Mickey prefers to be red. In fact, during baseball season, Cardinal Nation Red. But on this day when he has reached 550 days in a row with at least one post, Mickey is blue. Blue with the rain and the pain and the failure to gain, not Toronto Blue Jays blue.
Mickey is lost at sea when it comes to the question, “What should I write about today, tomorrow, and the day after that?” He had some big ideas to write about… but they seem to be too big for his little head to really get around.
He wanted to write something about sex and sexuality and sex education. But you already know why he’s a clueless idiot on this particular topic. His sex life was screwed up at ten and further messed over by religious teachings, and even more religious teachings when he tried to change his religion. So, he really has no wisdom to share on the matter. He is better off sticking within his innocent little pre-pubescent mindset where he can be perpetually no more controversial than a twelve-year-old. But by now you have probably learned enough about Mickey to know that he is enough of a real writer to not be able to stay within the safe zone. You will probably be pretty upset with him over some post in the near future. (I know that is partly wrong too. Being upset is never pretty.)
This weekend he actually had an uptick in views on WordPress, probably due to making the Twitter Nudists aware of his post called, “Why I Need to Be Naked.” They went and read it and looked at the pictures and told Mickey via Twitter that it was good (apparently not realizing you can Like things on WordPress.) And they also looked through his old posts for the other nudist things on Catch a Falling Star. “Free to Be Naked” and “Nudist Notions” got dug up and read again and again. And I should warn you, more nudists than ever are following Mickey on Twitter now. He will probably bore you with more nudist-friendly stuff.
Now that Mickey is finally clear of bankruptcy, he started buying and collecting dolls again. Chilly Willy is not a plastic doll, but the rest of these are new since the bankruptcy ended. There is a good chance he will write about this subject again too, though clearly, it is a sign that his mental stability is going South fast. Old coots on Medicare should probably not be playing with dolls so much.
But Mickey is still blue, though he longs to be red. Arthritis pain, diabetic problems like sores, memory loss, and low blood sugar all work on his mood in very bad ways. But you never know when the sun will come out again. And, since we have been scorched by hot weather for more than a month, a little cool blue might be better than red hot anyway.
Yes, I am philosophically a pessimist. I expect always that the worst outcome is the one I will have to live with. Hence, I was not as devastated by Donald Trump’s election as some who were too confident that Hilkary would win. And the climate crisis seems to be good reason to prepare for the worst that can happen. Some of it is already happening, already here.
But you really should listen to what this career futurist has to say about it.
The near future is, as documented with evidence in the video, far worse than we think it is. “Just doom, nothing else,” as Robin Williams declares. But too much pessimism at this point is the death of us. We have to keep trying. We can’t just give up.
A cheerleader who is not me.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not the right person to be elected head cheerleader on this issue. I have given in to despair and weeping on more than one occasion already. Since the election of Trump, the conservative pillaging of the Supreme Court, the roll-back of EPA guidelines and restrictions, the erosion of fundamental voting rights (soon to be followed by other rights,) the mismanagement of the economy, the Covid crisis, wildfires in the West, the insurrection after the election of Joe Biden, and more and more things that signal doom and possible Armaggedon, we have to battle the urge to lie down and die.
Here is where the optimism of the Reverand Peale is critical.
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, also definitely not me.
If we stop trying, our loss and subsequent death is insured. It is only by continuing to fight that we will have a chance to save ourselves. And this is beginning to happen everywhere.
In 2020 we turned out against the Evil-Clown President in record numbers. We wrested the control of the government out of the hands of the corrupt elephants and put it back in the hands of the hard-working but mostly stupid jackasses. Biden’s donkey-like devotion to following through on the work that needs to be done got us through the rest of the pandemic, getting ourselves vaccinated and acclimated to life with the reality of the new deadly virus.
We need, like the faun, to be one with our environment.
We have tried hard and kept at it to achieve much-needed climate-control legislation. The fossil-fuel industry has made it difficult, and we nearly gave up on the Build Back Better program, but it seems through perseverance that we may have finally gotten a critical piece of that over the hurdles after all.
One thing definitely indicated is that we will need to turn out to vote in the midterm elections again this year. If we don’t, the elitist elefantiasis party will take away all our gains and punish us again, playing their golden fiddles while the world burns.
We will never have the magic we need if we don’t try to conjure it.
But despair is still not warranted here. We know what we can do to solve the problems that face us. We have done similar things before, with the Cold War, World War II, and the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980s. What’s more we have the tools we need already, and what we don’t have is quickly being developed. There are plans in the works for mountain-sized storage batteries, massive solar-power arrays, and wind farms (many of which are already built and operating.) We can rebuild and upgrade the entire power grid, not just in the USA, but for the whole world. It needs, of course, to all be weather-proofed, meteor-proofed, solar-storm-proofed, and, hopefully, greedy-Republican-idiot-proofed.
We are not beaten if we don’t give up.
And as the futurist tells us in the video you didn’t watch, pessimists prepare us for disaster, but only the optimist can make us successful in living through it to a brighter future beyond.
This is an amazing new picture from the James Webb Space Telescope.
We are learning more and more about the universe every single day. There is a space probe orbiting Jupiter right now that is learning things with its magnetometer about the Jovian magnetosphere that we never even suspected could be true. We may have found an earthlike planet with intelligent life circling the secondary star in the Alpha Centauri binary system, our closest neighbor among the stars. The Chinese have a robot on the moon that has successfully planted and grown a seed on the surface of the moon (inside an artificial environment, of course.) And the Democrats may be about to pass the biggest climate-change-combatting bill that has ever yet been passed, making it possible that the corporation-corrupted Republican Party won’t kill us all for short-term profits after all.
I have been finding dancing children and singing children and ventriloquists and artists and face-painters and cartoonists on Tik Tok that fascinate me and keep me from my writing by entertaining me until my batteries are almost dead.
My tongue hangs out to the floor at the shere beauty of the creativity of ordinary people on an art-intensive social media site.
I have definitely been searching for reasons not to be depressed and give up on life as it gets too incredibly hot and politically entirely too wrong-headed and crazy to allow us to individually thrive.
But life finds a way. We are not alone. And we are not without our own inner resources.
I don’t expect you to accept my thesis whole-souled and become a nudist if you are a lifelong textile enthusiast. I understand the problem. The post-Victorian-era Christians, especially the fundamentalist extremists who think Adam and Eve’s nakedness is a sin after the fall from grace, work hard to put the fear of nakedness in everyone… from childhood onward.
But I have definitely learned in my older age that being nakedly open to new ideas is actually a good idea, not a sin. Human beings do not have to wear clothing to be mentally and physically healthy. And often, it is the very repressive nature of religion that causes the perversions and health problems that fire-and-brimstone preachers warn against.
The main stumbling block to a world where nudism and naturism are accepted as not only natural, but essential to a happy life, is the association nakedness automatically has with sexual activity. Pictures of naked people, especially naked and attractive people, are almost automatically considered porn. The average viewer of naturist and nudist materials assumes that the purpose of such material is to reach a sexual, and therefore evil, outcome. How nudist materials can actually affect the sex-lives of any but religiously repressed teenaged boys, I cannot effectively explain.
You may have noticed from being both a parent of your own children and a keen-eyed observer of other people’s children (only to prove you are a better parent than they are, of course) that it is harder to keep clothes on young children than it is to get them to take their clothing off. Kids enjoy swimming, playing, and running around in giggly circles completely naked. That urge to do such things that are inherently offensive to elderly church ladies has to be carefully trained out of them.
Being naked, though routinely trained out of us as a furless species, has provable health benefits. Vitamin D, acquired by spending time exposed to sunlight, is crucial to emotional health, and low quantities of vitamin D in the body result in a susceptability to severe and life-threatening depression. People are also attracted to other people with a healthy tan (not eaten up by skin cancer or constantly peeling from sunburn, but a healthy tan.) And I can testify from experience with nudism, if you are comfortable enough with the people around you to take off all your clothes in their presence, (family, doctors, other health professionals, and fellow nudists you both know and that show a reciprocal comfort with being nude in your presence,) there is a culture of trust, respect, and love around you.
And this portrait, recently done by me, of my young friend Naomi, demonstrates that there is no privacy issue from participating in nudism. This portrait of a young girl is not porn. She is not engaged in any sexual act. Her most private parts, though exposed, are not the focus of the portrait. She was using the pool when she saw me sketching things and offered to pose for me. I had her permission. I had her mother’s permission. And they both approved of the result, though Naomi thought I did not get the breasts right. I was given permission to share this picture, as long as I didn’t tell you the girl’s real name. It does not look enough like her so that her school friends will know that it is her if she doesn’t tell them. She is happy to now own the original, and there is really no way for you to track her down or accuse her of being an exhibitionist. There are many far more concerning pictures of girls her age on the internet and social media. It ends up simply being a work of art.
People need to see other people naked more. It gives you confidence that your naked body is no uglier than anybody else’s. It makes you feel like those naked people you are seeing are holding nothing back and are far more open and honest than the average politician. especially Senator Ted Cruz. (Special note to the world: I personally feel that Senator Ted Cruz is the one person on this Earth that you do NOT want to see naked. Not every nude body is a good thing.)
I myself regret that I waited so long to embrace nudism. I had chances as far back as age 28. But I had a traumatic experience, a childhood sexual assault, to overcome before I could ever have a positive body image. And now that I have come to a place of peace and self-acceptance, I can finally recapture some of that naked joy we all had once as a young child. Adam and Eve were supposed to be perfect in the eyes of God when they were comfortably naked in front of Him. It was only after the fall when they were wearing clothes that they were sinful.
So, now that I have not convinced you that you should become a nudist, I hope I have at least given you something to think about. And think about seriously. If you don’t believe the naked human form is a work of art, then I should warn you… don’t go into art museums and galleries.
It is getting harder and harder to climb the new day’s hill to get to the summit where I can reasonably get a good look at the road ahead. At almost-64, I can see the road ahead is far shorter and much darker than the highway stretching out behind me. It is not so much a matter of how much time I have spent on the road as it is a matter of the wear and tear the mileage has caused.
This weekend I had another depressing free-book promotion where, in five days, I only moved five books, one purchase, and four free books. I have made $0.45 as an author for the month of June.
I was recently given another bit of good advice from a successful author. He said that I shouldn’t be in such a rush to publish. He suggested taking more time with my writing. Hold on to it longer. Polish it and love it more. And now that I have reached sixteen books published on my author’s page, I have basically beaten the grim reaper in the question of whether or not he was ever going to silence me and my author’s voice. I can afford to live with the next one longer.
But the last one, A Field Guide to Fauns, practically wrote itself. It went fast from inspiration to publication simply because the writer in me was on fire and full of love and life and laughter that had to boil over into hot print exactly as quickly as it did. The additional writing time afforded me by the pandemic and quarantine didn’t hurt either. Once in print, my nudist friends loved it.
This next one has the potential to boil and brew and pop out of me in the same accelerated way as that last one did. Of course, it has been percolating inside my brain basically since the Summer of 1974. So, this is no rushed job. The Wizard in his Keep is a story of a man who tries to take the children of the sister of his childhood best friend to a place of safety when their parents are killed in a car wreck. But the only safe place he has to offer is in the world of his imagination. A world he has bizarrely made real. And that best friend comes searching for the children. And so does a predator who seeks to do them all grievous harm.
In many ways, it is a story already written.
So, I am rekindling the flame that keeps the story-pot boiling. And more of it is already cooking. And I am recovering from the cool winds of disappointment, as well as the dark storm clouds of the nearing future.
This is now actually a two-year-old post. Both of the books mentioned here are published and available from Amazon. As far as holding on to the books longer, there is no problem with that on Amazon. Editing, improving, and re-publishing a book is actually easier than publishing it the first time. Nothing about this old post has been made untrue by the passage of time. I am still probably the best author of books like these whose published books almost never get read.
I do not claim to be prescient. But like any overly smart and perceptive person, I often see what’s going to happen before it happens. Sometimes it is almost as eerie as a Vincent Price movie. Sometimes eerier. After all, on the 60’s Batman TV show, Price played the ridiculous villain Egghead, and was completely creepy while doing it, but still, you know… Egghead.
One thing that I have to predict about the coming darkness is about politics. I mean, the current Republican administration, where it is decisions by all Republicans all the time, has become nothing more than a monster movie. Not merely a bad monster movie, but a super-creepy-bad monster movie with a gigantic orange rubber rooster as the main monster.
This is what the great orange rooster looks like in black and white.
The reason it is bad is because, basically, to become a member of the Republican Party’s elected elite, you basically have to have your heart removed. Heartless, soulless monsters have a tendency to do things like take away Meals on Wheels for invalid seniors, health-care services from Planned Parenthood, and any hope of ever having affordable health insurance that actually pays for health care.
Senator Ted Cruz grinning about taking away Obamacare
And now, the monsters who have taken control of the theater are pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement because… well, apparently clean air isn’t good for decaying, desiccated monster skin and shriveled monster lungs that don’t breathe air anyway.
So here are my predictions for the coming darkness.
What people like me will look like in the future. That’s me in the middle.
I won’t live to see it. My body is breaking down at age 60. My lungs are compromised by years of bronchitis and flu. I am diabetic, so my very body chemistry is betraying me. There is a family history of heart disease. And I have already gone broke once on health care bills that the health insurance people really don’t pay for. (They are in the business of collecting premiums, after all, not making people well.)
What a lovely oxygen-free environment we will have!
As the climate changes take away large parts of our food production and resources, and the sea rises to take away land and major cities, people will be at war increasingly over diminishing resources vital to a population of seven billion souls. Graveyards and unburied bodies will become a part of every monster-movie scene.
Kiss me, Baby!
Love will become more complicated, because people who are selfless and put others before even their own life will die out first. The heartless, selfish, and often stupid ones will have the best chance for survival because they put themselves ahead of everyone else, and so have an unfair advantage over those who are not content with mere survival and exhibit self-sacrificing love.
You’ve never had a friend like me. And I can always eat you later if need be.
So, if you find my black-and-white monster movie post upsetting with the darknesses I am sincerely predicting, please remember, this is a satire post in a humor blog. The way it is supposed to work is that you wake up to the factors that make it upsetting and decide to do something for yourself to change them. Everybody doing a lot of the same little thing to make the world better can move mountains and fly to the moon. Big things don’t happen without everybody taking a hand. Maybe we can dream dreams once again and make some good things come true.
Weeping violins were playing on Mom’s kitchen radio as she had it playing something from the classical music station in Des Moines. The announcer said something about the music being composed by a Venetian master, Tomaso Albinoni, in the 18th Century, and now being known as being synonymous with sorrow and sadness. As Valerie placed the spoons and the forks, she felt like it was the perfect background music for her entire life.
“So, Rance, be honest with me,” Mom said. “Did Val apologize to Dash for the misery she caused him at the dance?”
“Well, she made a promise to him about what she would never do again.”
“That’s not the whole truth,” said Valerie.
“Oh? Why don’t you explain your version of the conversation then,” said Uncle Rance with a smile that seemed somehow sad.
“Uncle Dash was afraid I was being like Stacey, that I was going to run away and never come back.”
“And what did you tell him about that?” Mom asked point blank.
Tim and Aunt Jen sat silently at their places at the table. They were both looking at her with unsmiling lips tightly pressed together… as if they feared the answer.
“You know what a cardinal is, right?”
“The little red song bird?”
“Yes, the bright red bird we often see in the snow around Christmastime. The one that doesn’t fly away when the winter comes? Never migrates? Never flies away from the cold, and the wind, and hard times?”
“What does that mean? That you promise not to run away from your problems?”
“Well, if a little red songbird can do it…”
Mom put her hand over her eyes. Was she crying? Had she said the wrong thing?
”Do you have any idea how much what you did probably hurt your Uncle Dash? You know he loved your Daddy very much. And he’s tried so hard to be like a father to you since…” A sob caught in Mom’s throat.
“She told Dash that she didn’t blame him. She blamed herself.” Uncle Rance had no right to say that part out loud. But… she couldn’t say it herself. Not after shouting it in front of Charlotte and the whole world. Why didn’t they just talk about it all behind her back like normal parents do?
“Did you know that Tim kissed Dilsey on his date? Did he tell you that?” She knew that one wasn’t hers to tell. But she needed to change the topic. Needed it desperately. She could always apologize to the king of brats later.
Tim was grinning at that.
“Is it true?” Aunt Jen asked, smiling for the first time in a while.
“How did you know that, Val?” Tim asked.
“Dilsey told me.”
“Was she bragging… or complaining?”
“What do you think, Lothario?”
“More like Romeo, I think.”
“I hope you didn’t do something you didn’t have her permission to do,” said Uncle Rance.
“You know, Val, I wasn’t done with the other topic yet,” said Mom.
“What topic would that be?”
“You are not the only one who was devastated by what your father did.”
“I know that, Mom. I was here when we lived through all of that… more than once, I think.”
She hadn’t taken the hand away from her eyes since she first put it there.
“I love you, Val. You know that, right?”
“I love you too, Mom.”
“And you know I worry about the fact that suicide might run in families… I’ve thought about it. And I am afraid you have too. Can you…?”
“Promise you?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t. But I am like the cardinal, Mom. And suicide is a form of running away.”
At that point, nobody had dry eyes but Valerie.
“I… I want you to write the thing about cardinals down for me, Val. I need that in writing.”
All Val could do was nod, or she would be bawling too.
“Well, now that we have all ruined our appetites, maybe we should think about actually eating something,” said Uncle Rance with a soft chuckle and tears still in his eyes.
The dinner changed into a rather quiet discussion about more normal family things, and Dilsey and Tim’s first kiss. And, sporadically, some roast beef and mashed potatoes was eaten too.
Later, as the Kelloggs were leaving, Tim stood in front of Valerie at the door. Tears glistened in his eyes again.
“You know, Val, I really liked the cardinal thing too. Blueberry is in the hospital. One of my Pirates is very ill.”
“Dilsey told me about that too.”
“Did she tell you we need to visit her? There are hard winter times coming our way there too.”
“We’ll be there for her, I promise.”
She wrapped him in a hug then. The first time in a very long time. He didn’t resist. If anything, he was hugging her back.
Dilsey Murphy made her way back to Val’s usual seat on the bus the first thing in the morning. Usually Valerie rode to school of a morning with Ricky in his hand-me-down Ford Fiesta, but he had football practice after school on Mondays through Thursdays. So, Val was available to sit with Dilsey on a cold Tuesday morning in October.
“Hello, Dils. Something the matter?”
“It’s Blueberry. She’s sick this morning. Not going to school like usual.”
“How’s Mike taking it? Worried?”
Mike Murphy was Dilsey’s younger brother. Blueberry Bates was his eighth-grade lady love. They were always together like salt and pepper shakers on a restaurant table.
“He’s devastated. The Bates sisters took Blue to the emergency room last night. She’s in the hospital now.”
“Oh, that’s terrible! We’ll have to go visit her as soon as possible.”
“She’s not conscious. Maybe a coma…”
Dilsey sat down next to Valerie and the first thing Val did was put an arm around her and pull her in close. Dilsey laid her head on Val’s shoulder. Tears followed.
It’s funny how things work in real life. Not so long ago it was Val in tears, laying her head on Mary Philips’ shoulder. Then Mary had been the actual leader of the Norwall Pirates, the infamous liars’ club. But when Mary was going away to college, she didn’t turn to any of the boys to lead the club. She asked Valerie to do it. And then Val shouldered the responsibility until she finally handed the leadership of the infamous werewolf chasers and undead wizard whackers off to her cousin, the Terrible Timothy.
“Is it enough just to hold you like this? Or is there something you wanna talk about?”
“Holding me helps. Did I tell you I kissed him?”
“On your date?”
“Yeah. After the movie.”
“That’s sweet. But don’t let him take advantage of you.”
“I know… he’s a boy. And he tells a lot of lies.”
“Big ones… black in color… with hair on them… and sometimes spider legs.”
Through the tears, Dilsey chuckled at “spider legs.”
“But he has a good heart.”
“He does. You know he was pretty awful to Blueberry about the whole transgender thing, though.”
“Yeah. Blue has never really been a boy. But it was hard for him to accept that when he found out she was born with a penis.”
“Empathy for others was never something he was good at.”
“The Bates sisters convinced him though. They showed him the x-rays that showed that Blue also had malformed ovaries. She was only a boy on the outside part.”
“I didn’t know that. I always thought she just needed to be a girl that badly.”
“Do you think it’s easier to be a boy than it is to be a girl?” Dilsey looked up at Val and the tears were gone.
“I suppose it is to be your brother Danny. He always sees the funny side of everything and life is mostly one big joke to him.”
“Yeah, but my brother Mike is the opposite. He takes things way too seriously. He fights with Mom more than any of the rest of us. And he really loves Blue, even though he tells me how much he struggles to understand her most of time. Mom couldn’t force him to go to school today because Blue is in the hospital.”
“Mike is a gallant young man. You’re right. It must be harder to be him than it is to be either of us.”
“I wouldn’t want to be Tim either. It has to be hard to be that smart and that imaginative all the time.”
“I suppose you’re right. More than half of all the weird things the Pirates have done over the years happened because of what was going on in Tim’s evil brain.”
“His brain’s not evil, Val. He has a good brain.”
“Sure he does. And it’s a fine thing for you to admire him for it. I just say things like that ‘cause… you know… cousins.”
“Sure. It’s just like me saying brothers.”
“You know, Dils, it’s a good thing to be able to talk like this. Me and two former Pirates have started meeting down at the skinny-dipping pond. It might be good to have another girl there.”
“Really? Who are the other two?”
“Ricky Porter and Billy Martin.”
“Oh, uh… I don’t really know them.”
“Well, if you come along with me next time, you’ll get to know them better. It could be good for all of us. Some of us have problems with depression and it helps to be able to talk about anything and everything with people who will at least try to understand.”
“Yeah. That might be good.”
“I will get in touch with you for the next time.”
“Yeah, um… okay.”
The two girls sat together in silence for the last couple of miles to Belle City High School. It felt good to hold somebody like Dilsey. She was warm and soft and good to be near. And when they left the bus together, Valerie felt like now she was the wise older girl, while Dilsey had taken Val’s former place as the apprentice. She would be happy to pass on all the things she learned from Mary when she was younger. In fact, it felt like a real important responsibility.
Catch a Falling Star 
550 on a Bad Weather Day
Mickey prefers to be red. In fact, during baseball season, Cardinal Nation Red. But on this day when he has reached 550 days in a row with at least one post, Mickey is blue. Blue with the rain and the pain and the failure to gain, not Toronto Blue Jays blue.
Mickey is lost at sea when it comes to the question, “What should I write about today, tomorrow, and the day after that?” He had some big ideas to write about… but they seem to be too big for his little head to really get around.
He wanted to write something about sex and sexuality and sex education. But you already know why he’s a clueless idiot on this particular topic. His sex life was screwed up at ten and further messed over by religious teachings, and even more religious teachings when he tried to change his religion. So, he really has no wisdom to share on the matter. He is better off sticking within his innocent little pre-pubescent mindset where he can be perpetually no more controversial than a twelve-year-old. But by now you have probably learned enough about Mickey to know that he is enough of a real writer to not be able to stay within the safe zone. You will probably be pretty upset with him over some post in the near future. (I know that is partly wrong too. Being upset is never pretty.)
This weekend he actually had an uptick in views on WordPress, probably due to making the Twitter Nudists aware of his post called, “Why I Need to Be Naked.” They went and read it and looked at the pictures and told Mickey via Twitter that it was good (apparently not realizing you can Like things on WordPress.) And they also looked through his old posts for the other nudist things on Catch a Falling Star. “Free to Be Naked” and “Nudist Notions” got dug up and read again and again. And I should warn you, more nudists than ever are following Mickey on Twitter now. He will probably bore you with more nudist-friendly stuff.
Now that Mickey is finally clear of bankruptcy, he started buying and collecting dolls again. Chilly Willy is not a plastic doll, but the rest of these are new since the bankruptcy ended. There is a good chance he will write about this subject again too, though clearly, it is a sign that his mental stability is going South fast. Old coots on Medicare should probably not be playing with dolls so much.
But Mickey is still blue, though he longs to be red. Arthritis pain, diabetic problems like sores, memory loss, and low blood sugar all work on his mood in very bad ways. But you never know when the sun will come out again. And, since we have been scorched by hot weather for more than a month, a little cool blue might be better than red hot anyway.
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