This is the best Trump cartoon I have done of him so far, so I will use it multiple times.
The current President of the United States initially seemed to me to be a gift from the gods of comedy. I figured it would be easy to make humorous blog posts about a clown who wears orange face paint, wears super-long red ties, and is more cartoonish behavior-wise than Yogi Bear.
But the Grumpy Trump leadership style is more depressing than even that of Rodeo Clown in Chief, George W. Bush, though Trump has managed to be accused of fewer war crimes by international tribunals. He is so relentlessly inhuman in his every deed that you can’t use exaggeration humor against him. The reality is too far over the top for that. And you can’t rely on insult humor, because he does it so much more often himself than any comedian can, and he really MEANS it. He doesn’t tell or comprehend jokes unless it makes a good excuse to claim he was only joking.
One of the things he does that bothers me the most is the use of criminals in his cabinet and departments that do all the dirty work.
Sleepy McBoing-Boing, the HUD secretary seems to be in his job to screw things up for poor people who were barely hanging on and turn them into homeless people while he commits crimes to put an expensive dining table in the HUD office for his personal use. “Let ’em eat cake,” right, Ben?
Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, heads of the EPA and Department of the Interior are so busy spending Federal budget monies on personal uses that their departments are falling apart, and so the air we breath and the water we drink are now more at risk than they were under Obama, where it was a very real crisis having very real effects.
I think I am through posting criticisms about Trump. Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Seth Meyers do so much better at skewering the pumpkinhead than I ever could, so look to them for actual political humor of the thoughtful kind.
The only thing I want from Trump now… Now that his tax cut has cost me extra money and his healthcare meddling has made the price of insulin out of my reach… Is for the whole thing to end. He won’t resign. You can’t expect Ebola Fever or brain tumors will go away on their own. But it is so obvious that he has committed impeachable crimes that, for the good of us all, the Congress needs to get rid of him. The Dark Lord with White Hair, Mike Pence, though deeply evil, would be better.
While walking the dog yesterday, we struck up a conversation about writing and being a writer that proved once and for all that DOGS REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW TO WRITE!
She turned around on the end of her leash and looked at me with that woeful you-don’t-feed-me-enough look on her little well-fed face. “You know, I was reading your blog today, and I think I know how to make you a well-known writer and best-selling author.”
“Oh, really?” I said. “Since when do you know anything about being a writer or marketing fiction?”
“Well, you do remember that I wrote a couple of blog posts for you already.”
“True. But I can’t afford to do that again. You type with your tongue and it leaves the keyboard all sticky. I haven’t gotten it truly clean and working properly again since that last time. If you are…
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.
My morning was used up making a cover for The Baby Werewolf out of old works of art and art-editing programs. I will soon start the final edit and formatting of the book, and I hope to publish it in December. It is a related story to the one I just published, Recipes for Gingerbread Children. The two books share some of the same characters, events, and even dialogue. The two stories, however, have a very different focus and thematic approach to what happened. It is a gothic novel with humorous overtones. The Baby Werewolf himself is not really a werewolf. He is a boy with hypertrichosis, the werewolf-hair genetic disorder that gave Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy his carnival freak all-over fur. The story is a first-person narrative told by three different characters who all were in Recipes. Torrie Brownfield, the Baby Werewolf himself, is one of the three narrators. I can’t wait to see how this two-novel story arc comes together, and if anybody at all will actually read it.
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.”
I am reaching the point that I am almost ready to self-publish another novel. I am only 30 pages away from having Recipes for Gingerbread Children fully edited and formatted.
Do you know that feeling of dread you get when you go back to a completed manuscript that you have left in the cooler for a bit? You don’t? Is it because you have never done that? Or because you have never dreaded it? I was terrified that, as good and wonderful as I thought the story was when I wrote it, the impression was a false one based on self-delusion and narcissism. I dreamed in my nightmare about re-reading it and realizing it was total garbage and a total re-write would be necessary.
Well, I was worried about nothing. On rereading it, I discovered that the things I was sure I had messed up on were executed well. The story was precisely the way it was supposed to be after mulling it over and plotting for more than twenty years. The structure I built it on still seems to work beautifully, and the key themes are still present for the reader to interpret as he or she sees fit.
There is nudity, violence, and horror in this book, but not done in a way that leaves the wrong message in a young reader’s mind. In fact, it answers questions about life that, as a former school teacher, I strongly believe are on young people’s minds. It has characters who are nudists and want others to become nudists too. It has stories about Nazis and concentration camps. It also has fairy tales that are almost as gruesome as those of the Brothers Grimm.
The main character and focus of the story is an old German woman who is a Holocaust survivor, a story-teller, and a baker of gingerbread. The character is based on an old woman who lived in our little town when I was a boy. But though the character is inspired by a real person, the real Old German Lady was not a nudist, nor, as far as I know, a storyteller. So, most of what you learn about Gretel Stein in this story is really about a story-teller who is me. I promise, however, that I did not wear a dress at any point while researching for this book.
It will be a story about fairies fighting to have a place in the modern world though they have shrunken in importance to the size of mice and insects. It is about finding the courage within yourself necessary to survive a terrible thing like the Holocaust. It is about self-sacrifice. It is about love. It is also about baking cookies and telling stories. There’s a werewolf in it. There are also two twin sisters in it who are nudists and spend a lot of the story naked. It is about standing up for yourself and becoming the hero of your own story.
And the most exciting thing for me is, soon this book will be available from Amazon.
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…
My dog Jade 
Catch a Falling Star 
Dump the Trumpy Grump
The current President of the United States initially seemed to me to be a gift from the gods of comedy. I figured it would be easy to make humorous blog posts about a clown who wears orange face paint, wears super-long red ties, and is more cartoonish behavior-wise than Yogi Bear.
But the Grumpy Trump leadership style is more depressing than even that of Rodeo Clown in Chief, George W. Bush, though Trump has managed to be accused of fewer war crimes by international tribunals. He is so relentlessly inhuman in his every deed that you can’t use exaggeration humor against him. The reality is too far over the top for that. And you can’t rely on insult humor, because he does it so much more often himself than any comedian can, and he really MEANS it. He doesn’t tell or comprehend jokes unless it makes a good excuse to claim he was only joking.
One of the things he does that bothers me the most is the use of criminals in his cabinet and departments that do all the dirty work.
Sleepy McBoing-Boing, the HUD secretary seems to be in his job to screw things up for poor people who were barely hanging on and turn them into homeless people while he commits crimes to put an expensive dining table in the HUD office for his personal use. “Let ’em eat cake,” right, Ben?
Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, heads of the EPA and Department of the Interior are so busy spending Federal budget monies on personal uses that their departments are falling apart, and so the air we breath and the water we drink are now more at risk than they were under Obama, where it was a very real crisis having very real effects.
I think I am through posting criticisms about Trump. Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Seth Meyers do so much better at skewering the pumpkinhead than I ever could, so look to them for actual political humor of the thoughtful kind.
The only thing I want from Trump now… Now that his tax cut has cost me extra money and his healthcare meddling has made the price of insulin out of my reach… Is for the whole thing to end. He won’t resign. You can’t expect Ebola Fever or brain tumors will go away on their own. But it is so obvious that he has committed impeachable crimes that, for the good of us all, the Congress needs to get rid of him. The Dark Lord with White Hair, Mike Pence, though deeply evil, would be better.
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