And Speaking of Ninjas...

The following story originally appeared on The Badgers of Uncertain Fortune where some friends and I endeavored to all write one short story a week. It was one of my favorites to emerge from my fingertips during that exercise. The writing prompt that started this one was "My Imaginary Friend." 

YOSHONGA

“Lie back on your mat and close your eyes.”

The instructor’s voice lilts across the room and the class gladly obeys. It has been an exhausting hour of stretching, posing, balancing, inverting. A bead of sweat races down my brow, but like everything else that vies for my attention during these rare moments of stillness, I do my best to ignore it. The instructor walks between us, talking us through the savasana, guiding our awareness from one end of our bodies to the other and out to its farthest reaches, urging us to release any tension that we encounter along the way.

A tile in the ceiling above me slides away and a shadow appears in the opening, the blackness punctuated only by a pair of eyes. Ninja. The shadow looks down at the prone forms on the floor beneath it, at the instructor with her back turned, looking out the window. “Relax your toes, relax the space between your toes…” It then looks straight down at me, lying still on my mat with my eyes closed, trying - without trying to try - to be aware of as little as possible.

The shadow drops out of the ceiling. Falling faster than gravity, he pulls a saber from a sheath strapped to his back and pivots so that the point of the blade is aimed at my throat. The sunlight streaming through the window strikes the sword, only to be absorbed by the ninja magic that imbues the metal.

Barely the length of a baby cobra fang lies between the tip of the blade and the flesh of my throat when an arm clad in silks of green, pink, and yellow reaches down out of the hole through which the ninja just emerged and grasps the shadow warrior by the ankle, halting his descent. As he is pulled back into the ceiling, the ninja looks up into the blackness between the third and fourth floors and sees the face of his undoing. A whisper escapes his lips, the first word he has uttered since beheading his former master and entering the service of the shadow.

Yoshonga.

And then he is gone. No sound reaches my ears, nor those of my classmates. Our eyes see only the insides of our eyelids. The instructor thinks that perhaps she hears an insect flying through the room, but ignores it.

“Slowly bring awareness back.”

The instructor’s voice reaches me as if from the other side of a dream and I wonder, as I always do, if I have fallen asleep. I wiggle my fingers, wiggle my toes. I open my eyes and think nothing of the unremarkable ceiling above me.

Good Day To You, Sir!

Here's how we in the Holmes household feel about the end of Movember's impact upon my face:



Subtle, no?

Both of those lightsaberish instruments you see me using there came absolutely free from the nice people at Philips Norelco, but rest assured that the opinions you see below are mine. I call them nice folks because they donated an extra $15,000 to our team, effectively doubling our team's Movember contribution, and all they asked was that we use their stuff and put it on video. Why, that's just downright friendly.

The Vacuum Stubble and Beard Trimmer rules if for no other reason than it vacuums all the hair up as you slice it off of your face. NO MORE CLEANING UP STUBBLE OUT OF THE SINK! You can't imagine how happy this makes me. As for the SensoTouch 3D, I like the fact that it looks like a hydra, but doesn't yank the hair out of your face. Electric razor technology has clearly advanced since last I used one, many moons ago.

Okay Movember, that was fun. Now, on to writing about things other than facial hair.

Watch For The Stache Signal

So, Holmes...how's Movember going?

Glad you asked, friend. Tell you the truth, between the new glasses I got a while back and my latest facial hair configuration, I'm feeling a bit Detective Gordon these days.

Thanks to everyone who's tossed some 'stache cash our way. If you'd still like to contribute to the cause, just swing on over and clicky-clicky-typey-typey. Because cancer fucking sucks. 

My Name Isn't, But Could Be, Earl

Now lookie here, y'all. I ain't claimin' to be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I know a good cause when I see one. And a bunch of fellows growin' out their mustaches in the name of fightin' cancer? Well now if that don't beat all, then I don't know what. So if you would please, take a few minutes and clicky-click your computer on over to the Movember internet page and drop a few dollars in the jar, why that'd be mighty kind of you.

Thanks y'all!

Keys

I can barely convey to you with words how well these two simple phone-snapped pictures capture the wonderful differences between my two boys. So I'll hush and let the pictures talk.

Do The Ninjitsu

I was looking at a bunch of pictures of my kids from this past Halloween. They both wanted to dress like ninjas, to which my wife and I were like SCORE! because 1) cheap-ass costumes and 2) NINJAS. Everybody wins.

So I was looking at these pictures and it occurred to me that parenting is kind of like being a ninja in that it involves a lot of hard work with very little recognition. Nobody thanks the ninja for pulling off a flawless assassination, no matter that he or she left not a trace of their presence. There are no attaboys for the shadow warrior who successfully infiltrates the enemy compound and defeats scores of attackers. There are no ninja company meetings where the ninja CEO recognizes Bob and Steve for Excellence in Disappearing Into Clouds of Smoke. 

I was gonna write about all that, but then I got distracted thinking about how there’s really not much of a place for ninjas in a democracy, not in an official capacity anyway, but I guess ninjas typically don’t function in an official capacity anyway, but I guess what I mean is that assassination -- covert and otherwise -- isn’t really a key driver of change in our country, which I would call a very good thing, none of which is to say that there are not shadowy figures doing shadowy things in the halls of power and perception, they just don’t typically carry throwing stars on their person...as far as I know. Then I remembered that I hate writing about politics because it’s not as much fun as writing about ninjas. All of which is to say, holy shit, ninjas.

Shadow Warriors

Dear Me, I Seem To Have Misplaced My Beard

No, actually, I washed it down the drain. Much to my wife's chagrin, I'm taking part in Movember again this year. For those of you not familiar, Movember is this thing where a bunch of dudes take November and we run the N out of town and replace it with an M. Kind of like October and Rocktober. Then we continue the party for the rest of the month by growing out our mustaches, and everybody gives us money in hopes that we'll stop it with the mustache action. About three weeks into it, we all sit down to a big-ass turkey dinner. It's called Thanksgiving because we give thanks for our beautiful mustaches that, by that point, are in full glorious bloom. Or maybe because people are thankful that it's almost over. Either way, when December arrives, we give all the money that everybody gave us to groups that fight cancer, but we don't give them the turkey dinner because we already ate that.

In order to do Movember right, you're supposed to start things off with a clean palate, which, for me,  meant parting with my beard. True, my beard is not as epic as that of my friend Bill (pictured below), but I was used to it. I like my beard. And yes, so does my wife.

Bill is a pirate

So in order to do this, I had to go from being this adorable sweetheart...

Wouldn't hurt a fly

To this fucking psychopath:

Obviously hacks people to pieces while humming along to Katy Perry

So yeah, Movember. Mustaches good, cancer bad, GIVE US YOUR MONEY!!!