Basil’s Word Search

 

Hey!

Check out this free word search based on my books and podcasts.

If you listened to the podcast you will recognize most of the names and places. Enjoy!

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Basil’s Word Search

 

Hey!

Check out this free word search based on my books and podcasts.

If you listened to the podcast you will recognize most of the names and places. Enjoy!

Sphere: Related Content

Pork…and other forbidden fruits

Some days I feel like eating pork. You know, a delicious slice or two of bacon, or maple and sage sausage.  Maybe even a thick juicy pork chop.

But then, I remember I will probably die if I eat pork. No, I am not Kosher or whatever the Muslim version of Kosher is. I am just allergic to pork. While it probably won’t kill me, it will make me wish I was dead. And the smells emanating from my body after ingesting it will likely make anyone within fifty feet of me think I am dead and just haven’t realized I am decomposing.

It has probably always been that way for me, even though I loved bacon and ham as a kid and didn’t know it was slowly killing me. I ate it all the time. Bacon, pork chops, beans and ham, pork sausage. I should have guessed early on when my mother always complained about how rude I was for passing gas as much as I did. But hey, she kept feeding me the poison!

It wasn’t until my appendix was taken out that I realized all the intestinal issues I had as a kid was because I was allergic to pork. The first time I ate pork after recovering from surgery my wife had made a really delicious Korean spicy pork bacon dish that I always loved before. I endured the most violent cramps you can imagine. PMS on steroids for men. I thought my appendix had come back into my body like Freddy Krueger returning from Hell. It nearly put me back in the hospital.

I don’t know if anyone else has ever experienced that kind of symptom from pork after an appendectomy. It was a real shock to me. If it is a regular medical occurrence I have yet to meet the rest of the victims. When I mention it to other people they are quite surprised to hear that. Except of course for my Jewish friends who just say “Of course, the prohibition of pork wouldn’t be in the Torah if there weren’t truth behind it.”

Now I do still eat other non-Kosher foods. Shell fish like shrimp and lobster and scallops and catfish and octopus and so on. But I will say this, I do not enjoy them as much as I used to. I don’t know what it is, but all of that kind of food just…I don’t know…tastes funny. And it makes my burps taste funny too. Funny in a bad sort of way.

So, what does my allergy to pig flesh and recent aversion to shellfish and bottom feeders have to do with my books or politics or news or anything I normally bring up?

Well… I’m not sure. Except that sometimes the thing we think we may be naturally drawn to, the thing we are fed all of our lives under the guise of normal food by our parents and even our spouses may not always be what we are actually meant to consume.

Maybe I need to reconsider my career as an IT Specialist. After all, when I am in the office I regularly spend a good portion of my work day sneezing and blowing my nose…just like an allergic reaction.

Hmmm. Perhaps I should just jump on over to what seems more natural to me.  Writing and telling stories and acting like a silly person on my talk show don’t give me allergic reactions.

Something to ponder.

If what you do makes you fart like a brute beast, or it if makes you sneeze like hyper-allergenic cat groomer maybe you should reconsider your path.

Just thinking out loud here.

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Same ol’ Same ol’

I really don't like to be seen as derivative, but I also realise that there is little likelihood someone could write something in the same manner or style as I do or I, they unless I really try...ie cheat.

My problem is that my dislike of derivation, commonality, normalcy, repetition etc has led me into a quandary. I am in the middle of the last book of a loosely connected series and find that I am beating myself up trying not to sound derivative of my own previous works. The other three books had surprises and events that made people keep turning the page (actually they've only been released in podcast audio, so they just kept listening as I turned the page). In this one the characters feel too familiar, too transparent.

Maybe it is just me. Maybe I have grown too close to these characters and like a bad case of visiting relatives too long have tired of hanging out with them.

Or maybe it is the fact that I have only seen ten hours of sunlight in two weeks and it is flippin' cold and I am wishing I had the cash to take a vacation but my agent still hasn't sold the previous three books I wrote so I am feeling like I am spinning my wheels late on a Sunday night and just plain feeling whiny at a time when no one wants to hear me whine even though just yesterday I had a few hundred people laughing when I did my talk show but now can't even get a simple plot in a simple thriller novel to make sense or even keep the tempo and now I just feel like crawling under my chair and eating those little cheesecake niblet thingies my son brought home yesterday from his job at the fancy Italian restaurant that I can't afford to eat at but don't want to eat right now anyway because I have a serious issue with run-on sentences and can't even figure out where to put the punctuation in this one.

Sigh...I'm going outside to make snow angles.

yeah...angles...they're easier than angels...you just lay there in a half fetal position in the snow.

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Same ol’ Same ol’

I really don't like to be seen as derivative, but I also realise that there is little likelihood someone could write something in the same manner or style as I do or I, they unless I really try...ie cheat.

My problem is that my dislike of derivation, commonality, normalcy, repetition etc has led me into a quandry. I am in the middle of the last book of a loosely connected series and find that I am beating myself up trying not to sound derivative of my own previous works. The other three books had surprises and events that made people keep turning the page (actually they've only been released in podcast audio, so they just kept listening as I turned the page). In this one the characters feel too familiar, too transparent.

Maybe it is just me. Maybe I have grown too close to these characters and like a bad case of visiting relatives too long have tired of hanging out with them.

Or maybe it is the fact that I have only seen ten hours of sunlight in two weeks and it is flippin' cold and I am wishing I had the cash to take a vacation but my agent still hasn't sold the previous three books I wrote so I am feeling like I am spinning my wheels late on a Sunday night and just plain feeling whiny at a time when no one wants to hear me whine even though just yesterday I had a few hundred people laughing when I did my talk show but now can't even get a simple plot in a simple thriller novel seem to make sense or even keep the tempo and now I just feel like crawling under my chair and eating those little cheesecake niblet thingies my son brought home yesterday from his job at the fancy Italian restaurant that I can't afford to eat at but don't want to eat right now anyway because I have a serious issue with run-on sentences and can't even figure out where to put the punctuation in this one.

Sigh...I'm going outside to make snow angles.

yeah...angles...they're easier angels...you just lay there in a half fetal position in the snow.

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