I just framed a painting I was given from my trip to Bhutan — it illustrates a story called The Four Friends (which is very famous in that wonderful country). I was reminded how much I liked this tale and was inspired to make some sketches so that I could share it with you.

Here is the story as it was told to me:

There were once four friends — a peacock, a rabbit, a monkey and an elephant. They were hungry so they decided to work together to grow a fruit tree.

A good friend recently told me a story about a childhood trauma in ballet class and I was struck by its similarity to other memories people have shared with me over the years.

Each of these stories involved someone feeling ashamed to dance in dance class due to classmates/teachers who did and said all sorts of negative nasty things.

I can totally relate and, dance class or not, I think almost everyone has similar stories.

What makes these types of experiences especially sad is that they get carried around our entire lives always reminding us that its safer not to try.

There wasn’t any ballet trauma for me but there’s a powerful force that keeps me from dancing. I totally need to get my groove back on the dance floor (or at least in the living room) and do what kids do and just dance as goofy as I want.

Anytime someone just lets themselves go and dances their dance (or writes their book, or sings their song, etc.) the world becomes a nicer place to live.

Well, really monster-pieces — LOTS of pieces.

My crafty partner and I volunteered at the Ronald McDonald House at Standford (an amazing place that houses sick children and their families while they need to be near the hospital) and had a monster making party.

How do you make monsters? Awesome question, I’m glad you asked. Here is a step by step guide:

Step One: Spend Sunday drawing and cutting out LOTS of monster bodies, arms, legs, horns, tentacles, mouths, etc.	Step Two: Lay out all the pieces and impatiently start making monsters because its so awesome.

Step Three:
Decide the kids can do it better and bring the pieces to them and have a monster making party! That’s basically it. Once you have completed Step Three the monsters just keep coming! Here are some samples of the amazing creations the kids put together:

Picasso Monster This was done by a six year old! A real monster piece!	The Geo A small economy monster

Bling Monster (I love his gold tooth!)

Monster Par-TAY
What could be more fun than a Sunday spent making monsters! The kids were great and I am so happy we were able to help them bring these creatures to life.

Everyone should have a little monster-making in their life!

National Library Week is from Sunday, April 10 to Saturday April 26!

It’s time again to celebrate the amazing institution of libraries and the super heroes that make them run.

It’s incredible how easy it is to take for granted the free and easy access to books (as well as magazines, music, video, etc.) that libraries provide and the people that work tirelessly to make that happen.

To help you celebrate I’ve created a downloadable sign/card for you to print and post and/or give to your favorite librarian. There is a special extra-bonus version after the first for the Medical Librarians in your life.

Click on the pictures below to open a larger printable version:

For the Medical Librarians (my personal favorite):

This post was going to be about my battles with Procrastination Monkeys but I put off doing it for so long that I decided to write about something else.

I did like my Procrastination Monkeys drawings though, so even though this post is not about them I thought I would share the pictures along with some brief notes so you know what they are.

Flying Pizza Monkeys

All I have to do is pick up the magic phone and these guys bring me awesome pizza. It’s always a battle to resist their siren call. Once they arrive, most things get put aside.

The Sofa Sasquatch
This behemoth keeps me from doing what I should be working on and yet is a constant reminder of what I’m not accomplishing — making whatever fun or relaxing activity I am using as an escape totally stressful.

Copilot Space Monkey
This is my shipmate while I drift of to space and watch my life go by. I need to be careful as I can easily just orbit my own life while the apes take over and before I know it my metaphorical Statue of Liberty is buried waste deep in the sand.

This isn’t a post about Procrastination Monkeys — I decided not to do that. Its not good to dwell on them anyway.

There are so many more wonderful creatures all around me to play with and I’m glad to say that I’ve been trying to hang out with them more and more.

I’m glad to restart this blog with a happy story.

I feel incredibly lucky and inspired to have had these children color in my illustrations.

It is a wonderful feeling to find that, across the world, my pictures where hanging along the wall of a church—made so beautiful by little hands.

This is just the cutest little girl ever. She is totally rocking the coloring.

I was given some of the pages that had been colored by these kids who turned my drawings into amazing kinder masterpieces. They used the entire Crayola palette in ways I never would have imagined.

I so enjoyed this experience that if you know of any non-profits that need something like this please drop me a line.

Many of the pages I created are shown below.

I hope you have some awesome coloring experiences in your life as well. Its amazing what a box of crayons can do.

I did not kill the dog.

This is very important and I need to make it clear right away.
I don’t want you reading the title and seeing the pictures and assuming Blog Monster Doug is this horrible dog killer. I’m not. I didn’t kill the dog.

While I’m doing disclaimers I might as well warn you that this story doesn’t have much of a conclusion. Also, as you might expect, it’s kind of sad.

I’m glad you are still with me though because I do want to tell you what happened:

I was driving my usual route home from work — I’ve done this drive like 1000 times so I’m on autopilot. It’s a fairly residential area but there is a stretch that has six lanes of traffic so people drive pretty fast even though the speed limit is 30 mph. There are three cars in front of me, each in their own lane, getting out in front of the pack. They are speeding.

Then comes the dog.
This friggin dog.
This little white dog.

And it’s running really really fast. I have no idea what would make it run so fast. Why the hell would it run so fast? I see it bolt from the safe long grassy median strip straight into the path of the three cars.

And now it’s all slow motion. It makes it past the first car and then the second. I cant believe it makes it past the second car, it’s unbelievable, it’s still running and I’m thinking maybe it will actually make it, the third car has got to slow down or swerve or something but it doesn’t and suddenly there is this explosion of white fur. I didn’t think there would be fur like that. It’s like the car hit a pillow or a chicken. I am screaming.

And the car just keeps going. It just keeps going and now I am passing this mound in the road that used to be a little white dog. I am furious. I speed up because I need to catch the driver. I must find this monster who kills dogs and doesn’t stop.

Soon the car is at a light and I’m pulling up along side it. I don’t know what I’m going to do — I’m all anger. I’m ready to hate, to judge, imagining the worse possible person — someone laughing on their cell phone or, like, dancing to music — and I look over and there is this women and she is leaning against the glass with her head in her hand in a posture of such sadness and trauma that I am taken aback. Her face is covered but everything about her looks so shaken and upset and raw that I turn away because feel like I am intruding on something deeply personal. The light changes. This all seems to happens in seconds.

I’m not letting her off the hook. She should have stopped. She is not excused no matter how she reacted but I could no longer hate her.

Later as I replayed my brief glimpse of her it occurred to me that maybe she hadn’t been covering her face in grief. MAYBE she was just covering her face. Did she see me trying to catch up and look at her? I’ll never know.

For a while all I can think about is what happened. I am filled with this sadness and melancholy that I cant shake. I spend time just sitting and thinking about this damn little dog. Obviously no one wants to see anything killed, but it was more than the loss of life that bothered me and I tried to think about what that was.

Dogs are of course amazing creatures for all the love and affection they give but there was something else that occurred to me. Dogs are an incredible RECEIVER of love. I think people have so much love to give, that they need to give, but it’s so unsafe to love another person. The motivations of people are so incredibly convoluted and hidden. Was that women in grief or just trying to hide? Within moments she fluctuated between monster and human.

A dog is safe. There is no ambiguity. It will take love without reservation — there is none of the insecurity and fear and pain that are the costs of loving another person.

I think I was so sad at the loss of that love along with the loss of the dog. The unseen owner who had one less piece of the world to love unreservedly.

POSTCRIPT

Thanks for reading — I really do appreciate you letting me tell you my story. I have fallen behind with updates but there will be more regular posts which will include cheerier fare such as space penguins, pizza monkeys and perhaps a few sock puppets. I hope you will come back because I do have more stories to tell.

Working with this metaphor, it’s important for me to remember that the demons want to help – they are not evil – they just give really bad advice.

When I try to write and the incredible frustration kicks in, it DOES feel better to stop and check my email or surf the web or read or eat pizza or watch a movie or do the millions of other distractions my writing demon is jumping up and down and telling me to do. In fact, doing these things instead of writing is usually an incredible relief. So in that sense, this guy has totally got my back …he’s looking out for me.

Although it seems obvious that this is a bad strategy to follow, it remains one that I fall prey to quite often, letting this little demon lead me astray.

For better or worse, I have no choice but to get used to the idea that he isn’t going anywhere and hope that I can have fun with him while still writing all the things that I have to say.

A GUEST DEMON

I made this Writing Demon for my good friend William. His poetry and prose are beautiful. He gave me some specifics as to what his demon looked like and has graciously allowed me to share it with you. It is covered in the poetry and prose written in his younger days.

No real conclusions, just some demons that I wanted to share. There are plenty more I have hanging around that would love an audience.

Many of the comments I got about my last post on cooking were about the gratuitous space aliens at the end which spurred me to devote this post to more interstellar creatures.

In retrospect, I really should have added some gratuitous cooking at the end of this for the sake of symmetry but I dropped the ball on that one.

Originally I was going to write a essay on why space aliens capture the public imagination and fascinate me in particular. It was going to be a very insightful post and even have an Odyssey reference.

Then I realized that no one wants to read that, including me, and all I really wanted to do was draw some space aliens which is exactly what I did.

Space aliens are cool. ‘nough said.

I would totally hang with these guys

If the universe is truly infinite with only finite particles to put it together then somewhere, sometime, the colors of the seventies must occur naturally.

I unearthed this drawing that was buried in a folder on my computer. It’s nice to think that somewhere in the universe Polaroids are still being used.

I have to admit it. I like weird vegetables.

To keep things in perspective, my vegetable vocabulary is limited so most things outside the norm seem exotic – walking through a farmer’s market, for me, is something akin to entering the Star Wars Cantina only with a lot less hive of scum and villainy and a lot more carrots. Also the markets let in droids. They’re cool like that.

Working with ingredients like celery root, dandelion greens and rainbow chard may seem mundane to some but they make me feel like a culinary Indiana Jones.

Partly, its due to my predilection for fun food. I have fresh pasta making totally down and I can credit that mostly to its technical similarity to using the Play-Doh Fun Factory.

Peculiar produce aside, I’ve been surprised at the techniques and motivations around cooking that have arisen as I’ve been fumbling more and more in the kitchen. It turns out that it’s not about the food.

Learning to cook monster style

Figure A

Step 1: Invite 4 or 5 friends over for an overly elaborate and ambitious menu that you have never made before (involve at least one or two strange vegetables).

Step 2: Make sure to clearly state when dinner will be ready so your guests will arrive on time.

Step 3: Even though you KNOW you gave yourself enough time, have dinner like maybe 60% done when people arrive. Dinner guests should walk into something resembling Figure A with wine in hand.

Step 4: All parties involved should start consuming said wine as soon as possible (very important).

Figure B

Step 5: Let those that want to cook help you out while others watch or relax. Repeat Step 4 and talk and laugh while your awesome "Cool Music" mix plays mostly 90′s songs. Your kitchen should be full of wonderful people chopping and stirring and telling stories. Realize that it isn’t so bad that dinner was not ready on time because THIS was what you really wanted anyway. See Figure B.

I’ve found cooking to be better as a shared experience. I’m still just a beginner and its inspiring to cook with those that know what they are doing and fun to muddle through with those that don’t.

Its also much more rewarding to share what you make. Cooking is a creative act that deserves an audience.

One night not so long ago I invited some friends over for dinner. Things were running late and while I cooked one friend helped me and another played the Wii and another worked on an article. We were all doing our thing, happy and content to be where we were, knowing soon that we would be sharing a meal together. I really cant explain it, but that was a wonderful moment that I will always remember.

And that is why I cook.

POSTCRIPT

The original version of this post had some space aliens nicely worked in at the end but that ending got changed and sadly they were no longer needed.

Still, I wanted to draw them so here they are. If there is one thing I know, this blog always has room for space aliens.