Being a pessimist, I am fully expecting to die from Corona virus sometime in the next few months. Our moron criminal President has not done anything in a timely matter to head off the pandemic. In fact, he did a good job of preparing for failure by firing and disassembling the special CDC unit Obama had put together for responding to potential pandemics because of the Ebola crisis. (Trump has made a very special effort in his administration to undo anything good that Obama did in his presidency.
Pandemics have nothing to do with panda bears.’
I am in the highest risk category when it comes to dying from the virus. I am not in a nursing home, but economically I have no choice but to keep being a substitute teacher, and that puts me in the center of germ and virus petri dishes that are middle schools and high schools. But, fortunately, I go into this perilous near-future with open eyes. If I die from it, I am prepared after a long full life, and I will die doing something I love to do. The economic hardships that fall on the members of my family when I am gone, will thankfully fall mainly on the credit-card abuser who caused most of that crushing debt and then refused to help me pay it all off.
I am now as confident as a total pessimist can be that Donald Jerblinkaninney Trump will be defeated in the next election. If I am still alive at election time, and he does win, that will be enough to kill me off right there. But even though it is no laughing matter, I will have the last laugh. Existence is eternal, and I have existed on this Earth, doing good things rather than bad.
You may have looked at the name of my website here on WordPress and wondered, “Why in the heck has that fool Mickey called this thing he writes Catch a Falling Star?”
The answer is, he named it after the first good published novel he wrote at the insistence of the I-Universe Publishing’s marketing adviser. Very poor reason for doing anything, that.
But, the secondary reason is because of where that title came from. Look at the first stanza of this poem by John Donne.
So, now, you are justified in asking, “What nonsense is this? That doesn’t have any coherent meaning, does it?”
And you would be right. These are impossible things that I am being ordered to do by a very religious cleric in the Anglican Church who was originally a Catholic, but, in the time of Henry VIII Catholicism was made illegal, and he wrote this poem about not being able to find an honest woman in his drunken, wasted youth anyway. He is ordering me here to not only “catch a falling star” (and catching a meteorite with your bare hands has rather hot consequences), but also to have sex with a semi-poisonous plant, explain why we can’t go backwards in time, determine whether and why God might’ve given Satan goat feet, listen to probably-nonexistent humanoid creatures singing, find a way to avoid anybody ever looking at me with envy and then doing something to me because of it, and, most importantly, find a place where the wind blows in a way that fills your head with facts that actually makes you smarter.
Challenge accepted!
It is exactly what I wanted to write about. Impossible things actually being accomplished. Finding the meaning behind alien beings from outer space developing an intense love of I Love Lucy television broadcasts and Mickey Mouse Club music. Discovering why intensely shy people need to embrace social nudity. Defining who is actually a werewolf and who is not, uncovering who and what real monsters are. Singing songs so sad that it magically makes people fall in love with you. Talking to clowns in your dreams and getting real answers to the meaning of life, love, and laughter.
Catching falling stars is the stupid idea that this wacky, idiotic little blog is about. It is what I write about constantly. You have to kill me to get me to stop. So, there is your fair warning. Read on at your own peril.
Canto 82 – Siege of the Seadome (the Blood-red Thread)
Ham Aero was chafing in the wrist cuffs. He’d been stripped of his yellow and blue combat armor, as had Ferrari and myself. We all lay on the hard metal floor of the seadome brig. Ham was working at the cuffs, seemingly knowing how to break free in a Houdini-esque fashion. He twisted them back and forth, rolling his knuckles over in a very interesting fashion. I have never seen such a form of double-jointedness before.
“I am supposed to execute all three of you,” the black-suited commander was saying. “I know I am supposed to, but I can’t see killing someone like you, Duke Ferrari.”
“Why don’t you let me go, then, soldier?” said Duke Ferrari in his oiliest political voice. He almost seemed sympathetic to our captor and potential executioner.
“Admiral Tang has personally ordered your immediate execution. What will I do?”
At that moment, the Commander of the commando team we came with came in with two armed guards. He still wore his armor and seemed remarkably fit compared to the wear and tear that showed on the rest of us.
“Why haven’t you killed them yet?” he asked of the Black Commander.
“I had to confirm that the orders were not a mistake,” said Blackie.
“Nonsense. You know what the Admiral wants. Just do it!”
“I called Planet Mingo Command to confirm the order before I do it. I don’t want to kill the former ruler who did the most to help my people in his lifetime.” The Black Commander took off his helmet to reveal a snake-eyed Human-Galtorrian face. He was of the fusion race that dominated the Imperium.
“What happened to your loyalty?” Duke Ferrari asked the yellow and blue Commander. “I thought you were on our side?”
“I am. I don’t want his people to claim that you made a mess of things with your little rebellion. The people idolize you, but they don’t realize what is actually good for them. A government of a space empire cannot be a democracy. You have to have order to maintain the rule over so many worlds.”
“Save me from military intellectuals!” moaned Ferrari.
“Give me the fusion gun, Commander,” said our former friend. “I will take responsibility for their deaths.”
“Ruts rowing on here?” said the metallic voice of a mechanoid mutt, possibly a Great Dane.
I looked at Ham. He had his hands free, ready to grab a gun and fight for our lives against impossible odds.
“Commander Doo!” The two commanders stiffly saluted in utter surprise. “What are your orders, sir?” said Commander Blackie.
“I rahnt rorder! Rese men are under the protection of Rord Rayrond King! Roo will not harm them!”
“What? Lord Doo! We have to kill them. They are a danger to the Imperium.”
The snake-eyed commander seemed visibly relieved. It was as if this message from the dog’s mouth was exactly what he wanted to hear.
“Will you release us, then?” asked Duke Ferrari.
“Res!” said the mechanoid dog. “Roo are free. Rord King rahnts it that way.”
“You’re a weasel,” said Blackie. His slug-thrower gave off a quick blast, piercing the traitor in the chest plate of his armor. As he slumped dead to the floor, Ham began freeing us from our cuffs. The Black Commander helped.
“We are grateful,” said Duke Ferrari. How can we repay you?”
The dog-mechanoid looked at us with artificial eyes, creepy eyes. “Roo rill rule Farwind as risely as roo took care of riss sector before. Re are all allies now.” It didn’t seem right to be set free by a mechanical talking dog, at least, not without a set of meddling kids to go with him, but I was in no mood to question our good fortune.
I have looked deeply and longingly at my own writing time and again trying to determine what is good and what is poorly done and what is the best that I have written. How does one examine what is good? What are the standards that you must meet?
I had a writing teacher who was teaching a class in fiction writing and said to us, “You write fiction to create that special bittersweet something, that je ne sais quoi, that you need in order to come to terms with reality. Everything necessary to say something that satisfies a nameless desire.” I wish I remembered his name so I could credit him with having said that wise thing. Or, at any rate, I wish I could remember the name of the wise guy that he was quoting.
So, basically I am trying to capture in prose something that I have no idea what it is, but both you and I will know it if we see it. Easy-peasy, right?
Good fiction that I have read and liked makes me feel something. If it is truly literary quality, like the novels of Charles Dickens, Terry Pratchett, and Mark Twain, it will make me both laugh and cry. Funny things balanced by things that hurt to know and make you weep for characters that you have come to love. If it is a downer kind of novel, as some very good bits of science fiction and horror fiction are, it will make you laugh a little, cry a little, and think a lot; think with dread, or despair, or even impossible hope. Steven King, George Orwell, H.P. Lovecraft, and Ray Bradbury are good examples of this.
I am grappling with how you do that. I am not fool enough to think I am some sort of literary great. I am a school teacher writing stories for school children, stories I wanted to hear when I was a kid. Stories of good versus evil, good people coming together in the face of chaos. Heroes, villains, and clowns being heroic, villainous, or foolish. And themes that both warm and chill your little blue heart.
. So, what can I do besides keep on writing and keep on trying and keep on begging people, fools, and children to try reading my writing because they will like it, even if it is the least best thing I have written?
I finished a possible cover for my work in progress, A Field Guide to Fauns. It is a book about re-forming families from tragedies and divorce. It is also about suicidal thoughts and depression. And it takes place in a nudist park where the family has a permanent trailer.
This book will definitely be about some of my own experiences with these things and issues. And I hope to distill a bit of high-quality wisdom from this brewing novel. After all, when it comes to depression and battling it, I have deep scars and burned-in notions of how you overcome them. It is ironic that I know so much about fighting depression and darkness, even though it was mostly about the depression of other people, not me.
I have come to know how to stitch families together out of used and discarded parts. Hopefully not creating a new monster. And again, it is ironic that I know this mostly from other families, not ours.
The book is flowing, practically writing itself. And that is always a sign of a big idea turning itself into a great novel. I look forward to finding out what happens in each and every next chapter… or, in this case, Canto.
Nudists and naturists exist in real life, and some of them read my books!
Because I have characters in a few of my books who are nudists, based on people I have met in real life, my books have caught on with naturists, particularly naturists who write novels about naturism. Ted Bun, a naturist writer and operator of a nudist resort in France, has read and reviewed several of my books so far. You can find his reviews using the link below.
It is a good thing to have your novels read by others. And I am sorta on the edge of being a member of the nudist community on Twitter myself. Of course, my days of comfortably going nude anymore is limited by psoriasis sores, ill health, and disapproval by family members. So, I guess I can only say I am a fictional nudist myself.
I have also been successfully spending time in schools (with all my clothes on) being a successful substitute teacher. I benefited yesterday from the efforts of an excellent teacher as I successfully conducted a U.S. History class with eighth graders all day long. It is rare to have a day when you don’t actively have to stop and redirect bad behavior at least once or twice during the day. But her well-taught series of classroom procedures made my day easy. I only had to tell them I was instituting her every-day discipline plan, and the classes seemed to almost run themselves. Especially in the two LEAP classes (Advanced Placement) . Those classes were heavily populated by students who are first or second generation Indian-Americans. Perry Middle School obviously has a nearby immigrant community of people who are originally from India. And probably smart, professional people too.
I am also still working on my next novel, A Field Guide to Fauns. I am currently at 8,672 words with 32 pages and three illustrations completed. I have been working on it for almost two weeks. It is the story of a boy trying to recover from psychological abuse while trying to fit in with his father’s new family, a stepmother and two twin stepsisters who are nudists, living as full-time residents of a nudist park. I hope the Twitter nudists will love it, but I am not writing it for them. As always, it is a book I am compelled to write.
I am also losing my eyesight. I have glaucoma. Bright lights now fill my field of vision with haze and blurry spots while floaters swimming in my eyes have me repeatedly swatting at bugs that aren’t there. I continue to have symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease, including minor hallucinations. If school children I am trying to be a substitute teacher for ever find out, they will be repeatedly telling me that the misbehavior I am seeing is all a hallucination. So, finishing visual projects has a new urgency now.
My eldest son talked to friends in Oklahoma this weekend about acquiring cheap medical marijuana for my glaucoma. We shall see if I am to become a pot-head or not.
Anyway… this little essay is rather a mixed bag of ingredients, poured into a stew and loosely cooked together with poorly-written transitions. So, I now have done a pinch of this, a pound of that, and the stew must now marinate its very meat in weird broth. How do you like them apples?
Canto 81 – Mong the Miser-like (The Midnight Blue Thread)
Tara Salongi stood next to the conference table in the reception room of the main hall. She wore a diaphanous blue gown that, with its see-through fabric, was quite revealing of her newly-healed feminine form. In fact, it was the kind of dress that, if this story were a Japanese anime, it would be called fan service. But, of course, it was no more so than the fur bikini she had worn for most of her old life back on Don’t Go Here.
At that moment, Emperor Mong, who had summoned Tara, entered through the double-door entrance.
“Ah, the beautiful sorceress Tara Salongi, I believe,” said the sinister looking bald man with the goatee that came to a sharp point under his chin.
“Yes, I am here. What do you want of me?”
“I am told that Wormheart Toadsucker, Admiral Tang’s left-hand sycophant, delivered you here by giving you over to Lord Dark Doo.”
“That is correct, if I know who you are talking about.”
“But the question is, my Lady, why weren’t the admiral’s specific orders carried out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Yes… whatever do you mean, Mong?” said Raylond, appearing from behind a curtain on Tara’s right.
“Excuse me, Lord King. I do not believe it is business you were supposed to know anything about.”
“Am I not one of the ruling triumvirate of this star system with it’s multiple inhabited worlds?”
“Yes, that is so. But the Admiral…”
“Wait a moment… do you mean Admiral Tang started a business in secret that he didn’t want me or Lord Hardretter to learn anything about?”
“That is correct… er, I mean… It was a local matter from another star system that the Admiral wishes to control… for Imperial security reasons.”
“So, tell me, what is the Admiral’s specific plan involving Tara, whom I consider to be under my protection for now?”
“Um, well… Lord King, the fact is… this woman is a dangerous Psion. The Admiral captured her at great personal risk to himself.”
“I am aware that she is a Psion. But we have the proper shielding capability available to us, do we not?”
“Um, yes… but the Admiral wanted to ship her to the planet Djinnistan where Dr. Havir Bloodlust could possibly use his genetics skill to transfer her unique abilities into a suitable Mechanoid or even a controlled genetic Freak.”
“No sir. I will not have it, sir. She is under my protection. Lord Hardretter and I have discussed ways to use her here on our worlds to better life for all of us.”
“Ah, but since Lord Hardretter isn’t here now, and I have the Admiral’s proxy vote in the matter…”
“Ah, but I am here, Mong.” Smoky Hardretter, the teenage ruler of the system’s manufacturing worlds, stepped out from behind the curtain on Tara’s left.
“Lord Hardretter? Uh, are you suggesting you are siding against me and Admiral Tang with Lord King?”
“That is exactly what I am suggesting. We have use for the cooperative and lovely Psion, and two thirds of the ruling triumvirate can overrule even the Imperial Grand Admiral.”
“So, maybe you should go back to playing with your rot warriors and tin men, Emperor Mong, and leave us to the business most beneficial to the Imperium,” said Raylond King.
Mong, white in the face and obviously frustrated, stormed out of the room.
“Thank you, Lord King. And thank you too, Lord Hardretter,” said Tara.
“Think nothing of it,” they both said simultaneaously.
I have been avoiding talking about politics for more than a year even though it is a rich source of potential comedy material. The idiot-criminal President continues to bumble and blather and make money and do crimes he automatically gets away with in spite of the law. It’s easy to jape him and make jokes, but he black-heartedly continues to do things that benefit him and devastate me and the issues I care about.
This is Skye Johnson , the newest illustration for my newest novel, A Field Guide to Fauns.
After the South Carolina primary, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are now clearly the two leading candidates and most likely to become the Democratic Nominee. I will vote for either one. In fact, if Bloomberg steals it by out-spending everybody else, I’ll even vote for him. Donald Trump is the death of everything I care about in life. His position on health care, the environment, education, the arts, and on and on… is poisonous to my way of life. I may not live to see him defeated in the election. But I hope to last just long enough to be able to vote against the !#$%#%%,
In the meantime, I have forced myself to go back to work in the classroom, the thing that was killing me in 2014. And I have so far avoided the flu and death while making enough money to solve my immediate financial woes. I put in an extra day this last month beyond what I reasonably thought I could survive. And I am feeling good about that, even though I am still unable to afford the health care I need, and still feel awful on a daily basis.
So, do the good things in my near future still outweigh the bad on the scales of my continued existence? I think they do.
My work in progress, for which I am marshaling my ability to draw fauns, and I am using this blog post to show you illustrations for it, is about life at a nudist park where the family in the story is dealing with the after-effects of child abuse, divorce, and alienation of family members. It is about issues boiling in the stew-pot of my own personal experience. And about how love can ultimately overcome those issues.
Mandy Clarke and Mandy Clarke;s tongue.
I sincerely hope that Trump gets dumped in November. If he wins, and if I am still alive, that misfortune will seal my fate. I will not survive beyond it.
But if you can’t control your fate, and if the airplane is crashing, you might as well enjoy the ride down to the ground. I am doing a novel now that imagines life as a full-time nudist. My family will never accept it in real life, and my skin flakes off with psoriasis almost as badly as a leper, so I will never live that life. But you can do things in fiction that fly far above the limits of your real-life wings.
If I can keep up the work pace as a substitute teacher, I will actually have enough money to get by. That will be a welcome relief. And I might reach a level of life that approximates what I had before 2012… With a bunch of novels in print that didn’t exist before that year. No future fatality will overcome me. I exist here in my words. And words and pictures are my hope and dreams.
Today I had a good half day with well-trained, well-behaved accelerated sixth-grade English students. It is gratifying to be able to use my best teacher skills and have them work. It is a rare day for a substitute teacher. And it is always the work of superior classroom teacher that makes this happen.
Being a pessimist sometimes makes planning for the future difficult. I knew that the biggest argument against me going back into classrooms as a substitute was the fact that I could easily die the next time the germ factory that is your average middle school or high school is hit with a flu outbreak. And as a pessimist, I know the coronavirus is going to hit in a big way. So, part of the plan has to include dying in 2020.
Watching the way Democratic debates get reported in the media, I also have to live with the knowledge that Donald Trump will win in November. (That, of course, will lead to him making himself Emperor after his eight years are up, and then Don Jr. gets the Empire by birthright and rules us with a very stupid ham-fist until he is either assassinated by school teachers or the world ends from climate change.)
We may be on the way to losing the house we have owned since 2005, since property taxes are soaring beyond my ability to pay them in the middle of my Chapter 13 Bankruptcy. So, I will be planning to make my way through life in the near future living under a Fascist dictatorship while being both homeless and dead.
There are too many bad things coming that I cannot control. So, as the tidal wave draws nearer, I need to put on shark repellent and prepare my surfboard.
So, my priorities need to be adjusted since continued survival is probably not achievable. Living longer isn’t the most important thing after all.
So, here are my current priorities;
Savor the time I have left with my family, however long or short that may be. I will live each day as if it were the last day of my life on Earth.
Continue to write and share my writing with whoever cares enough to read it. This blog needs to be kept up as near to every day as possible. My work in progress is called A Field Guide to Fauns and it is set in a nudist park, but is really about families and how they survive domestic abuse and divorce. The picture above is an illustration from that book The next novel will most likely be The Wizard in His Keep if I am blessed with the time to write it.
I will continue to be a substitute teacher as much as I physically can. Not only do I need the money from it, each day spent with kids, helping them to learn, or at least helping them not to kill and eat another substitute teacher, is priceless as an addition to my treasure-chest-full of teaching experiences.
And I will face whatever comes without fear or regret. I have lived a good long life. I have shared a lot of things with a lot of people, and I really have committed no sins, crimes, nor sorrows that I must feel regret over.’
I have given myself things to think about in the time remaining. And, possibly, I have given you things to reflect upon too. My reality is that there is a great deal more past in my life than there is future, so let me not waste the present I have been given.
Catch a Falling Star 
A Fatal Case of Hope
I have been avoiding talking about politics for more than a year even though it is a rich source of potential comedy material. The idiot-criminal President continues to bumble and blather and make money and do crimes he automatically gets away with in spite of the law. It’s easy to jape him and make jokes, but he black-heartedly continues to do things that benefit him and devastate me and the issues I care about.
After the South Carolina primary, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are now clearly the two leading candidates and most likely to become the Democratic Nominee. I will vote for either one. In fact, if Bloomberg steals it by out-spending everybody else, I’ll even vote for him. Donald Trump is the death of everything I care about in life. His position on health care, the environment, education, the arts, and on and on… is poisonous to my way of life. I may not live to see him defeated in the election. But I hope to last just long enough to be able to vote against the !#$%#%%,
In the meantime, I have forced myself to go back to work in the classroom, the thing that was killing me in 2014. And I have so far avoided the flu and death while making enough money to solve my immediate financial woes. I put in an extra day this last month beyond what I reasonably thought I could survive. And I am feeling good about that, even though I am still unable to afford the health care I need, and still feel awful on a daily basis.
So, do the good things in my near future still outweigh the bad on the scales of my continued existence? I think they do.
My work in progress, for which I am marshaling my ability to draw fauns, and I am using this blog post to show you illustrations for it, is about life at a nudist park where the family in the story is dealing with the after-effects of child abuse, divorce, and alienation of family members. It is about issues boiling in the stew-pot of my own personal experience. And about how love can ultimately overcome those issues.
I sincerely hope that Trump gets dumped in November. If he wins, and if I am still alive, that misfortune will seal my fate. I will not survive beyond it.
But if you can’t control your fate, and if the airplane is crashing, you might as well enjoy the ride down to the ground. I am doing a novel now that imagines life as a full-time nudist. My family will never accept it in real life, and my skin flakes off with psoriasis almost as badly as a leper, so I will never live that life. But you can do things in fiction that fly far above the limits of your real-life wings.
If I can keep up the work pace as a substitute teacher, I will actually have enough money to get by. That will be a welcome relief. And I might reach a level of life that approximates what I had before 2012… With a bunch of novels in print that didn’t exist before that year. No future fatality will overcome me. I exist here in my words. And words and pictures are my hope and dreams.
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