May Sweeps - Day 470

So, yesterday on Facebook, I posted an image of this character from SHANG-CHI (or, more specifically, an image of the action figure of this character from SHANG-CHI), whose name is Xialing, along with the caption, "How would I pronounce this character's name?"

Usually, within seconds of posting something online, I'll get notified that someone has Liked or replied to my question or comment.  But I got nothing.  When I logged on a couple of hours later, I was informed that no one had seen my post, but that it had been removed "due to Insensitivity."

Now, I ain't gonna whine about this and claim I'm being treated badly or anything (I'm a grown-up, and as sensitive as I am, mine was the last generation born on the planet that could legitimately take a joke), but I do resent the implication that I was being a douche or a racist or even asking the question sarcastically.*  The name starts with a bloody X, and I honestly wanted to know how it should be pronounced.

Shoot, now I am angry about it.  I hadn't been before, just a bit disappointed.

Sit-ups Today: 100
Sit-ups In May: 1616

In today's coverage of me trying to find images to use from the website Unsplash, I came across this photo:

It's really, really great, though not appropriate for any story of mine that comes to mind.  Even so, do you see a face on that tree, or is it just me?  Abigail Hilton needn't answer, since she doesn't see faces.

Push-ups Today: 66
Push-ups In May: 1790

My nephew, over the past year or so, has gotten really, really fixated on cards (mostly Pokemon, but also basketball and football).  He told me that the Mickey Mantle card is the most valuable card in the world (the equivalent of an Action Comics number 1), and I didn't believe him, remembering a card from the Twenties that was the gold standard of baseball cards, and even on the cover of the UK edition of Stephen King's "Needful Things."**

But I looked it up, and indeed, the 1952 Mickey Mantle by Topps is the number one.  It sold for over five million at auction this past January.

That reminded me, though, that when we were spending months cleaning out my childhood home, my mom told us we should pick the things that we personally wanted, and set them aside, so that they didn't get claimed, taken, or thrown out (all of which did happen with fairly-valuable stuff).  I ended up tossing about a third of my own stuff, from yearbooks to letter to toys to clothes, and the only thing I wanted that belonged to my dad was the sword my grandpa brought from France and Germany in 1945.  I suspect the other siblings would've wanted it, but they don't love World War II and Nazis as much as I do.

Whoops, guess I should rephrase that in today's political climate.  

I love GERMAN Nazis, not American ones.  

Or Canadian, while we're at it.

But while I was cleaning the downstairs bookshelves (mostly unchanged since I was in high school), I found my dad's autographed baseball that he told me he'd gotten signed by Mickey Mantle and a couple of other Yankees on a trip to Los Angeles in 1961 or '62, where they played the Dodgers, and the team hung around after the game to meet fans.

Well, I'm not embarrassed to say that I absconded with that little item too, despite not being a sports guy.  I guess I should mention it to my brother and ask if he'd like the baseball, since it does nothing for me but sit in a drawer.***

And, if I'm reading you right, you've just asked yourself, "Why doesn't he sell the baseball, if it means so little to him, and it was signed by the Commerce Comet?"  To which, I say, I thought he was known as The Mick, but maybe that's just me being racist (I am suspiciously fond of the Third Reich, after all), but also, well . . . Mantle may have signed the ball, but it's in my dad's handwriting.

So, at the end of the night, I really wanted to watch TV and veg out, but I hadn't written a single word.  But I sat myself down, with no TV and no music, and made myself write at least three hundred words on my twin story.  Finally, I had reached the bit that made me want to write it in the first place: where Layla decides to take Shayla's place and find out just what the deuce is going on.

I got quite into it, and realized around one-thirty or so that I hadn't watched the program I'd intended to (and that the ice cream I'd gotten out of the freezer no longer qualified as "ice" cream), so I stopped, quickly watched my show, slurped up half of the ice cream, and called that good.  As I always say, a real writer would've just kept on writing, and tossed the ice cream container in the garbage when he was done.

Words Today: 1109
Words In May: 9660

*I originally typed the word that starts with "face-" that means the same thing, but I remember swearing in 1991 that I would never, EVER use that word, and I've made it close to thirty years, so why not use "sarcastically?"

**It was Honus Wagner from 1909.  I looked it up so you didn't have to.

**Of course, my grandfather's sword does nothing for me but sit in the closet, but I ought to pound a couple of nails in the wall above where I hang my microphone so I can look at it from time to time.