My Button’s Bigger Than Your One!

On January 4, 2018 By Mick CanningIn humour, opinion, poetry, politics, satire55 Comments

My button’s bigger than your one.

You’d better let me play, or else I’ll go,

And take my toys with me.

I’ve got more friends than you have.

That picture’s fake, you’ve Photoshopped in

An extra friend or three.

Vlad’s my pal and he’ll get you.

He’s got your name, and he’ll beat you up,

At the end of school tonight.

That fat, specky boy’s gonna get it,

He won’t have a clue what hit him

When we get into a fight.

See that girl in the playground?

I’ve done it with her! Oh yes, I did!

Of course, she wanted me to.

I’ll tell you how it’s done, you grab them!

Show them who’s boss, they love it,

Yeah, that’s what you do.

Don’t believe all the stories those boys tell.

They’re all liars and cheats and I’m not listening.

La la la I can’t hear you!

White is black, black is white, do you hear me?

All the adults are wrong,

Just believe what I tell you to.

I’m the head boy of the school, because

I won the popular vote, the biggest number of votes,

Despite my opponents cheating.

I’m also the head school bully,

And if you’re gay or disabled, Moslem or black,

I’ll give you a jolly good beating.

Because my button’s bigger than your one!

It is, too!

Stupid face!

You’re stupid!

Poo head!

My friends’ll beat you up, fatty, if you don’t watch out…

Nyagh! Nyagh! Nyagh!

Oh.

Nobody likes me!

It’s not fair!

‘Mr Business Brain’ or ‘Trying to blow my own trumpet without ever having learned how to’.

On January 28, 2017January 28, 2017 By Mick CanningIn Art, blogging, Making Friends with the Crocodile, Painting, photographs, social media, Wood Carving, writing44 Comments

In today’s alternative ‘Alice in Wonderland: ‘When I use a word,’ Trumpty Numpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’.

Lewis Carroll obviously saw this fellow coming.

Just thought I’d share that with you. Anyway, back to the task in hand. After two ridiculously hectic weeks, I now have to do my best to catch up with everything. Onward!

***

I don’t have a business brain.

I look at my clutter of short stories and paintings, my carvings and photographs and think ‘I should be able to at least make a bit of a living out of all of these.’

But I don’t. And then I wonder ‘how on earth I am going to do it?’ and go ‘aaargh!’ and run off into the distance.

It really doesn’t help.

And so, if I had to have made a New Year’s Resolution this year, it would have been to sort all this out. I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore it for any longer.

To begin with, then, how about attracting new blog followers?

Dressed in a loincloth and brandishing a spear (not a sight that sensitive readers should try to picture in their minds), I go charging out onto the lightly wooded WordPress plains, hunting new blog followers.

‘Aha, there’s one!’ I think, spotting a potential follower grazing harmlessly beside the River of Inspiration. I sneak up on them, then hurl a ‘follow’ at them, hoping that they will respond in kind.

Er, no.

It’s just not me, unfortunately. As I have mentioned in the past, I find it incredibly difficult to blow my own trumpet. And I will not ‘follow’ someone just for the sake of getting a ‘follow’ back. I do understand that anti-social media make up the platforms I have to work with, but for some reason I have not yet got my head around using them properly. So for blogs, I shall carry on as I always have. I don’t hunt for followers, I let them find me. Then if they follow me, it is presumably because they like what I’m writing.

Of course, they might simply be after a follow in return, but that won’t happen unless I like what their site does.

I do need to be more professional, though. For a start, then, I have begun to properly update the information on each site I use – such as the ‘Author Profiles’ on Goodreads, Amazon and LinkedIn.

So please feel free to connect with me on those sites – Goodreads LinkedIn. I promise I will put up more book reviews on Goodreads, and try to work out just what the hell LinkedIn is for.

I shall sort out the prices on the paintings and photography websites.

What? Oh, Paintings and Photographs – thanks for asking!

And I need to find new ways to promote my novel Making Friends with the Crocodile.

And then, there is this blog. I must regularly update the information on the ‘About’ page and the ‘My Writings’ page.

Do I need to simply be bolder in my approach to all this? Should I put a ‘shop’ on my blog?

I don’t know. But, learning how to properly use the limited anti-social media I reluctantly and sporadically do take part in (other than blogging), is a priority for me.

But I’m damned if I will ever use Twatter, though.

Why?

On November 9, 2016November 9, 2016 By Mick CanningIn discussions, politics, Presidential election, United States59 Comments

047

Have half of the American population become xenophobic, misogynistic haters overnight? Of course they haven’t. The demographic who voted for Trump are, like any other political demographic, a mixture of many different views and beliefs.

There are the die-hard Republicans who would vote for anyone or anything, as long as it wore Republican colours.

There are those who believe in Trump’s vision, as he set it out.

Those who believed that Clinton would take away their guns.

Those who have had a pretty raw deal over the past however many years, and think that Trump holds out their best hope.

And there are those, who I believe number many millions, who wanted to give the establishment a damn good kicking, and perhaps did not care how much damage they did in achieving it.

They are the ones who think that everything is run by the rich; the elite, no matter what their political colours, and that the system needs to be torn down and built afresh.

‘Drain the swamp!’ – how that must have resonated with them.

Had the Democrats selected Bernie Sanders as their candidate, and the Republicans selected a more moderate candidate as theirs, then I suspect we would have seen many of those who voted for Trump, supporting Sanders – solely because he would be seen as the anti-establishment candidate.

And the Democrats had another huge disadvantage, in that they were the presidential incumbents, and therefore the obvious targets for this anger.

Clearly, the political class, most commentators, and probably a huge chunk of the population have been unaware of this mood, this anger, although it must have been widespread, and for a long while.

And perhaps the Brexit vote has, in some ways, given it a legitimacy, given people permission, almost, to express their feelings. Even made them realise their power. Trump has been very keen to use Brexit as an example, aided by Farage’s visit.

And Brexit was a phenomenon strikingly similar to Trump’s victory, in that it caught the pollsters, commentators and political classes by surprise, and for many voters was an outpouring of anger against the political status quo, the elite.

Where we go from here, I don’t think anyone yet knows. In the UK, it seems that the political class have not yet realised that there is going to have to be, at some point in the future, some serious discussions about how the electorate are given a genuine say in how things are run. The same conversation will have to happen in the US.

Of course, the electorates of other countries will be watching all of this with great interest.

It could get quite exciting.