One has to worry about mortality on a day like today. I have chest pains and aches again. I can barely write to keep the posts going. I can’t afford a doctor’s visit before Friday. I also can’t afford to be hospitalized again or to be put on insulin, both real possibilities. I really can’t even afford to just drop dead. Maybe the villain is just a man in a rubber mask. But probably not. Time will tell. Should I survive, I would like to write about the cartoonist Winsor McCay and the filmmaker Stanley Kubrick. There is writing to be done. So, I really can’t have a heart attack today. Reschedule it. That’s the ticket.
The only advice I am actually qualified to give here is… don’t take any blogging advice from me as worth more than diddly-squoot.
Life is like moose bowling because… In order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose.
That being said, my blog views are gradually going up year after year. I am followed by readers all over the world, and some of them actually read my blog regularly, rather than just looking at the pictures and occasionally hitting the like button.
I have not yet, however, learned to throw the moose. I started this blog in order to promote my published writing. I now have seven published books available on Amazon. I made $2.60 in royalties during 2018 so far. So, as a marketing ploy, it has been a total failure.
But as a tool in my writing life, here are some things I definitely count as benefits;
Writing a blog post every day makes the ideas flow more easily and does away with any threat of writer’s block.
Writing every day is practice and it makes me a better writer.
I have learned how to engage with an actual audience.
I am able to try out various writing ideas without worrying about success or failure.
So, all of these things add value and keep me at this blogging thing which didn’t exist in my early life when I was planning for becoming a writer when I left teaching.
If you are tempted to make the huge mistake of following my advice and emulating me, I would warn you, I do not make a living as a writer, and I never will. I am a writer in the same way I am a diabetic. I can’t help it. I wouldn’t change it even if it were possible. I have a body of work that I intend to continue to build on until I am no more. The creation of it is a necessity of my existence. And I certainly don’t regret a single syllable, though what happens to it when I am gone is not important to me in any way that matters. I hope my children will keep it as a legacy, but I only do it because it shapes the story of my life.
And so, I continue to throw meese (or mooses… or moosi… or whatever the hell the funniest plural of “moose” is) and continue not to knock down any pins.
Dr. Hooey proved
to be as wild and eccentric a character as Trav Dalgoda. He wore outlandish clothing and said
remarkably stupid things without a moment’s hesitation. He was not pretty to look at with a big nose
and uncombed hair. He was consistently
frazzled and at his wit’s end. Still, he
was probably the highest-level problem-solver that Tron had ever met.
Outside the
pyramid that no one had been able to detect two miles outside the borders of Oasis City,
Hooey was hunkered down next to Tron and Hassan as the wind blew fierce,
stinging sand all around the base of the pyramid.
Dr. Hooey
“I don’t know how you found this thing, Hooey!” said Tron, having to yell over the roar of the storm. “It seems like this sandstorm never ends. It’s been here since my people arrived within scanner range of the planet.”
“I think it’s more or less permanent. All I had to do to find it is scan for a focus of artificial radiant energy large enough to create a concealed feature of the planet, like this one.”
The King of
Killers came back to his leader, running with his head bent down into the
wind. He had a breath mask on to keep
the sand out of his lungs, and brought three more for Tron, Hooey, and Hassan.
“The doorway seems
to be over there,” he yelled, pointing with the breath mask on his chin while
he handed out the remaining masks to the others.
“Okay, King. Lead the way!” ordered Tron.
Tron had his laser
pistols attached to the powerpack on his back.
The King had an ACR hanging
from the leather strap over his back, while Hassan had a net-pistol that had a
one-shot net trap loaded. Hooey carried
a thing that looked like a small plastic water gun that he called his really
big gun.
The four men ran
to the pyramid door, hands up to protect their faces from the cruel white
sand. King brought them to a dark alcove
in the base of the pyramid.
“This is where we
go in!” hollered King. “I don’t know
what’s in there. My sensors read nothing
at all, not even the stone that it should be reading!”
Worried, the group
inched forward into the darkness. Tron
took over the lead and allowed King to drop back and cover the rear. Hooey hovered over Tron’s right shoulder,
while Hassan limped along on his new leg to Tron’s left, trying to get used to
the unfamiliar device.
“I do hope there
are no mummies in here. I hate battling
the living dead!” said Hooey firmly.
“How could a man
of science be stupid enough to think that mummies could ever come to life?”
asked Tron, rolling his eyes, the artificial one looking more disgusted than
the natural one.
“Pretty easily!”
remarked Hooey. “Look there!”
In the long
Gallery ahead, hard to see in the dim light, four shapes lurched toward
them. They were skull-faced and
bandaged. Mummies come to life!
“No. I’m not sitting still for this crud!” growled
King. “I have a wife to get back
to.” The infamous King of Killers rushed
to the front and tried to prove that he deserved his ruthless nickname. He went fully automatic with his ACR and sprayed bullets all over the approaching undead
creatures. Bone splintered and wiring
sparked. Two of the creatures fell
completely to pieces. A third one lost
its head, but still kept stumbling forward.
“There’s something
fishy about these mummies,” grumbled Tron.
“They walk too much like movie monsters to be real. And what’s with all the electrical sparking?”
The two wounded
mummies kept coming towards King even though men who were punctured that much
by armor-piercing shells should have died and fallen still. King tried feverishly to load another clip of
ammo, but before he could, a mummy grabbed his shoulder. Electricity shot out of the bandaged hand and
King went unconscious, his hair smoking profusely.
“Hooey!” shouted
Tron, about to demand that the Time Knight do something.
Dr. Hooey stood
and pointed his little plastic water pistol.
He sprayed the two remaining mummies and completely shorted out their
control circuits. They fell in smoking
piles of bones.
Tron rushed
forward to help his fallen man. King
Killer would live, but he’d had a nasty shock.
“What were those
things, Hooey? Tell me straight, or I
might have to shoot you.”
Hassan picked up a
severed hand wrapped in rotted bandages and took a close look. “Rot warriors,” said the Space Elf. “They are Mechanoids made from completely
dead men.” He handed the boney hand to
Tron.
The bones were
inlaid with glittering microcircuitry that you could only really see up
close. A nearby skull yielded up a
wrecked computer processor. The main
control pod was found in the chest cavity.
“The perfect
soldiers,” said Tron. “They’re too dumb
to question orders.”
“Yes,” said Hooey,
“and designed to put a real scare into any locals who might come in here.”
“What do you
suppose they are protecting?” asked Hassan.
“Oh, I already
know,” said Hooey. “They are protecting
a Galtorrian agent of Count Nefaria called the Lizard Lady. She’s here in this complex somewhere.”
“You already know
what’s supposed to happen here, don’t you?” said Tron. “That’s how you knew to bring the water
pistol.”
“Well… In a sense,
that’s true.”
“All right, King
is already hurt. Spill it, Doctor. What will happen next?”
“Patience, Tron,
my boy, only time can really tell.”
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.
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…
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.
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. )
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 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.
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…
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…
Catch a Falling Star 