I have to because somebody has to control the words.
People are made of words. Their identity, their inner self, their reason for existence… all made of words. The very thoughts in their heads are… words.
If I want to control the words I am made of, then I must be the writer who writes his own story.
I don’t want anyone else to write the words that essentially become me. Do you?
Of course, authors create characters. Even autobiographers create characters. Carl Sandburg could no more make his words into Lincoln than a bird can make its tweets into a cat. Sandburg can, however, help us to understand Lincoln as Carl Sandburg understands the words that are Lincoln.
Lincoln probably did not have the words for “bikini girls” in his head when he wrote those words in the second quote. But somebody thought that the picture would help us understand the words. By all accounts, Lincoln was not a particularly happy man leading a particularly happy life. But he showed us the meaning of his words when he stood firm against the strong winds of harsh words and bad ideas in a terrible time. And he was as happy about it as he made up his mind to be.
I, too, have not lived a particularly happy life. But I was always the “teacher with a sense of humor” in the classroom, and students loved me for it. Funny people are often not happy people. But they make themselves out of funny words because laughter heals pain, and jokes are effective medicine. And so I choose to write comedy novels. Novels that are funny even though they are about hard things like freezing to death, losing loved ones, being humiliated, being molested, and fear of death. Magical purple words can bring light to any darkness. I am the words I choose to write in my own story. The words not only reveal me, they make me who I am. And it is up to me to write those words. Other people might wish to do it for me. But they really can’t. The words are for me alone to write.
And so it is imperative that I write my words in the form of my novels, my essays, and this goofy blog post. I am writing myself to life, even if no one ever reads my writing.
Internet memes apply to me. It says it in the name. In fact, it says it twice. “Me+me = meme”.
This one is uncanny. I revere Mark Twain. Apparently I walk in his shoes enough that I am imitating everything he did except becoming wealthy and famous.
And maybe I am not as good of a writer as he was. Maybe. But I am heck at living an unhappy life and going bankrupt in the process.
And this is not the only meme that uncannily defines my life.
They put a stupid, orange-faced man in charge of the government because they wanted to tell Mickey, “F*** You! You are not better than me just because you are smarter than me. We are going to burn it all down to get revenge for your superiority!” And they are laughing and enjoying it now as the flames get hotter, even though their houses are on fire too. But stupid people aren’t really winning the game. There are evil people lurking in the background waiting to exploit and make money. They are winning. They hate Mickey too.
Of course, I never said anything about being better than them. Mickey is smart, but humble. I suffer from the wildfires anyway.
But if you know where to find it, there is helpful wisdom in memes. Short, pithy wisdom, but wisdom never the less.
The “Me”” of the memes can be hurtful at times, saying things out of anger or fear. But he can also be uplifting, making hearts sing and soar. There is magic and power in words… if they are the right words, delivered in the right way.
Sometimes people need be appreciated and built up rather than torn down. Some groups have been hurting more than others. Having been a teacher, I know this is particularly true. Teachers need to hear thank yous.
And I find memes to be a useful way to gain that temporary feel-good nugget of wisdom. I think it is probably a chicken nugget of wisdom. You know, bite-sized pieces of white meat protein to fortify you against the cold and the darkness. And it is important to turn away from the angry and the fearful memes. Going positive instead of negative is a bit of an antidote to the illnesses that infect social media. And I know Facebook is evil, but we are sorta stuck with it, so we might as well use it for good as it uses us and our data for evil.
So, I have shared several memes with you today because that is me…me. I do stuff like that. And you can’t tell me I am doing it wrong.
I read a lot of other people’s blogs for a lot of reasons. As an old writing teacher and retired Grammar Nazi, I love to see where writers are on the talent spectrum. I have read everything from the philosophy of Camus and Kant to the beginning writing of ESL kids who are illiterate in two languages. I view it like a vast flower garden of varied posies where even the weeds can be considered beautiful. And like rare species of flower, I notice that many of the best blossoms out there in the blogosphere are consistent with their coloring and patterns. In other words, they have a theme.
So, do I have an over-all theme for my blog? It isn’t purely poetical like some of the poetry blogs I like to read. I really only write comically bad poetry. It has photos in it, but it isn’t anything like some of the photography blogs I follow. They actually know how to photograph stuff and make it look perfect and pretty. It is not strictly an art blog. I do a lot of drawing and cartooning and inflict it upon you in this blog. But I am not a professional artist and can’t hold a candle to some of the painters and artists I follow and sometimes even post about. I enjoy calling Trump President Pumpkinhead, but I can’t say that my blog is a political humor blog, or that I am even passable as a humorous political commentator.
One thing that I can definitely say is that I was once a teacher. I was one of those organizers and explainers who stand in front of diverse groups of kids five days a week for six shows a day and try to make them understand a little something. Something wise. Something wonderful. Something new. Look at the video above if you haven’t already watched it. Not only does it give you a sense of the power of holding the big pencil, it teaches you something you probably didn’t realize before with so much more than mere words.
But can I say this is an education blog? No. It is far too silly and pointless to be that. If you want a real education blog, you have to look for someone like Diane Ravitch’s blog. Education is a more serious and sober topic than Mickey.
By the way, were you worried about the poor bunny in that first cartoon getting eaten by the fox and the bear? Well, maybe this point from that conversation can put your mind at ease.
Mickey is tricky and gets good mileage out of his cartoons.
You may have gotten the idea that I like Bobby McFerrin by this point in my post. It is true. Pure genius and raw creative talent fascinate me. Is that the end point of my journey to an answer about what the heck this blog is about? Perhaps. As good an answer as any. But I think the question is still open for debate. It is the journey from thought through many thoughts to theme that make it all fun. And I don’t anticipate that journey actually ending anytime soon.
Yes, these people are all real people, although they only looked like this in their imaginations. These are the game characters of Juan, Daniel, and Alice. (Not their real names.) They became the Wizard Onyx, Gryph the Eagleman, and Sunnyjias, the Cymryllian Sorceress. (Also not their real names.)
Chiron the Centaur and his class of Greek heroes, Achilles, Theseus, Jason, and Heracles.
Characters from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Ariel the sprite, Caliban the monster, Prospero (as played by the Stratfordian Bill,) Ferdinand, and Miranda.
David, Son of Jesse, plays his harp and sings for King Saul along with various other members of the court in Jerusalem.
On the Planet Dionysus in 5438 A.D. Jaak the Dion boy, Michael, son of the Imperial Planetologist, Franklin riding the raptor, and Hrroush the giant pink velociraptor.
Members of the Norwall Pirates, Dorin Dobbs, Francois Martin (in the clown paint,) Davalon the Telleron, and Tim Kellogg.
Here are images from the Monster Movie collection I keep as an obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder style of thing. I thought I would present them as a collage since I am lazy today and want to save words for my novel project.
The scary thing is that people like me obsess about such nonsense, and collect so many silly, fantastic pictures of stuff and nonsense.
… I was born in the Eisenhower Administration to a family of loyal Eisenhower Republicans. Nevertheless, I am now a Liberal Democrat by virtue of still holding the same basic values.
… I sympathize over the troubles of your Great Leader with the spoiled-mango sheen and horse-food wig… but only as much as you sympathized with me when Hilary lost the election in 2016. Remember the happy dance you did while wiggling your butt in my face? I certainly do. How sad for you that your Glorious Person is indicted after being impeached twice and has committed crimes in the public eye that we all know he’s guilty of. Remember, “Lock her up!” in 2016? I do.
Gregg Abbott is a mean little man.
… I am a liberal, and I believe that word is not a bad word. It means I want to change the world to make it better. A conservative is someone who wants things to stay the same, supposedly because we have already found what works.
Ron DeSantis is meaner than his bully friend Gregg.
So, forgive me if I don’t understand why the governors of Texas and Florida want to CHANGE the laws to allow concealed carry without permits everywhere in the State for all gun users immediately after the shootings of school children in Uvalde, Texas and Tennessee?
… I also don’t understand why if someone acts in a way that is “WOKE,” it makes you so scared you need to pass laws against it? Really? Being awake to reality around you, especially if you and your children are black and could be beaten to death or shot to death by cops even if they aren’t white cops, is a bad thing? You want everybody who is not white, rich, and entitled to be asleep to reality? Easily fleeced and even destroyed because they are not awake to what’s going on? And don’t you need to be WOKE yourself if you are not also white, rich, and entitled? The powers that be don’t treat poor whites any better. They just lie to them more.
Dear MAGA Republicans, notice what part of their anatomy is pointed at you now. Not with malice. They are simply going forward into the future and leaving you behind.
…Don’t think I don’t sympathize with your current predicament. You need to KNOW I don’t. You got what you voted for. Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and Kevin McCarthy… You deserve everything they will do to you. I think you should change your politics because you are valuable human beings and don’t deserve to live in hatred and fear. But you believe in making your own choices and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. So, good luck with that.
This is an old re-purposed post from 2016 to kill some time so that this blog doesn’t kill me.
Life is hard here in the Kingdom of Paffoon where you labor hard at a labor of love and try to give birth to something eternal that ends up going nowhere… stacks of old writing litter my closets, and the prospects of being published grow dimmer and dimmer. My book Snow Babieshas a contract with a publisher, but, apparently they are not going to be able to publish it after all. I am at the very least going to have to find another publisher for the rest of my books, both finished manuscripts and works in progress.
I do intend to follow through and get published, though. I can no longer teach, but I feel a powerful force pushing me towards the sheer precipice of authordom. One way or another I am going to make it over the edge and plummet to the bottom of that cliff. I am compelled by the need to tell stories, and I have a captive audience every school day no longer.
I used to tell my classes that doing impossible things was like trying to pull chicken teeth with pliers. You know, impossible things like getting a book published or teaching a mostly Spanish-speaking student how to read in English… every-day-sort-of impossible things.
“But, Mr. B, chickens don’t have teeth,” some bright-eyed student would say after realizing that “chicken” was the English word for “pollo”.
“Exactly!” I would say. “That’s what makes it so challenging!”
And now I must put on my chicken-catching socks, find my tooth-pulling pliers, and get ready to make more novels happen. After a brief bout of consternation and depression, I actually feel a bit better about the whole fiasco. There are other publishers, and publishers seem to like my writing, even if they can’t publish it. And I have waited two years to get Snow Babies published, all apparently for nothing. It is time to stop wasting time. And maybe to stop repeating repetitions too.
I would like to here note that I now have 21 books published, all but one of which is self-published on Amazon and fully under my control. My other book, the award-winning novel from I-Universe, Catch a Falling Star, continues to be little-purchased and less read, though I discovered they pay all my royalties to my wife’s bank account. That was unexpected. Chicken teeth where they can’t be reached by me.
I finished reading the book Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, while sitting in the waiting room as the dentist worked on the wires of my son’s braces in a nearby dentist’s chamber of horrors. The receptionist and secretary probably thought I was insane for incessantly chortling and making those other rude snorty noises you make when you don’t want to interrupt others with laughing, but can’t help it. What better way to wait in the cold chambers of dental anxiety than to read a funny, funny book about an assassin named Mr. Teatime who meant to slay the Hogfather, Terry Pratchett’s version of Santa Claus, by stealing children’s teeth from the tooth fairy and using them to control young minds and make them stop believing in the Hogfather, that giver of gifts on the sacred and festive Hogswatch Eve?
This story has an unusual hero. Death, that skeletal reaper of souls and talker in ALL CAPITOL LETTERS. Oh, and not just Death. His granddaughter Susan is along for the adventure. So Death puts on the red suit to make people believe in the Hogfather again while Susan tracks down the perpetrators of the tooth fairy plot.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels are full of bizarre but highly developed characters who not only make you laugh, but make you think. The books can be fairly thick and full of complex ideas, and yet, the pages melt away as you read. And the people who can hear you laughing about the book will think you are absolutely crazy.
Life is screwy. God, if there is one, made it that way on purpose. You have to hand it to Him, his sense of humor is bizarre.
My 771-day streak of consecutive posts ended when, ironically, I set my posts to publish last Friday too early on Thursday evening to post on what counts as Friday according to WordPress. So, Thursday had four posts and Friday had none. That means for the second time I have put together a string of consecutive posts that lasted for more than two consecutive years. But both runs ended on a technicality that made me miss a random publishing day.
At our house the plumbing has turned into a collection of raging geysers, forcing us to have the water turned off 99.9% of the time. And I, being the only member of the family still in an upstairs bedroom, have had to cope with life that doesn’t include a working indoor toilet. I have to get by with a pee spot out in the yard by the composting bin, a plastic jug in the waterless upstairs bathroom for nighttime pee, and a daily trip to the nearest public bathroom in the Winco grocery store for the solid stuff. Daily showers evolved into weekly… then monthly… to now, probably, yearly showers.
I know you are probably thinking, “Why doesn’t the dummy just hire a plumber?”
I did.
The plumber charged me $250 dollars to re-determine with his plumbing snake (exactly like the one I bought at Home Depot and used myself unsuccessfully before I called a plumber) that the toilet couldn’t be unclogged without digging up the floor and replacing all the disintegrating 60-year-old pipes. He quoted me thousands of dollars worth of repairs I will never be able to afford until my next life, or the next life after that.
So, we have to live for a while without running water in the house. Funny one, God.
My last free-book promotion for the re-edited version of the Necromancer’s Apprentice ended its five-day run without giving away a single copy. Nobody wants to read my book, even for free.
I choose to laugh at the screwiness of my current situation. Life is a comic strip with a new joke panel every day. What better thing can I do than laugh at it all?
The marionette that was now Shandra and the marionette that was actually Mark were both standing on a stage made for marionettes. It was small, but ornate, with a woodland scene draped behind them.
“You are now Hansel and Gretel,” said Mr. Mephisto.
Shandra looked up at the puppeteer holding her control stick above her, and the female puppeteer holding the control stick for Mark. “And who are these dummies that seem to think they gonna make us do stuff with them strings they got attached to us?”
“Oh, they aren’t there to control the two of you. Trog and Trogina are the real puppets. They will just hold the strings to convince the audience that you two are puppets.”
“So, we can move and do whatever we want?” Shandra put her marionette hands on her hips and frowned at Mephisto while Trog moved the correct strings to fake that he was doing the controlling.
“You can go anywhere on stage as long as you are attached to the strings. If you mention something that you need in the story, it will appear on stage as if by the magic of a Troglet handing it to you or changing the scenery like a good stage manager.”
“And what if we say something that’s not on the script?” asked Mark, his voice sounding nervous with apparent stage fright.
“Oh, we are not using a script, Hansel, my boy. You will just make up the story as you go. You do basically know the story of Hansel and Gretel, right?”
“I gotta story to tell alright,” said Shandra, frowning even harder with her string-attached eyebrows.
“Good girl. That’s what we do here. Improv. And it all works out in the end one way or another.”
The theater was in a library on Webb Chapel Road. When Mr. Mephisto pulled back the curtains you could see the shelves of books, and the wooden chairs lined up in front of the puppet theater, and the space right down front that quickly filled up with snotty little brats that were younger than Shandra and Mark by a bit. Shandra grinned evilly.
Mr. Mephisto came over the speaker and said, “The Kids on Strings now present their version of Hansel and Gretel.”
“ Well, Hansel, we are kicked outta our home by an evil stepfather and have to find a way to feed our own selves.”
“Um, yeah, Gretel…” Mark answered tentatively.
“So, you know that old witch that has the house made of gingerbread and candy? The one who eats kids like us?”
“Uh, well… yes.”
“Let’s go eat her damn house. I like gingerbread, and I’m really very hungry.”
“Well, yeah. But what if the witch catches us?”
“You know how this story goes. We kill her evil backside… and her frontside too.”
The kids in the audience all laughed. The adults, however, were looking rather frowny.
The scenery changed. The Troglet dropped in the gingerbread witch house, which was actually made of cardboard and papier mache. Shandra winked at the crowd, smiled even bigger, and proceeded to chew the scenery to pieces with her wooden teeth.
Mark helped her make the house-eating scene look real as he greedily chewed up the witch’s house beside Shandra.
“Oh, no! Look out for the witch!” cried several kids in the audience. The witch puppet showed up on stage armed with what appeared to be a magic wand.
Shandra grinned at the witch as she said aloud, “Troglet, where is that goddam oven we get to bake her in?”
The oven appeared as if by magic, stage right.
The witch puppet seemed to be looking at Shandra imploringly, fear featured prominently in her bulging, round eyes.
Shandra boldly strode over to the witch, hoisted the villain over her puppet head, and gave Mark a sharp command. “Open that danged oven, so I can throw this witch in there!”
“Oh, no!” cried the witch, having already dropped her wand.
Shandra marched over and threw the puppet witch into what appeared to be a real fire. The witch broke free of her strings and started to crisp in the oven’s hot flames.
Immediately Shandra formed a new plan. She reached down and picked up the witch’s wand. She pointed it at the oven.
“I don’t want no gingerbread witch. I want to turn the witch into a statue of pure gold. Not puppet-show gold, but real, honest-to-god gold.”
The oven disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving behind a golden statue of the witch. And, as the spotlight caused the golden statue to glitter, it appeared to be real gold.
The kids all laughed. The adults mostly applauded.
“That is real gold over there,” said Shandra, grinning at the crowd. “And I wanna use it to hire a hit man.”
“To kill somebody for real?” asked a black man in the back of the audience.
“Yes. You, any of you, know Poppa Dark?”
“The con man that maybe killed his stepdaughter?”
“That would be the one. Guilty as sin. He killed poor lovely Shandra and deserves to die. The statue, whatever the gold is worth, goes to anybody who can successfully make him dead.”
“Boy howdy, I don’t know about this!” said a white parent, grabbing her two kids from the front row.
“That is definitely not how the story goes,” someone else said.
“Won’t you all come back for our next show?” Shandra said with a grin. “It will be called How Poppa Dark Got What’s Coming to Him.”
The part of the library where the puppet show was located quickly emptied, and Mr. Mephisto drew the curtains closed.
Then the old devil man was standing in front of Shandra and Mark with a smile on his face.
“So, now you gonna punish us kids?”
“No, Shandra. That was perfect, just as it was.”
“You mean we didn’t mess up your evil little plans?”
“Of course not. That was precisely the introduction we needed in this case. Somebody will be getting the message soon.”
Catch a Falling Star 