The Emperor's new clothes were an amusing fit for an outsider, who cozened the tale. He became a grasshopper, well admired. Onlookers went their ways, in all directions, leaving no muddy footprints.

That might reduce the pall of carbon dioxide for our entire planet, he thought. Except, there remains a climate disaster. So it's not just about boots on the ground.

The backbone of logic lives in rules already agreed. Illogical facts get ruled out. Facts that survive the rules are secondary. For instance, vehicles have either right- or left-hand steering. That's factual. Crashes are avoided because everyone agrees. Another fact is, however, there are too many cars already. Now some cities are ordaining commute fees to mitigate congestion. Of course exceptions and even some discounts are granted, depending on a driver's age or disability. These prove the rule.

Speaking this way, like the Emperor, might provoke the domino effect. A grasshopper will be landing on the windowsill, or a bee will be buzzing to be let in. It will make more sense than it ought to. The visible people who went away will come back, tapping their iPhones for an explanation. Googled judges will entrain opinions. All their words, held to account, won't be enough to stop the baffling ripple. Only ferry boat captains, navigating the late night bay, will announce the story's continuation.

Here's how it will fit right in ~

clickity clack, clickity clack

don't look back

Here comes the street beat, trombones dark, metallic.

Or how bout cutting cots, laid out on racks to dry in the sun. Juice evaporates.

Making fake snow for Christmas trees by grinding up blocks of Styrofoam. Crumpled up. Thrown down the wastebasket to join cotton ear swabs stained with yellow ear wax.

The art of telling is to fry while the oil is hot. No argument out of leather bound books can survive this. Ego syrup is gooey enough for flapjacks, but that's another business. And it's on somebody else's dime. There are a million clues that go unnoticed. Rime of the ancient pine tree, evaporating as points of light break through at noon..

Mona Lisa's smile illuminates some stepping stones that remain quite where they were in the first place. Such progress might be less than intuitive, but it's counter balanced by a traceable journey. The subject need not be repeated, restated, or dyed green. There could be kibitzing – the chosen suit ought to be red, or yellow perhaps. The color of the mean. All in a gobble of oysters. Stepping stones on the world stage are a guarantee for 15 minutes of fame.

Ants of an afternoon swarm for mass action, gobbling left overs. Halleluiah!

The snout song, remember that? The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out . . . and does it seem heartless? Or only fascinating. There's only one way to go when stepping off stones. Strains of the distant beat float in. Muffled ogre growls settle into a kettle drum, pinging echoes that fill the orchestra pit.

Twinkie comes to sit with me. Our horizon will be the lawn chair. Everything doesn't have to be seen to be heard. Our visitors arrive at the seed feeder and the water dish. The first autumn leaves are falling as summer loses steam. Conversations become quieter. Today she is not lurking behind the red geranium, won't have to hear arguments in favor of my bird friends. She's curling up, chin on paw. In fact she's looking the other way.

I will do some writing. Turns out I'm the bucolic one, or at least that word sounds right. I have to look it up because it's one I don't ever use. And it's close enough for gardening. To ring the changes, I give her a scratch behind one ear. She purrs. Robin does his high pitched chirp.

Here the good weather lately does not substantiate what I've been saying about the climate. Smoke from horrendous fires a few miles north has so far drifted to New York. Our exceptional drought has caused water rationing elsewhere. It's deceiving.

To ring the changes: While our vaunted technology supports preparations for Mutually Assured Destruction, the acronym sports a strange sense of humor. But who's laughing?

On a high note, the light counterpoint, we learn of an almost miraculous little helicopter, weighing about four pounds, that hovers over a planet with almost no air. And for emphasis, hear the trombones? we hear the feat was accomplished by Artificial Intelligence because real time commands from earth, even at the speed of light, can't work fast enough over the distance. In fact, as proven right here on earth, joy stick trials showed human reaction times to be too slow anyway.

Thus I introduce another sort of levity: AIeeee!

Twinkie knows I'm sitting quietly. So she does. What I'm thinking probably makes no difference. She likes to go on long journeys, to god knows where. She makes up her mind.

To give some idea of her qualifications, let's consider later, when we're in the living room for the nightly weather report. And not just that this is a sort of rondo, the way things ought not to fit but do. From past experience, she has paced the spiel of the KPIX5 weatherman, always the last show I watch of an evening. When he starts, but before he's done and I will move, she gets off my lap.