It took a while. I started this blog in 2013. But I have built it up gradually. And now I have reached the point that my publisher’s publicity expert said I should reach in a few months. My novel is not doing nearly as well. My high-priced consultants (high-priced for me because I have no money) want me to spend more money to try again to get the novel noticed. What I have actually noticed is that they are making a helluva lot more money than I am. I am resolved now to do it on my own. I will find my own way in marketing, or fail on my own. I don’t need to be paying anybody to help me fail. I am doing that quite well on my own. And I have reason to think this blog might be succeeding. The I-Universe marketing team cannot legitimately claim to have anything at all to do with that. I thank them for what they have taught me about the business. They taught me that no one really wants to help me but me myself. They are in it for the money. And like unsuccessful authors everywhere, I have begun telling myself, it is not about the money… especially not money for them.
Today may very well be the last day on Earth. I laugh when I write that, but it could literally be true. There is an asteroid approaching the earth and it is supposed to pass within 11,000 miles of Earth. That is close enough for a minor math oops to fool us into not panicking about an extinction event. The Dallas Fort-Worth area is being soaked in thunderstorms and potential high winds as I write this in a house that has foundation cracks made worse by a high number of fracking-induced earthquakes the last couple of years. I woke up with chest pains this morning, and I have a family history of heart trouble. (Although the last time I panicked and had the chest pains checked it was apparently arthritis in my rib cage… and the weather does make my arthritis worse.) So, in very many ways, this really could be the last day. And as I reminded everybody yesterday, I am a pessimist in all things.
So, I am girding up in armor as a pessimist always does, preparing for the worst. If I am not going to be here tomorrow, then I need to prepare by counting my blessings today. Number one, I have completed a successful 31-year career as a teacher. I touched over 2,000 lives, made a difference in a lot of them, and screwed up only a handful of them. I taught some kids to read, and I taught a lot of kids to write. I was a good writing teacher. I know how to build a theme and I can teach others to do the same. I have lived a life of service, and though I have not been made money-rich by my efforts, I have wealth greater than Croesus (I know you don’t really know who that is, but I didn’t want that sentiment spoiled by using a name like Trump or the Walmart heirs.)
Senator Tedhkruzh, the lizard-man from the doomed planet Galtorr Prime.
Number two, I am a survivor who has seen an amazing amount of history roll past without ever being crushed under its wheels. I was alive for John Kennedy’s Presidency and assassination. I watched Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon. I taught the day the Challenger exploded with the first teacher in space on board. I also taught the day the twin towers fell on 9-11. I have seen how the world was changed, and I, like most people, experienced the changes necessary to adapting to a new world. As a pessimist, I am already planning for life under President Ted Cruz. It will be the worst possible outcome for our nation of the election of 2016. We really should not elect a Reptilian as our leader. But I survived the Ronny Ray-Gun revolution, and eight long years under the Cowboy of Very Little Brain, so if I live to see it, I will adapt. And so will you. We have only rarely ever been truly free and prosperous, but in our minds, no one, no matter how tyrannical, can ever truly deprive us of our freedom.
So, if these are the last words I ever write, then know that I am at peace with the world. If the big space rock does us all in today, then at least we have to consolation that humankind has had its chance to live and love and laugh, and we didn’t do everything wrong.
There is only so much time you can spend making fun of Tronald Dump and Cred Tuz… Only so many “Ted Cruz is a lizard-man” jokes can be made before they are no longer funny. But it is never going to be less important during an election season than it is now.
Lizard-man Cruz is a religious-fanatic-poser who will lead us further into the realms of oligarchy and fascism. We see him constantly in the Republican Presidential debates using lizard tricks to get any advantage he can get. Telling Ben Carson supporters that Ben the Sleepy Dwarf was leaving the race and his supporters should vote for Cruz, the next best choice. Of course, Carson was still in the race. And all we got from the Cruz campaign was a big old “oopsie”. Those of us dedicated to making fun of Senator Cruz, especially those of us in Texas who have to take the blame for him, are trying our hardest to expose what he is to everyone who listens to us, and it isn’t working very well. Cruz, as sleazy and reviled as he is, still seems to get what he wants… at least preventing others from having what he doesn’t want us to have.
Here’s a lovely video of Ted Cruz from Bad Lip Reading on YouTube;
I have to admit that I had to watch this three times to figure out that they were matching words to his lips rather than just showing us stupid crap that Ted actually says. I mean, he really does talk and act like this. How was I supposed to know it was mere satire?
And as bad as Ted Cruz would be as a choice for President, Donald Trump would be far worse. The irrational humanoid orangutan is using the same sort of fear tactics that Herr Adolf used to rise in Germany in the 1930’s. He uses Mexicans and Muslims as whipping people instead of Jews, but he is similar in almost every tactic. In fact, I believe that Herr Hitler would have his own reality TV show if he lived in New York City in this day and age. He would definitely relish firing people on television, especially using real fire. This man is leading all the Republican candidates in the polls. He is even capable of beating Hillary Clinton due to her Benghazi-and-email tarnished reputation. We may soon be required to salute and shout “heil Donald!” in this country.
Any of the Republican candidates would be better than these two I have concentrated my ridicule upon, yet any of them would be a disaster. Kasich and Rubio are the most moderate and least-likely-to-destroy-all-life-on-earth. But Kasich wants to slaughter public education, and Rubio is actually an enemy to immigration reform, not an advocate. They are no bed of roses either. Bed of thorns maybe, but not sweet-smelling like roses.
A fairly accurate portrait of what Marco Rubio sees when he looks in a mirror.
So now I have used my 500 words to elucidate and lament the evils of politics as they have played out in this election year so far. I hope you will laugh with me at the ridiculousness of booger-eaters like Cruz and monkey-men like Trump. But I also hope you will take this humor at least a little bit seriously.
A wizard selfie taken at Mad Ludwig’s Castle in Bavaria.
My quest to become a wizard began when I was but a kid reading comic books. It got a boost when I became a middle school English teacher and realized the fundamental truth of the universe, human beings know practically nothing at all… about anything. The only path to wisdom is the way of the fool.
So, I embraced it. It made it so much easier to teach and manage a classroom full of teenybumpers to realize the only thing that works when they laugh at you and make fun of you, is to be able to laugh at yourself and make fun of them right back.
I learned along the way that things that hurt you and make you suffer cause wisdom to happen. You walk under a ladder and the painter accidentally drops a paint bucket on your head, and you realize that walking under a ladder is a bad thing to do in the future… not simply because of superstition either.
Drawing and painting wizards is something I began to do too. I find it fascinating to try to draw a wrinkly old face and attempt to put some kind of intelligence in the eyes. I can get vapid and stupid really really well. I think I know what that looks like in the eyes of another far better than I know what wisdom looks like. And how do you know it is wisdom, anyway, and not merely constipation? Can you see understanding and intelligence in the eyes of another? I think you can. But looking into the eyes of young learners for so many years and searching for those things, I realized that the best you can do is guess. You could easily be wrong.
That is what wisdom is. Make your best guess, but remember that you are probably wrong. It is possible to do great and powerful magic in the world if you are a wizard and you have wisdom. But it will not be easy. And you must work hard. And when you have to decide whether to speak or stay silent, the wise man is always silent first, giving himself time to think before he speaks.
The truth is sometimes Mickey tells lies. For instance, the title of this post is intended to lure you in with expectations of a juicy something that doesn’t actually exist. There is no controversy on the internet over this particular Mickey. He hasn’t done a very good job of keeping it secret that he tells a lot of lies. In fact, most of the most embarrassing and terrible secret things that he had been keeping secret for going on sixty years are now published in this blog. Talk about a life being an open book!
Of course, being a lover of internet conspiracies and ufo’s and junk, there is always that other Mickey to talk about. Yes, Disney has generated its share of conspiracy theories.
Everyone on the internet knows, for instance, that when Walt Disney died, he had his body frozen cryogenically so that he could be re-animated once a cure for his lung cancer was found. Of course, Snopes.com already did the investigation on it and brought out the fact that not only was Disney cremated with full documentation of the process, the first cryogenic freezing of a human being didn’t occur until a year after his death. This lie about Mickey’s dad, then is easily debunked. See, the internet lies about Mickey!
Of course, the notion that Disney was a racist and a Nazi and worked with the CIA are much harder to disprove.
A character from the original version of Fantasia that doesn’t help Mickey’s image.
Most heads of super-wealthy corporations are by nature fascists. The dictatorial style and oppressive oligarchic command structures of fascism organically grew out of business practices. Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan were also Nazis. And, of course, no one believes me when I start in on the Disney/alien connection. After all, what’s with alien beings in Escape from Witch Mountain, Lilo and Stitch, and even Chicken Little? I may have some more conspiracy-theory investigating to do.
So, let me assure you that lies about Mickey are actually lies. The thing about Mickey’s dream in the 1960’s of seeing Annette Funicello naked is a lie… er, probably. The notion that Mickey trained himself to be a cartoonist by copying Disney characters like Carl Barks’ ducks are… err… um… lies… maybe. Well, anyway, the point is… don’t spread lies on the internet about Mickey. That’s my job.
The award that was given to me yesterday was not so much this blog as it was for my little vault. I opened a can of worms a while back when I created a second blog on WordPress more or less by accident. I wasn’t really interested so much in giving myself more writing tasks to do, rather, I decided I would use this other blog to store whole stories, poems, and cartoons. I really haven’t figured out how to link this blog to that one, or that one to this… and since WordPress “improved” everything by changing all the controls, I really don’t know how to properly link something or put a URL into this prose, but here is the web address for that blog;
It is a place where I have posted more complete works that, though mostly still unfinished, will take a little bit longer to look at and read. I know that my daily 500 words on this goofy blog is too much for most internet readers, and these things take way more time to read than is good for you. But some readers of this blog have recently discovered that the thing exists, and I have had a sudden burst of interest. I gained five followers to the vault yesterday. I think I have six total. I don’t post there often enough to generate traffic, but I do keep stuff there that certain of my followers here are likely to enjoy if they are foolish enough to buy into this whole artwork and wordswork nonsense that I constantly do. So, there it is… a little bit more of me than you were probably ready for.
Every Dungeons and Dragons player, especially game masters, know about the oubliette. In the foundations of towers in the castles of the French you often find a windowless room with the only entrance in the ceiling. It is a dark hole where you throw captives you want to simply forget. In fact, the name comes from the word in Middle French, “oublier” which translates to “forget”. Now, of course, as a former school teacher, I know about oubliettes. I have been in one more than once. I have tossed bad kids in there more than once. But the thing I had to learn about “forget holes” is that there is always a way out.
I had a principal who decided I had betrayed him because he overheard me talking sympathetically to a teacher he had been berating for asking that he discipline students she sent to him for disruptive behavior. He overheard me saying that he would be more understanding if he tried to manage a class himself once in a while. For my indiscretion he took away my gifted class and gave me in its place a class composed entirely of students who had been repeatedly sent to him by teachers for being disruptive and unmanageable. It was a class from hell. Really… from hell… Satan’s stepson was the first student he put in that class. I was told I would have to discipline them entirely without help from him. But as tough as it is teaching twenty dysfunctional learners at once with no outside help, it was do-able. In fact, I liked some of the kids in that class. (Hated some too, though, because you can’t always like every kid no matter how crappy they act.) I didn’t manage to teach them much English. They all spoke Skuggboy fluently the whole time. But I did endure. In fact, when that principal was suddenly jobless two-thirds of the way through the year and replaced by a new principal, I got a chance to get some back. She overhead Satan’s stepson doing his comic stand-up routine in response to my specific directions and came in to remind him who was in charge in the classroom and who deserved respect. That reminder lasted for a good fifteen minutes and was a prelude to a parent-principal conference that same afternoon. I saw his evil smile turned upside down for the first time that school year.
Whenever I put a student in the oubliette (asked them to stand outside the classroom door until I could talk to them about their bad behavior) I never left them there more than five minutes. I would quickly give the class the directions they needed to continue on their own, and then I would go out to execute the prisoner. It usually was an explanation of how I wanted them to behave, and then giving them a choice, whether they wanted to go back in and do the right thing, or they wanted to visit the office with a written explanation by me of exactly what they did wrong. Even though nothing would probably happen to them in the office, they rarely chose that option.
So, there is always a way out… but there are many forms of the oubliette, and no one is immune to being sent there.
With numerous health problems, I have difficulty with sleeping every night. One of the worst problems I have is nocturnal acid reflux. It makes me wake up in the middle of night with fire in my throat, like some sort of dyspeptic acid-spitting dragon. I have to vault out of bed, arthritis and all, and go toss the contents of my stomach into the toilet. Sorry to be so gross, but it is important to this theme to get a sense of just how bad it is to be on the wrong side. What do I mean by that? Well, I learned from a doctor recently that which side you lie on to sleep makes a big difference. If you sleep on your right side at night, your stomach is oriented in a way that the top opening angles down towards the esophagus. This leads to an unfortunate ooze of stomach acid that sets off the reflux crisis. If, however, you sleep on your left side, the stomach is angled in a manner that allows gravity to work for you instead of against you. I have been intentionally lying on my left side every night for a month. It works. No acid reflux. Until last night. But when I woke up gagging, I had unconsciously rolled onto my right side. So it has become obvious to me, the left side is the right side.
The latest additions to my collection, January & February
Life has to be in balance. But, unfortunately, it constantly shifts back and forth, up and down, and all around. Keeping life in balance is a juggling act that may involve lying only on your left side while you sleep.
I worry too about the balance affecting the world as a whole right now. We are very deeply mired in a time when political right and left are out of balance and have been for too long. In politics, the right is the conservative belief that things should remain the same. Since the Reagan administration, that has meant deregulating in the name of profits, free market capitalism, and letting Wall Street profit-makers do anything and everything they want to do to make higher profits. The left is in favor of change. When I was a kid, I can remember the left being a very bad thing. They wanted communist-style revolution. They robbed banks and blew things up. But most of those leftists are now dead. They still exist, but the far right is just as dangerous, the KKK, the militias, and they are far more numerous in this day and age. The leftist agenda now is more what used to be the moderate position. Senator Elizabeth Warren and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders want to re-regulate the Wall Street trends that caused the economic meltdown in 2008. They want to promote progressive tax systems that move the money out of corporate profit-funnels and back into the hands of the middle class, and the institutions that benefit them. There is a need to shift to the left. There is need to restore balance. Once again I think it is proper to say, the left side is the right side.
Here is some of that leftist thinking from the socialist Public Television initiative.
Communicating with a wife is complicated. In fact, I couldn’t do the whole writer-think thing about that topic without writing a book. But I can successfully ruminate for about 500 words on the that awkward first encounter, the first time I ever was embarrassed in front of a non-sister girl.
In grade school I met my first crush in kindergarten. Alicia Stewart was a honey-sweet little brown-haired girl with a bow in her hair. I was a boy. I was not allowed to like girls. Hating them was the only thing that made sense to my friends and I. But, secretly, I didn’t hate Alicia. In fact, if I was ever to be doomed to be married when I grew up, I would’ve only accepted that horrible fate if it was with her. And in my small town school I saw her practically every school day. In fact, in Miss Malkin’s music class on Tuesdays and Thursdays I sat right next to her in Miss Malkin’s seating chart for six years.
In Miss Malkin’s music class we always did musical stuff like listening to classical records, singing songs for the yearly musical review concert (we did the songs from the musical The Music Man one year… you don’t get more musicky than that), and we did square dancing. Yeah, you heard that right. Square dancing. You had to have a girl for a partner. And one year, Miss Malkin decided it would be cute to have the boys ask the girls to be their partners. Now, as boys… in top secret boy-conversations, we had generally agreed that if such a problem would ever occur, Alicia Stewart was the only acceptable choice. We all hated girls. But we all were secretly in love with Alicia. She was girl-hating-boy approved. When I was twelve, there was another girl that was making me uncomfortable too. Marla Carter was nine when I was twelve. She had big brown eyes and dimples. Her face was somehow heart-shaped, and only Alicia could make my palms sweat any worse than she did. But in top secret boy-conversations it was ruled that she was a booger-eating little girl and totally toxic. Well, I didn’t totally agree, but I was still subject to all girl-hating directives.
“Okay,” Miss Malkin said, “the boys will now pick their partners… one at a time in alphabetical order.”
My last name began with the letter “B”, but my best friend Mark had a last name starting with “A”.
“I pick Alicia,” Mark said.
My heart sank. I had my pick of any girl besides Alicia. Marla was standing about four feet away from me, her hands folded together behind her back, looking at me with those puppy-dog eyes. My throat was too dry to speak.
“Um, ah… I can’t pick anyone…” I croaked. “You pick it, I will dance with it.”
“Now, don’t be like that, Michael. Get on with it!” Miss Malkin commanded. Everyone loved the music teacher, and so everyone obeyed her. I had to submit.
I looked at Marla, dug my toe into the floorboards, and said, “I choose my cousin Diane.”
Talking to girls has always been a matter of embarrassment. The words are always awkward and shaped not by my brain, but by my bowels. This fact has always been a hindrance to my dealings with the female species, but it has been an unending source of potential for writing humor.
Truthfully… I rarely ever tell the truth. I am a retired school teacher who now spends a majority of the time left to me on writing fiction and drawing colored-pencil pictures. Truth is not an asset for that kind of fantastical foolishness. But that doesn’t mean that the truth is irrelevant. In fact, after the last round of politics as usual (if 2016 even remotely qualifies for that) it is more important than ever to divine the trends and consequences for who we are about to elect.
If you look at the events in Flint, Michigan… the world becomes a scarier place. What are the actual consequences of having Republicans in charge? Because of cost-cutting measures by Governor Rick Snyder’s spend-less-on-the-people so we can give-more-tax-breaks-and-wealth-to-the-wealthy initiatives, the water system of Flint, Michigan has been neglected to the point of poisoning everyone who is poor enough to have to drink city water. Reptile-man Snyder reassures people with a Republican grin that shows his fangs. Then he lies, first about the water being safe to give to your children, then that he will do everything in his power to fix the problem… as long as it doesn’t cost actual money. And the truth is every city in America is under the same threat. Texas is a Republican-controlled paradise for billionaires. You can taste the taint in the Texas frogwater that comes out of the tap. Plus, we have all kinds of fracking going on underground, pumping toxic stuff into the ground to pump shale oil out. North of here in Oklahoma, the fracking has caused powerful earthquakes. We have felt lesser shakes here in the Dallas metroplex. The animals are so mad for meat in their feeding frenzy that even the ground under us is not safe from their appetites.
Senator Tedhkruzh, the lizard-man from the doomed planet Galtorr Prime.
After the Iowa Caucus it became very possible that the Republican nomination could end up in the claws of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. This shape-changing lizard man is the popular choice among the rabid evangelicals. He is supposedly the most conservative and the most Christian of the Republican candidates. But if you type into Google the phrase “Is Ted Cruz…” you get a result that says “the Zodiac Killer?” Of course, he was not born at a time that allows him to be the actual mysterious serial killer who was never caught. But people are searching this question for a reason. According to the New York Times, in 1997 a young man named Michael Wayne Haley was convicted of stealing a calculator from Walmart. The crime carried a maximum two year sentence. Texas, the loving State that it is, mistakenly gave him 16 years. When Haley tried to get the courts to fix the mistake, Ted Cruz was Solicitor General for Texas. He took the case all the way to the Supreme Court to try to force Haley to serve the entire sixteen years. The Supreme court ruled that Haley should be released for time served after serving six years of a maximum two year sentence. The man has no compassion, no mercy, no Christian love in his reptile heart. It is entirely possible that he could become President of the United States. I confess, ttuthfully…, I am deeply afraid of that happening. He is the Zodiac Killer.
So, I have run out of truth for today. Telling the truth is hard to do. Especially for a practiced liar like me. But I promise you I will tell more truth in the days that are left to me. Truth is important. And the thing about writing fiction, especially humorous fiction, is the point of telling all those lies is to ultimately get at the truth.
