​Now that the show is over, I can share a couple of my gourds that were in the exhibit. “Steampunk Bunny” is to the left, “Trapped” to the right. 

​ 
​Starting Thursday of last week, the Good Witch and I were volunteering at the Wuertz Farm’s 17th Annual Gourd Festival. The Powers That Be held the festival on a weekend that included the Olympics and the Super Bowl. I selfishly worried that this was a mistake. It isn’t as much fun making gourd art if no one sees it.
 
I shouldn’t have worried if people would show up. Thousands of visitors came through the gates. Not Super Bowl numbers, but pretty good for an event in Casa Grande, Arizona.
 
Instead of focusing on my words for today’s post, I spent my time chatting with festival goers, selling tickets to the Game of Chance, and holding my breath as the judges evaluated the work I’d submitted into the various competitions. Both the Good Witch and I did okay, each of us bringing home new ribbons to add to our work rooms. We also shared a first-place ribbon for a project we did together.
 
None of this was miraculous. We’d worked at a gourd festival before, we’d won some ribbons before. Last Saturday, though, something happened that I didn’t believe was possible. Call it Miracle #1. It occurred during the mini-gourdster race, the Grande 500.
 
My sleek little whale racer, Thar She Rolls, was tagged as Racer #10. My hubby’s wind-resistant behemoth of a snail racer, The Snail Trails, was tagged as Racer #9. There were 2o cars in the big race.
 
Before the Grande 500, there’s a touch of pomp and a dab of circumstance. Musicians played as the racers and their owners paraded through a large metal shelter to the 32-foot race track. (My partner hated the parade. Being on display is not his idea of fun. “Never again,” he growled.) The parade ended at the track, which was positioned in front of two sets of bleachers and an enthusiastic audience. The cars were timed as they go, two at a time, down the track. The top six finishers were then raced again.
 
It was a blast. Three of the cars flew off of the track, finishing their run on the concrete floor below. A few of the racers stopped in the middle of the track, their weight or their wheels not up to the challenge. Two of the cars hit the cushion at the end with such force, they knocked the stop aside. The racers were snatched up before they could make it to the bleachers.
 
Rolling on only three of its four wheels—the fourth refused to make contact with the racetrack, because of course it did—The Snail Trails led the charge. Like I said, that baby had some size to it (relatively speaking). When the smoke cleared, my whale racer, Thar She Rolls, rolled swiftly. It came in first. The even bigger surprise was when the snail racer came in third! It was a miracle. Miracle #1 of this blog.
 
The second-place finisher was Ice Sled. Although it's hard to see in this pic, the Penguin-mobile was so cute, children were approaching its owner, telling them they liked it. No one said that about the whale. Or the snail.

​For me, Miracle #2 is happening right here. Twelve months ago, on February 15th, I promised to write and post a new blog every seven to ten days for an entire year. I met my goal. It paid off in a couple of ways. Besides forcing me to sit down and write something that wasn’t fiction, these posts drew more people to both of my websites. The audience for MarsNeedsWriters tripled while the readers for AnneGlynn increased over twenty-fold. Considering some of my posts, how can I be anything but pleased?
 
Gilligan’s Island? Really? Since I had a week to come up with each topic, you’d think I’d scribble something of greater than average interest. I’m sorry this didn’t always happen often enough.
 
If you’d prefer to try someone who finds something interesting to say regularly, stop by Ken Levine’s blog spot: here. He’s been a novelist, a director, a DJ, a baseball announcer, a cartoonist, a television showrunner; it’s no wonder he has stuff to share. Look at his archives and you’ll see over 10,000 posts to read. If you stop by here and a new blog is missing, go to his place.
 
Fair warning, though: Ken is opinionated and can be persnickety. A lot of his posts are Hollywood-heavy. Also, when he can’t find an appropriate photo for whatever he’s writing that day, he’ll post a photo of Natalie Wood on his site, instead. I think it’s done because of love or lust, but maybe Natalie drives traffic to his blog. Who knows?
 
I asked the creator of The Snail Trails if we should start posting photos of Chris Hemsworth to our websites to drive traffic to our blogs, but he wasn’t buying it. I offered to substitute pictures of David Tennant, instead, but he saw through my little ploy.
 
He knows I’m more of a Dr. Who type of woman than a Thor kind of girl. If I was posting images of Tennant’s Who every week, this blog would never go away. Since I can’t, I’ll be blogging less often. I will be by occasionally, though, so don’t think of this as goodbye. It’s more of a--
 

I had to use the picture somewhere, didn't I? It's just too fun.
 
Until next time, stay well and stay safe.

​Since this is a PG-rated website, I try to watch my language. I try not to curse around children, people I don’t know, the highly religious and the easily offended. But if you’re a friend, I will occasionally throw a little spice into the conversation.
 
You won’t find any swear words in this post, either, because I’m going to substitute asterisks for the naughty words. Which brings us to Murderville on Netflix. Because the program’s not on network television, the actors have some leeway in how they speak. Cursing can occur and sometimes does. In episode #2, it happened frequently.
 
If you’re not familiar with the show, it’s roughly a comedy-murder mystery. In each episode, the middle-aged and eccentric police detective Terry Seattle (played by Will Arnett) is teamed with a different celebrity as his partner. Terry and the show’s regular cast have a script to follow. The celebrity does not. He or she enters the situation as Terry’s newest partner, expected to improv his or her way through the half-hour show. During the show, silliness reigns supreme while a few scattered clues and red herrings are thrown into the mix. At the end of each episode, there’s an entire Agatha Christie thing going on, with all the suspects brought into the room. At that point, the celebrity is asked to identify the murderer.
 
Of the four episodes I’ve watched, the guest stars have done a pretty good job of finding the guilty party. Those of us who play along at home can try to solve the murder, too. So far, I’m four for four.
 
No brag, just fact, as Walter Brennan used to say on The Guns of Will Sonnett. If you don’t know Walter Brennan or The Guns of Will Sonnett, you can find episodes on YouTube.
 
As I was saying, Murderville, episode 2, leaned a little heavily on the profanity. Not in the scripted passages, mind you, but in those that were improvised by former football player and Detective-in-Training, Marshawn Lynch. Marshawn didn’t mean anything by it, it’s just the way he speaks, but my, was his speech colorful. How do I know this? In an interview with Hollywood Reporter, he recounted his reply when asked what kind of role he wanted when acting. “I told ‘em, ‘Well, I don’t want to talk too much. I want to blow **** up. I want to shoot ****. Basically, I just want to **** **** up.”
 
In his appearance on Murderville, Marshawn didn’t blow **** up, didn’t shoot **** up, and he talked a lot. For a man who’d never done improv, I thought he had a powerful presence and did an interesting job… but he used the same four-letter words too frequently. After the fifth use of the same curse word, I decided the man needed some new swear words.
 
The problem is, there haven’t been any great new swear words for about 200 years. Today’s current favorites were among in the favorites in the 1800s, too. Our ancestors, the Victoria lords and ladies, used the same S-word, F-word, C-word, and B-word that we hear today.
 
The M-F word? It dropped in at the beginning of the 20th century. Being a progressive guy, Marshawn threw a couple of them on the show.
 
The Victorian Era had other curse words that have fallen by the wayside. Words like “blazes” and “dratted” and “bootlicker.” These are pretty weak tea in the 21st century. But wouldn’t it have been fun if Marshawn used a few of those words? “The dratted bootlicker who killed our victim is that strumpet, Mary Agnes! May she go to blazes!”
 
If you haven’t guessed, “bootlicker” and “strumpet” were also popular swear words back in the day.
 
As much as I admire some originality while swearing, it’s escaped me so far. While packing my gourd art for the upcoming Big Show, I lightly nudged a figure on my mermaid sculpture. It immediately broke off.
 
“****!” I said. “****!” Distraught, I went with two of this century’s standards. It turns out, me and Marshawn both need new swear words.
 
Before I go: If you aren’t a Netflix subscriber, or if you’ve already burned through the six episodes of Murderville, I’m told you can get your comedy-murder mystery hit by trying Murder in Successville, instead. A BBC production, Successville ran for three seasons and was the inspiration for the creation of Murderville. In Northern America, there’s no one streaming the series, there’s no Region 1 DVDs, and it’s not even on BritBox (USA). The only place you can find it is YouTube (here).