Thank you for visiting Camp Strange, my little corner of the online world. This site contains a collection of some of the stories I have written over the past 6 years since I first began blogging at the now-defunct Beauty Dish, as well as new stories. You can read some of my funniest Avon Lady stories, tales from Las Vegas, New Mexico, and eclectic Star Trek-esque experiences I have had with my two sons.
Please visit Camp Strange: Bird Brain for my daily thoughts and news.
When I first started blogging, my sons were 7 and 9 years old. Now they are 13 and 15, much taller than me, strong, healthy, strange, and wonderful. I’m hoping to have them both guest blog here from time to time.
Thanks for hanging out at Camp Strange. Let the arts and crafts, ghost stories, and burnt hot dogs begin!
This is too soon to write this. I should wait a few months, maybe a year, take time and coffee and dreams and let it finish whirling around my neural net. But Star Trek is all about the temporal anomalies so here I sit. One year and a couple months ago, on Star Date something-or-other, my …
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Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation’s android science officer, shared his starship quarters with a sleek cat named Spot. Data wanted to be human, wanted to understand what makes some of us choose chocolate over vanilla, what makes us giggle when tickled, the strange and etheric connections that tie our species together. A cat’s fiercely …
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December 13, 2009 – 8:00 pm
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By Birdie
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Posted in Featured, Star Trek, The Daily
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Tagged 726, brent spiner, compassion, data, dog, humanity, sissy, Star Trek, tap dance
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When my youngest son, Martin, chased gap-toothed girls through a dusty schoolyard, he carried a tiny Star Trek shuttlecraft in the front pocket of his jeans. “Vroooooooooom! Ba-ba-ba-ba-bing! Bing!” The shuttlecraft — torpedos armed and ready — made the noise of a boy’s pursed lips. It flew graceful arcs, one hand over head, around body, swooped …
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Sunday morning I packed one of those paper grocery bags with blood oranges from my backyard tree, a handful of shelled walnuts in a plastic baggie, a few cans of good ginger ale, a bag of homemade corn chips, a package of fig cookies, and I stuck it in the back of my van. I …
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I’m working on the This Old House issue of my regional arts magazine, and in the process of writing a story on penitentiary tiles, I began to think about my adopted home town, Las Vegas, New Mexico.… ——- My hometown in New England held a node on the Revolutionary road. Most of the townspeople — …
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A man called my cell phone. I didn’t catch the call, heard the ring as the shower pelted me with heat and hope. He left a short message, just a macho first name and telephone number. I stood in the bathroom, heat pouring from my hands, dialed his number. “Hi! Is this Rocco? This is …
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James Doohan died yesterday. My two young boys would tell you he played “Scotty” on the Star Trek original series. They would tell you he ruled the Engineering department, carried more brains and guts than tools, and knew how to massage life into fading dilithium crystals. They would tell you how he saved the Enterprise …
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I met Cat Woman through a mysterious man during one of my kamikaze door-to-door Avon missions. He stood on the corner of the two most expensive streets in town, a tasseled leather woman’s bag slung over his right shoulder. He wore slim pin-striped denim slacks and over-pursed lips as if he were kissing an old …
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I borrowed my son’s Green Day CD this morning, stuck it in my old warped silver walkman, listened as I hiked up hill, up hill, up hill to the crest of my town where the rich people live, where Kilt Man lives. I dropped Avon brochures here and there, thought about my son, 17, and …
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