Category Archives: Uncategorized

November 19, 2018 · 3:13 pm

Blog Happy

Yep, this one goes hither and yon, so let me post it again so that those of you who ignored it the first time can glance at the pictures, assume it is idiotic, and ignore it again.

Catch a Falling Star

Gingeyhouse12n

I can’t seem to help blogging daily on this goofy little blog spot. I am a writer and I write every day whether I publish anything or not. I am not connecting with readers through my published novels. In fact, I seem to be nose against a brick wall with publishing anything further in novel form despite doing well in writing competitions. Publishers exist mainly to make money for corporations, and creators of content of any kind are only paid serious money when the publishers are forced to by the healthy flow of cash into certain authors’ established platforms. But feeling sorry for myself is a full time job and doesn’t pay very well… actually, if you can’t afford a lawyer, it doesn’t pay anything at all. Instead I have been looking at the arc of this blog and rereading old posts. To my amazement, I actually communicate ideas much…

View original post 606 more words

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

November 18, 2018 · 3:15 pm

It’s a Nerd Thing

Re-posting this for no good reason is just a thing I did today.

Catch a Falling Star

Last night my family and I finally got to see the new Avengers movie. For me, it was a religious experience… even my wife, who never discusses my comic-book obsessions without raising at least one eyebrow, likes the Avengers movies… so I was able to share this sacred ritual with the whole family (minus the son in the Marine Corps who has already seen it.) The new wave of Marvel movies is a godsend. They are something that feeds my story-addicted tapeworm in ways that movies never have before. It meshes with my need to read comic books

If you hadn’t figured out the nerd facts by now, I am a comic book collector. I used to subscribe to Avengers, two Spiderman books, Iron Man, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, the X-men, Daredevil, and Howard the Duck. Shamefully that is not a complete list.

A key to my love of…

View original post 618 more words

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

November 16, 2018 · 7:32 pm

What Are You Reading, Mickey?

Well, I have a thing for collecting old books. This one is 100 years old. It is a modern edition, though, re-published in 2003.

Here’s my Goodreads review;

This book is an ancient treasure in many ways, being now more than 100 years old. The illustrations by John O’Neill, too, have a very antique charm. The book is a little short on plot. Dorothy wanders off from the Kansas farm, meets the hobo Shaggy Man, and Button Bright, one of the stupidest little boys in literature. They meet old friends along the way; Jack Pumpkinhead, H.M. Wogglebug T.E., the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, Tik Tok the mechanical man, Billina the Talking Yellow Chicken, and the living Sawhorse. And they all end the story at Princess Ozma”s birthday party where Santa Claus is the favorite guest. This is a potboiler novel for Baum, obviously written only because the readers all begged for it, and it has a lot in it to be enjoyed by true fans of Oz, but not much in the way of suspense or excitement. It can easily be summed up in the words of Button Bright, “I don’t know,” which he says in answer to every question.

I find the illustrations more compelling than the story itself, but I have to admit that the story itself is incredibly visual.

I love this book, even though I don’t respect it much as a storyteller myself. But it is the fourth Oz book I have read since childhood. And it isn’t because of the story. Frank L. Baum is a genius at creating loveable and memorable characters. And these illustrations are wonderful. The Shaggy Man with the head of a donkey? Absolutely fabulous! You can’t beat that. (Well, you can. But whether he’s a donkey or a man, it’s still a crime. )

Leave a comment

Filed under book reports, book review, humor, Uncategorized

Tagged as book review, Frank L. Baum, The Road to Oz

November 14, 2018 · 9:25 pm

When Things Go Wrong

Some days are bad days because no matter what you do, everything goes wrong even in spite of the measures you take to deal with every late-blooming snafu.
I have to get my drivers’ license renewed, but the State now requires an authenticated birth certificate to get your license renewed. After all, you may have been an illegal alien the last time you renewed it.
They hid the DMV from me. The old location is now a computer game shop. And the DMV site I went to today does not issue licenses. That is not confusing at all.
And my computer now officially has a virus. Norton can’t remove it. McAfee will have to do the job or give me my money back. But it ground away at a deep scan, and after eight hours I have only seen 8% progress.
I had to finish this post on my phone.
So, today ‘s post literally had to be phoned in.

They hid the DMV from me.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Gallery

Small Town Inspirations

Having just finished telling a story that has been in my head for 40 years, I discovered that story-telling is still very much on my mind.

Catch a Falling Star

Pesch Street

I grew up in a small rural town in North Central Iowa. It was a place that was, according to census, home to 275 people. That apparently counted the squirrels. (And I should say, the squirrels were definitely squirrelly. They not only ate nuts, they became a nut.) It was a good place to grow up in the 60’s and 70’s. But in many ways, it was a boring place.

20171023_085521

Yes, there were beautiful farmer’s daughters to lust after and pine for and be humiliated by. There was a gentle, supportive country culture where Roy Rogers was a hero and some of the best music came on Saturdays on Hee Haw where there was a lot of pickin’ and grinnin’ going on. There were high school football games on Friday nights, good movies at the movie theaters in Belmond and Clarion, and occasional hay rides for the 4-H Club and…

View original post 361 more words

Leave a comment

November 12, 2018 · 4:03 pm

November 11, 2018 · 6:40 pm

Bedbug Crazy Planning

I decided to re-post this because it was liked overnight by a WordPress site ironically called Seattle’s Best Pest Detection.

Catch a Falling Star

It occurs to me, (usually suddenly in the middle of the night making me leap out of bed with a light bulb over my head that tends to evaporate if I don’t write it down), that you may not be able to make much sense of the order of my posts, or the way that I leap from one pond frond paragraph of ideas to another with nary a bridge over troubled water between them. The phrase, “Crazier than a bedbug” may have just leaped into your head. If it didn’t, then I didn’t do a very good job of planting it there just now with this loony opening paragraph and my witlessly wired title for today’s post.

The problem probably begins with seeing the world as I see it. As in, “Nobody sees the world the way you do, Mickey!” For example, look closely as this picture of me…

View original post 405 more words

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

November 10, 2018 · 9:36 pm

Hidden Kingdom (through page 19)

Catch a Falling Star

flute cover 4a HK1x H21x HK41

HK31 Hk51 HK61 hk71 hk81 hk91 hk101 hk111a hk121a hk131 hk141 hk151a hk161a hk171a hk181a hk19

Almost there. Page 20 is the end of Chapter 1 : Sundered. Stay Tooned…

View original post

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

November 9, 2018 · 7:08 pm

Flying the Magic Flying Carpet

Since I am too ill to really write well today I will let this older post do the thinking for me today.

Catch a Falling Star

20170630_211224

There are many ways to fly. Airplanes, bird wings, hot air balloons, bubble-gum-blowing goldfish… well, maybe I am really talking about flying by imagination. The more my six incurable diseases and old age limit my movement, my ability to get out of bed and do things, the more I rely on reading, writing, and the movie in my head to go places I want to be.

Wings of Imagination

Sometimes the wings I use to fly come from other writers. I get the flight feathers I need not only from books, but also from YouTube videos, movies, and television shows.

This magic carpet ride in video form is by the thoughtful creative thinker Will Schoder. In it he carefully explains how Mister Rogers used the persuasion techniques of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to talk to elephants and convinced a congressman intent on cutting the budget to actually give Public Television more money for…

View original post 142 more words

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Gallery

Fix Coulrophobia… Now!

Here’s an old post to help repair the reputation of clowns. Curse you, Stephen King for writing It. I love clowns, and they are crucial to the novel I am finishing now.

Catch a Falling Star

I love clowns. I always have. When I was five I wanted to be a clown. Red Skelton is my personal hero and role model, the reason I became a teacher, to use my clown skills for good rather than evil. But sinister folks who think they are joking are seriously jeopardizing all of that.

clownhead

In 1988 I did watch and enjoy the movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space. It was funny. And I liked Stephen King’s “It” as a horror movie. It was definitely scary. But 2016 has become the year of the creepy clown. Why would any idiot want to dress up in an expensive horror-clown mask and clown suit to wave at somebody’s security camera at two in the morning? And, Mr. Idiot, did you at least try to figure out if the homeowner was a gun owner in an open carry State? One of the recent…

View original post 195 more words

1 Comment

November 4, 2018 · 3:06 pm

November 3, 2018 · 7:54 pm