Monthly Archives: December 2015

December 12, 2015 · 5:33 pm

Flu Season

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The very real possibility exists that it is illness that will end me.  I have six incurable diseases (diabetes, arthritis, COPD, hypertension, psoriasis, and an enlarged prostate).  I am also a cancer survivor (malignant melanoma in 1983).  My fragile, diseased body is like a house made of straw, and the Big Bad Wolf came knocking at my door yesterday.

The Girl with the Red Bird

My daughter, the Princess, came home from school yesterday noon with the flu.  She moaned and cried and was burning with fever.  She vomited on the bathroom floor.  Of course, the retired guy who stays home all day is the one who had to tend her and clean up after her.  But he is also the one most at risk of dying from the flu or from pneumonia as a side-effect of the flu.  I am the son of a registered nurse who worked in the ER and still gives excellent medical advice.  I have been taught how to care for the sick with proper precautions.  The poor Princess is already feeling better today after the overnight miracle of Theraflu.  I am no longer worried for her.  Now it is me that is at risk.

I identify myself with the cardinal.  Yes, the bird is the mascot of my favorite sports teams.  But it is more than that.  It is the resolute little bird who doesn’t fly away when the winter comes..  No flying south with the snowbirds when the world is covered in pure, white, cleansing snow.  It stays through the ice and cold to watch over its personal territory.  But it is not invulnerable to the ravages of winter.  Many of its bright red and pugnacious kind succumb finally to old age and the cold, and die in winter.  But I have no regrets.  If the final winter has come… well, I cannot exactly say I have no regrets, because I have goofed up a lot over rime… but I am satisfied.  If my life has to be complete from this moment, then it is a good life, well-lived.  And I am satisfied.

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December 11, 2015 · 7:53 pm

The Underdog

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Yesterday I failed to add to the list of magical powers I possess the ability to make football teams lose.  I have always believed that all I have to do is root for a team to win and they will lose.  I have tested out this power thoroughly over the years.  Through most of my life I thoroughly detested the Dallas Cowboys.  I hated the way they always seemed to have the advantage, the way they would always injure players on my favorite teams and force them out of football for the rest of the season, and they would always win.  Even after moving to Texas and, still rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals even after they moved to Arizona, I rooted against the Cowboys in every game they played.  I am amazed that they didn’t go undefeated for three decades.  But a little miracle called “General Manager Jerry Jones” happened to the Cowboys.  I moved to Dallas at a time when the team was being dismantled and dismembered by a magical ability of Jerry’s that seems very similar to my own.  The Cowboys became the underdog.  So much so that I actually began to root for them when they were not playing the Cardinals.  This, of course, magnified Jerry’s magical gifts tenfold.  The Cowboys became the same kind of perennial losers the Cardinals had always been.

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So, you can easily see that I am one of those superstitious nerd-body nincompoops who always pulls for the underdog.  I admit to helping the Boston Redsox win their first World Series at the end of “Babe Ruth’s Curse”.  Those perennial also-rans benefited from playing my beloved Cardinals’ baseball team.  So I rooted against them fiercely, and they won.  In fact, underdogs sometimes win even in spite of magical ability.  Some times they just have to win.  In 2006 the Cardinals won the World Series on the strength of Chris Carpenter’s throwing arm and Albert Pujols’ bat, along with a team of underdogs and ne’er-do-wells who all played far above themselves.  I rooted for them every step of the way.  And we lost some battles, but we won the war.  Such is the way it must be in this world.  The ultimate victory belongs to the Underdog, the unlikely superhero that is sometimes confused with a flying frog.

The football Arizona Cardinals came through for me again in the same way last night.  They were up against another good team in the Minnesota Vikings.  And in spite of the fact that I was rooting for them every step of the way, I saw them pull victory from the jaws of imminent defeat.  With mere seconds left, they created a fumble and recovered it, preventing a game-tying field goal that was practically in the bag.  The Cardinals are now in the playoffs with an 11 and 2 record, poised to make another run at the Superbowl.  That may not seem like an underdog to you, but if you look back over the years of rooting for a team that was often the butt of jokes and were usually losers like the current Cowboys are, then you can see that these are underdogs at the end of a long, long uphill climb.  And aren’t we all like that most of the time?  Aren’t we all climbing the mountainside in spite of numerous avalanches, storms, and falls?

Listening to the radio station KLUV doing their annual radiothon for Children’s Hospital while taking my daughter to school this morning, I heard the heartbreaking story of a little boy who is both autistic and epileptic.  Apparently he collapsed in school, and when taken to Children’s ER, was found to have leukemia as well.  I had to stop the car and cry for ten minutes.   It never seems fair to have to listen to stories like that.  You want to help the underdog to win.  But you feel totally powerless.  I don’t have enough money to pay my own medical expenses, and my daughter had to come home early with a fever.  But believe me, I had to donate $20 to Children’s Hospital.  It is a tiny, meaningless amount… but the magic is in the doing and the believing.  I will continue to use my goofy magic to the very best of my ability.

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December 10, 2015 · 5:05 pm

Mickey is Magical

I have decided that since I have a tendency to write science fiction and fantasy, with a special emphasis on the fantasy part, I should actually be able to do magic.  It doesn’t take a lot of self-examination to see that it is so.

Teacher Magic

wonderful teaching

As a teacher I know several powerful magic spells.  I have the power to put teenagers into a deep and restful sleep.  All I have to do is start a lesson focus and heads drop to desks and snore-music fills the part of the room that my blah-blah doesn’t.  I also have a powerful ability to make teenagers hate things.  All I have to do is testify with my best honest-to-goodness face that something is good for them, and they will thoroughly hate it.  Protein at breakfast is good for you?  Gotta hate that.  Independent reading of books is good for you?  I have just made the entire school library radioactive by saying it.  Think what good a teacher could do if the principal would only let them say, “Illegal drugs are good for you!” or, “You should join a street gang, it would be good for you!” or even, “Racial prejudice is a good thing for our white society!”  (I know I would never actually feel good about saying those things, and I could never make the proper honest-to-goodness face, but that last thing was actually tried by a teacher I once worked with… he said it because he believed it… and even the white kids were instantly up in arms and got that teacher fired.  Come to think of it, that was the only lesson he ever taught that I actually approved of.)  An even more powerful teacher magic is to forbid things.  Anything forbidden by a teacher or a teacher’s rules is the only thing they want to do.  I was able to get kids to read more by forbidding them to read library books during lessons.  I found it strengthened the urge to occasionally catch them doing it and lecture them about how they will end up unable to flip burgers at McDonald’s because they will let interesting and complicated stuff get in the way of mindlessly doing repetitive tasks.

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Traffic Magic

I have an amazing magical power over stoplights.  I can unfailingly turn them bright red just by approaching them, no matter what color they were five and a half seconds before.  If I am in a hurry, I have the power to make that red light last for more than the three minutes that is supposed to be the maximum for the cycle.

I can also make old people (of course I mean other old people) drive slower in the fast lane by driving behind them.  I can make young guys in Bubba trucks zoom in front of me and nearly kill me simply by having a few inches of space between my front bumper and the rear end of the car I’m following.  I don’t know how they fit those big old Chevys and Ford Broncos and Dodge Rams in those little spaces which are less than half as long as their vehicles, and do it while using one hand to give me the finger out their window.  I suppose they have fold-able bones like a rat so they can squeeze through tight places.

Laughing Magic

20150105_161714 I suppose the magical power I am proudest of is my ability to magically make people laugh at me.  (Yes, they always say they are laughing with me, not at me… but we all know how humor really works.  We laugh because we are really happy that it didn’t happen to us!)  I am able to put on the clown nose and people automatically laugh almost as hard as they laugh at me without the clown nose.  I am able to say things in weird words that stimulate your brain to shout silently in your head, “That jest ain’t right!”, and you automatically think, “Funny!”  So, with all this magical power, I have concluded… I am a wizard!

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December 9, 2015 · 9:05 pm

Gosh I Love Maps!

There are so many places in this world (or maybe out of this world) to visit and become a part of, that it really helps to have a map to navigate the places (especially imaginary places) with the mind’s blurry eye.

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If you are ever lifted up into the stratosphere in your house by a twister, bonked on the head so you see wicked witches flying on brooms, and set down in a place filled with magical dwarfs called Munchkins… the above map might prove very useful.  I found it’s like as a kid to be thoroughly helpful as I read not only Frank L. Baum’s first book, but also his second and fifth books.  It really helps to know where you are in Oz.

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Edmond Hamilton’s hero, Captain Future, needed a map of worlds like Futuria as well as Mars, the Moon, and Venus in his 1940’s Science Fiction Adventures from Captain Future Magazine.

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This is Fritz Lieber’s city of Lankhmar where giant Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser commit numerous acts of stealing, wenching, fighting and drinking.  A map like this would help them in their many dealings with wizards, magicians, and strange beings.

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This map could easily prove to be the salvation of Robert E. Howard’s hero, Conan the Barbarian.  The well-traveled Conan was a peerless fighter, but not much of a thinker.  So barring the odd smart girlfriend and witty, fast-talking sidekick, Conan couldn’t do without it.20151209_110653

This whole map thing was inspired by this old book that I have thumbed through so much the pages are falling out.  It contains maps of Middle Earth, Pern, Pellucidar, Atlantis, the planet Arrakis from Dune, and Narnia.

It is now the inspiration for my holiday art project.  I will create my own imaginary map from my hometown novels, a map of Norwall, Iowa, that will include the homes of many characters, fairy battlefields and secret lairs, the Gingerbread House where the witch lives, and more.  As you can see… I have only just begun.

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December 8, 2015 · 8:46 pm

Reading Old Books

My personal library is a final destination for a multitude of used and well-worn books.

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Half-Price Books employees used to know me by name.  They don’t now so much any more, because poor health has cut down on available funds, and they hire new people all the time.  But I have bought a number of books just cruising the Dollar-or-Less shelf.  A case in point is a recent purchase of an old book by one of my all-time favorite authors, Terry Pratchett.

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You can see why it was only worth about fifty cents.  It is all scuffed up and dog-eared from previous owners.  Of course, I know how to mistreat a book as well as the next guy, and some of the books I bought bookstore-new long ago look worse than this one does.  But that’s not what’s important.  The good part is on the inside.  You have to put in some effort to get at it.  It is an extremely funny and highly imaginative book.  Johnny is a kid living in Blackbury, England in 1996 (the present day of the story, though it is about time travel and drifts back to the early 1940’s).  He thinks he is just a stupid kid with more stupid-ness about him than he has pockets to keep it in, but he is blessed with an idiot’s ability to think outside of his own head (whatever the heck that means).  There just happens to be an old bag lady named Mrs. Tachyon who just happens to have a Tesco grocery shopping cart that just happens to be a time machine (or so Johnny and his stupid-kid friends just happen to believe).  Johnny and his stupid-kid friends, Bigmac, Wobbler, and Yo-less (don’t ask, okay) along with the girl Kirsty (who is definitely the opposite of a stupid kid), find Mrs. Tachyon lying in a bloody lump in an alley way, and sort of inherit the shopping cart when they get the old lady to a hospital.  And of course, the shopping cart is very unusual with its bags of mysterious wobbly stuff and its resident hyper-vicious cat named Guilty.  It soon accidentally transports the kids back to 1941 when German bombs (like the one in the title) are falling from the sky on Blackbury.  The very day, in fact, when the street they are standing in is supposed to be destroyed by a German bomb, according to history.

Of course, I can’t help but love any book by Terry Pratchett.  But this one is quirky-wonderful and full of surprises.  I really can’t even tell you more about it without spoiling something magical.  I won’t, however, recommend that you read this book.  After all, I had a lovely time reading it, and you certainly don’t need to share in that.  I can keep it all for myself.  No, don’t even think about trying to find a copy and read it!  I think it is out of print anyway.  Don’t you dare go to Half-Price Books!

I will continue to read and fall in love with old books.  I have a few in my library that haven’t actually gotten around to reading yet.  And I have a large number of books I want to read again.  Old books are the best books, and I will continue to say that… at least until I have a new book of my own coming out.

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December 7, 2015 · 7:29 pm

Framing the Picture

Framing the Picture (a poem about autobiography)

I pop out of bed and look in the mirror

And there is horror in that picture

Wrinkles, spots, and a crypt-skinned leerer,

Stare back from that ancient mixture.

It isn’t so terrible to be really old.

But you have to learn to live with the mold.

And it makes me long for when we were young,

When the sounds and feels of Spring had just sprung.

Remember how we were limber and spry?

And fully intended to write our names on the sky?

But looking back the picture will shift,

Deeds that were done shine brighter with fame,

With polish and retelling, the purpose to lift,

We remake the picture by placing the frame.

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The picture is called That Night in Saqqara I Was Taken By Surprise.  It is built on the themes of life versus death, youth versus age, fear versus courage, and probably other things that I never thought of because the interpretation is not entirely up to me.  I can indicate that the Mummy Imhotep has suddenly come back to life.  The picture on the wall behind him is supposed to suggest what he was like in life, at least in his own mind when he had it carved and painted in his tomb.  The boy Tanis is supposed to appear startled, but not afraid.  He wears the Ankh around his neck that symbolizes life and resurrection.  If the mummy kills him, as horror movie monsters once portrayed by Boris Karloff are apt to do, the mummy himself is proof that the dead live on in some way.  The god Horus on the sarcophagus is practically kissing Tanis on the lips  The hawk-headed god is also leading the procession on the side of the sarcophagus, which you may interpret as having the naked boy in line with the others following the god of resurrection and life.  But all of this drivel is me telling you what to see, and you are welcome to disagree with all of it.  Truth is our own to define.  And we define it by putting a frame around it and saying, “This is what you should look at.”  Aren’t we the silliest of creatures when we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that we can actually do that?

Magicman

This is called Wakanhca’s Daughter.  Wakanhca in the language of the Tetonwan Dakotah Sioux means “lightning dreamer” or, loosely translated, “Magic Man”.   But the interpretation is again up to the viewer.  The brave in the foreground could be that magic fellow since the shield he carries has figures on it that represent a bolt of lightning and a man flapping his arms.  The girl, however, is white-skinned and fair.  Possibly my own daughter rather than his?  Except the Princess wasn’t born until years after this was painted.  The stag, as well as the two Native Americans, is illuminated in a way that is brighter than what you might expect from a night of thunderstorms.  Is he a warrior’s spirit animal?  He is not behaving like a real deer or elk.  And is he looking at the girl, or the warrior?  Consider too, these framings;

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So, what, in the end is all this nonsense about “framing the picture”?  We are the authors of our own stories.  We get to set the whole thing in a frame of our own making.  Does that mean anything important?  Oh, probably not.

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December 6, 2015 · 5:46 pm

The Current State of My World

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I am busy reinventing myself.  There are things that have to get done.  I have to raise my finances phoenix-like from the abyss I found myself in three years ago after five hospital trips in five years devastated my bank accounts and credit rating at the same time I was forced to retire from my teaching career by health problems.  I went through a debt-reduction program with the advice of a law firm in California that has helped me reconcile 35,000 dollars worth of credit card debt.  I am nearing the end of that painful belt-tightening process, which can be likened to putting a pumpkin in a vice and cranking the handle tighter than you ever believed was possible, and I did not pop the pumpkin.

Health matters are better too.  I am farther away from doom’s ultimate doorway than I was when I retired.  No longer teaching has kept me from getting the four cases of the flu yearly that I had become accustomed to when I was in the germ-filled giant Petri  dish commonly known as a public school classroom.  Lovely Aetna health insurance people decided they would no longer pay for my maintenance medications for diabetes, depression, blood pressure, and cholesterol, so I was forced to cut down and cut out medications.  Ironically, the less I take the meds, the better I feel.  Maybe… just maybe… I am not going to drop dead tomorrow.

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I am stuck indoors quite a lot, because COPD and not using an inhaler and sensitivity to every allergen in Texas makes for a less than wonderful outdoor experience.  So I have taken to reorganizing my library and various vast collections of junk.  I am rereading old and beloved books.  I am playing with my toys more than ever.  I am winning computer baseball games.  I just pitched another perfect game.

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I have been painting the house too, when the weather allows, making the outside of things look a little better too.  The football Cardinals have been winning.  And the Iowa Hawkeyes were perfect up until the narrow loss to Michigan State.  12-1 is still the best they have ever done.

I have recently been able to shave and look a little less Santa-like, though psoriasis is trying to peel my lower face away again, so I will probably be growing my author’s beard and Gandalf hair back again.  And I have completed collections and written up a storm.  My work is not yet complete on this Earth, and there needs to be a new Mickey in town to clean up this cowboy-infested heck-hole where I live my life.

I know this has been a rather goopy-goose of a post, but I am feeling good for a change, and it is hard to do humor about everything going too well.

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December 5, 2015 · 10:37 pm

Old Timey Stuff

Okay, here is something to look at if you are ridiculously old and out of date like me.  If you have read any of the doll collecting posts or the Pez dispenser posts I am constantly and obsessively posting, then you know I have hoarding disorder almost as bad as my Grandma Beyer, the old string-saver.  She had a collection of used Christmas wrapping paper in her basement that went back to the 1930’s.  It cost her nothing to collect and keep that hoard.  She merely had to be loony about never letting anyone tear their wrapping paper when she wrapped presents.  So, inspired by that, I have found many ways to collect and hoard many kinds of free collections.  This is one I keep on my computer, hijacked images from the internet that remind me of my past.

I’m sorry if you don’t know who or what some of these things are.  Drive-ins, Davy Crockett, The Captain and Mr. Moose, NBC in color on Grandma Beyer’s RCA color TV… these are important things from childhood in the 50’s, 60’s, and early 70’s.

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Do you know who and what they all are?  Does it matter to you like it matters to me?  This is just a glimpse of the museum inside my mind.  I can’t help it.  I am almost 60, and I have been absorbing the detritus of culture since I was four.  That’s a lot of images to collect and catalog.  Have fun making your own collection.  It doesn’t cost anything… as long as nobody sues me over copyrighted images.

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December 5, 2015 · 4:52 pm

Today, I Say

Wings of Imagination

This silly little blog thing that I have been doing for a while now… has 750 followers.  It is hard to believe that many people on WordPress have time to waste.  But I do appreciate having you look at my wacky Paffooney doodles and even sometimes reading my deplorably monkey-headed words.  I have more posting to do today, and this year… but I wanted to say thank you.

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December 4, 2015 · 8:35 pm

Notes From the Archangel Michael

I was born and raised a Methodist.  But I married into the Jehovah’s Witness faith.  Yes, those annoying little people who come knocking at your door offering free Bible studies and wanting to talk to you about the “good news from God’s Word the Bible”.  I was one of them for the better part of 20 years.  And I want to tell you from the outset that I have been guilty of knocking on doors.  I have been threatened to have the dogs sicked on me.  I have been threatened with guns by Winchuks, Hickenloopers, and other rednecks.  Laughingboy Larry, a seventh and eighth grade former student of mine even begged me to come to his door so he could throw a pie in my face.  I requested lemon meringue pie because… mmm, lemon meringue!  Jehovah’s Witnesses are not bad people.  They are real honest-to-God Christians who believe and teach the essential lessons of Christianity, Love and Forgiveness.  Some of the finest people I have ever met are self-sacrificing, hard-working Jehovah’s Witnesses.  I would never speak against them.  But this post has to explain why I no longer am one of them.

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I have always been a reader of the Bible.  I began seriously reading it in my youth when I was a victim of sexual assault and the life-threatening depression that can cause.  A very thoughtful and loving Methodist minister, the father of my best friend, taught me how to use the Bible to seek answers and find comfort.  As a Jehovah’s Witness, I have read the entire Bible cover to cover twice.

But I have also always been a Christian Existentialist, even before I knew what that was.  I believe that existence precedes essence.  There has to be a real, observable rock in front of me before I grant faith in the existence of a rock.  I don’t accept “rock-ness” as something that is real because other people tell me that “rock” exists.  If God is going to be the rock upon which I build my faith, then I have to observe that God is real.  I need proof.  Superstition is acceptance of something without proof.  As far as I can tell, almost all religions… organized religions… are based on superstitions.  “How do you know that Jesus loves me?”  “Because the Bible tells me so.”  “Why must I believe I go to Heaven when I die?”   “Because your father and his father before him believed it.”  “Can I accept these as real reasons… as evidence?”  “Of course not.  These things follow the patterns of superstition.”

“Kill the infidel! Die a hero’s death, and you will be granted 99 virgins in paradise.”  “How do you know this to be true?”  “Allah has told me in a dream.”

 

So, if you follow any of this (undoubtedly due to the same curse of relentless intelligence that plagues me), you are probably wondering why I don’t just come out and claim to be an atheist like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens?  Well, because I believe in God.  I have seen the proof.  When I talk to God, he answers me.  When I ask him to guide me, he sends signs and leads me to the answers I seek.  He comforts me, even though it is only by helping me to find comfort in my own mind… my own self.  He helps me find the power within me to do what is right and overcome what is wrong.  Why, then, am I not still a Jehovah’s Witness?  Why am I not still knocking on doors?

The truth, as I see it, is… each of us must find God for ourselves.  Each of us must obtain the certainty we seek with our own efforts, or be satisfied with a perpetual state of not knowing all the answers.  Either result is perfectly acceptable.  Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you that you can’t obtain eternal life unless you believe what they believe, do what they do, and accept everything just as they interpret it from their magic book.  Personally, I believe there is no eternal life.  I am made of star stuff (as Carl Sagan used to say, because science has mathematically proven it is true).  When I die, the configuration of star stuff that is me will simply be no more.  But I have existed.  And my atoms will go through a large number of processes that disperse them and turn them into something else.  My individual consciousness will be disbanded, but the overall consciousness of the universe will remain.  The universe is greater than I am.  In fact, the whole human race could wink out of existence in a massive fireball that consumes planet Earth, and the whole still remains.  I don’t have to worry about any of it.  I am the author of my own story.  I am responsible for its content, both good and bad.  And I am not sorry for any of it.

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Most of the angels used in this post are by William-Adolphe Bouguereau…and one is by me.

Now you know the awful truth.  Mickey is a humanist.  He thinks for himself about everything… even matters of religion.  How horrible!

“Tell me, oh great and powerful, Vishnu, will I be offered 99 virgins in paradise if I kill him for you?”

“No, Singh-Rama O’Malley.  You are simply being stupid and superstitious.  And besides, that particular superstition doesn’t belong to my religion.  You are mixing things up.”

“Oh, sorry, Lord Vishnu.  But is it okay if I don’t kill myself for my error?”

“Singh-Rama, you are a child of the universe… no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.  And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding… as it should.”  (Note; These last words are the words of the poet Max Ehrmann in his wise poem, Desiderata.)

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