Micajah’s Monkey

By TRB

I once wrote a novel entitled "Micajah's Monkey." It was about a junkie (Micajah) who was hunted by a serial killer. I never even bothered to tell my agent about it. It was good fun, attempting to see if I could perfectly mimic the law enforcement voyeurism that had taken hold of the drug store novel. I could. Anyone could.

I had a writing teacher who once said "Ok, your character is on this side of the bridge. How are you going to walk him to the other side?" The answer is pretty simple. You are not going to walk him to the other side; you're going to write him to the other side with useless knowledge and other literary goodies. Simple. And make sure that he doesn't fall off the bridge or is hit by a car along the way. It's your world, not the characters.' His life depends upon what mood you're in when your get up in the morning.

How do you describe your character? Do you fall for the old trick of placing him in front of a mirror? What if he is nondescript. He can't be nondescript because he is a major character in novel? That can be limiting. We need more nondescript major characters.

Six novels later and three years later, nothing had happened in the world. Or in my world, at least. I was writing 400-page novels on a typewriter. I was writing every day. Then I would go to the newspaper and write the "Man Bites Dog" story then back to the novels. My housemate at the time was an architecture student at MIT and she personally had a very busy life anyway. Our relationship tended to be a series of accidents that led to a brief marriage that was really quite fun. Yes it was fun.

My novels were beginning to scare me because they were actually good. Friends would come by and read them and come back and read more. But I never even attempted to sell one of them. Why? If you read me regularly enough you already know the answer. I am a hack writer. Can't I just be a hack writer pretending to be a novelist? I am not hurting anyone.

That would all end anyway. Now I have an antique dresser filled with novels in hardcopy, called the "novel dresser." It remains silent, the drawers always closed, and physically a very heavy and hard to move piece of that phase of my life. We've all had phases like that. Call it narcissism if you want. I don't care. I was just enjoying a segment of my life when I cared about very little beyond myself. The woman (wife two) I married back then is now living quite happily in Australia. You can imagine. But still, we had fun.

So suddenly I found myself caring about things in the world at large. It just snuck up on me this feeling, like a guy taking your wallet in the street. When that changed, I began to care about a lot of things. I became very political because that seems to be what happens when you care about a lot of things.

But lately, with the revolutions and wars happening in West Africa and the Middle East, the Japanese proving that perhaps they are not the neatest people on earth with their lackadaisical treatment of nuclear waste, and the Democrats absolutely storming the Midwest on working class economic issues, I reached a bit of an overload. And sometimes I long for that typewriter and "Micajah's Monkey" and the rest. It was easy not to care back then. Perhaps that is what people miss most about their youth. It was so damn easy not to care.

Let's start this off with Moammar Kadafi's hats. First off, who designs them, who makes them, what do they mean, why are they so disturbing, how can one make a disturbing hat? His hat raises too many questions. Hats that raise questions are never good hats. Hats are not supposed to raise questions. Then there are the sun glasses, a designer brand I believe. But, like the hat, they are insane, and their insanity makes him look even more insane than he already is.

But, back to the comedy of life where the fatal pratfalls rule. This is where Kadafi's people rise up against him and he goes even more bananas than usual and hires thousands of mercenaries from all over Africa to come to Libya and kill his people. This is a typical Kadafi thing. Predictable even. He is the Charlie Sheen of world leaders. So Obama, as usual, drops the ball and doesn't produce air cover until Kadafi almost wins the civil war. Yesterday, mostly with the prodding of the French, the UN ruled that it was okay to knock this mans idiotic hat off. His sun glasses too. We'll keep an eye on this.

Frankly all news is overshadowed by the nuclear reactors that were wrecked by an earthquake and tsunami last week in Japan. At first the Japanese seemed to know what they were doing and how to take care of it. But then it became apparent that the spent fuel rods outside had piled up to an unacceptable level prior to the tsunami and the Japanese were misleading the world with these hunky-dory stories about "low emissions" and the rest of it. For too long they refused to even accept help, as if they knew what was best and they were well enough equipped to take care of such disasters.

It turned out that none of this was true. The Japanese don't know a fuel rod from a venetian blind. Yesterday, I watched as they piloted these Godzilla-era helicopters with buckets of water hanging from them swaying, always missing the mark, which was the reactor in an attempt to drench the cooling rods. Finally, one of their officials had enough. The U.S., even Russia sent their best people. It is one thing to be "stoic," as the news media loves to call the Japanese people. It is quite another to be stupid.

Of course, most of the time, we have a corner on the stupid market right here in the U.S. Look at what these Tea bag Republican governors are doing in the Midwest. They are trying to break the unions, while raising taxes on elderly and working people to afford a tax break for the rich. One governor, R.Snyder, out there in Michigan is even trying to privatize formally elected offices. A recall petition has already begun circulating for him yesterday.

Then there is this genius Governor of Wisconsin, who took money from the billionaire anti-union Koch brothers and destroyed the unions in Wisconsin. He won the battle but he lost the war. At this very moment recall petitions are making the rounds in Wisconsin that will probably result in a Democrat-led State Legislature.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC said it best just the other day. The Republicans are now going after the Democrat base, the working class. And that is probably the worst idea they ever came up with. It will eventually put them all out of office if they don't put the brakes on. It is probably too late already though.

Economic popularism works for Democrats every time. Every time. How could these corn-fed Republicans be so dumb? Maybe there really is something in the beef out there.

All I know is, since I brought up the topic, I might as well tell you. No, Micajah of Micajah's Monkey doesn't die. I was really bad at killing characters back then. I am much better at it now.