Category Archives: feeling sorry for myself

November 10, 2019 · 7:39 pm

The Blacklight at the End of the Writing Tunnel

The link above is still capable of giving you a free copy of this e-book until midnight on Tuesday, November 12th, 2019. By all means, click on it and get yourself the free Kindle e-book.

I write this plea as my third free e-book promotion is half-way done. It is, as expected, failing miserably. As of this writing, the promotion using Facebook and Twitter has managed to give away six free books. And one of those is me grabbing a free e-book for my own free Kindle reader on my laptop. So, basically, I can’t give away copies of my own book for free.

But writing this book was not a matter of making myself famous or wealthy or even acknowledged as a good writer. Those are not the things I need. I wrote this story because I myself have been badly damaged by life. I was sexually assaulted by an older boy when I was ten. I had teenage bouts of depression that nearly made me end myself. My sex-life did not develop normally and led to chronic prostatitis and the precursor to “Priests’ disease”, a prostate gland the size of a grapefruit. Yes, it may ultimately end in prostate cancer. And then when I finally made a family for myself in my late middle years, I was besieged by depression again, this time not my own, but others in my family. So, in many ways, I have lived a sad life.

The novel itself is a means to self-healing and recording how I rebuilt myself using love, laughter, and artistry. The singing orphan boy wearing clown paint and singing only sad songs is a metaphor for me and my struggle. The clowns that haunt the main characters’ dreams are also a metaphor. I was always known as the laughing teacher, the one who joked around in class, and let laughing grow into a means of instruction in the English classroom. I used humor to make learning painless. I used it to take away many other kinds of pain as well. The book is about how a family can be healed by someone who has nothing, yet selflessly gives everything to make that family come together and be whole. It is a story, just as the introduction claims, about what love really means.

But the world is stacked against lying truth-tellers like me who make up stories only to heal themselves. Facebook stopped me from messaging everybody who is a Facebook friend whom I wanted to send the book link from Amazon. They called it spamming, which really means, “advertising something on Facebook without paying Facebook lots of money.” I discovered on Twitter that sending the link in DMs makes more of my followers stop following me than it makes followers click on the link to obtain a free book. Ah, disappointment again. At least I gave away three more books than I did on the last promotion.

So, this is like a blacklight, shining on my promotional inspiration. It only shows in ultraviolet the opposite of what I thought I would see. And it resigns me once again to be only ignored as a writer of novels. I suppose it is my proper place in life.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, battling depression, clowns, feeling sorry for myself, humor, novel, novel plans, Paffooney

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October 31, 2019 · 6:39 pm

No Bad Kids in School!

You know that old saying, “There are no bad students, only bad teachers?” Yeah, that one that Betsy DeVos keeps pinging off of Trump’s brain?

Well, only idiots and educational administrators actually believe that. And I had three full classrooms of proof of this Tuesday while subbing sixth-grade Science classes.

Yes, they were bad kids. And apparently, the last time they had a sub before me, they killed and ate her, after eating her lunch in front of her. They were not merely bad kids. They were vile and noxious, unrepentant Spawn of Hell.

They were, in fact, laying in wait for me, testing every way a vile and noxious sixth grader knows to get the sub off track, dazed and confused, and turned from teacher into a helpless prey animal.

The very first class in the door immediately chased each other around the room instead of having a seat. Jamika stole a package of pencils off the teacher’s desk, ate one, and threw the plastic package in the trash. Seferino chased her around three of the tables and pinched her on the butt. And Jaden threw three different pieces of a pink eraser in three different directions at once at about three different girls, hitting two, in about three seconds of time. These aren’t their real names. But I know their real names because I had them sign my sin-sheet with first and last names before I even went through roll call. I tell them, “Sign your name so I can report what you did and, hopefully, also leave a note for the teacher that you were much better behaved for the rest of the period.” Two of the three were actually better for a majority of the period. Jaden got the Golden Turkey award at the end of the fifty minutes.

The next class had four names on my list before roll call ended, and they never did completely settle down. In fact, the teacher across the hall came in at the end of the period and jumped all over them about “Unacceptable behavior!” and vent a little heat and hatred on a few of the star players whom she knew by name and had for Math class. It wasn’t just that she thought I was an incompetent sub, but she deeply disliked some of the bad behavior that was a part of both the varnish on the surface of these kids, and the taint in the marrow of their bones. Ah, sixth graders! Thy teachers do not love thee, and yet thou keepest on screwing aroundeth! And I know the teacher I was subbing for. She taught number two son and the Princess both. She is no slouch as a teacher and is not to blame for the condition of the class.

And then the last class sauntered in behind Mr. Evil-in-a-small-package. Yes, the last class of 28 kids was under the complete control of one self-centered, manipulative, emotionally-disturbed little man. The teacher I was subbing for had warned me about him and had arranged for the Special Teacher of Special Edwards to come and take him to his special quiet place because they knew he was so special and the special things he would do if they left me at his mercy. And, of course, something went awry with the arrangement. I was left at his mercy (of which he had none.)

He would not sign his name to the paper. Or sit in his assigned seat. Or stop talking. Or stop saying inappropriately sexual things to the girls. I tried to phone the office, but the number of the assistant principal’s secretary would not ring through. I asked the teacher across the hall, also a sub, to call for me. The science teacher next door came in just in time to see Mr. Evil give me the one-finger salute. He immediately began arguing that he would not be removed from “his” class. He wanted me removed instead. Then an assistant principal showed up. He began hollering and screaming about being touched as the AP shoved him out of the classroom through the lab door. It was a total meltdown. And the fumes and melted wax of it affected the behavior of the rest of the class for the rest of the period. I yelled at them (a pointless thing to do, but it made me feel better). The science teacher next door came back in and yelled at them for making me yell at them. And everybody ended the day feeling terrible. A couple of well-behaved girls apologized to me for the behavior of the class, saying that that kind of thing happened almost every day. A cute little black kid who got in trouble too that period ended the day by almost crying and telling me that he was basically a bad kid. I told him I knew him just well enough to tell him he was not, that he only needed a little more self-discipline and he could be among the best kids in that classroom. (And I don’t believe that was completely a teacher-lie either.)

So, I had a bad day at being a sub. Not merely a bad day, but the kind of bad day that makes a teacher want to give up and never sub again. The sub that got eaten before me probably did that very thing. But, me… I’ve had bad days like that before. Worse ones, in fact. So, I will not give up.

I had an excellent day teaching yesterday at a different school. I can still teach, no matter what lasting scars Mr. Evil gave me. And there really are bad kids in the world. Somebody needs to actually feed them to alligators, not just threaten them with being fed to alligators. Then they will finally know how their substitute-teacher victims feel.

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Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, teaching, telling lies

October 6, 2019 · 5:15 pm

What Stupid People Think About

Let me begin by reminding you that the only head I have to explore as an example of what I am talking about in this essay is my own stupid head.

So, this is not an insult post. This is self-deprecating humor. And therefore, the contents of your own stupid head are completely safe.

Now, there is considerable evidence in the books already that Mickey is not, and has not been, particularly stupid for a large portion of his time on earth. He got college scholarships based on his ACT and SAT scores to get his undergraduate degree for free (in the 1970’s when it was significantly cheaper than now). And he has been both a teacher in a gifted program and the middle-school coordinator of that same gifted program. So, Mickey has effectively fooled everybody into thinking he is not stupid. But consider for a moment where the laughs come from when watching Stephen Urkel on TV, or the four nerds from Big Bang Theory. Smart people do stupid things and are very awkward at times, proving that, no matter how smart they are, smart people are capable of being quite stupid.

What, then, is the stupid thinking in Mickey’s stupid head?

Well, there are a number of things. Mickey is, as you may know if you read any of his nudity blogs, obsessed with nakedness. He was assaulted as a child in a way that caused him to be afraid of nudity and slow-developing in sexuality. As he grew older, he had to compensate for this lack of natural development. So, he has reached an age where his brain stupidly rejects guard-rails when talking about nudity and sex. He has convinced himself that he wants to be a nudist, and writes about nudity constantly, as evidenced by this very paragraph. When Mark Twain was in his seventies, he did leave the house without remembering to wear clothes more than once. The neighbors did not compliment him for doing that. That and worse is probably in Mickey’s near future.

And sex, as a subject sloshing around in a brain awash with hormones and other nightmare chemical imbalances, leads to a rash of stupid decisions. Of course, Mickey is old and has had chronic prostatitis long enough to eliminate the possibility of making a stupid decision about infidelity since those body parts don’t actually work anymore, but it leads to buying numerous things sold by marketers using sex as a way to sell things. Cabinets full of hair gel and cologne and Herbalife products that can never be used up is the result. And the wife is frustrated with the foods Mickey is constantly addicted to. “Why so much chips and salsa, Mickey?” Chips and salsa? Hubba hubba!

And Mickey’s old brain, full of a vast quantity of useless trivia-type knowledge, random wisdom floating around in a disconnected fashion, and prejudices formed by a bizarre obsession with things like nudism, Disney movies, comic books, model trains, and doll-collecting, becomes strangely creative. He begins to believe weird things.

For example, he thinks rabbits, if they were suddenly transformed into people, would make better people than people ever do. They are mostly quiet most of the time. They eat an all-vegetable, healthy diet. And they don’t vote Republican.

He obsessively also thinks about how his mind is working and how thinking about thinking is likely to improve thinking. He even realizes that the map of his head, provided above, doesn’t accurately reflect the many branching corridors and dead-end hallways of his actually-complicated-yet-stupid mind. He thinks that thinking too much about thinking makes you stupid.

I have illustrated this entire piece without uploading any new art… What a stupid thing is that?

And finally, Mickey is left with a sense of wonder about how it is entirely possible that everybody is stupid at least part of the time. And he wonders what possible things that you, dear reader, are thinking about that you consider at least somewhat stupid? You are welcome to tell him in the comments. But remember, this post is about stupid thoughts in Mickey’s head. You are perfectly free not to worry about your own stupidity.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, Mickey, Paffooney, satire, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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September 30, 2019 · 3:58 pm

Under Pressure

As a new week begins and a new month begins tomorrow, I admit, I have been under pressure. But now the monsters are temporarily under control, either beaten back, or caged.

As you can see here, I have tightened up the cover design for part two of my novel re-write AeroQuest. The work on that has picked up pace. And the pressure is off because I have already completed and published the novels most essential to my writing life to finish before I die. But there is still the pressure to produce more.

My health has reached a point where immediate worries of death have been pushed back enough that the pressure is off. At least for now. My heart is still pumping properly in spite of the 2017 heart-attack scare. I still can’t afford insulin for diabetes, but careful attention to diet is still reducing the times I have to take to my bed all day due to high blood sugar. I have taken positive steps to secure a position as a substitute teacher in the local district. After next Tuesday I may actually be back in classrooms again, doing what I was born to do. Yes, I mean babysitting middle-school monkey-house denizens. I love it, and I have missed it. You may have noticed (if you’ve looked at any of my novels) that all my books are about school kids. Old teachers never die. They just lose all their class.

Money worries have loosened their grip on my heartbeat as well. Texas legislators were turned more friendly to teachers and retired teachers by the Blue Wave election of 2018. I got a healthy cost-of-living increase paid to me in September. I got a refund of a tax penalty that I paid to the IRS and didn’t actually owe. I was able to buy the new prescription glasses that I have needed since last January and wasn’t able to afford until now. I can actually see again.

And, assuming I can actually teach again, money will be coming in as a substitute. And when I don’t feel well enough to teach, I don’t have to.

The thing is, I will still be preparing for future bad turns of fortune. Good times never last for long. And I am naturally a pessimist. But even though I will always be living under pressure, that is not a bad thing. The fire in the forge tempers the metal as it is hammered. And in that metaphor I find my strength.

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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, novel writing, Paffooney

September 26, 2019 · 5:18 pm

Surviving Good Luck

Good things are happening right along. I got the job as a substitute teacher. The IRS investigation turned in my favor. I got money back from them because they charged me penalties I didn’t actually owe. It was THEIR fault that they didn’t register my previous $400.00 check. I dutifully made demanded payments during the 90-day investigation. Even though it hurt economically. And, miraculously, they admitted the mistake was theirs. I have been able to write more fluidly and well than I have in a long time.

You can see that I have had some success making illustrations for the next AeroQuest re-write book in spite of arthritis in my hands.

But everything has a price. I have had to scramble to do the online testing for qualifying to be a substitute teacher while the internet access in our house has been going in and out of order. I called the provider and scheduled a technician’s visit. But the thing fixed itself mysteriously before the date of the work arrived. I finished my testing even before I called Spectrum to cancel my appointment.

I ended up having to split the refund check with my wife. The bank would not let me put the check entirely in my personal account unless she was there in person to okay it. So, even though the penalty payment came 100% from my account, I had to give her 40% of the money because her bank will let her do what my bank would not. It’s not like that was a major fight between us, or anything. But she had originally agreed to sign the check over to me 100%, and then bank rules fudged up that agreement for me.

And this morning, the Princess had a nosebleed on the way to school. I was picturing a major emergency-room expense wiping out everything. There were, after all gushers of blood enough to soak five paper towels before the bleeding stopped. She made it to school on time in spite of the necessary clean-up-and-stop-bleeding time we had to put in.

So, I am not cursed with only the blackest of bad luck. But I am not blessed with purest white of the good luck either. And for those of you who will remind me, “Mickey, you don’t believe in luck!” I will remind you that, “Yes, I don’t, but you have to explain these bizarre random rewards and punishments somehow.”

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Filed under Celebration, feeling sorry for myself, humor, illustrations, Paffooney, pen and ink paffoonies

September 16, 2019 · 4:08 pm

The Straight Poop About Politics

If you were fool enough to become a fan of my political humor, then you probably noticed that there has been very little of that in this blog for some time. And have you sensed the reason why yet?

Basically the problem is, politics is no longer funny. It is soul-suckingly horrible and robbing me of my ability to laugh. The idiotic moron criminal with tiny hands that we elected President is transparently corrupt and obviously guilty of numerous crimes, especially the obstruction of justice.

The idiotic moron criminal continues to get away with everything he does. He has packed the courts with appointees that don’t have the qualifications to do the job. They were chosen based on their stated agreement with the erroneous and criminal beliefs of the idiotic moron criminal. He depends on them to stay in power and rule his way.

He fires, pursues, and undermines the people who are supposed to protect us from lawbreakers so they won’t accuse and incarcerate him.

He doesn’t understand the first thing about foreign policy. And so, the idiotic criminal morons who are in charge of other countries can take advantage of their stupid little American brother-in-dictatorship.

And nobody is capable of changing anything, especially not minds. All the decent Republicans are resigning and leaving the corpse of the GOP to whatever Frankensteinian uses the idiotic moron criminal has for it. There seems to be no one left to turn to.

And so, I will proceed without pursuing political humor anymore. I am tired of scratching through piles of political chicken-poop to find anything worthy of real satire. The idiotic moron criminal always seems to win, no matter how much clever irony I throw at his orange head.

And I know there are readers out there who will say I am a hypocrite because I say I don’t like insult-humor, yet I routinely call the idiotic moron criminal an idiotic moron criminal. What else am I going to do? Call him a criminally moronic idiot? Respect needs to be earned in this world. And to earn it, he needs to pay me, and all the other American voters, reparations.

I wish to thank all the cartoonists represented in this blog whose work I blatantly stole for the purposes of illustrating this blog. I hope they can forgive me. I cannot pay out anything through lawsuits because the idiotic moron criminal with tiny hands has stolen all my money and left me bankrupt.

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September 13, 2019 · 5:12 pm

Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is a bad luck day… for superstitious and stupid people. Of course, it is never a good day if you are truly stupid.

I had a bad week last week with all the toilet explosions and the car accident and my daughter’s epic lost-ID freak out.

Today could not possibly get worse than the week prior.

Except that it could. I am now in bed ill with a slight fever and a probable sinus infection.

But I will not blame it on superstition. The stupidity was all mine.

The toilet repair went so badly because I was trying to match really out-dated metal plumbing parts with modern plastic cheap stuff and PVC. Nothing matches, nothing fits, I had to piece together a jury-rigged repair with putty and tape and as much ingenuity as my stupid little brain could manufacture.

It’s not as if I can write my way out of my house-repair woes, or my physical ailments and short-comings. I might be able to make a dent in the stupidity factor by means of this essay. But can a collection of paragraphs ever really cure being stupid? The natural state of all mankind?

The car accident was not my fault. I was hit from behind going around the corner by a motorist who did not stay in his own lane of traffic. And I didn’t suffer any real visible damage. We didn’t call a cop for an accident report. My diabetic blood-sugar drop didn’t kill me. So, I guess everything is all right. But stupidly, I am probably allowing my insurance rates to go up because of another accident that was not my fault. And the blood-sugar drop probably lowered my immune system’s defenses during the height of pollen season and the beginning of flu season.

Of course, I am sure you know that Friday the 13th is historically not an ordinary day. You can Google up the information on it’s connection to Jesus’s last supper (13 people gathered on the 13th of Nisan the night before Jesus was crucified on Good Friday.) Or what the King of France did to the Knights Templar on a Friday the 13th. But that is all irrelevant to me, as I am not superstitious, only guilty of some measure of stupidity.

I told my daughter during the heat of her meltdown that we would soon be able to laugh about the whole bad week. Well, what better day to begin the chuckles than Friday the 13th?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhhaaaaaa!

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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, humor, illness, Paffooney, pessimism

September 11, 2019 · 4:07 pm

Making Life Happen

After a week of bathroom trips to Walmart, exploding toilets shooting water across the bathroom, and cuss words from me each time the antique fossilized pipes spring a new and different leak, we finally have the water back on in the house, relatively dry bathrooms, and a useable toilet (provided the cutoff valve is shut when the toilet refills).

I like older homes because they tend to be well-built, stately, and relatively free of the breakdowns attendant to plasticized and computerized new-fangledness. But when age mandates rust-repairs to the plumbing, it causes no end of expenses and hassles due to antique pipes needing to be replaced in a modern, PVC world.

I suppose the root of the problem has really been that I, as a do-it-yourself-er, am well past my own prime and now somewhat out-dated and probably past my expiration date.

But now, as the crisis winds down, we have a dry place in the house for relieving ourselves again. We have a renewed appreciation for the importance of the same in the over-all arc of our lives as a family. Peeing and pooping has to be dealt with as a part of life.

One never knows where the next family crisis will occur. We now know the bathroom is one possible location of life-impacting disasters.

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September 9, 2019 · 9:22 pm

Bad Daze

We have been using Walmart’s restroom for an entire week now, including late-night trips. The toilet’s shut-off valve has exploded with water twice. My daughter lost her school ID badge and missed two days of school feeling terrible. She also dropped and shattered her favorite sculpture to make herself feel worse. I had a car accident on Friday. A fender-bump that didn’t damage my car, but made me almost go into shock with a sudden blood-sugar drop. Stress may kill me yet.

It is almost the worst streak of bad luck that I have ever had. It ranks second, maybe. Or possibly third.

But we will survive it. Bobby McFerrin will help;

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Filed under Depression, feeling sorry for myself, humor, music, Paffooney

September 6, 2019 · 9:17 pm

Why Tuesday Was Icky for Mickey

This has been a terrible week. It takes a good deal of explanation to make clear what fundamentally went wrong. But the ignition of the raging fire of black-luck can be traced back to the explosion of the upstairs toilet that unexpectedly started a cascade of bad luck and rather icky events.

Yes, you heard me right, the toilet exploded, not with actual fire, but with an unexpected gusher of the household water supply that disrupted and defeated a simple toilet-repair procedure. And went on to mess up the rest of the week.

A vertical picture of my horizontal sunflower.

The problem was first apparent when the float broke off from the bar that is supposed to stop the water from flowing into the toilet when the tank is full. So, it began pumping water into the bathroom relentlessly through the overflowing tank. Three inches of water on the floor later, I noticed what was happening and cut off the water to the toilet at the shut-off valve. I then went to Lowe’s and bought a new refill stack (a really cheap plastic one because I am really cheap) and I planned on repairing that toilet the same way that I did twice before. Easy-peazy.

What I didn’t know before beginning the repair, (and would soon learn to my horror half-way through the job) was that the shut-off valve was secretly out to get me, and put into action its twenty-year-long plan for exacting rust-revenge right before it’s gruesome demise. I discovered as I removed the broken piece of plumbing that the broken piece of plumbing was the only thing actually holding back the gusher that became a geyser while I was trying to fix it. And of course, once I knew what the problem was (several gallons too late) I managed to jam the piece I was putting in with such gusto that not only could it not be put in place over the geyser, it was also jammed hard enough that it could not be removed.

The only thing I could do was to shut off the water to the whole house. So, I went out to the spot by the front door where I remembered the shut-off valve to be. But where I thought I remembered the valve being, there was only a new bit of PVC pipe where the city had made changes to the old sewer lines two years ago. So, I began to panic. I don’t pay the water bill. My wife does. And she works at the Dungeon in her middle school’s basement where she can’t call out or get calls in. And I didn’t know the number to call to get help from the city. So, I went back upstairs to find something jammable to stuff in the geysering hole while number-two-son continued to hunt for the shut-off valve. I tried electrical tape and duck tape (though I didn’t actually have a duck to tape with it) and even considered briefly using one of my daughter’s many soaked socks that littered the bathroom floor (or rather, floated above it). As I went downstairs defeated, contemplating calling 911 for a drowning victim’s rescue, my son came in shouting that he had found the shut-off valve. It was under the replanted hedge that my wife moved two years ago.

So, we got the geyser stifled, and the rest of this week we have been living a comfort-free lifestyle with the water shut off while I have been contemplating my Joe-like ability to make bad things happen around me.

I have had to adapt as I work out how to undo the plumbing damage already done without being able to afford a real plumber, and attempt to prevent further damage from happening. And our luck with things like midnight bathroom runs by auto to the nearest all-night-Walmart-store restrooms, my daughter getting ready for school with limited wet resources, and even the car accident I had today between paragraphs two and three of this essay (no kidding… I had to run and pick up my son and got clipped by the car behind me going around the Walmart corner) has been Joe-Btfsplk-esque.

I have had a bad, bad, icky-Mickey week. But I did publish a book. And I got a fairly-funny essay out of the whole thing, though, sadly, every detail is truthfully accurate.

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