Writing's on the Wall

One of the things that cripples me as a writer and one of a myriad reasons I no longer blog on a regular basis is that I have such a hard time sorting and settling on set paths.  I also suffer from a tendency to write sentences so long you have to wonder if they really are sentences or a sneaky sort of paragraph that enables a writer to keep expressing a thought long after your normal, everyday sentence had given that thought up for good.  If I wanted to, I have no doubt I could set the Guinness Book of World record for the shortest number of sentences written to form a full fledged novel.

The closest I ever came to diving into a concerted effort to write a REAL novel was my idea concerning a bubble that appeared around a small town and expanded to shove aside the entire world.  Then Stephen King came out with "The Dome", which I think the bastard psychically stole from me, and pretty much killed that idea.  And I honestly think MY idea was better, even if it was going to be written with a minimum number of sentences.  

I have this aversion to thinking that my failure to pursue a genuine written career has a lot to do with just plain laziness, so I embrace the excuse that once I envision the general idea of the story, I can't seem to settle on which twist and/or turn that idea can take within the story.   Plus, by the time I finish one of my legendarily long sentences, I might have forgotten exactly what the story line was supposed to be.  At my age, THAT's becoming increasingly easy to do.  Perhaps writing is a young person's game.  Or at least a YOUNGER person's game.  

Then there's the point of it all.  Most of our most beloved authors have stood the test of time and become immortal, talented ghosts stalking the halls of our schools and libraries.  But what of what I might create today, even if it DID stand a rat's chance in that hot place of making the New York Times best seller list?  There's not much time left for this race to enjoy anything I might write, and thus there will be no immortality for THE Michael save for the very unlikely chance an alien archeological team finds a dog-eared, termite-eaten but otherwise intact copy of my novel buried deep within the rotten remains of our dead civilization and they mistake it for serious literature.  Stop laughing, it won't be a comedy.

My one other major deterrent is walking into a Books-a-Million and being faced with all those choices for the reading dollar.  There are just TOO damn many choices, most of them ending up on those bargain tables and probably from there being shipped to a recycling center.  That's a lot of trees having been killed for no real good reason other than vanity and all those failed grasps at immortality.  Whatever immortality I will garner I believe is already set in stone, that stone being the internet, which will crumble into dust with the rest of all those paperbacks and leather bound limited editions that line those thousands of shelves in those hundreds of bookstores, libraries, and schools scattered around our world.  There will be no more downloads when the next really big solar storm hits and our electrical grid is fried, our computers all burned out, and our cars with their electronic brains dead as doornails.  All that will remain will be those English majors who memorized all those works of Shakespeare and are kept alive by those of us who didn't but can till a garden and shoot a bow.  Maybe THEN I'll try and write a book……with those old manual data transcribers we in the day called a PENCIL.  If I can remember how………

By Request

 One of my three loyal fans mentioned during our last chat that he would like to see another post appear on this blog, preferably one written by me.  It certainly warmed the cockles of my heart to know that SOMEone out there can actually roll with my tendency to use capital letters and ………… for strategic emphasis.  I fully realize that those of you who excelled in grammar during high school and perhaps even college just simply couldn't handle it anymore and stopped following me rather than take the risk that you yourselves might be infected with this new, less rigid and clearly lazy sort of communication skill.  I admire you for your caution.  The rest of you, I admire your thick skin.

Now, the problem with granting this request is that I have entered a phase in my life that doesn't easily lend itself to retrospection, inspection, or any other sort of spection period.  You see, these blogs I have created are public in nature, in that they are available to anybody who knows me or is slightly familiar with me, and is even accessible to those who hit that "next blog" button up there in the hopes of coming across something awe-inspiring.  That availability to people who know me means that whatever I write has the potential to piss same said people off, and regardless of any incidental vitriol you have witnessed in these blogs so far, it is NEVER my intention to (at least publicly) anger, hurt, or disrespect those people who through blood or congress are involved in my life to any great degree.  Thus, I face a certain self-censorship which causes the relief valve of my inner " boiler" to function only in extreme circumstances.  Otherwise nice people going postal on their friends and family is a good example of that relief valve not working when it is supposed to.  That is why a public blog such as this one does not contribute much in the way of venting when the angst and turmoil gets truly personal.  Anyway, getting back to awesome inspiration...... .The only "awwwwwww" this blog will ever inspire would probably come as a result of post regarding kittens or baby goats.  Which, incidentally, has just inspired a topic………shall we?

Lately I have had an incredible deficit in "joy of life".  Now, please don't get me wrong; I do rather enjoy the practice of breathing, interpreting light patterns on the back of my eyeballs, and other such things that life forms indulge in, but as far as those fun things that "advanced" species such as humans enjoy……..(there, see it, the ………..?)I haven't been enjoying much of that lately.  I've pretty much lost most interest in writing (as evidenced by my lack of doing so on this last remaining active work of trash literature), I never go out on the town or eat at a restaurant, can't remember the last time I actually danced (which I used to live to do), and the closest thing I can think of doing that relates to a hobby is lusting after some electronic toy I can no longer afford to even think of buying (Although I must admit to taking the leap and getting back in bed with a major wireless provider just so I can stroke and coo  Apple's latest electronic crack pipe, that is if they don't look at my credit score and have me arrested for even TRYING to do so).  I am kept halfway busy by this ever enlarging zoo we have here at the Hold, which now includes one lizard, one cat, one kitten, one dog, and four goats, including THOR, the incredibly cute baby pygmy goat which has been wowing them over on Face Book.  Now, I DID purchase a new 1800 psi electric pressure washer at the behest of THE Wife in order to blast the yucky dark mold off this deck of ours, and it was fun, but now I'm even bored with that.  I also have laundry, dishes, floors, and cooking to help fill the time, and believe me, you haven't LIVED until you've done laundry, dishes, floors and ruined a few meals all for the sake of contributing to the responsibilities of shared responsibility.  

No, I'm not insinuating that life sucks.  In order for life to actually SUCK in this day and age, I would have to join the ranks of the more-or-less permanently unemployed, lose my home and car, and experience the joys of homelessness along with millions of my fellow Americans, something I loathe to do simply because I have already experienced minor versions of such conditions and I do not care to repeat the experience.  Now, yes, I COULD suffer from some sort of medical condition which makes life on Earth a living hell, a condition which my "health" insurance company will do it's best to avoid having to pay to have treated, but again, I am thankful not to be suffering from anything major so far.  

Plus there is all that angst built up inside for which I have precious few outlets, the kind I can confide in with no risk of making things even worse.  I suppose if I had to define happiness as it applies to MY universe, I would have to describe it as a condition where-upon (is that actually a word, and am I using it correctly?) my outer appearance does not cause alarm or consternation amongst those surrounding me.  Yes, I am doing my level best not to alarm anyone, upset anyone, make anyone unhappy, or otherwise contribute to the idea that I am SO not perfect and might actually never have been.  Perhaps this idea that all that is really necessary is what has my insides churning while my outsides appear relatively calm.  I so want to be happy, but I also would like to know exactly what that really means, and if achieving such a state really does mean others might get rather un-happy as a result.  Should I really CARE if they do or not?  People have told me that the very idea that I worry about it means that I really AM a good person.   Thank you, people, that really helps…….

Of course, all this is rather moot when you consider the fact that I have arrived at a juncture in my life where I have lost all faith in humanity and/or it's likelihood of surviving very much longer.  The grist of our most entertaining and scary science fiction horror movies of the past used to be what aliens from other planets or some natural disaster would do to us, but it turns out that it's much more likely what we are doing to OURSELVES that's going to kill us all.  Pile on top of that this unnerving tendency for large segments of mankind to blissfully ignore or deny what's happening to our ecosystem while the evidence keeps mounting, and you get to the point of just not caring anymore.  No, I never DID want to die an early or unnatural death, but we are ALL gonna die sometime, someway, so the fact that we are all gonna do it together like some great big suicide party hardly matters when you get right down to it.  It just really pisses me off that the lives of all those wonderful Einstein's and Picasso's and George Harrisons and Michaelangelos simply didn't mean anything in the greater scheme of things.  So, if mankind thirsts so badly for his rapture, then I say let him have it.  I just wish they would leave me behind to enjoy the peace and quiet and beauty of a place without them in it.

When I started this post I gave a full 47 seconds to the idea of trying to come up with something more positive to write, even though anything positive and uplifting is not my strong suite.  But I realized that other than expressing how grateful I am for the love and kindness so many people have shown me during my life, I have very little joy to express otherwise that would go perhaps past a medium length paragraph.  However, for those of you who have suffered through my pessimistic pool of pathetic pity thus far, I leave you with this, my one witness to the joy of life.  I hope it forces a smile out of you as it has me……

Thor, One Small Package of Joy

Father's Day

I used to be a blogging fool.  I mean, I was once able to come up with something epic (in MY mind at least) at least twice a week and sometimes every night for several weeks at a time, making my old blogs some of the most prolificly uncelebrated works of introspection of all time.  Those were the glory days!

Now, I go for weeks at a time with this guilt gnawing at me that I am letting some sort of amorphous audience down by not posting something fascinating more often.  This is even occurring long after I wrote the final chapters to my long running and long winded chronicle of life on an acre of sand in sunny, conservative Florida, where people like me are looked at sideways by people with questionable DNA.  Why in the hell should I give a damn wether or not some readership which hardly ever existed is entertained by my self-centered observations from a jaundiced eye?

I guess it shares a certain sick similarity with my karaoke days, when I discovered the joy of singing to a crowd and not having that crowd throw rotting vegetables or worse at me for having done so.  I was complimented on my singing many times but the praise, lukewarm as it was, never really squared with what I heard on tape recorders.  I would have shot the sonofabitch who subjected me to THAT voice.  So, I have had people read some of my stuff and ask me why I never got published, and I in turn have wondered who they were really reading because it certainly couldn't have been MY stuff they were complimenting.

I really hate myself for the ways I hate myself.  On this Father's day the best praise I can offer my own sperm donor is that he didn't stick around to observe the mistake he'd made mixing his DNA with my Mom's.  Now, I do NOT blame my Mother for her part in my creation.  She loved me more than sin and even though she wasn't really capable of being a responsible parent, she certainly had the heart for it, and the best years of my entire life were those I was lucky enough to have spent getting to know her and holding her hand as she passed beyond the veil.  As far as the rat bastard whose last name I still bear (something I really need to jettison), the Gods only know what ever became of him after he abandoned me so cruelly to my lonely unloved fate as a foster kid.  I can only hope he went on to sire other kids who perhaps made his life a living hell.  I am if anything charitable with my hunger for karmic justice.

However, I made it in this world to were I am mostly on my own, and I own most of the condition I find myself in, due to the choices I made and both the good things and bad that only I can take responsibility for.  Yes, my father launched me from a shit shore in a boat full of holes, but once I was on my own and fully in control of my own rudder, I only had myself to blame if I broadsided an iceberg or two that I plainly saw floating in my way.  Even now, I am making choices that may or may not contribute to a life best lived, given all the Karma I have saved up or pissed away.  I imagine it's the same for everybody, silver spooned piss-ants or working class heroes; hell, George Bush proved that it's not what you know that can make you the President of the most powerful nation on Earth, it's whose hand is stuck up your ass calling the shots you have to give credit too.  That's probably why I am where I am, and where I will always be.  I have one tight sphincter.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.  Choke on it.

Surprise, Surprise!

Blue on right, evidently pregnant

I know it's been a long time since I visited upon the world another boring episode of life here at Pendragon Hold, but the last several days have been worth writting about.  If you know anything about this place, you know about the twins, whom we call Red and Blue (formally Sorcha and Sasha).  Not the Good and Evil twins, mind you, but the pygmy goat twins, the sisters we acquired awhile back.  Well, THE Wife, being the goofy romantic concerning cute cuddly things she is, wanted to see some babies, so, me, yours truly, THE Michael, always the enabler, procured a baby buck in hopes of getting one of the girls knocked up.  We even found Billy, our large and exuberant Male (but fixed) a new home with lots of grazing and a herd for him to rule, which I am happy to report he is doing joyfully.  We sent Billy away as a precaution against hurting another kid like he did (not intentially, he's just a rough boy) to Pepper, our last attempt at herd enhancement.

Well, we bought a well-weaned and beautifull little Ram and called him Pan, in hopes he would live up to the reputation of his namesake and do his duty to Gods and Homestead, and darn if he didn't manage to do it right off the bat!  We noticed that Blue, although not getting any wider than these two normally are (which is WIDE, like land-bound little Hindenburgs), had a milk pouch that was evidently getting larger every day.  So, we knew she was expecting, but fer God's sake, we had no idea she was THIS far along!

Yesterday, while at work, I got a frantic phone call from my neighbor, Dee, who has always been a kind guardian of our Hold, always keeping an eye on the place in our absence and even returning Shiloh to us on a regular basis whenever our adventursome explorer slipped the bonds of his Hold and trotted off to visit the neighbors.  This time she called to inform me that there was a new baby in the back forty getting shoved around by the bigger goats, and had even wobbled thru the tiny little squares of our woven wire fencing into our back neighbors yard, where he was intercepted and "rescued" by the kind lady before their dogs could get to it.  Then both my neighbors gathered the required milk mix and bottle and even went so far as to milk Blue to give the baby some mother's milk, which really is essential to the young ram's survival in it's first day of life.  I managed to get away from work a bit early and rush home, and we were greeted by the most wondrous surprise.........

That is ONE tiny little baby!

This really caught us both off-guard, because we had been feeling and observing Blue the last several weeks for signs of the developing fetus, but it seems her internal stomach and organs masked the baby easily.  We thought that due to her behavior that Blue might even be producing yet another baby, a twin, since these goats can have anywhere from one to four babies, but it seems that this one Ram is the only one.  AND, sadly, Blue hasn't proven to be very maternal, not allowing the baby to nurse, forcing us to milk her ourselves and feeding the baby with a bottle.  She may come around as the days pass, but for now WE are the parents, for all practical purposes.  I honestly think this comes with the territory of domestication, much of the instinctive behaviors that wild animals depend on for survival having been bred out of these creatures over the centuries.  Not all are so seemingly helpless, but it is a hit and miss proposition.


It doesn't help that we are such novices when it comes to animal husbandry.  We really are going into this almost totally blind, and I want to thank all those who have chipped in and offered their advice, their support, and their prayers (yes, even us Godless pagans appreciate prayers offered in our behalf).  Dee, you have always been there for us and I wish we could repay you for your kindnesses as a great neighbor.

So, THAT's what's been happening of note in the lives of the citizens of Pendragon Hold, that rebel enclave existing smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt, where you can still find rational humans without religiously motived agendas.  And even when you do, those agendas can still be almost "Christ" like in their sincerity.  Blessed be you all.

The Mind of Monty

One of my defining traits, it seems, is my tendency towards the sarcastic, the doomsayer, the extreme pessimist, and with that assessment, should that be how YOU, my reader, view me, I must admit to, and I do so with no regret.  However, despite this character trait which comes through so loudly, I must also insist that I am just as capable of experiencing Joy, Love, hope, and all those emotions that any other decent and non-sociopathic human being is capable of, and I DO experience them, if not on a regular basis.  I attribute this to a certain realism that I have embraced based on my own experiences as well as the observations I have made of the highjinks of the  human race in all it's various guises.  Along with this realism is included a realization that I am not apart or immune from all these damaging foibles that make us, Homo Sapiens, both beautiful and evil/ugly creatures.  I am human, thus I fall as far from grace as all those whom I rail against.  That being said……

Long before this tragic event occurred, I have pointed out that mankind is both his and his planet's own worst enemy, as demonstrated by genocide, greed, selfishness, intolerance, religious hysteria, violence, and bigotry.  Ever since it's invention, Mankind has embraced money as his one true God, to which his whole existence has revolved around, and this one concept can almost always be traced back from most if not all of our worst depredations.  We do things for the lust of money that the Christian Devil could never have thought up if he tried.  In Western Capitalism, especially the American version, we use commerce as a weapon against each other rather than a tool of exchange, as demonstrated by fine print in contracts, legalized fraud and abuse in the credit markets, and the misery of those who had hoped to have homes of their own but instead suffered at the hands of predatory lenders and greedy speculators.  Not many of us want to know this, or do and simply feel that some evils are necessary, but we all, to some degree, participate in it, and would rather help maintain the status quo rather than risk the sacrifices involved in making real changes that could benefit all mankind.  No, as long as we have "ours", we are content to turn our heads and refuse to acknowledge that we benefit from the misery of others, and even go so far as to blame the downtrodden for the socio-economic hell they endure.  We always harp that any man, no matter their origins, can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if they want to succeed badly enough, yet we never address who will wash our dishes, mop our floors, or pick our lettuce if indeed "everyman" fought their way into a college, attained a degree, and demanded the same standard of living that so many of our smugly entitled enjoy.  We never address where all these predatory bill collectors, lawyers, politicians, and bankers would drag down their salaries if there were no unfortunate citizens who fell sick at the wrong time, lost their jobs, lost their insurance, and became fodder for their sick and all-to-often gleeful assaults?

I suffer very few, if any, heroes.  I have come to realize that any human, no matter how famous or historic their place in the timeline became, has had their share of human frailty and fault.  Even Thomas Jefferson, that man who I admire so much for his forethought in his design of our constitution, suffered the status quo and owned his slaves.  I gave up on football altogether when that first team snuck out of their stadium in the dead of night to move to another city, succumbing to the lure of the almighty dollar versus loyalty to their fans.  And yet, along comes the occasional human whom I admire to such an extent that I am willing to suffer their humanity.  Ralph Nader was one of those humans, a man who would broke NO compromise when it came to consumer protection or just plain ordinary justice and fairness.  His unwillingness to compromise on any of these principles before long earned him the ire of even his most devoted followers, and indeed even tested my own tolerance for someone who would not at least try and seek compromise for the greater good.  Yet, to this very day, I know how much all of us owe this man, and when push comes to shove, I am happy that he was so insufferable that even his own team had to distance themselves from his inflexibility.  The problem is, we don't have ENOUGH of these kind of people on OUR side, on the side of the helpless, the powerless, the disenfranchised in this great capitalist winner-take-all society of ours.  We don't have enough Bill Maher's who are willing to take the heat and tell it like it is, even if they must camouflage it in the cloak of comic relief.  We don't have enough people like ME, your's truly, THE Michael, who are so beneath he radar of notice that they can say what they think needs be said without much risk of having their homes firebombed.  Yes, as allergic as I am to "heroes", I have known them, and admire them, and celebrate them in my heart, and use them as an excuse to believe that there actually WAS once some hope for this intelligent race of apes who tried to touch the face of God yet instead managed to do nothing more than fart in it's general direction………..

Yes, I believe the mind of Monty Python pretty much sums up the best we ever had to offer…………

Enemy Mine

I truly despair of it all. My brothers, they shake their heads at me and my like, and laugh and deny, deny, deny, for they love their money, they love their very, very big cars, houses, and swimming pools and can't remember from wince we ALL came. Money, money, money, they love it more than their own children, and their children's children, for what shall become of them, even the richest amongst them, when all the water is poison, when all the land is bare, and the air is empty save for CO2?

You reply to my pleas with anger, with indignity, and imply my Gods are inferior, that YOUR God will save you from your insanity, but where is he? Mine stand beside me, weeping, not in judgement, but in sadness, for my Gods are in me, with me, and suffer beside me. You claim this all powerful God gave you this world to use as you will, and THIS is how you use it? You listen to Rush Limbaugh reading scripts written by Satan himself, and you laugh and imagine you follow the teachings of Christ. Glen Beck plays the Anti-Christ even better than Hitler and you worship him……what message is YOUR God sending you? You insist you are saved, and yet, I see a world condemned by your self-destructive behavior, and you dare suggest that those who don't drink your cool-aid are in the service of this Devil you are so frightened of, yet feed so willingly with your ignorance, hatred, and intolerance. How can you claim to serve the sacred, when you suffer the rape of the mountains for dirty coal? How is anything holy when children are preyed upon by men claimed to be holy? How can your savior find himself in your heart when your heart would deny a child health care?

The term "humane" is an oxymoron. Their is no charity in the human condition,and thus this term is abused. To be human is to be above it all, including the very world that bore us. We soil our nest, we eat our young, and we make arrogance a virtue. Yes, we love our wives, our Mothers and Fathers, our children, our families, and still, we are willing to accept the slightest chance that we visit upon them a hell on Earth by our greedy and self-centered actions. Is this truly love? Do we really even know the meaning of the word?

I know you have no desire to hear more gloom and doom. But that's not the problem, really. The problem is that you would much prefer to act as though everything is rosy, you are getting YOURS so why worry about it, and other such avoidances. If you don't believe in it, then it must not be happening. Even when all you see on the news anymore is yet another ecological disaster, well, as long as it's somebody else, it's not your concern. It IS your concern. Do you NOT realize just how small this world is? Where will you run, where will you hide when the rapture never happens and the end comes without any help from your God? Do you honestly think it will matter THEN, to ANYbody, when you realize how wrong your were? Do your think your wanting to take it back will make it all go away? Will you EVER grow up and take responsibility?

YOU are the monster, the alien, the enemy at the gates, and I no longer belong to your club. You've had your chances over and over again to do the right thing and you instead did the opposite, and with some glee I might add. The prisons are holding all the wrong people, for you are no mere felon, you are the mass murderer, which you do so well all in the name of your "rights". Yes, you have the right to die along with the rest of us, but you had NO right to make that decision for everybody. Love to you is an opportunity. Responsibility to you is getting caught, and even then you avoid it, somehow, someway. God to you is a tool, at whose feet you quake in false fear.

You are my species, and I despise you.

Face Book vs Blogger

I am really getting perturbed by the effect that the instant gratification of Face Book is having on the blogging universe.  Face Book doesn't allow you to pontificate to any great length unless you want to get creative and carry on your display of self-centered angst in the comments section, while Blogger has always allowed you as much room as you needed to create your own version of the Great Gatsby, if that was what you wanted to do.  Blogs have risen and fell depending on the talent of it's author, but with Face Book, well, what can you say in 140 characters that is going to change the entire landscape of the culture?

I suppose people have always had this great need to be HEARD in some fashion or another, and yet until fairly recently, there has never been a readily accessible medium that your average citizen could harness in making their own voice available to the masses.  These days, just about anyone can "go viral" and a star is born, albeit a star that will burn itself out even quicker than before.  We are so fickle, tiring quickly of this thing in order to leap towards the next thing, devouring the product of so many individual efforts and discarding them like we discard the packaging of our disposable consumerism.  Even the likes of Picasso or Michelangelo would find this fast and furious world of ours challenging, perhaps insuring that they would never have become the icons that we measure our cultures against.

The use of the blog to exercise the power of the word may have even inflicted a mortal wound upon the enterprise of the professional writer, since so many of us have foregone, thanks to the gauntlet that the publishing world forces us to transverse, the idea of doing it for profit, instead happy to disperse our thoughts and ideas to the universe free of charge simply because we need to.  I have many times been told I should be published, yet I have heard so many horror stories of all the rejections that writers far better than I have endured, and I ask myself why I should expose myself to such humiliation simply for the chance to add my one voice to the 5 million voices you find in your average books-a-million, a place I no longer frequent thanks to the overload of choices presented to me.  Books compete now with both hands tied behind their backs in a world with far too many distractions and so few that truly enrich the soul as the well-written book used to.

I really WOULD love to be published, and have more than a handful of my fellow humans thank me for my efforts, but I am just as happy to write something strictly for the pleasure of hang written it and having at least one person be effected enough to at least leave a comment about it, even if to tell me I got it wrong.  At least I had an effect, which proves that I was HERE, and someone else knew it.  I expect the sands of time to bury any trace that I ever existed, but it IS possible, that if this species survives at all, somewhere in the depths of this virtual world, a record of my thoughts and ideas will somehow survive, and a person here and there will be exposed to them, and for at least those few brief moments, I will live on in their minds.  I doubt very much that Face Book will ever afford any of us THAT kind of immortality.