Caleb Rosales, Carpenter and Concerned Neighbor from "Virtuous"

 

"The World According to Mister Rogers" by Fred Rogers

BOOK TITLE: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

AUTHOR: Fred Rogers

YEAR: 2003

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Inspirational Quotes

GRADE: Extra Credit

As the host of the longest running PBS show in history, Fred Rogers inspired entire generations of viewers with messages of love and wisdom. He didn’t have one mean bone in his body. He wasn’t judgmental. He knew that every child had importance, every child had potential, and every child was deserving of love. Love didn’t always mean being one hundred percent agreeable all the time, but it was always an unconditional feeling that every person should experience in their lifetime. Fred Rogers passed away the year this book was published, but his legacy of love is immortal and multi-generational even to this day.

One of the most important messages you can receive from this book is to know that your emotions are completely natural and shouldn’t be feared or balked at. If someone wants to smile, let them smile. If someone wants to cry, let them cry. If someone is angry, help them use their anger in a constructive way. I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with my emotions from time to time. I belittle myself for the times I feel sad, I don’t allow myself to cry in front of others, and I don’t want to admit to anyone else what I’m feeling at that moment. Reading these quotes has helped me lower my defenses somewhat, but it’s a process that takes time as Fred Rogers will be the first to tell you. I’ll also admit that I hate watching other people cry because it makes me vicariously sad as well. That’s not from a place of discomfort. It’s from a place of love. Love is one of Mister Rogers’s most important themes.

Another important thing to remember is the effect we have on other people. Whether you do a big or small favor for someone, the feeling of gratitude is a powerful thing that will make it all worthwhile. By the same token, every hurtful thing we do to another person will be remembered as well. Be careful with your words and actions. Be a positive influence on a child’s life. We take all of these experiences when we grow up and they help us develop our adult personalities, for better or worse. Everything you do matters more than you think. It may not seem like a big deal, but to another human being, it means the world. Don’t be hateful. Don’t be bitter. Be the best possible example of yourself you can be.

And finally, another favorite part of this book is the fable Mister Rogers tells of the carpenter who refused to hire an apprentice because he won’t admit to making mistakes and therefore won’t know how to fix them when he does. Making mistakes is a natural part of the human experience, no matter how good of a person you may be. Even Mister Rogers made mistakes in his life that he ended up turning into valuable life lessons. Strength doesn’t come from perfect muscles or superhero abilities. It comes from being able to admit your weaknesses and working to make them into strengths. Egomania never did the world any good.

Everything you read in this book may seem like practical commonsense, but the truth is, these things don’t get said enough. Too many times we’ve strayed from our happiness and used our negativity to do awful things to each other. It could be a microcosmic relationship between two people or a macrocosmic political blunder heard around the world. We need Mister Rogers’s wisdom now more than ever. If everybody would pick up a copy of this book and study it until the end of time, we’d be much better off as a human race. An extra credit grade will go to this beautifully-crafted piece of nonfiction.

Crow Cop

“Read me the summary on this one, Hammy,” said Dexter Young as he cocked his magnum while sitting in the passenger side of the van. He tucked the weapon in his pants and pulled a pair of black ski masks out of the glove box, one for him, one for Hammond O’Hara a.k.a. Hammy.

Hammond sat in the driver’s seat flipping through various pages in his binder until he found what he was looking for. “Toni J. Mathews. Age 39. Recently divorced from her husband of five years after citing irreconcilable differences. Part of the settlement deal with her husband was that she was to receive a topaz ring worth fifty thousand dollars, maybe more on the black market. According to my research…”

“Ha! You did research…” chuckled Dexter as he winked at his partner.

Hammond got a good laugh out of it too. “Anyways, from what I’ve seen, she keeps the topaz ring in a safe in her bedroom. As far as I can tell, she has no security systems other than that safe and the only occupant living with Miss Mathews is a parrot named Mirko.”

Dexter blew out some air, shook his head, and said, “I asked you to canvas possible threats in the neighborhood and all you could come up with was a fucking bird? No cameras, no alarms, just a fucking bird? You know what? Maybe we won’t have to stop by KFC after work. I just hope the bitch has a working stove in her kitchen. I don’t see why not. She is a woman, after all; that’s kind of her thing.”

Hammond shook his jowly head and chuckled, “You’re awful, Dexter. You’re just plain awful.”

Dexter slapped Hammond upside the head and warned him, “Remember, no using real names. You’re Hammy and I’m D. Got that? I don’t want you forming bad habits when we’ve got the biggest score of our lives just waiting in there for us.”

“Sorry, man. My bad,” said Hammond as he tucked his ski mask in his jacket pocket. Both burglars dressed in dark clothing that blended in perfectly with the night air. They exited the van and sneaked across the street like ghosts, not prompting one porch light to flare up.

Once they reached the front porch, they pulled their ski masks over their heads and pulled out their magnums. “Ready to roll?” Dexter whispered.

“Ready as I’ll ever be…D!” whispered Hammond as he pulled out his lock picks and worked his magic on the doorknob. Slowly, carefully, and silently, The chubby burglar unlatched the bolt and even held the door open for his partner like a true gentleman. “After you, Dex, I mean, D!”

“I’m warning you, dip shit, if you blow our cover, you’re a dead motherfucker!” snapped Dexter. The two burglars crossed the threshold and Hammond gently pulled the door closed behind him. The entire house was as dark and silent as the streets themselves. Still, Dexter and Hammond weren’t going to take chances and tiptoed across the hardwood floor like ninjas.

They nearly jumped out of their skin when the light came on in the bedroom and a weary female voice asked, “Hello?” Dexter caught his partner drooling through his ski mask when the two of them saw Toni Mathews wearing little more than a sports bra and tiny shorts in the lit doorway. Not bad for a thirty-nine year old, thought Dexter. She had her blond hair up in a ponytail, which Dexter knew was an advantage for a horny partner like his.

Toni rubbed the sleepiness out of her eyes and turned on more lights in the house until she found herself in the living room with Dexter and Hammond. She wanted to snap awake and let out a shriek of doom, but the two burglars wrestled her to the ground with Dexter keeping his gloved hand over Toni’s mouth. The divorcee struggled and writhed while her stifled screams vibrated off of Dexter’s hand, but Hammond was already playing his role to perfection when he was wrapping duct tape around her ankles and knees.

Binding her hands and mouth became a much easier task when Dexter pressed the barrel of his gun against Toni’s nose and angrily whispered, “Shut up, bitch! Shut the fuck up! You make one more sound and I’ll blow that pretty head of yours off your shoulders!” Shaky and teary, Toni had no choice but to lay still while Hammond wrapped tape around her wrists and gagged her as well.

The two burglars dragged her bound body against the couch and sat her upright against the cushions. Dexter kept his gun pointed against Toni’s forehead and silently, but tensely said, “Listen good, lady: we’re not going to be staying a while. We just want one thing and then we’ll be out of here. If you try to resist us or call the police, you’re going to have splattered brains all over that pretty sofa of yours. You understand?”

“Wah! Call the crow cop! Call the crow cop! Wah!” squawked an avian voice from out of nowhere.

“That must be the goddamn bird,” said Hammond with a look of concern behind his mask.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. Go find the fucking thing and shut it up!” ordered Dexter. Hammond’s heavy and clunky movements towards the back of the house prompted Dexter to snap, “Can you make a little more noise please?! I’d love to have the cops on my ass!”

“Wah! Make some more noise! Make some more noise! Wah!” squawked Mirko again. A subsequent yelp of pain from Hammond followed by the sound of wings flapping caused Dexter’s adrenaline to pulsate throughout his body. The heavy burglar came back into view holding his now bloody nose. “What the fuck happened?”

“That little bastard bit me! I don’t care if I get the chair, I’m killing that bird!” said Hammond.

“Wah! You’re gonna get the chair! You’re gonna get the chair! Wah!” squawked Mirko.

“Shut up, you little piece of shit!” shouted Hammond before firing a round into the dark and prompting Dexter to wrestle him to the ground.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Hammy?!” snapped Dexter as he held his hand over his partner’s mouth. “You can’t be doing shit like that, you fat fuck! One more outburst from you and I’m putting one between your eyes! You and queen bitch over here can let the bird sing melodies to you for all eternity!”

Hammond removed his partner’s hand from his mouth and said, “Wait, wait! What if we take the tape off of the bitch’s mouth and make her call the little fucker over to us? Are we really going to be outgunned by a goddamn parrot?”

Toni sobbed through her gag and shook her head no at the burglars’ plans. Dexter creepily crawled up to his victim and said, “Oh, yes, yes, yes. You are going to call that little bastard over to us and it’ll be winner, winner, chicken dinner. And just so there’s no confusion, we’re under no obligation to keep you alive during this heist. We’re only doing it out of courtesy. Well, that’s not really true. We do have to keep you alive. After all, the last time I checked…Hammy and I weren’t into necrophilia!”

The two burglars chuckled at the rape joke while Toni’s sobs grew progressively louder even with tape on her mouth. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” snapped Dexter. The third hey was said with enough force to get Toni to stop making noises. “The only noises you should be making are the kind that bring the future KFC meal over to us. I’m going to rip the tape off of your mouth and I swear to god if you scream for help, you’re going to join your birdie friend on the dark side.”

Dexter ripped the tape off while Toni stifled a painful scream, too frightened not to take the threat seriously. “Now that I’ve restored your first amendment rights,” said Dexter. “You know what you need to use them for. Call out your monster.” Toni could do nothing but sob hysterically until Dexter’s “Now!” scream gave her extra motivation.

Trying to keep her lips steady, Toni whistled and said, “Here, Mirko! Come on over to mommy!” The unstoppable sobbing weakened her voice to where she couldn’t pull off a full whistle.”

“Oh, what the fuck was that?” condescended Dexter. “Put some gusto into it, you crazy bitch!”

“Wah! Put some gusto into it! Put some gusto into it! I’m a crow cop! Wah!”

Dexter and Hammond pointed their gun in the voice’s direction while Hammond shouted, “Where are you, you little shit?!”

Dexter felt a hard double kick in the back of his knee, causing him to drop on his ass and accidentally fire a bullet into Hammond’s ass. Dexter’s eyes bulged out of his skull as he watched his partner trying to suppress a shriek of pain while holding his bloody anus. He could see Hammond’s chubby lips quivering like a boat motor. “Hammy…” the burglar said softly. “It’ll be okay. Just lay down and…”

Toni repeatedly kicked Dexter in the face with her bare soles as if her life depended on it. The burglar felt his nose snap in two and a few of his teeth fall out of his mouth. Meanwhile, Mirko flew threw the shadows and nibbled on Hammond’s nose some more, tearing flesh and dining on blood. Both burglar’s screams were as obvious as fire truck sirens and the whole neighborhood’s lights started to flare up.

Dexter could hear the sounds of doors opening and slamming shut in between face distorting kicks to the face. Neighbors with shotguns and handguns burst through the front door and rushed to the scene of the crime, pulling tape off of Toni’s body and asking if she was alright.

By the time Mirko flew back into the shadows, Dexter and Hammond were lying on the floor with gashing faces and rearranged features. Once Toni was free and steady, she removed both of their masks to reveal their ugliest features, to which the armed neighbors made gagging noises of disgust.

“All this crazy shit over a topaz, huh, Dex, I mean, D,” slurred Hammond.

“Sorry, sweetheart. There’s no topaz here. We just like to encourage intruders, that’s all,” said Toni with a sickeningly benign smile.

Dexter opened his swollen eyes as wide as he was allowed and asked, “What the fuck are you talking about, lady?”

“You think you’re the first ones to try to pick apart this neighborhood?” asked Toni rhetorically. “This place used to be a popular gang neighborhood. And then we cleaned it up and lured more scumbags like you to come and join us. We’re making this city a better place one dead motherfucker at a time.”

“But I did research,” whined Hammond while spitting out blood. “I did fucking research!”

“Wah! You did research! You did research! I’m a crow cop! Wah!”

“Shut up, you stupid fucking bird!” shouted Dexter as he reached for his magnum and instead was showered with a hailstorm of bullets from the neighborhood crime watch. Hammond didn’t stand much of a chance either as his body instantly became a pool of blood and organs on the hardwood floor.

The last thing to go through Dexter Young’s mind, aside from the bullets, was a little child’s voice asking, “Can I pet your birdie, Miss Mathews?”

Fighting Game Neighborhoods

***FIGHTING GAME NEIGHBORHOODS***

I’m sure most of my reading audience is old enough to remember videogames from the Nintendo and Super Nintendo gaming consoles. What I don’t know is if any of you have played beat ‘em up fighting games like Double Dragon or Final Fight. If you haven’t, then you probably won’t understand just what the hell I’m talking about. In which case, feel free to skip past this portion of my journal and go straight to the creative project updates and the quote of the day.

For those of you who did play those kinds of videogames as a child, congratulations, your childhood was fucking awesome. There’s no violence quite like senseless violence as you move your ass-kicking character from one side of the screen to the other. No talking, no nonsense, just straight up ass-beatings and maybe some kya noises. What this journal deals with in particular is how most of those games take place in poor, dilapidated neighborhoods.

You know the kinds of neighborhoods I’m talking about. The buildings are so broken down that they look like they’re about to collapse. Cars parked on the side of the road live up to their moniker of Fixed or Repaired Daily. The roads and sidewalks have so many potholes that it’s amazing your character doesn’t trip over them constantly. There’s trash everywhere, and I mean everywhere. In the second stage of the first Final Fight game, the subway train’s windows are bashed in and there’s graffiti all over the walls.

If you’ve ever lived in a small town or inner city district before, then you’ve probably made the connection between your own life and a fighting videogame. You would often pretend to be Billy Lee or Cody Travers as you punch and kick at invisible enemies. You couldn’t do that to real people walking by or else that would be considered assault and battery. There are places in Port Orchard and Chehalis, WA that look like they could be backdrops for a fighting game based on their depressing appearances alone. I haven’t met anybody in Port Orchard who was worthy of a Mike Haggar piledriver. Chehalis? Oh, that was quite the different story.

But why is this trope so relevant to fighting games? Why do they always take place in shitty neighborhoods? You never see fighting games that take place in friendly or rich neighborhoods. Even Belger’s penthouse from the first Final Fight game looked like shit. But what if there was an installment of Double Dragon that took place in a gated community? Would it have the same feel? Would it make less sense? Are people in rich neighborhoods suddenly better than people in poor ones?

And that’s how you can tell if class warfare exists. You won’t see Guy slinging a katana at some Wall Street motherfuckers. If Mike Hagger ever got elected president, you wouldn’t see him clotheslining Andore out of his boots at the white house. You won’t see Shadow Master drinking a glass of Chablis while eating caviar with Liberace playing in the background. The poor neighborhood trope in fighting games is stereotypical of how Americans see their economic inferiors. Then again, nobody played those games because of they were models for progressive values. They played them for the same reason I’d love to play them again someday: because kicking ass is a lot of goddamn fun!

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

Speaking of kicking ass and taking names, this week’s story will be called “Kink Floyd” and will conform to the Captive prompt. It goes like this:

 CHARACTERS:

Tarja Hunter, Cop

Daniel “Kink Floyd” Alexander, Bondage Enthusiast

Johnny Filter, Straightedge Gangster

PROMPT CONFORMITY: Tarja is the captive of Daniel and Johnny.

SYNOPSIS: In order to gain leverage over the Paulson City Police Department, Johnny kidnaps Tarja (their best detective) and takes her to Daniel’s studio. “Kink Floyd” as he’s nicknamed poses her in humiliating sexual bondage positions while Johnny takes pictures on his iPhone. Distributing these pictures could do serious damage to the Police Department’s reputation, which is why Johnny wants to use the photos to blackmail them into allowing him and his gang to do whatever they want. But even in kinky bondage, Tarja won’t give up without a fight to the death.

FUN FACT: If Tarja ever arrests her two captives, not only will they be charged with assaulting an officer and attempted conspiracy, but they’ll also be charged with murder. The victim? Pink Floyd’s music.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

If Stinger Crushwar’s head looks like it’s a little too far on his left shoulder, I apologize. That was a goof on my part and hopefully there will be fewer of them in the future. No sense in crying over spilled milk, though, because the next one to appear on the list is Mathias Jorgenson, the elf sorcerer from “Forever Autumn”. I already drew a picture of Autumn the parrot wizard, so Mathias was naturally next on the list. “Forever Autumn” was described by my audience as “cute” and “cartoon-like”, so hopefully I’ll capture those essences when I draw Mathias.

***POISON TONGUE TALES***

Only my Deviant Art members will understand why this section of the journal is significant since they’re the only ones who see my editing work. The next three stories that will undergo literary surgery are the three M’s of Poison Tongue Tales: “Mastodon”, “Minnie-Moo”, and “Molly-Dolly”. All three of these stories deal with animals and they all start with the letter M, which spells out MMM!! Tarja Hunter’s going to be saying that a lot when I eventually write “Kink Floyd” for the WSS contest. Hehe!

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What do you call a mean Canadian?

A: Eh-Hole.