Monthly Archives: December 2023

December 3, 2023 · 2:05 am

Bird is the Word

Birds are always talking,

And birds are always squawking,

And they are using bird-words,

These are the words I heard.

Twitter-pated – this word comes from the owl in Bambi and means not being able to think straight because you’re in love.

Aviary – is a great big bird house, big enough to fly around in

Feather-dusted – to you and me it means clean, to a bird it means the feathers are dirty

Bird-brained – don’t be insulted if a bird calls you this. It is a compliment.

Fume-fluttered – you gotta fly and get away from that bad smell.

Wing-walking – it’s how you get from here to there if you’re a bird… Duh!

Wakka wakka – it’s those dang ducks again, always telling jokes!

Egg-zactly – as precise and perfect as an egg.

Coo-coo-karoo – that stupid rooster wants us to get up again at daybreak. It’s like a bird can never sleep in!

Clucker butter – Can you believe that KFC place? Butter on improperly cremated dead chickens (ah, well, they were only chickens after all).

Now that you have less than one per cent of the bird vocabulary, please don’t try to tell me what they are saying. I really don’t want to know!

Art from Mickey’s Digital Obsession

I love the fact that I can so easily turn old pen-and-ink drawings like this doodle into a digital art masterpiece. All I had to do is trace the old drawing on the touchscreen with the digital tools available to me now. My electronic stylus and the free drawing app make re-inking the old drawing like a painting. The brush, line, or effect that you lay on the old drawing takes only a swish of the stylus. And it is so much cleaner and more stylish than the old way of inking a pencil drawing with a ballpoint pen.

Take for instance this digital drawing called “The Skinny Dipper.” It begins as a simple drawing filled with color. And then you can layer details over and under, blend in more colors, shapes, and shadows. It can become much more detailed and realistic. I used a photographic background under it, and then continued to make it an original drawing by painting over both the figure and every detail of the background.

And it didn’t stop there. I gave the boy, or possibly girl, a scuba suit to preserve his or her modesty and allow a deeper dive.

Reading Assignments

Yesterday I revealed that I have no earthly clue how to be a best-selling author with a blog and a brand and all those other things that marketing racketeers keep pettifogging at me about. I may not know anything about marketing and being an author, but I do know how to be a writer. I have learned to say things flat out when they are on my mind and I know how to do the two essential things that a writer has to know how to do… I can practice writing every day, and I can read.

If you are one of those few who actually read my blog regularly, you may remember some talk about the classic novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Believe it or not, I know how to read and understand great books. You can find me on Goodreads.com to see some of the wonderful things I have been reading, and to decide if you might like them too. If you are not on Goodreads already, why not? That is now your next assignment, young reader. Oops. You know what they say, “Old English teachers never die, they just lose their class.”

Today’s little self-imposed book report is about a book that I read my senior year in high school, 1975. It is called The Other by Thomas Tryon. It is a book that was made into a movie. The author is also a Hollywood actor that has been in many films. He wrote the screenplay for the movie version. But I have to tell you, the movie pales in comparison to the book itself. Movies simply cannot give you the rich depth of atmosphere and the delicate psychological nuances that a book can. Movies show you something. A book can explain something in detail. And that is a key difference.

Michael Beyer‘s review

Dec 22, 14 · edit

5 of 5 stars

Read in April, 1975

This is a fascinating book for it’s ornate description of long-ago New England life, and the eerie way old houses and long-gone people can twist and mangle our lives. It is a psychological horror story about twin boys, Niles and Holland Perry. They are polar opposites. Niles is warm and loving. But Holland is distant, cold, and sinister. Their grandmother Ada, a lovely old woman with deep Russian roots, has taught the boys to play an ESP-sort of game, reaching out with their minds to feel what a bird feels, or a squirrel, or a magician to find out how he did a certain disappearing trick. She has no idea that the mind-game will have such a devastating effect on both the twins and ruin so many peoples’ lives. I cannot say more without revealing the magic the author uses to bring this book to a totally unexpected and devastating conclusion. This book is not everyone’s cup of tea… and it may be many readers’ cup of arsenic… but it worked its spell on me. I recommend it if you wish to be chilled to the bone marrow.

I am reading this book now for the third time. It is rare that I read a book more than once, because every time through changes your perception of it and risks making you dislike it. But certain books are immune to that effect. And I am re-reading it now because I want to closely analyze the techniques he used to create his surprise ending. There-in lies the reason for this reading assignment that I have given myself. That is how I roll as a writer.

Into December… Remember?

Susu, my imaginary granddaughter, is looking forward to her first Christmas. As I invented her less than a year ago, this will be her first. I, myself, have foresworn the celebration of the holiday for more than twenty years as I participated in my wife’s Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs. They reject the holiday as a pagan invention. I don’t argue with their right to believe what they choose to believe. But as I can no longer conform to their strictures, I have reignited my interest in the cherished memories of the holidays in my past. Particularly relevant now that my parents are both gone from this world.

“So, you are going to play Santa and give me a present, Grandpa?”

“Yes. But since you are an imaginary child, Susu, it will probably be an imaginary gift.”

“Oh, good! That means I can ask for a purple hippopotamus… with wings!”

That, of course, makes me laugh. She has her father’s sense of humor.

This will be a December to Remember. There’s a song in there somewhere.

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December 1, 2023 · 1:34 am

Toonerville, a Place I Once Lived In

There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there. That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa). It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley.

Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in 1884. Louisville, of course is one of the two cities that claims to be the inspiration for Toonerville. Apparently the old Brook Street Line Trolley in Louisville was always run-down, operating on balls of twine and bailing wire for repair parts. The people of Pelham, New York, however, point to a trolley ride Fox took in 1909 on Pelham’s rickety little trolley car with a highly enterprising and gossip-dealing old reprobate for a conductor. No matter which it was, Fox’s cartoon mastery took over and created Toonerville, where you find the famous trolley that “meets all trains”.

I didn’t learn of the comic strip’s existence until I was in college, but once I found it (yes, I am the type of idiot who researches old comics in university libraries), I couldn’t get enough of it. Characters like the Conductor, the Powerful (physically) Katrinka, and the terrible-tempered Mr. Bang can charm the neck hair off of any Midwestern farm-town boy who is too stupid to regret being born in the boring old rural Midwest.

I fancied myself to be just like the infamous Mickey (himself) McGuire. After all, we have the same first name… and I always lick any bully or boob who wants to put up a fight (at least in my daydreams).

So, this is my tribute to the cartoonist who probably did more to warp my personality and make me funny (well, at least easy to laugh at! ) than any other influence. All of the cartoons in this post can be credited to Fontaine Fox. And all the people in them can be blamed on Toonerville, the town I used to live in, though I never really knew it until far too late.