May 17, 2003

• Has anyone missed the ArmsMerchant?

  
  

  About three months ago, after a three-week absence, Greyfox came back from totse long enough to post a blog entitled, “The day I Killed my Dog.”

  
  

  Since then he has had several ideas that he mentioned as being something he would like to blog about.  But when he gets on the computer, he goes right to his email inbox and follows a link to a reply someone has made to some thread he started at the Temple of the Screaming Electron, and he is there until after midnight most nights.

  
  

  A week or so ago, I was confronting him, giving him a hard time for taking liberties, ripping me off.  I was asking him what he was thinking, what might have motivated him to overstep bounds and take what was not his to take.  He said it made him “feel rich”.

  
  

  I questioned whether it might not be better–better than just FEELING rich–to BE rich.  He immediately agreed, and went on sadly somewhat to the effect that it would be a hopeless pursuit.  I reminded him that he can WRITE, and that not too long ago, in geological time, he had had some ambitions, even some works in progress along those lines.

  
  

  The Old Fart was kinda down anyway, with business woes and political shit before he had me on his case.  He mournfully moaned something to the effect that he had “nothing to give, nothing worth reading.”  I demurred.

  
  

  I reminded him of things he has written before, and things he has intended to write, things he has talked about writing.  Then I remembered one of the brightest spots, one of very few bright spots in the first few years he lived up here:  The Continuing Adventures of Melody Andrewsdottir, Lady Shaman and Healer to the Rich and Famous.

  
  

  Melody was a serial, coming out in roughly quarterly installments for the four years or so that Greyfox produced The Shaman Papers.  Readers wrote and told us of falling out of bed laughing at her.  Greyfox and I would crack up over and over as we edited the drafts.  Doug memorized long hilarious passages to the mystification of his friends and teachers at school.

  
  

  Greyfox gave me permission (I’d have done it anyway; I have his password.) to transcribe Mel’s tales on his Xanga site.  I have done that with the first episode, from Spring, 1990.  Not everyone will get every in-joke, but even so, it is funny.  And if you think that one is funny, what comes after gets better and better.  This episode is like the humorous set-up to a screamingly funny running joke that will go on as long as there seems to be any reason to continue.

  
  

  I have over three years of bound archival material at hand, and we have begun searching for the quirky and weird final year, plus the as-yet-unpublished last written episode… and there is no reason why that needs to be Melody’s end, because it ends in the usual cliffhanger.  Go meet Melody.  If you like her, leave a comment and let Greyfox know.  If you want to read more, let me know and I will transcribe the next episode.  It’s hard work, much harder than writing, but I think she and Greyfox are worth it.

   

  • 5:59 pm
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