Here’s the latest update.
If you would like to see the complete Chapter One again, here is the link; https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2018/11/24/hidden-kingdom-chapter-1-complete/
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Good Words We Never Use
Okay, let’s bend the old brains with weird words…
My attempt to draw “synesthesia”
Xanthophobia (from Greek xanthos, “yellow”) is fear of the color yellow. In China the color yellow was feared, specifically receiving the yellow scarf, which was an imperial order to commit suicide.
http://phobia.wikia.com/wiki/Xanthophobia
Yes, “xanthophobia” is a word I have never used in my life before now. I have no doubt that I will never need that word again in my life. You, dear reader, will probably never need that word either. But the derfy space-ranger part of my brain thinks it is neat that I was able to correctly answer a trivia question about the meaning of “xanthophobia”simply because my background as an artist who has shopped for exotic oil colors in artist supply stores helped me to recognize that the “xantho” part of the word meant yellow.
Are there other totally useless words that my space-ranger brain thinks are cool to know? Of course…
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How the Story Ends
The most important part of a novel is how it ends. It is the ending of the story that does the most to establish the theme, make the points the author wants to make, or gives you the all-important feeling that the story is complete.
I have written nine good novels and ended the story nine times. I have reason to believe they are good books. Two of them were contest finalists. I have gotten no bad reviews (of the minimal number of times someone besides me has actually read one of these books). And even experienced editors have told me that my books are competent and good enough to be potential best sellers. But, of course, they have little chance of ever reaching a wider audience. I am an Indie author and have either published through pay-to-publish publishing companies or the free Amazon/Kindle publishing services. The way the story of me being a published author will end, though, is not a story of success and wealth and critical acclaim. I am dissolving into abject poverty and fatal ill health. I will not last to see my books hit the big time. And when I croak and become worm food, my books will be forgotten and mostly ignored, even by my family who look at it as a pie-in-the-sky dream rather than reality. Reality, unfortunately, really sucks.
The fact is, all the greatest and most worthwhile people that ever lived have suffered terribly and they were forced to endure much. Greed, villainy, injustice, inequality, bullying, rape, murder, and income taxes prevail in an unbalanced and unjust world. If Guy McPherson in the opening video is to be believed (if you haven’t already watched it, I suggest you don’t. Hearing that message from a credible climate scientist like him is very depressing.) then greedy, rich, and powerful people made the decision to murder us all decades ago, and there is nothing we can do about it.
So, here is how my story ends; I will continue to tell stories and write essays like this one until the very end. And, for me, that will come any day now. It is the only thing worth doing for me at this point in my life. I also hope that you will take heed of my example and endeavor to be the author of your own story’s end. And I am not suggesting you commit suicide or hole up in a bunker somewhere. I suggest you spend every day as if it is your last one on Earth. Cherish your loved ones. Do what pleases you to do. And, most of all, be the author of how your own story ends… plotted out with grace, theme, and meaning. A tribute to how you lived. And maybe you will be able to tell me sometime in the next life about what a colossal fool I was when I wrote this essay.
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Expelling Evil (Part Three)
I warned you. And now that it’s here, I got you!!!
When last we left the Captain Action Hero Team, they were busy trying to rescue Mickey’s beloved X-Box with the EA Sports Baseball ’04 game that Mickey loves. The Evil Doctor Evil had taken over the library and turned it into an evil lair for his evil minions of Evil. But Captain Carl Action had led his team into the fray and clobbered the Agent in Red with a kiss and the Grammar Nazis with bad grammar. Dr. Evil was feeling foiled.
The pretty Barbie doll (whose name was really City-Style Christie) was captured and at the mercy of Evil Doctor Evil.
Dr. Mindbender had an evil talent for bending minds. He possessed considerable talents of ESP (which here stands for Extremely Stupid Puddlebrains). The poor captive doll was bent to Dr. Evil’s evil will.
Suddenly Mickey’s blog stood on the verge of losing its PG rating (which was already…
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Expelling Evil (But Only If You Can Overcome Spelling Trouble) Part Two
I had to give you part two, didn’t I? Be on the lookout for part 3!!!
In the last episode of Expelling Evil, Grammar Nazis, we saw the Captain Action Hero-Action-Guy Team move into Mickey’s Library with the speed of a Republican in Congress when there is legislation to be passed. The heroes were prepared to battle Dr. Evil and evil Dr. Evil’s evil minions. Captain Carl Action had encountered and pacified the evil minion known as the Agent in Red. He found ways to capture and interrogate her that, while not the least bit effective, were something that he really, really enjoyed.
So Carl, taking his time… an entire week if you can believe it! decided to extend his interrogation even longer, in spite of chapped lips and the total absence of lip balm. It was then that Colonel Komma and his evil Grammar Nazis decided to move in and attack the foolish hero-guy with Blitzkrieg word war.
It was true. I went back…
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Expelling Evil (and his Grammar Nazis) Part One
Do you remember when Dr. Evil took over Mickey’s Library with his evil minions and Grammar Nazi’s? No? Well, the Action-Hero-Guy team charged with protecting the library didn’t either… until finally today one of the Barbies complained that Dr. Evil was totally monopolizing the X-Box. So now, incensed by Dr. Evil’s audacity… and unwillingness to share…the Captain Action Alliance of Action-Hero-Guys are taking action.
Here’s a link to help you remember what this is supposed to be about; https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/dr-evil-invades-mickeys-library/
So, lead by Captain Carl P.M. Action, the heroes sneak inside the library door ready for action.
It did not take the heroes long to realize that they were not alone.
You know that given a choice, true action heroes always choose action like bopping someone on the head (assuming they are not allowed to kill them with big explosions and lots of blood, thus leading to an R-rating so the…
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Taxes and Death… Gotta Love ‘Em
It has come down to that time of year again, when taxes are coming due in a month and a half or less. And you know what they say, “You can avoid practically anything but death and taxes.” Sometimes I wish “they” would just shut the hell up about it.
My tax situation is perilous still. I am on a fixed-income pension, bankrupt, and having marriage problems because my wife is frustrated that she can’t squeeze any more money out of my worthless old hide.
The problem stems from the Trump tax-cut of 2017. In order to give his rich Filthyrichican cronies thousands of dollars back in a single tax year, he made the horrible bill retro-active. And, of course, they had to cut loopholes in the tax law, which obviously had to include the reduced tax rate that pension earners traditionally pay. When he multiplied the under-withholding thing times 12 months, he ended up costing me $1,400 that I did not have to spend. I had to pay it off in installments, give up some of the grocery budget, and kiss off the chance of ever going on insulin just because I have the welfare-queen trait of being diabetic.
So, I got it paid off in December of 2018. The IRS said be sure I call my representative in the Texas Teacher Retirement System, because this was their fault. Which I did. An adjustment was made to my withholding back in February of 2018. So, now, at tax time, my tax estimate is that I will owe $1,300 again this year. My TRS representative assured me that this was not their fault. They say they interpreted the new tax tables to the best of their abilities. It is apparently the IRS’s fault. And I made an estimate of what I will need to withhold for the next tax year and changed it all again, hoping at the very least they don’t double what I owe next year, which they most certainly will. And next time it will be my fault.
I added death to the title of this rant because that is a very real possibility when you consider that I will have to go back to Uber driving for pennies on the hour to avoid financial collapse. And I had stopped Uber driving because, after the accident last August, I have not felt well enough to do it blood-sugar-wise. I may finally pass out at the wheel and kill myself and any possible passengers too. At least, if that happens, my wife will finally have to pay a tax bill out of her own funds. She might miss out on a trip to Europe or something.
Now I must get busy and earn some money and take this hard experience as a source of comedy. It has to be worth a few yuks, right?
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Dr. Evil Invades Mickey’s Library!
Down on my luck again, I suppose I need to re-post the good fight against evil.
Earlier I alluded to the plan of the super scary villain, Dr. Evil with the removable brain. He was planning on invading Mickey’s library with malice aforethought… er, anger about all the books in there… or something. Anyway, today he attacked. He showed up with several of his evil minions.
He brought some of the most evil minions I could afford on a teacher’s salary. Ming the Merciless is his most evil adviser, a real whiz with the evil plans, even though I suspect he really doesn’t like looking at the Doctor’s exposed removable brain so much.
So, once convinced, Dr. Evil put on his Dr. Normal-Guy mask. It was a disguise he often used, and was successful while wearing it, because he could sneak past his enemies while they were laughing and rolling on the ground. The laughter often started inexplicably after an enemy would ask what nationality a…
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An Overdose of Cheerios
Today is a day for embarrassing myself with old posts that may not be socially acceptable in the old-school-teacher sense of that notion.
I was trying to think what I would post today, and coming up blank. I have a pathological need to keep posting here, especially since my brain is currently switched to editing mode for my novel The Magical Miss Morgan. One can’t keep a sacred oath to write every day if there is no writing going on other than editing (which doesn’t count because no new creative thoughts are being generated and the fertile spore-producing areas of my mental storage shed may grow sterile for want of fresh garbage being piled there). So I went looking through my file of photo Paffoonies to find something I haven’t already inflicted on potential readers to the point of making them gag and doing something sensible like shutting off their computer for a while. Unfortunately all I found was this potential gag-inducing library photo of the time the Mighty Thor got drunk…
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Internet Lies About Mickey
Lies about Mickey need to be repeated. Sorry. That is just how it is.
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…
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Catch a Falling Star 