Wayward Landlubber

     I came to writing rather late in life. I had always wanted to write, but the seed matured slowly. In the late 1990s I read a book I had heard about on Fresh Air With Terri Gross, who has introduced me to a few wonderful writers. The author she introduced to me at that time was pen-named, F X Toole, a taxi driver, boxing trainer, and "cut-man", who at 70 wrote a book of short stories titled, Rope Burns. One of those short stories was Million Dollar Baby, which Clint Eastwood optioned as the movie of that name. Toole did not live to see his story on the big screen. Let me be clear. I am not a boxing fan. I grew up admiring Mohammed Ali, but not for his prowess in the ring. Still, the stories Toole wrote stirred something in me. Over the next decade I tried to write my own stories which ended up in the recycling bin. Around 2007, I took a writing class at Chemekata and the first shoots of inspiration emerged.       My style is influencerd by authors I have read all of my li

     I grew up in the cold war. We read  Spy novels, written by former spies like John Le Carre and Graham Greene.  And watched movies, James Bond of course, but there were others. Humorous spy cartoons and TV shows were also abundant, from Spy vs Spy in Mad Magazine, to Boris and Natasha on the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon show, to OUR MAN FLINT and GET SMART on TV. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, we have had little to laugh at on that spellbinding level. Not until the Republican party became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Crazy Caucus.       The latest installment of WTF comes from the Wall Street Journal, once the pre-eminant print business daily in the world. That was before Rupert Murdock purchased the paper to make it the premier rightwing print daily for oligarchs. Wait, isn't that like a spy embedding into an organization and posing as a friend of capitalism who is really a friend to oligarchic capitalism? I'm confused. Hell, I don't even know anymore if capita