Dali Train Mosh

Monet Whale Mosh

Rich Kids

think of the rich kids

who get everything sweet

their parents provide everything

is it really that neat?

to just be given money

not to know what it’s worth

money can’t buy happiness

money’s killing the earth

and when they grow older

and their viewpoint is shallow

they won’t try anything new

their minds are too narrow

they’re not going to be happy

they won’t find true love

when how others perceive them 

is all they’re conscious of

we need to work to get things 

we appreciate them that way

these rich kids miss out on things 

others go through each day

the persistent resistance 

to a happy existence

brought about by money

but that can make life seem funny

when you start to see that money’s not the most important thing

and take the time to appreciate beauty

and take the time to take the time

or take the time to look

way back to a time

when money didn’t exist

people got along just fine

when simply surviving was all they worried about

these people were happy

of that I’m without doubt

cause money is like a constant 

weight around our necks

when we haven’t got it 

we need it

when we have its hard to keep it

we can never have enough 

of this mystical paper stuff

the stuff that rules our rulers

the tool they use to fool us

into thinking that without it

we cannot be happy

but we know

Apple Tree

Shangl Hangl #1

The best toys ever made

Once-upon-a-time, in a beautiful evergreen forest on the side of a snow-capped mountain there lived a young girl named Julia. With blonde pig-tails and blue-grey-green eyes as she grew in to a young lady her beauty became known all around the mountain, but she was a clever girl and didn't pay attention to this, preferring instead to read any book she could lay her hands on and look after her father. He was a tall, broad, giant of a man with a big golden beard perforated by two of the bluest, brightest eyes you can imagine, with shoulders as wide as a house and hands as big as shovels. He worked as a wood cutter by day and spent his evenings making wooden toys and discussing life with his much beloved daughter. His wife, Julia's mother, had disappeared when Julia was a very young girl so she had no recollection of her and her father always seemed unwilling to talk about her, indeed he would go quiet for quite some time whenever he was reminded of her. So Julia had spent her childhood learning how to keep home for her father, how to cook and so on while devouring as much knowledge from her beloved written companions as she could possibly cram in to her pretty little head, all leading to the smart, creative, beautiful young lady with a wisdom seemingly beyond her few years that won the hearts of all she met.

To supplement the rather meagre income her father earned from his wood cutting Julia decided one spring morning in her fifteenth year to set up a market stall in the town at the foot of the mountain and sell her father's toys. It quickly became a very popular stall, with people coming to town from far away just to see the wonderfully crafted Marionettes, Nutcrackers, Peg games and other toys, so much so that her father had to get help from his wood-cutter friends just to meet the demand. While she was kept busy with the popularity of her stall Julia still had time to meet some new people, especially the other stall-holders. Her immediate neighbour at the market was the watchmaker, repairing and selling watches and other clock-work devices, who's son Michael often helped out on the stall. A tall, strong young man with dark hair and brown eyes, Michael and Julia were instantly attracted to one another and soon most of their evenings after the market were spent walking together by the river, or through the luscious public gardens in town talking and laughing and falling in love. Michael was also an intelligent, creative spirit as well as an excellent watchmaker and clockwork repairer, and one of their favourite subjects of conversation was inventing incredible moving toys, imagining if they could combine her father's skill as a carpenter with Michael's as a clock-smith and seeing what fantastic, moving toys could be created. When Julia finally introduced Michael to her father the rather awkward atmosphere to the early conversation quickly abated when Julia jokingly mentioned some of their toy inventions to her father. He was enthralled with the idea and the three of them were quickly embroiled in an enthusiastic discussion in his workshop on the specific designs for a small walking man toy, and a horse and wagon that could move all on its own. These first two designs were completed that first night and quickly went in to production with all of the local wood cutters and clock-smiths helping out in the evenings. Every day Julia and Michael dreamed up new inventions; carousels with waving children, ferris wheels that played fairground music, a frozen pond with two-dozen skaters gliding effortlessly around. Each idea was taken straight to her father's workshop, the designs were completed within a day or two and the toys were being manufactured before the week was over. Even with the help of carpenters and clock-makers from all the surrounding areas the work was too much for anyone to just be doing in the evenings, despite the handsome wages Julia and Michael were able to pay due to the ever increasing popularity of their wonderful toys, but to meet this increasing demand supply had to increase exponentially and this just wasn't going to happen when all of the men who made the toys couldn't give up their day jobs as they were all important to their community in their own way. To solve this problem Michael and Julia turned their inventive minds from toys to machines to make the toys, and it wasn't long before they had the world's first, completely clockwork assembly line, manufacturing a perfect replica of each of their designs, all day and all night long. Those of the carpenters and clock-smiths that wished to stay were always needed for repairs and to keep an eye on the running of the complicated wooden machinery, and soon Michael and Julia could return to their evening walks and dream up more toys.

Meanwhile the popularity of the clockwork toys had been spreading farther and farther throughout the lands, as had the toys themselves and after a while one of the original, hand-made Carousels by Julia's father and Michael found its way to a convent high on top of a mountain many many miles from the town where they lived. Home to over two hundred nuns, this convent was a gloomy place surrounded by high grey walls, were little grew in the well-tended vegetable patches and half of the year was spent snow-bound inside the damp, cold, stone corridors. Many of the sisters were sent there from other religious and medical institutions because they were considered to be quite crazy, but sane enough to function in a pared down idea of society so long as they didn't get in the way of anyone in actual society. One such sister was Madeline, a grey-haired, pretty lady with powerful grey-green eyes who had been found shivering, naked and mumbling something about demons in the graveyard of a small chapel on the opposite side of the mountain from where Julia lived. After being bathed and fed and having a solid, fourteen hour sleep on the friar's hard wooden bed she managed to explain in a frantic, terrified manner that she had no idea of her name, or where she had come from, but she had been chased for three days by huge, green, extremely fast demons through the forest, at which point she vomited what was quite clearly fly agaric mushroom residue onto the stone chapel floor and passed out. She woke up in the convent on the mountain and had spent twelve winters praying to someone she didn't really feel she knew or understood before one spring morning when she saw the carousel in the nursery. Initially drawn in by it's beauty she immediately recognised the handiwork of her long forgotten husband and like a tsunami her whole previous life came flooding back to her; her lovely cottage in the forest and her handsome, strong husband and wonderful, beautiful daughter Julia. Madeline left the carousel, left the nursery, and continued all the way out of the front door of the convent and began her descent of the high mountain down the tricky, roughly hewn path. As she navigated between the rocks she marvelled at the countless, beautiful memories flashing before her eyes, she indulged in the feeling of knowing herself again, understood why she had never understood the prayers or that life she had lived for so long. She immediately recognised the name of the town she found at the foot of the mountain and was soon on her way back to her family.

Of course, Julia and her father were entirely overjoyed to be reunited with Madeline, as was she to see them again and be introduced to her new son-in-law Michael and after an emotional reunion and  a marvellous dinner they went in to town where everyone was happy to see Madeline and a great party was had that night. The following morning Madeline slept longer than everyone else, exhausted from her long physical and mental journeys and content and free-minded for the first time in many years, so that she entered the kitchen as the others were just sitting down to lunch. Julia, her father and Michael were deep in a discussion as to how they could build smaller, more intricate parts for their toys, but the building machines they had at the moment just couldn't make anything that detailed. Half asleep and still in her nightgown but wishing to be a part of the conversation Madeline muttered 'why don't you just make the machines build smaller machines, then get those machines to build the smaller toys?' to which Michael, Julia and her father had no reply! They all fell about laughing, including Madeline although she didn't really understand why, then had a big but slightly rushed lunch and quickly set about designing a machine that could build a smaller version of itself. They quickly realised the potential in the idea and understood that they could just keep going, building smaller and smaller machines, but they couldn't fathom any real necessity in a machine that one can barely see and decided to keep it simple. Before long the machines were completed and as well as smaller versions of the old designs they could manufacture even more intricate designs than ever, with multiple-axle rotations and individual movement of many, many parts on one individual toy. Their new designs were so popular, so quickly, that soon toy designers from all over the realm and beyond were coming and asking to buy the designs so that they too could build these toys, as nobody really bought the old nutcrackers and spinning tops any more, but Julia, Michael, Madeline and her husband didn't care for money, they had everything they wanted in their beautiful little cottage in the forest on the side of the mountain so they gave the designs to anybody that asked for them, knowing that the joy their toys brought to the children around the world was worth much more than anything money could buy them.

Believe me, the corpse was exquisite but we could only save the head...