Muley in D.C.!

Photo taken on a recent trip with Mrs. Muley to Washington, D.C. Had a great time. (The way the wind is blowing my hair in this photo, I sorta look like Ed Grimley).

Good Friends

Another break from the dadgum Grocery Chronicles, just to tell a quick true life story,

My daughter Rebecca had her wisdom teeth removed this past Friday, and her face has been very swollen since then -- so swollen, in fact, that for a few days she went around the house with a scarf over her face (an idea she got, I think, from the movie "Penelope.") We finally convinced her that, instead of making her less noticeable, the scarf made her look like someone about to rob the 3:45 stagecoach from Dodge City, so she eventually stopped wearing it.

We'd all agreed that if Rebecca was still quite swollen on Monday morning, her mother and I would let her stay home from the first day back to school, since she's a good student and had her homework assignments to work on. She woke up yesterday still swollen, so she stayed home and missed the day of school.

Even though she was still almost as swollen this morning, she knew she'd have to return to school or risk falling behind. So she went, not too excitedly. And she made it through, although she claims EVERYONE noticed.

Here's the unusual little story part. Rebecca's got a great group of girls as her friends, and they all knew why she was missing classes. It turns out that there was a party at school she had to miss yesterday, so her friends created some sort of Rebecca "puppet" or "doll" that they not only took to the party in her absence, but that they faithfully took to each or her classes and placed in her empty chair.

This story doesn't have any big moral, but I just think it's nice for her to have such good (and creative) friends.

Halloween memories

When you're a kid, Halloween is the second biggest day of the year -- right behind Christmas in the "Boy, I can't wait -- how many days until it gets here?" department. A few days before Halloween, saliva would involuntarily begin leaking out of your mouth due to the anticipation of all that sweet stuff you had coming.

As an somewhat overweight child who liked to eat, Halloween was a big day for me. I lived in a fairly prosperous suburb of Houston, Texas, and back in those innocent days of the 1960s, Halloween had not yet gained the violent, ugly and overall negative connotations it has today. Parents accompanied toddlers trick-or-treating, but they thought nothing of sending their costumed elementary school children out into the neighborhood alone or with a group of friends, armed with nothing but an empty bag and a flashlight (which rarely if ever got used).

My memory is somewhat deficient, but I don't recall ever being a big fan of costumes all that much at Halloween. Those masks you bought at the store (with the laughingly thin rubber bands attached with staples) always were too small for my face, and were hot and uncomfortable to boot. I was usually too big for the manufactured costumes (Batman, Robin, the "fun" Joker), and although I probably took an old sheet and cut out eye holes and a mouth once to become a ghost, that was so cliche even back then to designate the wearer as an unimaginative loser.

So, I believe my usual costume disguise was "chubby pre-teen boy looking for candy." Since none of my school friends lived within walking distance, I usually teamed up with my younger brother. Lazy as we might have been on boring summer days, or when there was yardwork to be done, on Halloween night we were quick-moving, efficient machines of accumulation. While other kids might stop and talk with friends, admiring costumes or showing off props, we were focused like laser beams on the goal of visiting as many houses as we could and filling our sturdy bags as full of sweet swag as possible.

We would quickly scour the four streets in our immediate neighborhood, going methodically down one side of a street, then up the other side, then changing streets and repeating the process. We were always cheerful, polite and said "Thank you," as our parents instructed us to do, but we didn't hang around long.

Once we finished with our neighborhood, my enabler parents would drive us to a larger, somewhat richer neighborhood down the road where they would drop us off for a few hours. We had friends in this neighborhood, who we enjoyed seeing and chatting with, but again, our goal was conquest.

When we'd finally get home late that night -- some of the last kids out on the streets -- we'd come in the living room and dump out our bulging bags of hard-won treasure. The hundreds of pieces of candy that would spill out would cover half the floor. Our parents, on cue, after expressing amazement about how much junk we'd gotten, would warn us not to eat too much at once or we'd get sick. But we always ate a lot at once, and we never got sick, although by about the end of the first week of November we were secretly disgusted with candy, although we'd rarely admit it in case our parents would suggest we throw away the remains.

We'd always begin eating the best candy first, of course -- chocolate bars, Sweet Tarts, caramels, candy corn. After awhile the good stuff would disappear, and all we would have left is the second-rate remains -- rock-hard taffy drops, stale popcorn balls, mints, red licorice. But we'd eventually eat all that as well, unless it was truly nasty. If we couldn't feed it to the dog, only then would we throw it away.

Back in those innocent times, everyone went door-to-door trick-or-treating, and there were no "Fun Nights" or "Fall Festivals" sponsored by churches and other groups like there are today. But going door-to-door back then was truly safe. And every now and then, you'd find a house where the people really got into Halloween. They would have fake spider webs everywhere, with maybe some bloody monster dummies laid out by the front door with a record player blaring "Monster Mash" over and over. A great final touch would be the big black pot filled with water and dry ice to produce clouds of smoke over everything.

I remember at least a few houses in my neighborhood where the family temporarily cleared everything out of the garage, put up some dark curtains and black lights and made a "haunted house" they'd invite trick-or-treaters to come in and tour. In one area there was always a sheet with a hole cut in it, and when you put your hand through you'd be encouraged to dip it into a bowl of what you were told were human brains or intestines, but it always ended up feeling just like cooked spaghetti.

I also remember that Halloween night was a good time to determine which people on each block liked kids, and which did not. The kid-lovers had lights turned on and always had someone stationed by the door, ready to answer and dispense candy from big bowls. The non-kid lovers, by contrast, either had every light turned off (both inside and outside), or they had only a few dim interior lights left on. If you were brave or foolish enough to go up to the door of one of those houses and ring the bell, you'd wait a long time until someone finally opened the door, verrry slowly, and then asked, "Yes?," in a prickly tone as if you were selling life insurance or magazine subscriptions, or as if you had just relieved yourself on their orchids in the front flower beds. They never had candy.

This is hard to believe nowadays, but some people back in the 1960s actually took the time and trouble to make treats to give out on Halloween. They'd put together 700 popcorn balls (each wrapped in Saran Wrap and hand-tied with a little twistie), or make candy apples or little bags of homemade cookies. This wonderful tradition eventually stopped, however, when parents heard reports of sickos putting razor blades in apples and dousing baked goods with poison. Local hospitals would cheerfully offer to X-ray your candy for metal objects hidden within, but people just stopped making and accepting homemade goods.

This is the first Halloween where neither one of our girls is going trick-or-treating. They are both old enough now that they have switched roles and are working at our church's Fall Festival tonight. It's a fun night with big inflatable slides and jumping rooms, horse-drawn carriage rides and lots of games for smaller kids like ring toss and a cake walk. There's still lots and lots of candy given out, and I enjoy it, but somehow it just doesn't compare to those Halloweens of days gone by.

Have a great time tonight with your kids, and save the black licorice jellybeans for me.

An Ike Wrap-up (Almost)

Well, there's good and bad news to report on the people I know who got hit by Hurricane Ike.

First of all, my parents in Friendswood turned out to be some of the lucky ones. Not only did their house not see any major damage, but after losing their power early Saturday morning, they miraculously had their power restored Sunday night, when most everyone else in the Houston area was in darkness. We don't know why they got back on so quickly -- they aren't near a hospital or fire or police station -- but we're thankful. Now, all those heavily frozen and nearly petrified mystery meats down at the bottom of their freezer in the garage will not have to be thrown away. They can be preserved for study by nutritionists of future generations.

My wife's sister and her husband and daughter left Waco Monday afternoon for the long drive back to Humble, north of Houston near Bush Intercontinental Airport. They reported that it was very hard to get through because of all the downed trees and other damage all around. As of this morning, they are still without power, although because they have natural gas service they can take hot showers and cook some meals. Another blessing is this cold front we had blow in over the weekend, making the temperatures bearable, but I'm not sure what they do at night when there's no lights and no TV or computer. You can't even play Monopoly if you can't see the board.

Another of my wife's friends who lives near Humble in a place called Kingwood is also without power, and they have been without it longer because they stayed to ride out the storm. You can tell from this woman's e-mails how tiring and depressing it is being without electricity. They are thankful, however, that no trees fell on their house as they did elsewhere in their block. (She sent Mrs. Muley some photos of damage in their neighborhood, which I will display at the end of this post).

When I lived at home in Friendswood as a kid and for awhile as a college student we rode out a few hurricanes, and sometimes they were fun (when winds and damage were slight) and sometimes they weren't. Friendswood made national news back in the late 1970s when I was living there when a tropical storm that hit us stayed forever and dumped something like 18 inches of rain on us in a few days, causing what experts termed a 100-year flood. Our house, which was high above a creek and had always managed to escape big floods, got hit that time with about six inches of water inside. It was a pain having to cut out all our downstairs carpet and roll it out to the curb, and even more of a pain to walk on concrete slab for six months until we finally were able to get new carpet and flooring installed. But even that minor inconvenience was nothing compared to what so many people in Houston are dealing with now.

I think I'll try to talk about something else in my next post, because I'm tired of talking and thinking about Ike. But I'll hopefully remember to let you know when all my family and friends are somewhat back to norm al. And I appreciate all the prayers and kind thoughts from those of you reading these dispatches.

Ike Update

Well, as far as Waco goes, we got just what I figured we would, based on past experience and the weather reports. If you didn't know there was a hurricane to thank, I'd say we got some much-needed gentle rain and a few cooling breezes.

But, for family and friends in Southeast Texas, things are not so great. My parents in Friendswood lost power overnight -- as did millions of people in and around Houston -- but luckily no trees fell on their house and no water found its way inside. They are lucky, although with the predictions being that it will take days or even weeks for power to get restored, they've got to figure out what to do with hundreds of dollars worth of worthless refrigerated and frozen food, and where to relocate until power is restored.

Mrs. Muley's sister's house, I'm afraid, fared worse. They live in Humble, just north of Houston, and we hear they lost all the big pine trees in their backyard, and had roof damage with rain invading their dining room and upstairs master bedroom. My two nephews stayed there and rode out the storm, so at least they will hopefully be able to do some kind of repair and salvage. But they are without power as well, so it makes it hard to fix food or pass the nights easily.

We have other friends and relatives in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area, which I hear got really drenched with the "dirty side" of the hurricane, but so far we haven't heard through the grapevine yet how everyone made out. They, too, decided to ride out the storm and not evacuate.

I'll post again when I hear more. Tonight, my 12-year-old daughter INSISTS that we go see her newest favorite movie, "Get Smart," with her at the dollar theater, which will be a trial (I hear it's bad), but an easy trial to sit through compared to so much real suffering elsewhere.

Waiting for Ike

If I finish the Branson story, it will have to be later.

Everyone here in Texas -- at least the eastern half of the state -- is waiting for Ike, most with trepidation of varying degrees, some with total indifference. It seems evident at this hour (3 p.m. Friday) that Galveston Island will pretty much be under water before long. As in totally under water.

Mrs. Muley is watching live coverage from one of the Houston television stations, and there is already water in the streets of Kemah, a little town along Galveston Bay near NASA that has an amusement park and boardwalk we have taken our children to.

You would think everyone in Houston would be either gone or trying to get out by now, but my own family proves this idea wrong. Mrs. Muley's sister, her husband and their daughter are here with us in Waco, arriving today. However, their two adult sons decided to ride out the storm at their parents' home in Humble.

My own parents, meanwhile, who tried to evacuate during Rita but met with gridlocked highways and ended up turning back, have strangely decided to stick their head in the ground on this one. They live in Friendswood -- smack between Houston and Galveston -- but even though Mrs. Muley and I have told them that televised reports have repeatedly said Friendswood is under forced evacuation, they maintain that since they have yet to get some sort of automated message on the phone from the city telling them to evacuate, there really is no requirement to leave.

I and Mrs. Muley have both tried to convince them to leave and come stay with us, but it's apparent now this is one of my parents' stubborn quirks that we will not budge. Of course, I know what will happen. They'll come out fine -- maybe a small tree blown down and a little wet carpet -- and they'll tease us forever afterwards about what over-reactors we are.

Anyway, that's the situation here. I'm looking out the window in my new office (we recently were moved to the seventh story of a building overlooking the Brazos River) and the sky is blue with lots of puffy white clouds. I'm betting all we get here is some strong winds, no rain, but we'll see. Pray for all the folks here in Texas who will fare much worse.

The Branson Trip, part one

Well, when it comes to quickness, I might just win a race these days with a slug -- if I cheated by pouring salt on it first, that is. Two weeks late, I finally post.

The Muley family did indeed make it to Branson. Overall, we had a great time, but there were moments and aspects of the trip that made us realize why patience is indeed a virtue.

When leaving Waco the first day, we opted to go the "fast" route (a highly relative term) by heading straight north on Interstate 35 and then U.S. 75 through north Texas and then eastern Oklahoma. Just before you cross into Oklahoma, there is a huge "Texas welcome center" that we always stop at, even though we're really leaving. Most Texas rest stops look like they were built with prison labor and modeled on the prisoners' own toilet facilities, but they do things up right here when they think tourists are coming in ready to blow money. There are lots of shady places to park, and inside are fancy bathrooms, an air-conditioned lobby with soft music playing, and rack after rack containing brochures on every imaginable Texas city and event ("Come to Smithville for Worm Wranglin' Weekend!"). I even thought I saw Miss Texas 2007 passing through with complimentary Lone Star wine and cheese.

But, then it was time to head back in the van and cross the bridge over the muddy Red River into Oklahoma. I know that I don't have the appreciation of Oklahoma that I should have, because the rare times I am in the state are when I'm doing my level best to speed through as quickly as possible on the way to somewhere else. This does not allow for the slow, quiet and searching meandering through scenic spots that causes one to grow to love a place.

If you see Oklahoma only from the highway, it seems as if there are just two important facts about the state: there are lots of Indians living there, and they want your money in the worst way. It hits you not 20 miles across the border in Durant, where you see the huge Choctaw Casino with what appears to be thousands of pickup trucks and campers parked outside of it, and a marquee announcing a future concert by some 50s crooner or 80s heavy metal band.

I counted three different Choctaw Casinos along U.S. 75 as we traveled. The one in Durant was the biggest, and as the towns they were in got smaller, so did the casinos themselves. The final Choctaw Casino I saw was in a little two-pump gas station town, and looked like maybe it was housed in a remodeled 7-11 convenience store.

There were lots of billboards for other temptations like bingo parlors and cheap cigarettes to see along U.S. 75, and what must have been about five thrift stores and flea markets for each small town. However, I was still sad I didn't have time to investigate a bit, because in some of the towns (with really cool Indian names hard to pronounce) I could faintly see blocks away from the highway lakes and trees and the beginnings of hills. But there was no time available in which to explore.

At some point we took a big right turn eastward and headed due east toward Arkansas. After what seemed like forever, we passed through northwest Arkansas, turned north and made it into Branson just before dark (passing about 342 Wal-Marts en route). I'll try to pick up the story in my next post. (We're heading out of town this weekend to attend my 30th high school reunion, so that should make another good post at some time in the future).

Still Alive, Muley?

Yes, I am still alive. I just have not figured out yet what I want to do with the shriveled, neglected carcass of comedy and culture that Muley's World has become. I waver between jumping in again full-steam or pushing DELETE and sending the whole thing to cyber heaven.

To answer the question I posed in my last post from back in MARCH, the Muley family has decided to return to Branson for our summer vacation. We leave on July 7 and will return on Muley's birthday, July 11. We'll be staying at a hotel-water park combo that is adjacent to Silver Dollar City amusement park, which is where we will spend probably a day and a half. We'll also take the night cruise of the lake on the big paddlewheeler, and have a whole day to just bum around town, eat cobbler and buy garish trinkets. It should be a blast.

Anyway, I've felt so guilty every time I've seen this bookmark come up, knowing that I have this bad penchant for just up and disappearing with no explanation. Even though I've learned over time that this is not uncommon in the blogosphere, I thought I would write a few words here to let you guys know what's up. Maybe all those nights under the Ozark moon next month will give me a better idea of what to do with Muley's World.

In the meantime, I hope all of you and your families are well and having fun this summer. If we can survive this heat, $5 gas and the incessant lunacy that is Election '08, I guess we'll survive anything.

Gifted and Talented

Muley, circa 1961, completing the reasoning section of the Iowa Basic Skills Test. Results withheld by request of the author.

How Long Will You Live?

If you remember your Bible at all, you know it says again and again that our days are numbered, that only God knows what those numbers are, and that our earthly demise can come unannounced at any time.

Of course, sometimes we wish we knew just how long we actually have to live. I mean, if we knew we only had a few months left, we might cash in the CDs and probably wouldn't worry about doing winter maintenance on the lawnmower.

Despite the fact that mortality remains a mystery, there's always someone trying to make a science out of predicting how long we have to live, whether by examining the length of lines on our palms, reading the stars or looking into a crystal ball. Now, some high-tech geeks have gotten in on the act with an online tool.

When you go here, you'll find a panel that asks you questions about when you were born and how healthy your lifestyle is. When you fill everything out, it supposedly tells you the exact day you should die.

There are some bugs I should warn you about. Mrs. Muley and I figured out that when it asks you about your "medicine status," it doesn't want to know if you take prescription pills. It's asking if you abuse your body with harmful drugs. The reason why we figured this out is, when we checked "yes," it had us dying fairly quickly. And when Mrs. Muley's 77-year-old mother tried it out and answered in the affirmative to the drugs question, it told her that she should have died back in 1986, a fact that she found both comical and a bit bracing. When all of us changed our medicine status to the negative, however, the program changed its tune and gave us all much longer lives, even raising Mrs. Muley's mother from her early grave.

What did it tell me? Well, I am supposed to die on Saturday, September 18, 2049, which means that Mrs. Muley will have to teach 6th grade Sunday School by herself the next day. As far as Mrs. Muley goes, she is expected to shuffle off this mortal coil on what would have been my 98th birthday, July 11, 2058. That will leave her almost nine years of wild widowhood in her 90s to go out and party without me.

You'll probably either think this is too morbid to mess with, or you'll take it with a big grain of salt, as I did, and have fun with it. If you fall into the latter category, let me know what the mystical cyber swami tells you.

Merry Christmas!

Muley by the Christmas tree, 1962. Those were the days of Tinkertoys and tricycles.

Merry Christmas to you and yours, and may you be close to family and friends.

Thingmaker: Make Toys or Grilled Cheese Sandwiches!

This is the third in a series of trips down memory lane featuring Muley's favorite childhood Christmas toys.

This toy was a big favorite with me and my brothers. The foundation of the toy was Thingmaker, basically a heated metal plate that would take metal molds filled with liquid plastic and cook the plastic until the resulting shapes became hard and rubbery. But the product is commonly referred to as "Creepy Crawlers," which was the name given to the products of one of the most popular series of themed molds you could buy to work with Thingmaker.



If you go into a toy store nowadays, I believe they sell something under the Creepy Crawlers name. The idea is the same, but from what I have seen it is a pale imitation of the original Thingmaker system. The new one looks like a modified Easy Bake oven, with plastic parts and using the equivalent of a light bulb to bake the plastic. The original Thingmaker, by contrast, was like a little metal foundry in your home. The molds were made of thick metal, and the Thingmaker was able to heat that metal up so hot that you would burn the dickens out of your tiny, tender hands if you didn't remove the molds just right.

I would guess that Creepy Crawlers were probably the most popular things you could make with Thingmaker, but as you can see from the clipped advertisement here, you could also make other stuff like scary makeup items. I also remember that at our house we had molds that allowed us to create toy soldiers. One mold would make the front part of the soldier's body, a second mold would make the back half, and I guess you were supposed to fit the two halves together while the thing was still warm and sticky so that they'd dry into one figure. A third mold let you make rifles and grenades and such. The idea was that you could eventually create enough of the little guys to form your own army. But, unlike G.I. Joes, Thingmaker soldiers were as rubbery as the fake snakes and vampire teeth it also cooked up. It's as though some alien from space swooped down and removed all of the bones from a U.S. Army battalion.

Besides providing me hours of enjoyment being my own Dr. Frankenstein, I loved the sheer utilitarianism of the names Mattel gave to this toy and its components. The thing you made stuff in was called...the thing maker. The liquid goop you poured into the molds was called...goop.

When it comes to summing up Thingmaker, I believe radarmagazine does it best: "Nothing says safety like an open hot plate. And nothing says fun like using that open hot plate to create molten, rubbery insects you can throw at your sister while narrowly avoiding setting the house ablaze."

Major Matt Mason: Muy Molded Machismo!

In Part Two of what I guess is now a series of looks back at my favorite toys from childhood 1960s Christmases, I want to introduce you to Major Matt Mason (surprisingly, not a product of the 3M Corporation).



I think it was a bit unusual, even back in the groovy Sixties, to have television ad copy read in rhyme. I believe this poem, titled "The Misbegotten Moon of Major Matt Mason," was actually one of the lesser-known works of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert Penn Warren, based on a short story by Chekhov.

My little brother and I spent many hours of pleasure taking Major Matt and Sergeant Storm (as an enlisted man, he didn't rate a first name) on adventures across the floor in our dad's study. We would have been green with envy, though, if we'd seen the swanky fantasy play area the boys in the TV commercial have their space station set up in. Not many parents would let their children bring in beach sand and move boulders into the living room, even if they did look like those cardboard imitation boulders used on the original Star Trek episodes.

I don't remember the Captain Laser character at all. Being a battery operated giant, he probably had a giant price tag, which might explain why my parents never saw fit to bring him home to join our crew. Besides, being raised on Mars and all, could you really trust him? Would Major Matt wake up one day in the space station to find one of his rubberized legs chewed off up to his hips, with Captain Laser just licking his lips, his red eyes pulsing rapidly?

It Wasn't Called "Vrroom!" for Nothing

If you were a red-blooded American boy in the 1960s, not old enough to drive and forced to settle for riding a bicycle or tricycle, this was something you wanted from Santa. I finally got one as a Christmas gift, and I can still remember our neighborhood in the days following, with me and other boys riding their bikes down the street, sounding like an invading army of locusts ready for a motocross race.



You just knew this was the coolest because you had your own special key to start the engine. It weren't no toy, you understand.

I love the commercial! Am I wrong, or can no kid have that many huge freckles on his nose? Do you think they painted them on with some sort of dye? And why do all little boys in 1960s commercials look as though their fathers cut their hair with a pair of pruning shears while drunk? Probably because, in many cases, they did.

Muley at Christmas, 1963

If a Blogger Posts in the Forest, and No One Reads Him, Did He Really Have Anything To Say?

Well, it finally happened. Less than a week after I started posting to Muley's World again (after an eight-month hiatus), one of my old blogger friends, for some inexplicable reason, dropped by and discovered my return.

I told her in answering her kind comment that I wasn't sure how long I would be "back" because I wasn't exactly sure why I resumed blogging in the first place. I still am not, so I'm going to try and figure that out by writing this.

I started Muley's World and wrote my first tentative post way back in May 2005. It was done totally on a whim, after a friend who had a Xanga told me how easy it was and I found out that she was correct. It was easy and fun, and didn't require lots of expensive equipment, leave stains on the carpet or lead to social diseases or flatulence.

When I began Muley's World, I knew almost nothing about the blogosphere. The only blog I visited on any sort of regular basis was Dawn Eden's, and I didn't have a good idea of just who made up the blogosphere and why they had signed on.

I got into blogging for what I now see were wrong reasons, at least given the prevailing two-way, social, chatting-over-the-back-fence nature of the blogosphere. I have been a writer since my earliest days, and writing -- whether the result was a story, a column, a poem, a song lyric or a play -- was always an invigorating and challenging activity for me. I wasn't one of those strictly discipined and motivated people who can make themselves write every single day and always keep a significant long-range goal in mind for what they produce. I just like to write. In the same way some people love to work crosswords or fashion a gourmet meal from scratch, I enjoy the challenge of stringing random words together to make something greater than the whole. It's a puzzle I enjoy solving over and over again -- can I take this one absurdly simple idea, or this somewhat humorous picture in my mind, and expand it well enough to make a cogent, readable and (hopefully) humorous piece of prose out of it?

It was in this mindset, then, that I began Muley's World. I saw this blog as a wonderful new toy. Somehow, for absolutely no cost, I had been offered my own newspaper or magazine, to do with whatever I wanted. There were no boundaries at all! I could write essays, short stories, poetry, critiques, autobiographical memoirs -- heck, I could even type out my grocery lists -- and then publish them for an audience that conceivably could include readers in every country in the world. Wow! I was brimming with ideas and couldn't wait to get my words pixelated on the page.

Of course, I hoped that people would somehow find their way to my site and read what I had written. They soon did, thanks in part to a gracious, totally unexpected and wildly ego-stroking promo by Dawn Eden on her blog, and I was most pleased with the way things were working out. In the space of a few short weeks I had gone from being a somewhat frustrated wannabe writer to the owner and editor of an online publication that was attracting notice across the country. (In a small sense, of course -- no need to cue the John WIlliams orchestral score to begin here).

It didn't take me long, however, before I discovered that the blogosphere was a bit different than I'd first imagined it to be. I learned that blogs are expected to be quite communal little creatures. By blogging, you are in effect asking people -- strangers -- not only to read what you write, but to give you feedback on what you write through comments left after each post. If you simply read those comments, but do not return the favor by visiting the blogs written by the commentors and leaving comments of your own, you stand accused of being a (gasp) "lurker," a person who is considered to be as slimy and creepy and downright nasty as that ominous term implies.

In other words, if someone writes a column in a print publication and you read it without immediately mailing off a letter to the editor, you are considered normal. However, if you read that same author's columns online without once leaving a comment, you are considered a lurker who might just as well be peeping into the shutters of adolescent girls' bedrooms around bathtime.

Now, I am as social as the next person (well, almost), but I also have a huge shy, private streak. I didn't get into blogging as the means to a social end -- to meet women (I'm married) or to find a publisher (not actively, at least) or to discover new soulmates or beer buddies. I just wanted to write, and, as a secondary goal, to see if what I wrote might by some wonderful luck be interesting to anyone else. That's all.

I think of myself as a kind, caring and fair person, however, and I could understand why neglecting to even visit the sites of people who regularly visited mine, much less neglecting to read their pieces and leave comments in turn, could be viewed as selfish and unfair. I mean, after all, if I want you to visit my site, shouldn't I return the favor? Isn't that the Monroe Doctrine? Or is that the Geneva Convention?

And so I did visit. Often. As more and more people visited Muley's World, my blogroll got larger and larger, and I began rolling up into the driveway of the sites of my newfound cyberfriends on a regular basis. I learned a lot and laughed a lot, and got to enjoy stopping in for chatty, witty téte-a-tétes.

After a while, though, all of that cyber surfing started to feel less like an enjoyable hobby and more like a job with lots of overtime. Checking my site, reading any comments left, leaving responding comments on my site, then visiting the sites of the commenters, reading their new posts, leaving new comments, checking on my previous day's comments to see if those had been replied to and leaving a set of follow-up comments if necessary -- as that routine grew to encompass more than 20 blogs a day, I started having to steal time from work and family to keep up with it all. And, like it never had before, writing began feeling like a chore, an obligation, something I had to do or else I would let people down.

So I stopped. Cold. Twice.

Now I'm back, wondering why. Am I like an alcoholic who has been sober for months, wanting to test whether he can have a few teensy weensy sips of light wine each day without ending up in the gutter again? I haven't even told my wife or my friends that I've begun posting again at Muley's World -- that's how unsure I still am about all of this.

I do know one thing. I can't get back to that incredibly time-consuming whirl of blog-checking and drive-by commenting that I was on before. I don't think that means I never want to trade thoughts with my wonderfully sharp and funny cyber friends. Why deny myself that pleasure? But I don't think I can let that aspect of blogging guide what I do. To keep writing (and to keep sane) I think I need to adopt the philosophy that I will best serve my friends by hopefully writing things they might read to add a laugh or a provocative thought to their day. Period. Anything that I might be able to do beyond that will be gravy.

[A SHORT INTERMISSION. THE LOBBY REFRESHMENTS COUNTER WILL BE OPEN FOR 10 MINUTES. PLEASE DO NOT BRING SOFT DRINKS BACK INTO THE BLOG.]

I'm reading back over what I've just written and it all sounds so smug, so incredibly selfish. "I am such a writing talent that you should feel honored and lucky just to have the chance to read what I deem you are worthy to read." But I assure you that is not my intention.

You know what this blog is for me? Above all, it's not a vehicle to allow me to attract praise, but a tool that motivates me to get off my butt and do what I know I really want to do down deep inside, which is write.

If I get what I think is a great idea or a funny scenario in my head, and all I do is chuckle to myself about it and then resume my daily drudgery, then it's gone forever, and I've remained a lazy and flabby writer wannabe. If, however, I know that I have a blog that hasn't been updated in a while, I am motivated to take that small idea, chew on it, ruminate on it, let it spur my imagination to flex its muscles, and then let it lead me running to the keyboard to see if I can somehow corral all the wild thoughts flying around my mind into something cohesive and understandable. It's an incredibly fun test of skill that I never get tired of.

Then, after I have completed whatever piece I have written, if I think it's something worth sharing, if I think it's something that might be of value to someone else, then I have this wonderfully convenient thing called Muley's World where I can throw it in and let whomever wishes look at it. They can like it, they can hate it, but either way, it now exists in tangible form and I've had fun creating it.

This, as you see, is not at all the traditional model of most blogs, which seems to be basically "tell me about your day and I'll tell you about mine." Frankly, recounting most of my days would probably bore even your dullest friends and relatives, but maybe I can conjure up enough goofiness in my imagination to make all of you smile.

If there is anyone still reading this (and that is a highly doubtful proposition) I apologize for this very atypical Oprah-like confessional from me. I don't as a rule like to make my navel-gazing public. But more than anything, I wanted to wrestle with the issue of why I am blogging again to try and find the answer in my own mind, and if sharing some of that process with you in print has left you cold (or approaching REM sleep), I apologize.

I am glad to be back -- whatever that may mean. I thank Emma and any other longtime Muley readers who want to stop by, and I look forward to doing my best to return the favor from time to time. Above all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to stop talking to myself in public places and once again have a socially approved outlet for my malady.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones

Here is Muley himself on a recent visit to a medical facility in Dallas, posing with someone he met there. Is this new friend of Muley's:

A) Tiffany Torso, the famous runway model, visiting the diet lab;

B) Tooten Myohn Horn, famed Egyptian pharoah whose tomb was recently pilfered; or

C) Bones McPhalanges, veteran Halloween costume model?

You tell me.

Somewhat Germane Quote of the Day:

"When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap."

--Cynthia Heimel

...As I Was Saying Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted

Well, it was like this, see. We were in the drive-in lane of a Wendy's in Albuquerque, waiting on an order of Frostys and Biggie Fries, when an incredibly bright light filled our car, blinding us all. Next thing I knew, I'm strapped on some sort of table under a lot of blinking lights and whirring machinery. I'm covered in what feels like last week's spaghetti, and some huge creature with a face full of eybealls and tentacles is poking and prodding me and making noises like I'd never heard before.

Of course, at first I thought it was all a bad dream brought on by too little sleep and too many saturated fats and hydrogenated solids. But I soon realized that my worst fear was coming true -- my family and I had been abducted by aliens. Large, rude, flatulent aliens, at that.

It's been an incredible five months, I can tell you. We were poked, probed, examined and forced to do any number of nasty chores by our captors. And believe me, it's never fun to wash underwear, but try doing it for beings with 23 legs! And don't get me started about their fondness for watching bad television. We eventually understood enough of their language to discover that they were supposedly sent here from planet Qrxttblavn to study human behavior, but the only shows they seemed to watch were reruns of "ALF" and episodes of WIlliam Shatner's new game show.

We'd still be there, laundering Swiss cheese undies while hovering miles above the Earth behind an invisibility shield, if it hadn't been for the untimely death of soul singer James Brown on Christmas Day. Our alien captors revealed that the Godfather of Soul was actually their leader, in human disguise, and explained that they were required to return immediately to Qrxttblavn to report the death and prepare for a national year of mourning and daily public singings of "Papa's Got a Brand-New Bag." On their way out of the galaxy, they unceremonially dumped the Muley family in the parking lot of an abandoned K-Mart in Wheeling, West Virginia. After a bit of using our thumbs, we returned to Waco on New Year's Eve, just in time to ring in 2007.

Of course, one of the first things I wanted to do was check in on Muley's World with an account of my experiences. I sure didn't want anyone to think I was some sort of lazy, self-absorbed, disloyal, egg-sucking bum who would simply walk away and neglect his blog for five months or more. No, sirree.

So, I'm glad to be back. I hope all of you had a great Christmas and New Year's Eve. I'll try to check in with everyone and see what's been going on in my absence. Take care.

Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Fe

The Muley family is heading out tomorrow on the second leg of our World Vacation Tour 2006. This time, we'll be seeing some sights in New Mexico -- Santa Fe, Taos, Albuquerque -- with the Muley grandparents. The crew that all rode together in a van last summer for a week in Branson is back on the road! I'll try to post about our crazy adventures when I return in a week or so. Ya'll take care.

This Is Why Willie and Waylon Sing That Song

Cowboy Muley, about one year old. I hadn't started dipping snuff yet, but I could sure hogtie a mean diaper.