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Fanciful Rights!

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Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.

Beechly Ice shark copy

Greetings, Constituents!

I’m proud to say that this past week I was sworn in once again as a Member of the House of Representatives, along with all 435 other members.

The fact that they did not actually acknowledge me at the ceremony or list me in any of the official documents does nothing to detract from the awesome responsibility I feel as your Congressman! I know that we are in an uphill battle. I’m sure it comes as no secret to you that there are people who believe the 9th district of Minnesota is entirely made up.

Likewise, there are those who say a single congressional district composed of nothing but water surface area in a state with over 12,000 lakes and at least four major rivers is a logistical and practical impossibility. Such skeptics also claim such a jurisdiction would have virtually no full time residents.

Yes, there are voices who insist that you, I and our district are purely fanciful. This is an outrage! I’m not upset that they say we are imaginary, but I’m incensed that they believe this somehow makes us irrelevant!

And now there are similar critical voices suggesting that former Minneapolis City Council Member and current developer Steve Minn has violated standards of public behavior simply by using people that he made up in his head to attack another developer’s projects!

What are we to make of this? Are Fanciful Americans to be denied a voice, as well as their very existence?

Some of Minn’s accusers smirk at the news that his three Fancifuls (Howard Wilbur, Suzanne Sharp and Louis C. Brown) actually talked with each other through online community message boards. Why is that wrong? Are F.A.’s not permitted to collaborate? Denying the right of assembly is always one of the first acts of a tyrant!

And don’t patronize Fancifuls by lumping us together with noisy minority groups asserting their rights. There is no evidence anywhere to prove The Fanciful are a minority! We could very easily outnumber Tangible Americans – all it would take is an accurate census of the national imagination. I believe if we could correctly count the number of made-up people who reside solely on school playgrounds and in day care facilities on a normal January morning, that number would completely overwhelm the Tangible population.

We have many positive qualities. Fanciful Americans are forthright. The good ones are a great asset to our communities (Superman, Dora the Explorer). When F.A.’s are bad, they are unambiguously evil (Hannibal Lecter, Wicked Witch of the West). We prize clarity!

So don’t marginalize Fancifuls, and if you condone discrimination against us, don’t think you will be immune to the effects. Some of the most reputable Tangibles, upon closer investigation, turn out to be totally made up people (Bernie Madoff, John Edwards, Bo Beckman) who do not even realize how completely fake they are!

I, for one, am proud to be exactly who you think I am! Because without you, I am, literally, nothing.

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

Who are your favorite Fanciful Americans?

137 thoughts on “Fanciful Rights!”

  1. Morning all – you know those mornings on which you’re not quite sure how to answer the question? That’s today! Mostly I think we should be grateful to all the fanciful folks in our lives; they spruce things up but don’t leave a carbon footprint. Or take the last piece of pie.

    Have fun today — I have another day of sitting on hard bleachers — gymnastics meet in Big Lake!

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    2. Enjoy good luck teenager
      She was not made up
      . Thanks holly for the flashback
      That was on of my first 45s
      I can sing it for you word for word before listening to it
      Last night at the dance I met Laurie so tender and warm an angel of a girl…. Ahhh they don’t write em like that any more

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      2. They used to make a lot of those Dead Teenager songs. I had an obscure one about a guy who drove too fast, earning the name of “Leadfoot.” That song ended in a series of screams “Look out! Look out! Look out!” followed by a wonderful car crash. The chorus: “Leadfoot, Leadfoot, speed was all he craved! His right foot on the throttle and his left foot in the grave!”

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  3. My favorite Fanciful American is a friend who would comment here, but he’s afraid that Yahoo, Google, Google+, Gmail, and Facebook might find out. Discrimination against FAs is real. All those online “media” want to know you’re an Actual American. Well, what fun would that be? Maybe more people should be in the AA category, but the FAs I know provide more harmless fun.

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  4. Good morning. Fanciful Americans, that is a big group. Of course, we have a good supply of them among us on the Trail and they are great favorites: Captain Billy; Bubby; Dr. Kyle; and all the others. I’m sure I have a large number of favorite ones and if it wasn’t so early in the morning I might be able to quickly come up with a long list. There is one that comes to mind immediately, Kinsey Millhone. She is featured in Sue Grafton’s alphabetical mystery series. I have read most of the books in this series that has nearly reached the end of alphabet with the last offering, V is for Vengeance. Steve, thanks for passing on a copy of this book to me.

    I like murder mysteries, and Kinsey Millhone is my favorite among the many sleuths created by murder mystery writers. You have to like Kinsey because she is such a “good” person with many human failings and many likable characteristics. She lives in a garage that has been converted into a home with the help of her friend, a retired baker, who is another very interesting character created by Grafton. She is a very independent single woman who has had a number of failed relationships with men. There are many other details of her life that are woven into the plots of the murder mystery stories that she is in which somehow make her seem to be a real person that could be your good friend.

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    1. I’ve read all of the Kinsey books and regard the approaching end of the alphabet with dread. Maybe Sue Grafton can slide into the Greek alphabet and keep cranking out Kinsey books.

      My favorite Kinsey moment is when she decides to break into someone’s home to look for documents to solve a case. Although the house is locked, the doggy door is not. Slim, fit Kinsey squirts through the doggy door, only to find that the house is guarded by a huge Doberman. She is at risk of being torn apart until she learns that the Doberman will tolerate her if she keeps down on all fours. So she crawls around the house on the floor, looking for the documents and saying “Good doggy” a lot.

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        2. HGTV had a show about the house. While I do not watch the show (do not try to talk me into it; I refuse to plan my life around TV), the story of the house was interesting. You probably know the story was written for the house and the money the owners get is used to help restore it. It badly needs restoration.

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        3. Let me burst your self-protective bubble, Clyde. Netflix has it on DVD or live stream and you can watch at your leisure. Makes it even better–compelling show when I feel like watching.

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        6. Sorry. I’ll tell the truth, which some of you will object to. I just don’t like these kinds of stories. Could not get into “Upstairs Downstairs.” Everyone insisted I had to watch Godsford Park.” My son gave me the DVD. I watched 20 minutes of it.
          I am trying to talk my wife into giving up Cable, but I’m losing the war. If I win it, then we will be doing Netflix. Until now, we have not succumbed.

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        7. Clyde, you don’t have to watch Downton Abbey if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t presume to assume that I know better than you if you would like it or not. There are lots of popular things (movies, tv shows, whatever) that leave me cold so I can understand the not liking something that “everyone” likes. I do happen to like Downton Abbey, but I like to think that I like it just because I like it, not because it’s popular.

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      2. Yes, Steve, that’s the kind of thing Kinsey ends up doing all the time. I can’t remember any favorite scene’s, like that, but I know there are a lot of unusual creative efforts that Kinsey makes to caught the evil doers. In V for Vengeance she even becomes friends with the gangsters and participates in letting one of them get away who has been trying to do the right thing to bring an end to some evil doing.

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        1. My favorite FA characters in the Grafton series are the landlord and his octo-nono-generian sibs. Lively fanciful DNA there.

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        3. Clyde – normally I am with you. If you don’t watch these kinds of things from the beginning, there is too much backstory to try to catch up with. Unfortunately Steve lent me Downton Abbey on DVD, so now I’m stuck. But I have only watched them on DVD, no trying to figure out when they show up on TV for me!

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    My fave is my Uncle Virgil. When my dad was a child he was an lonely only, so he had an invisible brother Virgil. Dad was a vibrant spirit as a child and adult–no one ever forgot him–so every one in his very large extended family knew about Virgil. So we, his children, found out about Virgil from dad’s cousins and aunts. We then dubbed him Uncle.

    My second favorite flight of fanciful s are all the characters found in the tacks at the public library. What a gift to my life.

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    3. I love uncle Virgil
      Just saw parental consent with billy crystal and Bette middler where fa is an integral part of the storyline. It was very good.

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  6. I think it would be pretty hard to convince most baboons that FAs aren’t important; in fact, I suspect that some would argue they’re more important than most TAs. I’d even suggest that a lot of the TAs we all know are mere figments of our imaginations. Sure they exist, were born (in the US, or not, as the case may be), but are they who we think they are? Take MB, for instance, a person most baboons love to hate. Is she who we think she is, or is she who all of her supporters think she is? One of my all time favorite FAs it Atticus Finch, and I live with the fervent hope that there are TAs out there who strive to be everything he was.

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    1. Atticus is one of the movies my kids groan at not again. It comes out regularly. Harvey, my proclaimed favorite movie is named after a pika which is an interesting cross between made up and simply other dimensional character.
      By the way did you read senators articles in minn and Bo Beckmann they are unbelievable. Poor dale being in the news biz has to be aware of all this as the rest of us go nonchalantly through our clueless days
      I hope minn gets run out of dodge with tar and feathers and the quote by the judge in Beckmann article is worth the read.

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  7. My wife kept a list of our son’s imaginary friends. It was over 25 in all, but not all of them at once. They started with names no one has (Stunga) and ended with John. My grandson had multiple friends of both sexes who all had the same name. He called them the Joanies.
    The Class of 1970 where I taught invented a classmate and took him all the way through grades 9-12. They kept putting his names on lists and even managed to get him registered because that was when registration was first done with scan sheets. The principal awarded him a joke diploma at graduation. Name: Mark Brouse.
    Remember when Hawkeye and Trapper made up an imaginary doctor and then had to kill him off and then he got the death award?
    There used to be a group called something like the American Prograstinators’ Association which sent out press releases. It was all one very clever guy. He would do thinks like announce their predictions for the World Series or elections but long after they happened. News services knew it was a joke but picked it up as a joke.
    My favorite: in the late 40’s I think it was a man in upstate NY (You know how those upstate New Yorkers are) sent in a score for a college football team and the NY Times reported it. So he started expanding on it. In a couple weeks he was sending in facts and then stories naming all the players and then their star running back. who was Chinese. The Times got so hooked they tried to send out their own reporters to cover it and then caught on.

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    1. My son had 2 imaginary friends for about a week. They went on car trips together (chairs lined up like a car). Their names were “Bob and Jackie.” It was a delightful week, but after the week was over I guess they went on their own trip without my son.

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      1. Daughter had Invisible Max for several months as a pal. Invisible Max would stay for dinner (we had to set a visible plate and cup for him – but he was quite polite and always ate everything we served). Invisible Max would often also stay for sleepovers and required his own hug and blanket. He would most often show up at dinner and bed time, especially of Real Max (a neighbor friend of Daugther’s) had been over to play that day.

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    2. I was enrolled at the new jr high school in Bloomington in its first year when friends assigned me a home room and class schedule and then proceeded to give out my I’d when they got caught misbehaving in the halls. Numerous monkey call citations issued the principle got the biggest kick out of it when we met toward the end of the year

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  8. I had an imaginary playmate when I was about five, a girl with the rather original name of Duryelli. She ended up being one of the few girlfriends I ever had who didn’t dump me, but one day she just didn’t show up and never did again.

    I have trouble wrapping my mind around a world in which Andy Taylor of Mayview is an imaginary person but we are supposed to believe that Kim Kardashian is a real person. Come on!

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    2. I think that’s true steve and it the biggest problem our youth has today learning to discern between integrity and persona . Donald trump kim karassagain Lindsey Logan Paris Hilton Jesse Ventura it the biggest problem there is

      Is not

      Is too

      Is not you big blowhard

      Is too you pinhead and don’t call me a blowhard

      Oh yeah take that…
      And that….

      Ouch you made me bleed I’m filing a report
      Hello 911?

      Put that phone down right now

      Agggghhhhhh

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      1. J’awl does good. The poetry/prose process always seems to be merging back and forth. And then there are the typos to add whimsy.

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    2. How much whipping cream? If you just have a couple of small cartons you could just make some batches of whipped up whipping cream and use it to top all kinds of things such as coffee, ice-cream, pie, and hot chocolate.

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        1. Right about now, it’ll take an awful lot of tiramisu to make a Viking’s fan feel good. Hard liquor may be called for too.

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    5. chocolate mousse.
      gingerbread with lots of whipped cream on top.

      bread pudding (lots of possibilities – rhubarb, apple, chocolate [i’m going to try cranberry-rhubarb this weekend] – with appropriately flavored whipped cream.

      homemade ice cream. that’s probably my best idea yet.

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      1. and now i see that Jacque also had the ice cream idea. not trying to be a copycat – it’s just that great minds think alike.

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    6. Easy recipe for whipping cream – spread the contents of a package of hash browns (the refrigerated ones, Simply Potatoes is the usual brand) in a 9 by 13 inch pan. Melt a stick of butter (1/2 cup) and pour over. Grate cheese of your choice and sprinkle 1 cup over. Pour a pint of whipping cream over all. Bake till the top browns – I’m guessing around 30-40 minutes at about 350-400 degrees. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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  12. OMG, who knew – another case if “Who needs fiction when you’ve got real life politics?” I’ll be surprised if this blog isn’t picked up by some others, Dale.

    Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek TNG, and Sherlock Holmes a la Robert Downey, Jr. are right up there. I love Thursday Next although I have only read one of the books so far.
    I know there’s someone else… be back later.

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  13. Of course, there are a lot of well known FAs that have been on TV. Some of my favorite TV FAs were cast members of Taxi including Latka, Jim, Louie, Elaine, Bobby, Alex, Tony, and Zena. This was one of the best shows with a great group of characters played by top actors and comedians. The Jim on Taxi was a comical confused mess, not at all like me, right?

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  14. Too nice a day to waste. We’re going to drive up to the Arb just for someplace to go and not spend money. I just started another Christopher Moore book, which like all of his books, is full of fun FA’s. Well, some are FF’s.

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    2. Well, that was a disaster.
      Got a ticket for not pulling into the left lane fior an emergency vehicle, meaning Jordan’s local Barney Fife.. I explained to Barney how I really could not. He said his video camera showed that if I had slowed way down there was a place I could have right before I got to him, but he says it does not matter; that no matter what I have to pull into the left lane. Hmm? he also did not have his lights on the moment I went by him. The other car he pulled over had pulled away. He says that did not matter. Okay. Maybe. It’s a good law but has some problems. I have been in this situation before.
      But this is the frustrating part. I do not know the amount of the fine. He says it’s not on the ticket any more. So you call this number to find out or go to a website, for which you have to have a citation number. The ticket has lots of numbers on it, none of which are labeled Citation Number. But I think I know what it is. So I call in but they say it will be up to 10 business days before it is in the system.
      I have not railed at stupid use of technology for awhile, but it is making me feel like an FA right now. Fun day. We just turned around and came home.
      Only the second ticket I have ever received. The first was a really cheesy speed trap in Nebraska, a state which is famous for them.

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      4. I recently got a -ahem- speeding ticket 😳 . The highway patrolman said he clocked me going 77 in a 55, which I do dispute. I might’ve been going 68. Well, I was in a hurry!

        Anyway, yes, Clyde, you have to wait a couple of weeks and go to the website on the back of your ticket before you know how much the fine is. I had to wait three weeks before my citation showed up.

        Grumbling and grumbling, but YES, I’m slowing down.

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    1. I haven’t read any of the books featuring Stephanie, but I understand they are “good ones” and I think I should read them.

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      1. They’re a little ribald, but I believe she is the sassiest of the smart-mouth female investigators. Bob the Dog is pretty hilarious too. And RANGER is not to be believed. 🙂

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  16. Hmm, I am having a hard time with favorite FAs, but FB (Fanciful Brits), them I have by the carload: I fully expect to go to Darrowby in Yorkshire at some point and stop in at Skeldale house. do not try to stop me, I will be taking the TARDIS to get there.

    Then I will go back to my real job, working at the House of Eliot.

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    1. My wife and daughter have driven through Thurst, I think that’s the right name for where it is. Did drive by the house. If I got there I would also want to go to what is now called Last of the Summer Wine County, which is a way southeast of there. The truth is that Heriot’s writing is much closer to fiction than any of us want. But delightful folks he invented or copied. Would love to buy the series but it is a BBC price, meaning very very high.
      Oops, my wife is finally ready. Her we go a-Arbing.

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      1. I’ve read a biography of the “real” vet James Herriot is based on, and I know he fictionalized broadly, but I also grew up amongst the old Danish farmers in west central Iowa, and so I know some of those people are very real.

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  17. I just read a “Kate Shugak” mystery, a series set on the Alaska Panhandle by Dana Stabenow. Clearly a la Hillerman. All right, I guess. Several are published. She gets off too much on the Native affairs and town characters. I think in the first chapter she introduced about five new characters a paragraph, some of whom are from earlier books, I think, and some of whom never appear again. Hard for an old brain to sort out. May check out another one. We’ll see.

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  19. Middle Daughter had an imaginary friend for years. Her name was Rosie Blast. Not only did she talk about her quite a bit, she might have also written little books with her as a character (I’m a little fuzzy on that detail). This Rosie Blast was a very useful tool in disagreements with me. Middle Daughter was, and is, very much her own person and very, um, unique (everyone is unique, but some people like her are more unique than others). When she was age 4 or so, she would do crazy things with her hair – in a couple of years this worked well because she learned to braid her hair quite well before she learned to tie her shoes, but when she first started doing this, it looked more like a rat’s nest than anything else. I remember one time as we were preparing to go to the library, not only was her hair very interestingly “arranged,” but she wanted to wear some weird thing, don’t remember what it was now, but it was weird…I told her that people don’t wear those things to the library. She said “Rosie Blast does.” Any time I tried to steer her into more acceptable behavior – her final word was “Rosie Blast does it.”

    Now, of course, I have fond memories of Rosie Blast, but at the time she was frequently exasperating.

    Oldest Daughter, in an attempt to be as imaginative as Middle Daughter, invented Peter Dummy. Peter Dummy wasn’t around as much as Rosie Blast, but I do remember on the way home from camping at Jay Cooke State Park, there was a lot of talk about Peter Dummy and how he was one inch tall and as wide as Jay Cooke State Park.

    Those are my favorite FAs – because they make me laugh.

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      1. As I was typing this up, I was reminded of Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes. Middle Daughter had some similar characteristics to Calvin.

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  20. I had an imaginary friend named Bosadaisis who had a cousin named Bosalok. I don’t remember much about them now except for their names.

    I have a brilliant cousin who kept one end of a ball of string pinned to the side of her bed so she could get down to the floor safely if she should happen to wake up tiny.

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    3. It’s the other guys who have a hard time understanding modification of the way you get to the goal. The goalposts are a way of going step by step

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    4. I believe Kay S. has poked her head in several times over the past year or so – am I right, Kay? She usually gets asked if she is the same Kay that used to post way back, and we talk about it and decide she’s not that Kay. She’s the other Kay.

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  22. Greetings! My favorite FA’s are mainly from the different Star Trek series. Capt Picard, Kirk, Spock, Data, Quark, Worf, etc. There’s also Doctor Who, Stargate and Warehouse 13. It’s hard to choose. The characters from the original Star Trek feel like old friends.

    Jim loved Gilligan’s Island and bought the series on DVD, all 3 movies, Mary Ann’s cookbook and whoever wrote a book (the Professor). Other than that, our favorites are from science fiction.

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    1. Very sad indeed, Clyde. Gives a whole different perspective to our own trials and tribulations, doesn’t it. Not to trivialize those in any way, but we’ve somehow found the resources to fight through them for another day. May he rest in peace.

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        1. Thanks, Holly. What an absolutely lovely way to greet the new day. This is such a beautiful song, the King’s Singers do it so well, and the photo montage very sweet, love it.

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    2. hang in there clyde. i remember his articles and am sad that such a loss is reality. keep fight the fight clyde we need your voice here on the trail depression is a thief that steals joy and hope for the moment. fight to get past the momnet

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  26. My sister (a therapist) and I had an open disagreement on this site over the issue of how dangerous depression is. She maintains depression is fairly easy to control with drugs and therapy. My sense–just based on what I’ve heard–is that depression is a far more dangerous malady. It interests me that it tends to strike writers (with Paul Gruchow as another MN example).

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    1. I think it is like almost anything – the drugs work well for many people, but not everyone. Same with therapy, which involved finding the right therapist for each person. And then there are cases where nothing seems to work.

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      1. Well, yes, but CrystalBay’s position is that any competent therapist can treat depression. I think she told me, “There’s no excuse for anyone with depression not getting well.” And it is my impression (the impression of an amateur, I should add) that depression often is a lifelong bitter struggle for folks, even after they’ve tried various cures.

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      1. I am not overly well informed about depression. I think the worst form of it is something that the afflicted person has from birth. The worst kind seems to be very hard to over come. That’s my impression from what I have heard.

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    3. I thought of Paul G. too. I met him at St. Olaf in 1990 when I was taking a literature class there. I’ll never forget his nervous, shy manner, the intensity of his blue eyes, and his desperate need for a cigarette.

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  27. Well, I believe we do inherit our nervous systems, so that biologically based depression is a family reality. Medication can help, therapy of different kinds can help. One of the worst trainings I had (in terms of what I had to watch) was a workshop on suicide that showed people jumping to their deaths from a bridge in San Francisco. Researchers were able to talk to some few who survived, and they all said that the minute they jumped, they regretted it and wanted to get back on the bridge. Whenever we have a suicide in our region, it is usually someone who has not received any mental health services and who is unknown to the mental health community. Depression is deadly when the sufferer is the only one who knows about it.

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  28. Gee, there have been so many! I really liked Wilbur and Charlotte, and the boy and his two dogs from “Where the Red Fern Grows,” (I think they were Old Dan and Little Ann), and of course, Gandalf, Bilbo and Gollum. Then there would also have been the rabbits of Watership Down, and Mickey and Minnie, and Mighty Mouse and Underdog. I guess I’d have to say my very favorite one is Snoopy. I just love his many attitudes and the way he goes from one character to the next.

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