Category Archives: feeling sorry for myself

December 12, 2016 · 3:55 pm

I Can’t Get Me No… Satisfaction

I am old.  And it is true that I am not as old as the Rolling Stones.  After all, they are living proof that prehistoric fossils can actually still sing.  But I am nearing the end.  My health is rapidly deteriorating.  And while medical technology has advanced worldwide, and is probably the only reason I have lived for 60 years, the cost of that technology to Americans is beyond what I can afford.  I am living now in a house that I saw in my dreams back in college.  In that dream from when I was twenty, I saw myself sitting in an easy chair that is now in this house.   The sky outside was pale orange.  And an angel came to me and said, “This is it.  This is the end.  You must come with me.”

cupid-over-water-l

So I am expecting the angel any day now.

But there is so much in this life, in this world, left unfinished.  I have novels left to write, and novels I have written that still are not published.

Page Publishing has my Magical Miss Morgan book and I have to argue now with editors to keep them from totally mangling it.  They even want to change Miss to Ms. in the title!  Don’t they know that kids never say Ms. to a female teacher?    Will the angel have to wait while I labor through the process of correcting those danged ding-batty word-misers?

And the Arizona football Cardinals have not won a championship in the NFL since 1947, nine years before I was born.  I wanted to see them win once before I leave with that angel.  But the team that was practically unbeatable last year lost their seventh game this year to the Dolphins yesterday, and are probably defunct for this year.  It would take a miracle now for them to get funct again and make the playoffs.  Maybe I have to put the angel off for another football season.

And the world has ended in 2016.  The Great Orange Face has won the battle for leader of the free world.  He will institute policies that will make him richer, but will kill me, and eventually destroy life on Earth.  And remember, the Cubs won a World Series again, 108 years after the goat curse was set upon them.  The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are dusting off their saddles right now, and the pale guy is sharpening his scythe.  How can I leave behind such a world for my children?  The angel is getting impatient and tapping his foot quite a lot.

20151213_154806

                                                                                                               “You know, it is quite possible I will look like this the next time you see me, Mickey.”

So, I am really not satisfied quite yet with the way things are going.  The Rolling Stones have some sort of secret going for them.  They are never satisfied according to the song.  So maybe that is what is keeping them still singing after most of them have already died and simply refuse to lay down, get buried, and keep quiet.  Maybe I need to learn to sing.

 

3 Comments

Filed under autobiography, battling depression, cardinals, feeling sorry for myself, humor, nudes, Paffooney, publishing, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 7, 2016 · 4:24 pm

Mickey’s Red-State Blues

15202653_2152173305007321_637665507013224372_n

I often struggle with depression.  Every member of my family has battled it at some point.  And it is a dangerous disease.  It can kill you.  I don’t like spending quaking, fearful hours in the emergency room.  I have had to do exactly that three times already.  And now Trump has attacked my most cherished issue… public schools.  I gave my life to them for 31 years.  There is not enough chocolate in the house.

trump-education-plan

It is ironic.  I was already attempting to commit suicide by not taking my daily medication any more because of high drug prices that health insurance does not help with.  But that suicide attempt has actually failed already.  After two years of not taking blood pressure medication, a thing the doctor feared would kill me, I am now detoxified and actually feeling quite a lot better.  My blood pressure has not been high since 2001.

So, if I am compelled to end it all over the rise of Education Czar Betsy DeVos, I will have to use some of that creative problem-solving that we have not really been allowed to teach since the George W. Bush administration.  Something involving massive amounts of sugar water and thousands of man-eating butterflies would be appropriate, I think.

download

If I had to teach this class, I would be tempted to flunk the orange-skinned kid in the middle just on principle, but that would be discriminating against a rich guy, which is against everything this new administration stands for.

Privatizing schools, another way of saying the “school choice” thing that Republicans love to promote, will mean you get exactly what you pay for in education.  Unfortunately, that means you have to be rich to get proper schooling.  Since governmental entities will be shedding the burdens of paying for schools, the good schools will only be able to pay for their resources by charging high tuition and fees, something that limited school vouchers will never be able to fund.  A majority of kids whose families cannot afford anything more than the vouchers will pay for will end up in underfunded discipline mills that will be far worse than the public schools we have now.  Those schools will be set up to prepare students for their future employment making license plates in State prisons even more so than public schools are now.

My Republican friends in Texas (and my birth State of Iowa too, for that matter) like to tell me that, “You can’t solve education’s problems by throwing money at them.”  But I would like to know what studies they base that conclusion on.  When in American history have we thrown money at schools?  Other nations that get better education results do spend more, especially on paying teachers better.  And they are not forced to teach Creationism in Science class to get those funds.

So, managing depression has not been easy since the recent election.  Recount efforts and rumors that the Electoral College may do what they were designed for and vote for the candidate that actually won the popular vote are just pipe dreams, and won’t actually amount to anything.  Betsy DeVos will be the next Secretary of Education.  Maybe I will try bucket-loads of stinky, sharp cheddar cheese and a lighter for setting off explosive cheese farts.  It would be a painful way to go, but the results might also be colorfully amazing.

P.S. – I would never actually commit suicide, and as someone who has spent time in the ER fretting for someone else, I would never really advocate that.  But I am certainly not above using it as a bit of hyperbole to discuss important issues that I really do see as life-or-death.

3 Comments

Filed under angry rant, Depression, feeling sorry for myself, humor, politics, red States, teaching

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 4, 2016 · 4:08 pm

Finale – Why The Bad Guys Always Win

tellusowbegottenone_99e7c017f0afb731acf6a3a06eec137d

There is ample reason to believe that rich guys always win because they have enough money and power to change what is true.  I don’t believe for a second that John F Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman.  But rich oil men, other politicians, CIA operatives who were fighting for their continued existence after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the FBI, and probably Vice President LBJ all wanted us to believe that, so it is still the official story today.  And don’t get me started on 9/11 with that whole bag of spiders and incongruous inconsistencies that Dubya refused to investigate further.

11-moonraker-drax-1-png

There are a lot of evil Bond villains out there, but the 007-type superhero agents don’t really exist.  No one is thwarting the things that seriously need to be thwarted.

Converting from oil and fossil fuels to solar and other renewable energies does not profit the Moonraker schemes that are going on out there.  Some rich folks have even talked loosely about schemes to reduce the population of the planet to make the damage to the environment into a more manageable mess.  After all, what are the Georgia Guide Stones really all about?  You can look up what is actually written upon them.  It is worrisome.  And who is advocating for us, the common people in these sorts of schemes?

style-2012-11-bad-bond-bond-baron-samedi-gq

The truth of it is, no matter what we do, or who is out there trying to advocate for us, the United States will not last forever.  Neither will humanity as a species. Neither will life on Earth.  Forever is simply not in the realm of the achievable.  Only destruction and renewal are guaranteed.  So, in some ways, it is okay if the bad guys ultimately win.  My life will end in the next few years no matter what.  And my children will not last forever either.  But the ending of the book does not take away all goodness and value to be found in the main text.  I have lived a good life, and not even God Himself can take that away.

That is not to say that we are without hope.  As I said, we don’t actually know who is out there standing up for us now.  There are some very good and noble people putting  immense effort into the task of securing our future.  We don’t know what adaptations and breakthroughs are yet to be made.

bondbaddies620372

Here are some things to think about.  It is statistically almost certain, given what we know now about life science, that there is life on other planets in this vast universe.  And if there is life, there is almost certainly intelligent life, some of it far more advanced than we are.  And if interstellar distances can in any way be crossed, then they already have been.  If time travel is possible, then time travelers already walk among us.  The only reason we don’t have actual proof of these things is that someone doesn’t want us to know.  It is possible that they don’t want us to know for our own good.  Not all of the most powerful and wealthy among us are evil.

trumpdump

So, while it is true that bad guys always win because the system is rigged, and they are the ones who rigged it, that doesn’t mean that there will be nothing for the rest of us.  There is a limit to how much money you can actually benefit from owning.  There is also a limit to how much pain and suffering a single bad guy  can inflict upon us.  And even if they band together in large, powerful groups, there will always be more of us than there are of them.

4 Comments

Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, humor, insight, politics, rants, satire

Tagged as , , ,

December 3, 2016 · 4:28 pm

“Because I Said So!” (Why Bad Guys Always Win – Part 3)

images-2

Didn’t you hate it as a kid when Mom or Dad used to pull the royal decree maneuver on you rather than give you the real explanation?  “Why can’t we get a new dog to replace the one the junkyard dealer ran over with his truck?”  “Because I said so!” 

Yes, they pull rank or site ultimate power of authority or simply bully you into letting them win the argument.  Nixon said, “If it’s the President of the United States who does it, then it is legal.”  Remember, though, that Nixon was forced to resign shortly after that.

Now, Donald Trump says, “The President can’t have a conflict of interest,” by which he means that he doesn’t have to sell off his international real-estate holdings and put his assets into a real blind trust (not one run by Ivanka).

Does he get away with it?  It will mean, according to ethics lawyers from both the Obama and Bush administrations, that he will be in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution as soon as he takes the oath of office.  So, of course he will.  Just like Mom and Dad after we buried Scamper.

Obama, as President, was forced to do most of what he did by Executive Order because he was a Democrat, and to a Republican Congress, that means he is automatically in the wrong.  Still, he managed to enforce his will with the I said so’s at least until the righteously heroic Republicans achieved their miracle victory with President-Elect Babyhands Von Clownstick.  Now, of course, his overreaching abuse of the I said so power to do terrible things, like allow undocumented children fleeing from violence and persecution to take shelter in this country, will now all be undone.

Of course, when a Republican is President, that’s different.  Republican Presidents are automatically good and patriotic and protecting the people even when they are lying to create a profitable war in Iraq to benefit Darth Cheney’s Halliburton interests.  Lonesome George the Rodeo Clown when he was President issued all sorts of Executive Orders that were not questioned even by Democrats, let alone opposed or reversed.  In the hands of a Republican President, I said so power is more absolute than Emperor Palpatine’s use of the Dark Side of the Force.

trump-i-am-growing-stronger

So under President Donald J (for Joker, revealing his secret identity as a Batman villain) Trump, the “Because I said so!” will be absolute.  Rosie O’Donnell, Bill Maher, and Jon Stewart had better get used to the idea of waterboarding in Guantanamo.  We had all better get used to the idea of the White House being plated in gold leaf.  And I had better hope, having written an essay revealing the Cinnamon Hitler’s actual super power, that nobody actually reads this blog anymore.  If you would like to help ease my fears, you could always leave a comment in the comment section that includes the words, “I did not actually read this post.”

4 Comments

Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Liberal ideas, politics, rants, satire

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

December 1, 2016 · 4:07 pm

Why the Bad Guys Always Win

bond-villains

Donald Trump is picking cabinet members worthy of Goldfinger.

Now that the Cubs have won the World Series and Donald Trump is the next President of the U.S. and the world has ended, I want to take my time mulling over the meaning of this title and this essay.  I have to think it over carefully, because, after all, with the new leadership we have selected for ourselves (at least the only people whose votes really matter have selected) I will probably end up in prison or executed.  It doesn’t really matter how it all turns out for me.  If the Great Orange Face With Tiny Hands does away with Obamacare after everything he’s recently said to the contrary, I am doomed anyway because any health care I am going to need in the next decade I won’t be able to afford anyway.  Dying is the only option I will be able to pay for.  So, if they execute me, they will even be saving me that expense.

red_grant

Mike Pence talks a lot about “religious freedom” when he proposes to take away LGBT rights.

I am not suggesting that Trump is like a Bond villain…  Oh, wait!  Yes I am.  But unlike a Bond villain, when he talks about the evil he is going to do and how the hero is about to die an excruciatingly horrible death, he isn’t necessarily telling the truth, or even knows the truth.  So we will not be able to pull an unlikely harrowing escape at the last second, because we won’t accurately know what to counter.  He’ll tell us about the anti-Muslim piranhas in the water, but it will be the nuclear-proliferation lasers that will boil our heads off our torsos.

 

goldfinger-gert-frobe-united-artists-everett-11062015

                                                 The Trumpinator monologues a lot on Twitter, but doesn’t mean it or didn’t say it when you quote it later.

So, one of the most important factors behind why the bad guys win in real life while Bond villains always get their comeuppance by the end of the movie has to do with manipulating the story.  Telling the tale the way they want it told, even if it is a Limburger-cheese-smelling stinky-bad lie.

tvy02eu

You can bet that whatever Putin is planning, it will be bad, but he is a KGB-trained spook, so you will not win even that bet.

This is only the first essay in a series of related essays I intend to write about the world situation as I see it.  So there is the first bit of terrible news I have given you, independent of the bad news swirling around our brand new Cinnamon Hitler.  I intend to inflict more things on you that you will probably not believe, but may give you a chuckle or two at how goofy and idiotic I can be as I try to explain the stinky-bad nature of reality in terms of my own paranoid delusions, hopes, and fears.  I can’t help this criminal explaining-the-world thing I try to do in writing.  You have to remember, I was once a middle school English teacher, which goes a long way towards explaining abnormal psychology in essay form.

2 Comments

Filed under angry rant, battling depression, clowns, conspiracy theory, feeling sorry for myself, humor, insight, politics, satire

Tagged as , , , , , ,

November 28, 2016 · 4:23 pm

Just Call Me Joe

joebtfsplk

Yes, the rain clouds are hanging over my old gray head.   I am plunged deeply back into credit card debt by increases in property taxes, a lawsuit by Bank of America, the city  forcing me to get the cracked pool repaired though I can’t afford to do anything more than fix it myself and rain keeps refilling it, a recent car accident, my wife forgetting to pay the phone bill for two months, and the @#%&! family dog chewing up another of my son’s expensive retainers.  Good fortune occurs once in a blue moon, but bad fortune comes in daily waves.

So today is about complaining.  Life sucks… in the sense of a vacuum cleaner (the addendum I always had to add as a school teacher whenever the word “sucks” was used in class).  Life especially sucks (remember… vacuum cleaner) now that we have a dyspeptic orangutan running our country.

The answer, of course, is that we simply have to live with it.  Life will go on.  At least, until it doesn’t.  We are all going to die some day.  Humanity and life on earth will be extinct some day.  We live within the borders of birth and death.  The beginning and the end.

 But life is actually like a book.  It begins and ends.  But the important part is the pages in between.  And we can fill them with good things and lots of love and even more laughter.  Hmm, maybe I should stop complaining now.

4 Comments

Filed under commentary, Depression, feeling sorry for myself, humor, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as , , ,

November 24, 2016 · 4:46 pm

Lie la Lie

I suppose it is ironic that on Thanksgiving Day I am posting about lies.  After all, I really am thankful for the lies in some very specific ways.  Paul Simon’s song is the reason for the odd title and underscores the feeling I am trying to explain;

Yes, I am grateful that most of what the orange-faced man has said on the campaign trail has turned out to be lies.  I thank the Lord that the great ball of cantaloupe-colored mouth-flatulence has indicated he might not actually pull out of the Paris Accords on climate change.  That little item being a lie may save our entire planet and all life on Earth.  I thank the Lord that the orangutan president has had second thoughts about prosecuting Hillary Clinton for crimes she didn’t actually commit.

king-louie

I thank the Lord that the goal of repealing Obamacare is just a lie.  My diabetes is grateful too.  King Donald, seen in the photo above pitching snake oil and bananas to an innocent member of the American public, has strongly indicated he will keep all the good parts of Obamacare… and will basically just change the name to Trumpacare.  Of course, he will be preserving high premiums and profits for the insurance industry as well.

6e1fc5984c0bbdb1d08536ea8c50bce4fcab1e2d09b74b8be9a12752b6c4d88f_1

I have a strong suspicion the wall is just a lie as well.  In fact, the nature of President Cinnamon Hitler is such that if he is trying to keep alien secrets about Area 51 with the same talent for keeping secrets he displayed on the bus video and in his formation of a cabinet in his administrative transition, we may soon know the complete truth about Roswell.

But I’m sure you realize by now that all this is in the manner of lies and jests.  In reality I am Paul Simon’s boxer;

Yes, I am beaten down by life.  I have been lied to.  I have been tricked.  And if I only could, I would give that monkey such a punch!  But we are all the boxer, all scarred.  And we all together vastly outnumber the monkey’s minions.  I may not live to see it, but it will always be a possibility, for as long as the fighter still remains.  And I am thankful for that.

Leave a comment

Filed under aliens, angry rant, commentary, conspiracy theory, feeling sorry for myself, humor, lying, memes, politics, telling lies

Tagged as , , ,

November 23, 2016 · 4:51 pm

Terrible Trumpkin Trolls

images-2

A new Sith Lord has arisen to take charge of the new GOP Totally Dominant Empire of Evil.  He has successfully usurped the throne of power even though the Democratic candidate actually got over a million more votes than he did.

And one of the most surprising things about it is how accidentally the pieces of the Republican Empire seem to have fallen into place.

Lord Trump has benefitted from several evil and self-serving plots that the Republicans have been advancing since the rule of Lord Darth Ronny.  Reagan appointed Scalia of the Many Scales to the Supreme Court.  Scalia and Roberts (a minion appointed by Darth George W. the Rodeo Clown) created the Citizen’s United plan to bathe evil candidates in blood money from billionaires.  They also conspired to loosen the grip of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to allow voter suppression to run rampant in places like Florida, Texas, and North Carolina (two of which should’ve gone blue instead of red without the interference).  The FBI, led by Republican minion Comey, managed to keep the email scandal alive right up until the very week of the election even though they had to admit no evidence of wrong-doing was ever uncovered.  And it seems that the Russian hackery of emails and the publishing of them by Wikileaks might even be connected to statistical anomalies from districts where electronic voting machines were used.  Clinton may have lost 30,000 votes dropped by voting machines in Pennsylvania where she lost the State by 27,000.

giphy.gif

Of course, the victory conditions were not really set up to benefit Donald Trump.  The Republicans had intended all along to get a more competent Sith apprentice into the seat of ascendancy like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, or even, if forced to, a (shudder) moderate like John Kasich.  But Trump used incendiary rhetoric to fill the downtrodden masses who are suffering from the demise of the middle class with hatred and blame-bombs, effectively turning them into a vast army of Trolls.  And, unfortunately for the rest of us, Trumpkin Trolls are much better shots than stormtroopers ever were.  All that time in the NRA paid off.

28272883354_5a39285ed4

So, simply by accidentally taking the power for himself, Lord Trump has killed us all.  Yes, I mean literally.  He will pull us out of climate-change agreements and revitalize the use of coal to turn this planet into Venus where it is more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface due to rampant greenhouse effects.

And he has plans to put racists, warhawks, misogynists, and criminals in the highest positions of power.  If you don’t believe me, investigate the background of Sith Apprentice Steve Bannon even just a little bit.   He claims darkness is a good thing.

“Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power. It only helps us when they (liberals) get it wrong. When they’re blind to who we are and what we’re doing,” Bannon said in an interview published Friday, his first outside of Breitbart since the election.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/18/politics/steve-bannon-donald-trump-hollywood-reporter-interview/

trump711

One might imagine that Trump Ice Cream would be Nazi flavored.

I know people who voted for Trump.  They are not racists and do not share some of the hateful ideas these Trolls embrace as their own.  I imagine they feel betrayed already by Lord Trump.  If they don’t, they should.

636142218721755809-trumpcake.png

Trump celebrated his rise to the top of the Sith leadership with a scary Trump-head cake.  Presumably during the celebration, at some point, they ate his head.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under feeling sorry for myself, horror writing, humor, politics, rants, satire

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 21, 2016 · 5:05 pm

Thank God for Joe Biden

15109492_1187171871359418_5433226328083201610_n

I am still reeling from the election result and suffering a bad, bad, super-icky, down-on-my-luck, and in-poor-health sort of holiday week.  I will try to make humor out of all things going wrong in a later post… once I am finished surviving it.

In the meantime, I realize I am not the only one having a bad week in a bad month in a bad year.  And I really appreciated the wealth of internet memes that use Joe Biden’s unique persona and sense of humor to make me smile in the middle of the darkness.

15073323_1316740471752337_2759724439198205024_n

Me and a number of my like-minded Facebook friends (many of whom I have never met outside of the internet) have been passing these things back and forth to help ease some of the pain and make life a bit less grim.  I confess to laughing really hard at a couple of these.

I really hope the badger and duct tape thing is an actual plan being carried out.  Although, I know life doesn’t actually work that way outside of the funny papers.

15095645_638358096349847_8732286327672608586_n

Leave a comment

Filed under feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, politics, satire

Tagged as , , , ,

November 18, 2016 · 3:53 pm

Upon Further Reflection…

c360_2016-11-17-09-59-24-855

My 60th Birthday Self Portrait

Time dictates lots of things.  I am not now even the ghost of what I was back then.  I look more like Santa Claus than my father or my grandfathers ever did.  You may notice that, even with glasses on, I have to squint in order to see who I really am.

It is normal to do a bit of self-examination after a milestone birthday.  But I never claimed to be normal.  In fact, I doubt after the results of the recent election that you could say I was anything like the common man at all.

I was raised a Christian in a Midwest Methodist Church from a small Iowa farm town.  But I have since become something of an agnostic or atheist… not because I don’t believe in God, but because I don’t believe anyone can tell me who God is or how he wants me to be other than me.  But I am also not at the center of the universe the way most religious people believe.  I believe that all people are born good and have to work at being bad by making self-centered choices and making excuses to themselves for behaving in ways that they know are wrong.  God doesn’t forgive my sins because he doesn’t have to.  I am tolerant of all people and most things about them.  To sum up this paragraph, I am nothing like the dedicated Christians I know and grew up among.  The actions of the new, in-coming government and dominant political party convince me that intolerance, self-interest, and rationalizations are the norm.

mickeynose

Sometimes my nose gets really red and my hair bozos out for no particular reason.

I deal with the problems of life by making jokes and forging ahead with carefully considered plans in spite of the doubts others express about my abilities, my choices, and my sanity.  I prefer to do something rather than to sit idly by and do nothing.  Yet, I never do anything without agonizing over the plan before I take that step.  And like the recent election, things usually go wrong.  I have failed at far more things in my life than I have succeeded at.

I am told I think too much.  I hear constantly that I make things too complicated.  People say I should do practically everything in a different way… usually their way.  But I inherited a bit of stubbornness from my square-headed German ancestors.  In fact, I inherited Beyer-stubborn from my Grandma Beyer.  In all the time I knew her, I never saw her change her mind about anything… ever.  She was a Republican who thought all Republicans were like President Eisenhower, even Ronald Reagan…  but not Barry Goldwater.  Someone convinced her that Goldwater was a radical.  That was almost as bad as being a Democrat.  I, however, have strayed from the Beyer-stubborn tradition enough to change my mind once in a while, though only after carefully considering the facts on both sides of the question.  Nixon changed me from a Republican like Grandma into a Democrat.  Fortunately, Grandma Beyer loved me too much to disown me.

mewall24

In my retirement, I have gotten even more artistical than I was before.  This is a picture of me with my fictional child Valerie.

So how do I summarize this mirror-staring exercise now that I have passed the 500-word goal?  Probably by stating that I do have a vague idea of who I am.  But I promise to keep looking in the mirror anyway.  One never knows what he will see in the map of his soul that he wears on his face.

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, birthdays, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as , ,