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What a year!
By fred | December 28, 2008
This and that, just a little talk about your old Uncle Fred and the year ahead!
It is finally over – the year of our Lord 2008. Albeit I am not too sure the Lord or anyone in this crazy world of ours has been too happy with it all.
In the paper today the author of an editorial article tried to put a positive spin on it all. The author’s main contention was that it will be good for the average American to learn to be a bit conservative, to not be a free spender, to learn to save. That this recession, depression or whatever you wish to call it is good for our young kids that they will learn to be less wasteful.
I thought about that for quite a while, there may be a tiny, very small amount of truth in all that. I would have to talk to my retired economics professor buddy across the street and get his reaction. Seems a harsh way of learning, when folks are losing their homes, scared to death by either losing their jobs or the threat of losing it, I am not a in favor of this as a learning tool by choice.
My eBay store has been quiet, days sometimes go by without a sale, then you get a few, get all excited and figure maybe the dam has broke and folks will start spending again. Then days will go by again with no sales. Other eBay sellers say the same thing. One lady quit her job two years ago because her earnings from her eBay store could allow her to do so. Now she has little or no sales and little or no income. Looking for a job is not much of an option with less and less of them to go around.
Our friend, Obama has his work cut out for himself. I will say that he is surrounding himself with a cabinet of highly regarded professionals. I do believe, if some nut case, of which we have many in this nation of ours, does not kill him first, that he will lead us out of this mess. Problem is it is going to take a lot of time, years in my humble opinion to do so. We must be patient, give them time. After all the ass of all time, again my humble opinion, —Mr. Bush and Mr. Chaney took eight years of total mismanagement, spending like drunken sailors to get us into the mess. Imagine, billions, hey, guys and gals I said BILLIONS not millions of our nation’s funds that they cannot even account for? How can you lose BILLIONS of dollars and not know where it went. AND they do not want to impeach him?? This I cannot believe. I could go on and on but that is not productive, if a person is not pissed as hell about the mess we are in and the total asses that got us there then he or she has to have his head buried in sand.
One thing that drives your 79 year old Uncle Fred absolutely nutty is not doing anything. I thought about it a lot. My eBay store is packed with coins and jewelry, over 1,400 items already listed. Stupid to list more until sales pick up so all I have to do is check my e-mail daily for the few orders that arrive, pack them, ship em and that is done.
Answering an e-mail from my buddy the economics professor the other day, he mentioned a number of books he had written related to economics and his many years in Russia. Russia was a study of his, the nation under the Communist, ended with an almost completely failed economy and how it struggled to raise out of the ashes of that was quite a study for him.
I really love this guy; we have a bunch of fun people here where I live in what we call Corona Court Adult Community, a group of 35 homes with our own Clubhouse. I mentioned in my Christmas letter that Sally gets a kick out of some of my walks a half block to the club house to send or get our mail. Some of those short half block walks take an hour. Just fun people, smart people, gals and guys that are a ball to talk too.
Back to my buddy the professor. He wrote a number of books, very popular in the field he was in; there were a large number of issues, re prints. His classes would encompass upwards of three hundred students at Rutgers University. I can understand that, one evening for the fun of it he gave a talk at another buddy neighbor’s home. It was the most interesting lecture / talk I had listened to in many a year, if a student of economics getting a class of his would have been priority one in my book.
I got to telling him about all my adventures at writing, that the only thing folks wanted to pay me for was my book ‘Making money is simple – Just boring!’ – Funny that book was the least fun of all the stuff I have written. Told him how I wanted to write fun books, humorous books including family and friends in the stories and putting them in situations that they would never get into in real life, just for the fun and laughs of it all. I mentioned that the only agent interested in one of my books, (Soda Pop Soldiers) said if I would redo it, include a love / romance triangle and put in sex, real sex, he said sex sells, load it with sex then he would consider taking it on.
Wow, I got excited, a real agent interested in me, one of my fun to write books. So I started to redo Soda Pop Soldiers. First added a new title, called it, “Innocent indiscretions’ then started to work, it came to a screaming halt fast I can tell you. Try and write about sex, real sex, doing it sex, what is porno and what is just romantic sex not dirty porn? Do you know the difference? What is love sex and what is dirty, porno sex. Try to write a story a love story and include that in it. It was impossible at first, I even spent money for several books on writing the stuff, forget what they were called, as I trashed them. They were so stupid the main character was always more endowed than others, the ladies lusted for him, etc, etc. all total bull.
I ended up making the love acts like real life, life when young and full of you know what and it worked. Eight months after, yes it took me eight months to rewrite a several hundred thousand word book; I sent it to what I consider a ‘modern’ young woman, a friend, the daughter of one of my best friends in high school Jack Bighead. Jack has always been inserted in my books; he is gone now but never will be forgotten. Anyway she is an executive now but was a former English teacher. I asked her to give it a going over which she did. The double spaced copy came back with red marks all over the place, corrections to be made. Her comments were, “A beautiful love store.” She said it would need more correcting before publishing but should be O. K. for an agent to review once I had conformed to her corrections.
So – after eight months I printed it off and sent it to the agent. No reply for months, then I got a letter from his wife. She wrote that she was sorry but her husband passed away about six months ago. After sending literally hundreds of excerpts, copies, outlines to agents before finding the one agent interested, I just gave up, there are too damn ‘wanta’ be writers in the world begging to be published, I gave up. I will bet I spent at least a thousand dollars on stamps, paper, printing ink, etc. trying. I am told that a good agent, publisher gets sometimes hundreds of copies or excerpts from books written weekly. Who can read them? Who can evaluate all that? So the renowned, proven writers keep writing and they get published. To get published you better know something or someone, be famous, a star, etc, or forget it.
Still, writing humorous fiction is fun for me, so I got to thinking, got jazzed up with my e-mails with Bob, my economics professor, maybe since there is time now, why not start again. Maybe rewrite my original book about my three years at L. A. Poly high I called “Poly High & Number 11” – the number ‘11’ was my football jersey number playing football. Maybe call the book just “L. A. POLY”. Shorten it a bit; leave out a lot of the boring football stuff the ladies get bored with. With ‘Innocent indiscretions’ go over it and eliminate or soften some of the sex, cut it down a bit, maybe finish ‘C.E.O. CAT’ and maybe even ‘Everybody’s Danish’ now I have the time. I have several other books part done, did a sequel to ‘Soda Pop Soldiers’ called “Money talks – bullshit walks” albeit that title could use some rework.
Also got to thinking I would put them in my eBay store as “E” books, sell them for a few bucks, likely they would not sell – but who knows?
Anyway, that will be my projects for the next year, UNLESS my eBay store picks up and sales get big – and then all bets are off, back to buying and selling.
Why this subject in my BLOG, hey, can’t think of another thing to write about right now so decided to bore you with my thoughts and projects for the coming year.
Sometimes at my age, if I don’t keep busy I can get so damn depressed. After all I may not have all the years ahead of me that many of you have. There are loved ones, right now my best buddy and brother in law Jack going through hell fighting throat cancer, depressing to think of what my friend is going through.
As we get old it seems you have a habit of dwelling in the past, maybe because the future looks too short. I admit I do, maybe this is the reason I love to take family, old friends from years past, from high school and intertwine them in my books. I love to use things, events that happened as a kid, in business, real events and mix that with fiction, getting my buddies in outrageous situations.
Sally thinks I am nuts sometimes she will open the door to my home office when I am writing and ask what I am laughing at. Sometimes tears can be dripping from my eyes I am laughing so hard. At what? Just because of the situation I just wrote about getting buddies into stuff. Yes, laughing at your own writing has to be a sign of something; maybe they will be carting me off with a little white tie suit soon. Ha, well if you gotta go, you gotta go.
Of course if any of you know an agent, a publisher, a script writer, a producer looking for a broken down old fart with stories about high school, the army, cats, dogs, let me know and I will give you a fat cut of the take – I will however not hold my breath! Still – you never know!
I have to thank all of you that have written and told me that you enjoy my chapters of C.E.O. CAT and Everybody’s Danish that I have added to this BLOG, the fact that some of you get a kick out of my writing is encouraging, gives me the energy to do more. Your remarks are appreciated so much; just too darn bad you guys and gals are not the agents or publishers needed.
May you all – be loved as much as I love you—Uncle Fred
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