A bunch of pictures of me… in Germany… because who doesn’t like me… and mountains… and lakes?

Posted on August 24, 2015 by pouringmyartout

a 1We all love nature… but even the beauty of this pastoral scene of a mountain meadow in the German alps can be greatly improved by the simple expedient of adding me.

a 2Okay, the thing is… and I love this particular thing!!!… but I guess I told Mollie to take a few pictures of me when we were in the cute little town below Neuschwanstein castle… you know… to put on this here blog…

a 3And Mollie loves her daddy! There is a German mountain bike enthusiast, making dang sure the bad American tourist doesn’t steal her bike.

a 4Okay, I can take a hint… stop glaring at me…

a 5Is that sasquatch??? I didn’t know Mollie was going to take so many pictures of me when I wasn’t paying attention… I would have sucked in my stomach.

a 6Hey now… there is a weird wrinkle in my shirt in that picture that makes my man-boobs look even less flattering… dang it…

a 7Notice that I am the one carrying the heavy backpack with everybody’s extra jackets and all the snacks and the camera stuff.

a 8But that is how I wormed my way onto this trip, you might recall… to act as a Sherpa… and security guard…

a 9Look, I know I am going to do a lot of posts in the next few days, but if we can get through the Europe trip, we can move on to all the other cool stuff that has been going on in my life.

a 10Okay… seriously… it wasn’t that cold… what is going on with my nipples???

a 11Did I mention that I have gained back about 30 of the 50 pounds I worked so hard to get rid of? Sigh…

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

A German lake, some mountains that may actually be in Switzerland, and some feet… oh my…

Posted on August 24, 2015 by pouringmyartout

a 1Still just zooming through these last pictures of our day trip to Neuschwanstein…

a 2a 3a 4Mollie took a nice picture of her feet.

a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10And, of course, no blog post is actually complete without at least one picture of yours truly!

a 11a 12a 13a 14a 15I just like that picture because who doesn’t want to walk to Pinswang/Tirol??? I think you even get to pass through Hohenschwangau on the way, and see some alps!

a 16My mom liked that one so much she is going to make it her Christmas card.

a 17

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Random pictures… without those annoying words I always add… of Neuschwanstein castle, the town below it… and that other, smaller, yellow castle on the hill nearby, which I really should remember something about, but I don’t…

Posted on August 23, 2015 by pouringmyartout

a 3a 1a 2a 4a 5a 6a 7a 8a 9a 10a 11a 12a 13a 14a 15

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged , , , , , , , | 38 Comments

Okay, I am back from visiting my mom in the Bay Area and… awwwwwwwwwwww… baby swans!!!

Posted on August 23, 2015 by pouringmyartout

a 1Yes, we took a little trip North to the Bay Area… (mostly for Willie’s third birthday, but don’t tell my mom that)…

a d 1And I have tons of pictures to share… of the party, and cute babies, and some awesome art I was working on and so forth…

a d 2But I am so close to finishing with the pictures of our trip to Europe, that I think I will spend a couple of days wrapping that up first…

a d 3We spotted these swans in the alpine lake beside the town below Neuschwanstein castle.

a d 5Mollie and I ran around the lake to get closer to them, then followed them back around.

a d 6I think Mollie took a lot of these pictures.

a d 7And who doesn’t love baby swans???

a d 8The parents were very attentive and patient… you know… like good parents are.

a d 11Oh yeah, the alps in the background. How beautiful is that?

a d 13And look, free bonus ducks thrown in!

a d 14Anyway, the next few days will be full of that last day in Europe and our day trip from Munich into the countryside just miles from the Swiss border. I hope you enjoy it.

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

The two faces of WordPress… (or); Why is it that every kind of art has to end up being subjected to the whims of guys wearing expensive business suits, because isn’t that what broke the Beatles up???

Posted on August 21, 2015 by pouringmyartout

I am still hoping… against hope… that I can somehow manage to turn my blogging hobby into a paying job, while also increasing the number of people who have access to my novels and children’s books, thereby increasing sales of those without having to actually get an agent and get picked up by a major publishing house… and all without changing what it is I do here on my blog… just doing it somewhere else… if you followed along with all that…

I know, I talked about this stuff in the past, and then chickened out. But this time, my older daughter… who actually knows a little about computers… and my good buddy, Jibber, up in Canadaland, are helping me. That is the only reason I am even looking into this.

Here is what we learned so far.

It turns out that there is a WordPress.com AND a WordPress.org.

Who knew?

The .com does all the work for you and is free, but you can’t make any money. The .org makes you do all the work… backups and plugins and… uh… other stuff that I already can’t remember… but you can make money with ads.

The upside is that you would all still be able to find me easily, and I wouldn’t lose all my followers… except, I assume, the ones who are no longer amongst the living.

The downside is that I would have to pay somebody… or a company… to do all that stuff that I can’t remember, because I am a computer moron. Plus, I would have to pay the .org, I assume.

Oh, and it turns out that it isn’t easy to get people to just pay you to put ads on your blog. Oh no. You get paid when people actually click on the ads. That sucks. When advertisers put up a billboard on someone’s house, do they only pay the people when other people actually look at the billboard?

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me through my experimental journey to become a corporate shill… or stooge… or whatever I might have to end up becoming to prevent me from having to get another minimum wage, soul-crushing job.

Posted in stuff about blogging, thinking about stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

Ol’ Man Liver… (or); Time to get my Weird Al on…

Posted on August 21, 2015 by pouringmyartout

I have decided to lighten the mood around here by sharing a little thing me and the crack squirrels have been working on this morning… an amusing rewrite of the song; Ol’ Man River from the 1927 musical ‘Showboat’.

***(As an historical note, the original song was actually written in this ‘phonetic ebonics’-style of language, and included the ‘N’-word… [it was 1927], which I got nowhere close to… but I did decide to go for the original spelling of many of the words… you know… to and preserve the Mississippi delta feel of the song… Any complaints should be directed to Roger Hammerstein,.. who, I believe, wrote the lyrics… and who is also, I believe… deceased)***

OL’ MAN LIVER…

Dere’s an ol’ man I keep inside me

A better man den I could ever be

‘Cause he cares when I got troubles

An’ he filters toxins dat I can’t see…

Ol’ man liver, dat ol’ man liver,

Must be pissed ’bout somethin’

But he don’t say nuthin’

He just keeps filterin’, he keeps on filterin’ along…

He just keeps cleanin’

He just keeps strainin’

All o’ dis booze dat

Ol’ lady bladder gonna be drainin’

But ol’ man liver, he just keeps strainin’ along…

You an’ me, we eats bad sushi

Our guts get churnin’, our tummy’s feel squooshy

Git to work! Make dat sale!

Git a little drunk, end up pukin’ in a pale…

Ah gits weary, an sick o’ losin’

Ahm tired of bloggin’ so I goes out boozin’

But ol’ man liver, he just keeps chuggin’ along…

Ol’ man liver, dat ol’ man liver

Must be pissed ’bout somethin’

But he don’t say nuthin’

He just keeps workin’, he just keeps workin’ along…

Dat ol’ man liver, he’s just a filter

For when I goes drinkin’

When I feels off kilter

He just keeps filterin’, he just keeps filterin’ along…

He keeps maintainin’

Just keeps on strainin’

All dis here beer dat

On da street will soon be rainin’

But ol’ man liver, he just keeps strainin’ along…

He don’t help me breathin’

Or pump da blood I use

But he’s my favorite organ

And the most fun to abuse

He just keeps keeps cleanin’, he just keeps workin’ along…

Ah gits weary

An sick o’ losin’

Ahm so tired of bloggin’

I just needs to go out boozin’

But ol’ man liver…

He just keeps chuggin’…

Along…

Posted in thinking about stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Blogging is like the circle of life… where, if we move really fast, we can end up kicking ourselves in our own asses… (or); That last post really made me sound like a right proper enema nozzle…

Posted on August 21, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Here’s the thing… let’s just get the thing out of the way right up front, shall we?… I am a man of many contradictions. I am self-centered with low self-esteem… I am full of myself and full of shit… I am constantly busy and never getting anything done… and so on and so on…

I just want to make money from all the things that pour out of my head. It isn’t a novel idea… well, I mean, it is, in the sense that novels are some of the things that pour out of my head… but lots of people make money writing or doing paintings or playing music. I am not looking to get rich… okay, I wouldn’t turn down a yacht full of money… but… wait… where was I going with all this?

The other thing is… oooooh… two things in one post… that I am all art-side-of-the-brain… and I write books and paint and draw and sing and write songs and play the guitar and carve tikis and write short stories and poems and a whole bunch of other artsy stuff… but my head seems to be incapable of figuring out how to make a living from any of these things.

I need an agent and a publisher… I suck at marketing myself. Which brings me to the apology portion of this post. My last post was insensitive. I am going on and on about my 3,000 plus followers… (many of whom might not still be alive, as near as I can tell)… when a lot of you would be more than happy to be where I am now complaining about being.

Also, once again, it brings up the one inescapable fact about blogging. The more followers you get, the more people you meet that comment on your blog and follow you and are funny and loyal and awesome… and you can’t even stop by their blog for an occasional visit, let alone follow them back.  Because if you read stuff from everybody who follows you, you wouldn’t even have time to do any posts… or eat or sleep or whatever.

If my novels were selling… or the children’s book… I wouldn’t be in this dilemma. If I could just write and sell short stories or poems or words of whatever kind, I would be fine. But I don’t have the half of the brain that does that stuff.

Don’t get me wrong… I don’t want any of you to actually have to pay any money.

I just want a blog where I can keep doing the same stuff I do here… the pictures and stories of my life, the crazy observations and thoughts, the making fun of Dick Cheney and now Donald Trump… while big companies run by soulless zombie tycoons throw wads of cash at me for the privilege of putting tiny and inconspicuous advertisements in the lower corners of the page, where they will not in any way annoy you when you come over to visit.

Is that too freekin’ much to ask?

But mostly I would like to say I am sorry for taking myself too seriously… like I am a rock star and you are all just groupies… and no, sorry, I can’t listen to three thousand demo tapes, I have another platinum album to put out. I’m not that guy.

If I seem to be overlooking you, it is because I am a disorganized, confused, old and forgetful idiot with a cranium full of crack squirrels who sometimes forgets how unimportant he is in the overall scheme of things, and has too many things all going on at the same time. I think I might still be suffering from the delusions of grandeur that we all have when we are teenagers.

My daughter called and told me that I ‘generate enough traffic’ to make money blogging. I got excited. I thought maybe there was a way that I could go right on doing the same stuff but make enough money to help out a little more around here, and without losing any of you… because, when it comes right down to it… you are the people who are the ‘traffic’ that I am supposedly ‘generating’… But see… that is the thing… (wait… what… have we ever had three things in one post before???)… you aren’t ‘traffic’ to me. You are much more than that… even if I do never make it to your blog to see what you do… and our only interaction is in the comment section of my blog…

Which brings us right back around the circle… and hey, look, there I am right in front of me… let’s see if I can catch up and give myself a good kick in the ass.

Posted in stuff about blogging, thinking about stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , | 34 Comments

Should I quit WordPress???

Posted on August 20, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Now before you panic, let me share my thoughts… My books are not selling as fast as I would like. I work part time. I spend a lot of time doing this blog. My wife is not thrilled about all this, and neither, to be honest, am I.

My daughter… the older one… has been filling my head with visions of doing a blog where I spend the same amount of time… which is a lot… but I actually make a little money.

The thing is… and this might just be the scariest mo’fo’in’ thing of all my things ever… it would mean switching to a different host platform thingamajig… (yeah, no problem, what with me being such an obvious computer genius and all)…

I have three thousand followers on this blog… or so the good folks at WordPress tell me. But how many of those people are still around? I have asked you all about this very thing before, and I got some good answers. My buddy, the Gibber, even helped me out with research… because I am a moron… and people tried to explain it all to me and I got all panicky and backed out.

From what I gather, if I do switch, my blog still looks the same, and still works the same… which means I will still need help with lots of stuff. The real difference, if I understand the words that came out of my daughter’s mouth, is that I would no longer show up on the WordPress topic wall things or in your reader. You would have to switch over and follow me… by email???… does that make any sense??? I guess there would still be an actual blog you could go to… (geeze, I hope so, that is where all my book links to my poorly-selling books on my book page are, also thanks to my buddy, the Gibber)

Supposedly… or ‘supposably’, as my younger brother insists on pronouncing it… this is how all the ‘real’ bloggers… the ones that are making money… do it. There would be advertising… and a happy wife… and stuff. I am assuming I could do all the same goofy stuff I do now, and the blog would look the same.

Would any of you follow me to this new place?

Would advertising turn you off?… (not you, Trent, nothing turns you off)

Would I just lose a bunch of followers that don’t even have blogs any more or might even be deceased?

Would I start off so small that I wouldn’t make any money anyway?

Is ‘Bluehost’ or ‘Blue Host’ or whatever the way to go?

Would I end up with ten followers and then get huge and be made into a movie like the girl who did that blog about cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes, and become not only rich but also famous, and then have my books turned into major motion pictures and start hanging out with Brad Pit… who would totally play me in the sci-fi movies of my books, by the way?

Please tell me what you think… I can barely breathe right now.

Posted in stuff about blogging, thinking about stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , | 69 Comments

Ermagerd, it turns out, isn’t a female character in a Wagner opera…

Posted on August 20, 2015 by pouringmyartout

It is, as a matter of fact, one of those expressions that pops up and somehow worms its way into the public consciousness, being used often enough that there is some slight danger that the people at The Webster Dictionary Corporation will end up deciding to put it in their book and make it real.

Like all fashionable or trendy things, I am of the opinion that only the very first person … the ‘inventor’, if you will… who used the invention deserves any credit at all, and even then it is only recognition that they did something new, not necessarily that they did something good. The first person to go out of his house with a multi-colored, three-foot-tall Mohawk haircut was sort of awesome… all the rest of them are just trend followers with no imagination… (Are you paying attention, young guys who are right now walking around with their underwear hanging out above the top of their pants???)

So, anyway, some somewhat clever soul decided to pronounce the already overused ‘Oh my God’… (henceforth in this post to be shortened to; ‘OMG’)… as ‘ermagerd’… an idea which basically took an already bad idea and made it even more annoying, but slightly amusing for a few days… and all it requires is to say ‘OMG’ without moving your lips quite so much, adding a few ‘R’s’, and changing the vowel sounds.

As an historical note for those of you who have never been to America… particularly the South part of the West part of it… both ‘ermagerd’ and OMG are most often utilized by young females, and they are spoken in a long, drawn out manner, with either a viciously disdainful tone or as an extended exhalation full of judgmental disappointment. Conversely, it can be stated in an upbeat, sing-song manner to denote happy surprise and expectation.

Be that as it may, the thing is… what, you thought I was going to do all that clever lead-in and not have a thing???… but the thing is that, even though I think that ‘ermagerd’ has already begun to go the way of the dinosaurs… that is, become extinct… I feel it is my duty to point out how underutilized this obnoxious little word was by showing you all how much more you could have done with it if you had really tried… and if you had crack squirrels in your head like I do.

Here, for your entertainment, are a few new and improved versions of the dreaded ‘ermagerd’… with the definitions provided… feel free to use them in conversation… as long as you don’t do it anywhere near me;

  1. Germagerd… OMG, I think I’m sick!
  2. Spermagerd… OMG, I think I’m pregnant!
  3. Spurmagerd… OMG, I really like to ride horses! (Be careful that people do not get confused when you use number 2 and number 3, because they are pronounced identically)
  4. Insurmagerd… OMG, I just hit that car with my car, I really wish I had some insurance!
  5. Ensurmagerd… OMG, I am so old I should be drinking Ensure, so why am I still talking like this?
  6. Blurmagerd… OMG, I really need glasses!
  7. Stirmagerd… OMG, I really like to cook!
  8. Sirmagerd… OMG… (when addressing Royalty.)
  9. Shurmagerd… OMG, I am like totally so sure!
  10. Firmagerd… OMG, look at the muscles on that guy!
  11. Wormagerd… OMG, that guy is such a worm!
  12. Squirmagerd… OMG, that wormagerd totally makes my skin crawl!
  13. Hermagerd… OMG, look at her, do you believe what she is doing/wearing?
  14. Furmagerd… OMG, I really love cats/dogs/hamsters!
  15. Slurmagerd… OMG, I am so drunk I can’t talk!
  16. Dermagerd… OMG, my skin is so soft!
  17. Termagerd… OMG, that elected official should never be allowed to stay in office for decades because he is obviously incompetent and deceitful and corrupt, and we should really enact some legislation to limit the number of times those guys can keep getting elected!
  18. Nevermagerd… OMG, I am never using the word ‘ermagerd’ again!

(Remember; you don’t have to say the whole sentence, because each word means all that and more. You just have to say the word. I am sure people will be able to figure out exactly what you mean even if they never heard of my blog. In fact, I think this whole idea is so brilliant that I now may try to condense every complete sentence in the English language down into one short word. Think of all the time we will save!)

Posted in thinking about stuff | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 28 Comments

My juices are really flowing… uh… no… not like that… why you gotta be so immature and make things all weird and stuff???

Posted on August 19, 2015 by pouringmyartout

The crack squirrels that live in my head have shifted into overdrive… or they have been sneaking out in the middle of the night and hooking up with a crack dealer with a better quality product… whatever…

Right now I am;

  1. Storyboarding and doing some watercolor paintings for the rewrite of my little purple wizard story to make it more kid friendly, because I want one more children’s book published before I add shopping for a children’s book literary agent to my list of literary agents I need to find…
  2. Proofreading the first copy of the third book of my action/humor science fiction series so I can get it up on the blog book page and make it available for purchase.
  3. I am still doing the big edit on my murder mystery novel… the one that takes place in London in World War Two… with the help of Trent Lewin, my head blog minion… and with some helpful advice from Jessica, my older daughter… who suggested the whole idea that, as long as the Detective and the young lady are so smitten with each other that perhaps they should go on a date, and I sent them on a lovely outing to Selfridges department store, which you might remember we visited when we were in London recently, and despite the fact that the young lady in question is soon to be foully murdered!!!
  4. I am doing a rough outline of a new idea for a novel for teenage girls… once again, don’t try to make this sound like a creepy thing… I just think I wan’t to try to write a book with powerful, kick-ass teenage Princesses who become pirates and end up saving the Seven Island Kingdoms from the evil douche bag and the creepy sons he is using to consolidate his ever-expanding empire…
  5. Coming up with awesomely amusing blog post ideas like this one to keep you entertained…

On top of all that, I m going to take some photographs as I do the painting for the wizard book, just to show what my weird creative process is like, and maybe I will take some pictures of my Princess Pirate layout sketch too… just so you can feel like you are in on that one from the very beginning… and I have also been taking lots of photos of all the cute kids and babies I have been hanging around with… and some flowers and sunsets and other stuff… you know… to post right after I finish the Europe trip posts… because this blog is not only all about my life… it is all about all of my life… and I like having all of you live it with me!

Posted in Stories of my life | Tagged , , , , , , , | 14 Comments