Legos and the Path to Fame and Fortune.

I was born just a few years early to get in on the great Lego legacy. I had some white, red, and clear building blocks that worked much as Legos do, but they lacked the cool gadgets that Legos offers. 

 They were like miniature cinder blocks that connected and so they were relegated to building houses and forts for my toy soldiers.

Just as Bill Gates a generation later, cornered the operating systems market by slightly adapting existing technology, Legos moved into the American market with a slightly altered connector shape to my no-name building blocks and made an Empire. I’m even saving this file with a Lego USB drive.

So what is it about Legos that make six-year-olds hyperventilate? My erector set and Lincoln Logs never set me in a frenzy no matter how much Captain Crunch I’d had for breakfast.

I’ve never been proud. I steal pictures from FB to post here on Just Plain Stupid. I ‘borrow’ other people’s jokes; I even repurpose existing tunes to write parodies. I think I lack just as much character as Bill Gates and Joe Lego (or whatever his/her name is.) What existing bland and under-appreciated technology can I adjust slightly and use to rake in enough gold to satisfy a Lego pirate?

Rubber bands are basic and bland. They've been around ever since... a long time – but has anyone made jewelry from them?

You say they've been doing that a while? Maybe I should look around more.

Paper clips! What's more mundane and simple? But what if we made it artistic?

Oh – well, artists are usually poor anyway.

How about twist ties? Twist ties are ubiquitous. They breed in my top kitchen drawer, which really cuts down on manufacturing costs. How about claymation made from twist ties?

Hmm… I guess that’s covered.

Soda bottles! I could revolutionize the craft world with...

Dang it!

What's the most drab and useless technology out there... Toilet paper rolls? Ignoring the whole disease possibilities – if I could make toys from...

The heck with it. Move over; I'm playing with your Legos. I high-hosey the pirates!

For the .0002% of JPS readers who haven't seen it - here's a classic Lego adaptation of a Monty Python favorite.

TnT Excerpt Part E Slimy and the Law

There are sheriffs and there are sheriffs. Here’s one of my favorites:

Sheriff Quick was no Andy Taylor, but Andy rarely had blacksmiths blasted into hamburger helper in the Mayberry Diner. Slimy killed Mike Finn, and the loose coin that came of it made the regulars at the Rosa Linda sanguine (whatever that means) about the whole thing. But eventually the sheriff had to get involved.

This is the fifth and concluding post of my excerpt from chapter one of Trouble in Taos. If you want to read from the beginning, here is part-1 part-ii estevos-shotgun and part-4

Mike Finn was lying there dead. There were bits of him still hanging on the bar, and being such a large man, he was hard to step around and even harder to ignore. Mike didn’t have any family, so no one knew exactly what to do with him. Claybourne Petree, who you might remember was the undertaker and had the chair shot out from under him, searched the body to see if Finn had enough money on him to pay for a decent casket and hole. It turned out that Mike’s pockets were bulging with silver. No one knew that the smith was such a rich man.

Of course, some of that silver went for more whisky, which greatly relieved Estevo who had lost two shotguns and a nice chair in the business. The blacksmith’s inflated fees became the topic of conversation. Finn’s fortune was sufficient to supply a first class funeral, a good drunk for a rapidly crowded barroom, and even a couple silver dollars to compensate Flossy for her loss of business.

By the time Sheriff Quick (who was quick only in the sense that he wasn’t dead) arrived, Claybourne had Finn’s body at the mortuary. Estevo had cleaned up most of the blood and other body parts, and the universal opinion (with the exception of the doomed card-cheat Lefty Hagar) was that Slimy had done no great harm. After the sheriff downed a tumbler of real whisky, he agreed, told Slimy to be careful with those shotguns, and hauled Lefty off to the jailhouse.

I don’t know where W. G. C. R. Colmes got the bit about Slimy using a pearl-handled Colt to shoot Mike Finn. I’ve only seen Slimy handle a Colt once in my life, and that was to bludgeon a man who was unfortunate enough to stand between Slimy and someone he was shooting at. The poor bystander was gut shot, and so he was going to die anyway, but Slimy didn’t club him to put him out of his misery. The man was too absorbed in his wounds to pay proper attention to Slimy’s story about the dog his mother almost bought him just before the family was run out of Arkansas.

If you want more of Slimy’s adventures, you’ll have to download the book – well there is another excerpt at Go Figure Reads.