Kelpie

I really enjoy looking forward each week of the prompts that are suggested to write about. It has helped me immensely in my short story writing development. One week I was so baffled that I couldn’t relate to any of the subject matter so I didn’t write anything. If anyone outside of whomever chose the prompt to write something about subvert expectations this week and knows what it means. I’ll wear my Yankee ball cap backwards on my head for a week. Wearing your San Diego Padre baseball cap backward will not help you get a girlfriend. Wearing your Tiger Woods golf cap backward doesn’t make or work with any fashion statement you are trying to achieve or create. Wearing your Pittsburgh Steeler cap backward in the car prevents you from comfortably resting your head on the head rest behind you. The bill on the Green Bay Packer cap has a purpose. It is designed to keep the sun out of your eyes so you can see better. If you need to shade your neck, get a St Louis Cardinal cap with a brim that goes all the way around your head. This only looks good on children under the age of about 13 and that is pushing it. The only people that look OK with their Los Angeles Dodger cap turned around are baseball catchers and welders. By the way, most catchers and welders turn the cap to the front facing when their face mask comes off. Wearing your Montreal Expo cap backward does not make you look like a rapper. If you wear your Nike cap backward for a long enough period of time on a sunny day, and it has an adjuster, you will sunburn a half circle on your forehead. This will make you look like an even bigger idiot when the cap is off. Wearing your Nascar cap backward doesn’t make you look like a bad dude, tough, or edgy. It won’t make you any of those things I mentioned either. What it will do is make you look like an adolescent twerp. The humble baseball cap was designed with a purpose and has a storied history. Wearing it backward ignores all of this and makes pretty much everyone who does it look like a fool. What I don’t get is, if you don’t want to wear the cap the way it was intended to be worn, why don’t you just wear a beanie or cut the bill off the cap? You’ll pretty much achieve the same result if you do. My mother used to tell my sister if you see a grown man wearing his cap backwards that means his brain is on the wrong side of his head and don’t think about introducing him to her. I believe I made my case.

Subverting Expectations refers to a mocking criticism of various pop culture franchises, such as Star Wars and Game of Thrones, in their attempts at surprising the audience. The criticism is largely used for cultural artifacts that some believe make story choices that are unjustified, confusing or illogical for the sake of shock.

Now I’m ready to mentally involve my mind in a movie that not even I will know with extreme subvert expectations what I’m writing about. While I was watching an episode of Jerry Seinfeld it was focus on Jerry making out at the movie theater while Schindler’s List was playing. First of all you couldn’t get me to watch no movie in black in white unless it involved the three stooges movies Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959), Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962) and The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963). So for the sake of watching a black and white movie that only costed 22 million to make and grossed over 322 million and won 7 academy award winner trophy’s for winning Best Writing Adapted Screenplay, Best Production Line, Best Picture, Best Original Music Score, Best Film Editing, Best Director and Best Cinematography.  

Many people say that Schindler's List is a difficult film to watch. When you see the true atrocities of the Holocaust, your jaw drops. When you see the pain that all of the innocent people were going through, the only thing you can do is cry. Not me!  I wanna cry whenever I watch the made for TV series Root’s. When that Overseer made Toby (Kunta Kinte) choose between his right bare foot and his manhood now that was truly sad and maybe worth a tear or two.

To me as far as the true goal of all Holocaust films is to make you feel sorrowful, and Schindler's List did not affect me one bit. 

I kept waiting on the film editors to suddenly change the beginning of the black and white movie into color just like what happened in the Wizard of Oz. How in the world did Steven Spielberg expect any black person to relate to that black and white movie? The relocation of Polish Jews from surrounding areas to Krakow begins in late 1939, shortly after the outbreak of World War II, when the German Army defeats the Polish Army in three weeks.

At the outbreak of the World War II there were just four black regiments in the American military. After the Selective Draft Act was passed, more than a million African American volunteers responded. By the end of the conflict, just a year later, almost 400,000 black troops have served, many in combat roles. Don’t ask me why I included that information. I just might give you some more subvert expectations.

Oskar Schindler a successful businessman, arrives from Czechoslovakia in hopes of using the abundant cheap labor force of Jews to manufacture enamelware for the German military. Now that part of the movie I could relate to, because of free slave labor on the plantations. I probably would have gotten sold by my master three minutes after I arrived on a plantation or something worse would happen to me especially if someone was demanding me to pick some cotton on a 105 degree day in the fields.

Schindler, an opportunistic member of the Nazi party, lavishes bribes upon the army and SS officials in charge of procurement. Sponsored by the military, Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits and cooking paraphernalia. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, doesn’t that statement sounds similar to that person in the oval office in the Whitehouse in 2020, he gains a contact in Itzhak Stern in the local Judenrat (Jewish Council) who has contacts with the now-underground Jewish business community in the ghetto.

Well I’ll be! Never thought I’d ever hear about a white Nazi ghetto. Two thumbs down for Schindler’s List.

Before I submitted this short story I’m still wasn’t sure if I know what Subvert Expectation is and what is expected of me to write as the prompt suggest. It asked to use a animal not a movie. So “write” now I’m thinking about a Kelpie, or water kelpie, is a shape-shifting water spirit inhabiting the lochs and pools of Scotland. It is a Celtic legend; however, analogues exist in other cultures. It is usually described as a black horse like creature, able to adopt human form and is known to lure people like me into lakes to their death. Some accounts state that the kelpie retains its hooves when appearing as a human, leading to its association with the Christian idea of Satan.

 I have a crazy first cousin who actually believes that he can shape-shift. In his case he turns into a wolf anytime the moon is full in which only happens in which a full moon can be observed every 29th or 30th day. The total number of days in a lunar calendar year is 354 days which are less than 11 days from a Gregorian calendar. So if the first full moon of the year is sighted between 1st January to 11th January, there will be 13 full moons in that year.

Shapeshifting to the form of a wolf is specifically known as lycanthropy, and such creatures who undergo such change are called lycanthropes. Therianthropy is the more general term for human-animal shifts, but it is rarely used in that capacity. It was also common for deities to transform mortals into animals and plants. I would have chose to be turned into a coconut tree for some odd reason.

Now I’m not one who believes in the supernatural and I still don’t believe that Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Kaufman, Kurt Cobain, Aleister Crowley and Tupac Shakur have met the big entertainer down below.

Then in a dream or nightmare my Ronnie my Kelpie appears. He tells me that we have some important business that needs to be attended to immediately. What do you mean “we” I asked? You and I  and “we”, that jet black horse whinnied! All the while he’s talking that “we” stuff I’m wishing and praying that I could shapeshift into Jamie Dimon an American billionaire business executive. He is chairman and CEO ofJPMorgan Chase, the largest of the big four American banks, and was previously on the board of directors of the Federal Bank of New York City. JPMorgan Chase is the world’s largest bank with a market value of approximately $390 billion.

Suddenly Ronnie was waking me up. I’m thinking what part of the dream is this. Hurry he says and “we” were off to The Battle of the Hogwarts. You heard “me” right! Hogwarts! Slytherins were the first to desert Hogwarts when the battle called. Almost every Slytherin member have their superior blood purity status ingrained in them from the childhood.

If I’m not dreaming and I’m not awake then where am I? As if reading my mind Ronnie says “we” will have a guess appearance in that cartoon. There he goes with that “we” talk again. The cartoon Blue Exorcist where the realm of humans and demons never intersect, but demons are now intruding on the material world. Rin Okumura decides to hide his devilish origins and become an exorcist. But, his cover is blown and he is revealed as the son of Satan. Terrified his friends start to distance themselves from Rin until “we” arrive.

To protect myself I’m wearing a cross larger than the clock that used to hang around Flavor Flav’s the ancient rappers neck (61) and a pound of Heirloom garlic in my right pocket just in case “I” run into some vampires.

I’m getting bored as hell with Ronnie my shape-shifting Kelpie and I know how to kill him in which won’t be long before he returns to the big lake down below with his daddy Satan. Just as with cinematic werewolves, a kelpie can be killed by being shot with a silver bullet, after which it is seen to consist of nothing more than "turf and a soft mass like jelly-fish". Now I think I got some good Subvert Expectations.