Yes, this post is a self-examination. Not the kind you see Donald Trump enacting every weekend, where he says any crappy thing that occurs to his craptastical very good brain to cover what he doesn’t want us to believe about the truth on Twitter, basically for the purpose of continuing to say he is great and we are poop. I do not like myself the way Trump likes himself. I am an old bag of gas that is in pain most of the time, in poor health, and the subject of endless persecution from Bank of America and other money-grubbing machines that are convinced any money I might accidentally have really belongs to them. But this is not a complain-about-crap fest either.
This is a self-examination that attempts to honestly examine where I am in my quest for wisdom and my affliction with being a writer.
If I am being honest about the type of writer I really am, I guess I am most like the Weird Recluse in the bottom corner. I can’t claim to be as good as Kafka or Dickinson, but I am definitely better than some of the crap that gets published and marketed as young adult literature. The business of publishing is more interested in how many books they can sell, rather than literary merit or good writing. Some of the crap that is out there and being made into bad movies (which I have not seen because I don’t go to movies that don’t pass the fiction-source smell test) is actually a form of brain poison that will mold young people into sexual predators and professional poop makers. And people will take poison happily if it has been deviously marketed well. So far, in the money test, I have made only $16.43 dollars as an author (plus whatever I have made from I-Universe that doesn’t cut a check until it reaches at least $25 dollars). Nobody is buying my books because nobody has read them. I have sold a few copies to friends and relatives. Some of those books are just sitting on a shelf somewhere unread. I have a couple of 5-star reviews on Amazon, and that is it. I will die in the near future not having known any measurable success from my books at all.
I have entered novels in writing contests and done well enough to make it into the final round of judging twice. I have not, however, made a big enough splash that anyone really noticed. I have paid reviewers to review my books online. One of those charged me money, and then reviewed a book with the same title by a different author, a book which was nothing like my book, and then, when forced to correct their error, only read the blurb on the back of the book to write the oopsie-I-goofed-last-time review. They were not worth the money I paid them, money that Bank of America could’ve sued me for instead.
The only thing I have done successfully as a writer is, I think, this goofy blog. By writing every day, I have managed to give myself considerable practice at connecting with readers. I have practiced writing humor and written some laughable stuff. I have plumbed my soul for new writing ideas, and found a creative artesian well bubbling up with new ideas daily. I can regularly manufacture inspiration. I am never truly without an idea to write about. Even when I write a post about not having an idea to write about, I am lying. Of course, I am a fiction writer, so telling lies is what I do best. I am also a humorist, so that means I can also tell the truth when I have to, because the best humor is the kind where you surprise the reader with a thing that is weirdly true. Like just now.
So, somewhere ages and ages hence, I hope there will be a trove of old books in a cellar somewhere that will include one of mine. And some future kid will pick it up, read it, and laugh. The golden quality of that laughter is the only treasure I have really been searching for. It is the reason I write. It is the reason I continue to be Mickey.
Since I wrote this blog post originally, I have added a few books published on Amazon. You can find information about this random noveliciousness here at this page in my blog. Click on this linkie thingie here.
Catch a Falling Star 
Cranky Old Coots Complain and Don’t Care
Yes, I am a coot. I became a coot in 2014 when I retired. I have the hair in the ears to prove it. I sometimes forget to wear pants. The dog is learning to hide from me on days when my arthritis makes me cranky.
So I am a practicer of the ancient art of being a cranky old coot. I have opinions. I share them with others foolishly. And I am summarily told to, “Shut up, you danged old coot!” And, of course, I don’t shut up because that would be a violation of number five in the by-laws of cootism. Obnoxiousness is our only reason for still being alive.
Lately, my group of coots on Facebook (who call themselves a “pack” like wolves, but, in truth, a group of coots is called an “idiocy”) are talking about politics… very loudly salted with firmly held opinions, beliefs, and bad words in several languages. I mean, it’s texting each other on memes we disagree about, but we do it LOUDLY, like that, in all caps. We also do it in such an infuriating manner because, if no one ever bothers to tell us to “Shut the hell up!” we will begin to suspect we have actually died and gone to purgatory where we are still being obnoxious, but nobody knows we are doing it. That is rubbing coot fur in the wrong direction.
The radical right (otherwise known as coot paradise) have been cooting up a storm about school shootings and gun control of late. They have more or less turned their ire on me because, knowing I was a school teacher, they have seized on the Coot in Chief’s notion of arming teachers to protect schools. Obviously a majority of old coots agree that requiring a few “volunteer” teachers to conceal carry and learn how to handle a school shooter crisis situation with a gun instead of the way teachers are actually trained and practiced on handling such a situation, is the only economical way to defend schools from crazed lunatics with assault weapons. Of course, it is definitely more economical than hiring full time police officers to handle security because “volunteer” teachers does not mean that they are necessarily willing to do it, but rather that they are doing it without pay. And of course they shout at me things like, “Why don’t you just admit that you are too scared and unpatriotic to carry a gun as a teacher, and cowardly allow some female teacher with a big pistol to step in and do the job for you?” That is a very coot thing to say, and is hard to adequately counter, because if you try to argue using logic other than coot-logic, like the notion that since a majority of teachers in this country are female, you are asking women who are fierce enough to do the job (and I have known more than a few who would take it on no matter how hopeless their prospects) to take a handgun that the principal bought at Walmart with money from the Coke machine in the hall and face down a suicidal maniac with an assault rifle, you will not even be heard over the cacophony of coot braying and chest-thumping, let alone be understood.
And, for some reason, coots love Trump. Maybe because they feel he is truly one of them. He is older than dirt. He has an epicly bad comb-over to hide his bald spot. He says bad words very loudly in front of women, children, and everybody. He says, “Believe me,” a lot, especially when telling lies. And he’s not afraid to fart in public and blame it on the dog. I admit to insulting Trump in front of them only because I like to see coot faces fold up in extra wrinkles, and coot heads turn various shades of angry red and apoplectic purple.
So, yes. I am a coot. Not proud to be one… that I can remember, but a coot never-the-less.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, goofy thoughts, grumpiness, gun control, humor, Liberal ideas, oldies, Paffooney, teaching
Tagged as coots, gun control and coots, obnoxious coots, old coots