Category Archives: blog posting

February 15, 2019 · 4:14 pm

Whaa Diddy Doo?

Mixed messages of ironic intentions

Yesterday I had the most views in a single day for Catch a Falling Star that I have ever had. 126 different people looked at things 329 times on my blog. And that seems to be solely because of my Valentine’s Day post from a year ago in which I wrote about all the goofy, funny, and unintentionally inappropriate Valentines I remembered from my childhood in the 1960s. It didn’t get that kind of interest last year when I originally posted it. But this year, goofy and weird is apparently in vogue again.

So, that’s basically good news for me. I am a vast repository of goofy and weird.

If you don’t believe me, you could buy one of my books and prove it to yourself. In fact, if you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can get a Kindle version of a Mickey novel for free.

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January 31, 2019 · 5:24 pm

Videos Now? Really, Mickey?

I suppose it was inevitable, given my spectacularly bad luck at marketing. that I would have to move into new ways of self-promoting and marketing my books. So, I decided I had to move on into the realm of YouTube video blogging. I can handle this, right? It is just talking to people on video. I don’t expect to be as skilled as some of the other content creators you find there, but if I can get some people to be foolish enough to click on my videos, I might… well… you know, sell a book.

My goodness! That was certainly more difficult than I thought it would be. Of course, I only did one take. After all, as a teacher. you don’t normally get do-overs. I know some of you do videos, and you know how to do them a lot smoother than that, and time them better too. But I am trying to teach a really old dog new tricks here. (My age expressed in dog years is 434.) I will get better with practice. And since the first video is always expected to be the worst video, I anticipate having nowhere to go but up.

Well, maybe the second one is worse. I can’t help it. I am old and not exactly media savvy. I know too that video editing software is available to make things better. But I don’t really have the time and money to spare on that right now. Seriously, even five dollars is too much to spend on this blog post. But perhaps it will add to my two huge paychecks from Amazon this month, one of $0.85 and the other at $0.35, to help me afford better in the future. Creativity can help you through a lot of things. But technology you can’t afford ain’t one of them. And I hope you weren’t too badly traumatized by my hairy old face. We’ll try again next week, next Thursday most likely, and hopefully do a bit better.

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Filed under blog posting, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, novel, novel writing, publishing, sharing from YouTube

November 23, 2018 · 4:49 pm

Blogging Advice

The only advice I am actually qualified to give here is… don’t take any blogging advice from me as worth more than diddly-squoot.

Life is like moose bowling because… In order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose.

That being said, my blog views are gradually going up year after year.  I am followed by readers all over the world, and some of them actually read my blog regularly, rather than just looking at the pictures and occasionally hitting the like button.

I have not yet, however, learned to throw the moose.  I started this blog in order to promote my published writing.  I now have seven published books available on Amazon.  I made $2.60 in royalties during 2018 so far.  So, as a marketing ploy, it has been a total failure.

But as a tool in my writing life, here are some things I definitely count as benefits;

Writing a blog post every day makes the ideas flow more easily and does away with any threat of writer’s block. 

Writing every day is practice and it makes me a better writer.

I have learned how to engage with an actual audience.

I am able to try out various writing ideas without worrying about success or failure.

So, all of these things add value and keep me at this blogging thing which didn’t exist in my early life when I was planning for becoming a writer when I left teaching.

If you are tempted to make the huge mistake of following my advice and emulating me, I would warn you, I do not make a living as a writer, and I never will.  I am a writer in the same way I am a diabetic.  I can’t help it.  I wouldn’t change it even if it were possible.  I have a body of work that I intend to continue to build on until I am no more.  The creation of it is a necessity of my existence.  And I certainly don’t regret a single syllable, though what happens to it when I am gone is not important to me in any way that matters.  I hope my children will keep it as a legacy, but I only do it because it shapes the story of my life.

And so, I continue to throw meese (or mooses… or moosi… or whatever the hell the funniest plural of “moose” is) and continue not to knock down any pins.

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September 26, 2018 · 4:59 pm

Essential Sorting

The internet is a golden treasure chest with an attached bag of holding for me.  In other words, a lot of the writing I do depends heavily on a resource that didn’t really exist until I was almost 40 years old.  I save stuff from my eclectic surfing forays in computer files that tend to become amazingly complex garbage dumps.  So today, I decided to sort one of them to go through stuff I thought might make an interesting blog post.

So, let me show you some of the treasures I have found that could become upcoming blog posts.   I will go through the sorted files from July of 2018.

The Dragon Prince

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This is a funny, fascinating, D&D-type adventure series from Netflix and the creators of Avatar, the Last Air Bender.

I have recently watched the entire first season, and love this show enough to write a gushing love-review.

Fresh Off the Boat

This is a show on regular TV, the ABC network.  It is about an immigrant family originally from China.  I think I am married to the spiritual twin of the lead female character, an obsessively controlling Asian wife who has to have her fingers in every single pie in the neighborhood.

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It is chocked full of little things that are both bizarre and funny about Asian cultures being assimilated in this country.  And the kids are cute and extremely talented.

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Gene Colan

Gene Colan was one of my favorite comic book artists in the 70’s and 80’s.  I will probably do a more in-depth biography post on him in the future because he really helped me learn to draw in pen and ink.  I copied his work from Daredevil, Howard the Duck, and Tomb of Dracula.  But all of the work I will show you is done not by me, but by Gene.

Miscellany

This is the stuff that didn’t need its own folder.

 

Twitter Nudists

This is one I might not be able to use and still maintain a mild R-rating.  But I am, in fact, a member of the online nudist community.

Theodore Roethke

This one was already turned into a good blog post.

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The Wizard of Ozz

It goes without saying, nobody can have too many Wizard of Oz pictures.

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August 19, 2018 · 10:01 pm

Braindrain With a Side-Order of Lethargy

Because of weather, depression, and dealing with a wounded automobile, I have been having trouble getting writing done lately.  I mean, me, the goof who writes every day and claims to never have writer’s block, is having trouble with being motivated enough the write things.

It is entirely possible that it is due to an improper diet.  I mean, I haven’t been eating well this week.  Having to squeeze the food budget to be able to pay all the bills this month is a part of the problem.  The effect intermittent rain and heat have on my appetite could also be at least partly to blame.  I stress eat, and am not always smart enough to depend on peanuts and peanut butter to get me through the problem.

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I realize I need to eat protein to aid my brain, and fruits and vegetables so that my diabetes will slow itself down in the process of eating my brain.  That process can make you a bit stupid.

I am also quite aware that eating food that has eyeballs and mouths and occasionally cat ears is also a bad idea for dietary propriety.  Especially if it can also talk to me.  Do non-cartoonists also have this problem?

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Eating right with Ramen noodles as seen in the movie Ponyo.

All right, I admit it.  My writing problems probably don’t stem from eating cartoon food.  Or eating food in a cartoon for that matter, a thing I haven’t tried in real life.  But the whole cartoon food allusion has gotten me halfway to 500 words today.  So it is worth something.  And the real solution to the problem has been to just sit down and clack away at the keyboard, even if the only thing it yields is foofy nonsense.  (And I know “foofy” isn’t even a real word, but WordPress counted it anyway.)  I managed to write today simply by doing it.

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May 14, 2018 · 3:24 pm

What to Write When Your Head is Empty

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Sometimes when my health is poor and too many things are already on my mind, it is hard to think of a subject for the daily essay.  I don’t let that stop me.  Yes, indeed, I can write with a completely empty head.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not a stupid man.  But sometimes life’s demands can empty your mind of idea seeds, and the garden of your mind might be slow in providing new blossoms and palatable fruit.  But some people do a lot of writing with empty heads.  Some are toxic to read because there is no substance to what they say.  And some can spin out a tale or a logic trail that fascinates even though the idea furnaces are initially cold and not ready to cook.

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So maybe I have an idea to write about today already.

Maybe I can say something about how I get ideas out of my stupid little head.

But my head is completely empty today.

Oh, well… I already re-blogged something else anyway.

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Filed under blog posting, goofiness, humor, Paffooney, teaching, writing, writing teacher

May 11, 2018 · 3:06 pm

Reblogging

I have lately taken to reblogging some of my previous old posts, some of the 1,676 I have at the moment and this one probably adds to.  I do it not because I am being lazy, but because now, more than ever, I have people looking at my posts, looking at the pictures, and even sometimes reading what I wrote.  So I take pride in re-presenting some of the little essays I am most proud of or have recently rediscovered myself.

Yesterday was focused on lying as an art form.

Mark Twain

That’s actually Mark Twain in the background of this picture.  Which is a lie.  And if you can’t easily tell that, then no wonder Trump is now our president.

I re-blogged an old essay on telling lies… a how-to sort of piece called Lying as a Form of Social Responsibility  And then I promptly followed that up with a bit about one of the biggest lies I told my classes every year when they asked me how old I was and why I wasn’t already retired.  I called it Mickey is 561 & 1/2 Years Old which is a lie, but probably reasonable to believe considering the old saying, “Old English teachers never die.  One day they just lose their class.”

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On the day I had the weird confrontation with the coyote in the early morning light I wrote Morning With Coyotes and found it to be such a weird experience that I had to re-post What Do Martians Look Like?

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Today I found a piece that I still love very much called Mother Mendocino and re-blogged it, and it already had 9 views before I even finished this essay about re-blogging.

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So re-blogging isn’t just being lazy and fishing for likes, it is about reconnecting old ideas to new.  And to relive past writing moments and treasured reflections.  I intend to do more of it.  Especially with posts so old that you newer readers have never had the chance to look at the pictures and ignore the text.  So now I have fulfilled my moral obligation to warn you of what’s coming.  Now protecting yourself from what I might re-blog next is entirely your responsibility.

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