I made a choice, long about 1980 or so. And I have not regretted that choice. I became a teacher instead of the writer/artist I thought I wanted to be. And the more I look back on it now, if I had gone the writer route back then, I could’ve eventually become an author like Terry Brooks who wrote the Shannara books. I might’ve even been as good as R.A. Salvatore whose fantasy adventure stories have reached the best seller list. Back then, in the 1980’s I could’ve eventually broke into the business and been successful. Even as late as when Frank McCourt broke onto the literary scene with his memoir, Angela’s Ashes in 1996, I might’ve been able to transition from teacher to writer the way he did. But I chose to keep going with a teaching career that enthralled me.
Publishing and the literary scene is changing now. And it is no longer possible for someone like me to break into the big time. I am an author who has come aboard a sinking ship.
But I have stories to tell. They have lived inside me for more than thirty years. And I am scrambling now to get them told before my crappy old body completely betrays me and makes the chance go away. I will get them told… even if no one ever listens.
And there are some advantages to doing it the way I have done it. It is, and always has been, about the people in my life. My wife, my children, my students, my co-workers, my cousins by the dozens, my little town in Iowa… they are the people in my stories. My stories are true to life, even if they have werewolves and fairies and living gingerbread men and nudists in them. I live in a cartoon world of metaphor and surrealism, after all. I would not have had the depth of character-understanding in my stories without my experiences as a teacher. And I really don’t have to worry about the whole marketing thing any more. I am not on that treadmill. I do not have to be aware of what the market is looking for. If my writing ever turns a profit, I won’t live long enough to see it anyway. And that has never been what it is all about.
I can do anything I please with my stories. They belong to me. I do not owe the world anything. What I give you now in this blog and in my books, is given for love, not profit. I can even write a pointless blog post about Sunday blather and illustrate it with Tintin drawings by Herge. And you can’t stop me. And, hopefully… you don’t even want to.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Darkest of the Coming Darkness
Egghead might be slightly batty.
I do not claim to be prescient. But like any overly smart and perceptive person, I often see what’s going to happen before it happens. Sometimes it is almost as eerie as a Vincent Price movie. Sometimes eerier. After all, on the 60’s Batman TV show, Price played the ridiculous villain Egghead, and was completely creepy while doing it, but still, you know… Egghead.
One thing that I have to predict about the coming darkness is about politics. I mean, the current Republican administration, where it is decisions by all Republicans all the time, has become nothing more than a monster movie. Not merely a bad monster movie, but a super-creepy-bad monster movie with a gigantic orange rubber rooster as the main monster.
This is what the great orange rooster looks like in black and white.
The reason it is bad is because, basically, to become a member of the Republican Party’s elected elite, you basically have to have your heart removed. Heartless, soulless monsters have a tendency to do things like take away Meals on Wheels for invalid seniors, health-care services from Planned Parenthood, and any hope of ever having affordable health insurance that actually pays for health care.
Senator Ted Cruz grinning about taking away Obamacare
And now, the monsters who have taken control of the theater are pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement because… well, apparently clean air isn’t good for decaying, desiccated monster skin and shriveled monster lungs that don’t breathe air anyway.
So here are my predictions for the coming darkness.
What people like me will look like in the future. That’s me in the middle.
I won’t live to see it. My body is breaking down at age 60. My lungs are compromised by years of bronchitis and flu. I am diabetic, so my very body chemistry is betraying me. There is a family history of heart disease. And I have already gone broke once on health care bills that the health insurance people really don’t pay for. (They are in the business of collecting premiums, after all, not making people well.)
What a lovely oxygen-free environment we will have!
As the climate changes take away large parts of our food production and resources, and the sea rises to take away land and major cities, people will be at war increasingly over diminishing resources vital to a population of seven billion souls. Graveyards and unburied bodies will become a part of every monster-movie scene.
Kiss me, Baby!
Love will become more complicated, because people who are selfless and put others before even their own life will die out first. The heartless, selfish, and often stupid ones will have the best chance for survival because they put themselves ahead of everyone else, and so have an unfair advantage over those who are not content with mere survival and exhibit self-sacrificing love.
You’ve never had a friend like me. And I can always eat you later if need be.
So, if you find my black-and-white monster movie post upsetting with the darknesses I am sincerely predicting, please remember, this is a satire post in a humor blog. The way it is supposed to work is that you wake up to the factors that make it upsetting and decide to do something for yourself to change them. Everybody doing a lot of the same little thing to make the world better can move mountains and fly to the moon. Big things don’t happen without everybody taking a hand. Maybe we can dream dreams once again and make some good things come true.
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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, horror movie, humor, monsters