Category Archives: humor

May 23, 2021 · 6:40 pm

H.P. Lovecraft, The Master of Madness

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When I was but a young teacher, unmarried, and using what free time I had to play role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller with students and former students and fatherless boys, I came across a game that really creeped me out.  And it was quite popular with the kids who relied on me to fill their Saturday afternoons with adventure.  It led me on a journey through the darkness to find a fascination with the gruesome, the macabre, and the monstrous.  The Call of Cthulhu game brought me to the doorsteps of Miskatonic University and the perilous portals of the infected fishing village of Innsmouth.  It introduced me to the nightmare world of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

“H. P. Lovecraft, June 1934” by Lucius B. Truesdell

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Old H.P. is as fascinating a character as any of the people who inhabit his deeply disturbing horror tales.  He was a loner and a “nightbird” but with little social contact in the real world.  He lived a reclusive life that included a rather unsuccessful “contract” marriage to an older woman and supporting himself mostly by burning through his modest inheritance.  As a writer, he got his start by so irritating pulp fiction publishers with his letters-page rants that he was challenged to write something for a contest article, and won a job as a regular contributor to “Weird Tales” pulp magazine.  He was so good that he was offered the editorship of the magazine, but true to form, he turned it down.  He resembled most the dreamer characters who accessed the Dreamlands in various ways, but let their mortal lives wither as they explored unknown continents in the Dreamlands and the Mountains of the Moon.  He created a detailed mythos in his stories about Cthulhu and Deep Ones and the Elder Gods.  He died a pauper, well before his stories received the acclaim they have today.

I have to say that I was so enamored of his stories that I had to read them as fast as I could acquire them from bookstores and libraries all over Texas.  My favorites include, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and At the Mountains of Madness.  But reading these stories lost me hour upon hour of sleep, and developed in me a habit of sleeping with the lights on.  In Lovecraft’s fiction, sins of your ancestors hang like thunderheads over your life, and we are punished for original sin.  A man’s fate can be determined before he is born, and events hurl him along towards his appointed doom.  H.P. makes you feel guilty about being alive, and he shakes you to the core with unease about the greater universe we live in, a cold, unfeeling universe that has no love for mankind, and offers no shelter from the horrors of what really goes on beyond the knowing of mortal men.

Loving the stories of H.P. Lovecraft is about deeper things than just loving a good scare.  If you are looking for that in a book, read something by Stephen King.  H.P. will twist the corners of your soul, and make you think deep thoughts to keep your head above water in deep pools of insanity.  I know some of his books belong in yesterday’s post, but we are not talking about happy craziness today.  This is the insanity of catharsis and redemption.

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May 23, 2021 · 6:35 pm

Books You Should Read If You Desire To Go Happily Insane

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Yesterday I wrote a post about religion that revealed my lack of connection to organized religion (I am still in recovery from fifteen years of trying to be a good Jehovah’s Witness) and my deep connections to God and the Universe and That Which Is Essential.  I feel that it is good evidence for the theory that being too smart, too genius-level know-it-all goofy, is only a step away from sitting in the corner of the asylum with a smile and communicating constantly with Unknown Kadath in his lair in the Mountains of Madness  (a literary allusion to H.P. Lovecraft’s world).  And today I saw a list on Facebook pompously called “100 Books You Should Read If You’re Smart”.  I disagree wholeheartedly with many of the books on that list, and I have actually read about 80 per cent of them.  So it started me thinking… (never a good thing)… about what books I read that led to my current state of being happily mentally ill and beyond the reach of sanity.

2657To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee is the first book on my list.  The Facebook list had no reasons why to argue with, so here are my reasons why.  This book is written from the innocent and intelligent perspective of a little girl, Scout Finch.  It stars her hero father, Atticus Finch, a small-town southern lawyer who has to defend a black man from false charges of rape of a white woman.  This book makes clear what is good in people, like faith and hope and practicality… love of flowers, love of secrets, and the search for meaning in life.  It reveals the secrets of a secretive person like Boo Radley. It also makes clear what is bad in people, like racism, lying, mean-spirited manipulations, lust, and vengeance.  And it shows how the bad can win the day, yet still lose the war.  No intelligent reader who cares about what it means to be human can go without reading this book.

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Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell is the second book on my list.  This is really not one book.  It is a complex puzzle-box of very different stories nested one inside the next and twisted together with common themes and intensely heroic and fallible characters.  Reading this book tears at the hinges between the self and others.  It reveals how our existence ripples and resonates through time and other lives.  It will do serious damage to your conviction that you know what’s what and how the world works.  It liberates you from the time you live in at the moment.

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The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini is the third book on the list.  This will give you an idea of how fragile people truly are, and how devastating a single moment of selfishness can be in a life among the horrors of political change and human lust and greed.  No amount of penance will ever be enough for the main character of this book to make up for what he did to his best and only friend… at least until he realizes that penance is not all there is… and that it is never too late to love.

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The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak is number four.  This book is about an orphan girl, the daughter of an executed communist, living in Nazi Germany in the early 1940’s.  It is a tear-jerker and an extremely hard book to read without learning to love to cry out loud.  Leisel Meminger is haunted by Death in the story.  In fact, Death loves her enough to be the narrator of the story.  It is a book about loving foster parents, finding the perfect boy, and losing him, discovering what it means to face evil and survive… until you no longer can survive… and then what you do after you don’t survive.  It is about how accordion music, being Jewish, and living among monsters can lead to a triumph of the spirit.

Of course, being as blissfully crazy as I am, I have more books on this list.  But being a bit lazy and already well past 500 words… I have to save the rest for another day.

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May 23, 2021 · 6:16 pm

H. P. Lovecraft Gaming

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Back in the early 1990’s my little group of game players turned the full power of nerd obsession on the fantasy role-playing game Call of Cthulhu.  It is a totally weird little game based on the novels and short stories of H. P. Lovecraft.   It is a game about solving mysteries that, if successfully solved, will lead you to confrontations with all-powerful ancient evils that you cannot win against.  And you keep playing until your character absorbs so many insanity points that they go completely insane.  Your character then becomes a minion of demonic and irresistible evil that the next player character you roll up will have to hunt and defeat.  It is not a game you ever win.  You merely have to learn to survive and stay sane, things at which the game is set up to make you fail.

In 1991 the television gods took an old vampire soap opera that I had loved in the 60’s and remade it.  Dark Shadows came back to life starring Ben Cross as Barnabas Collins (the Chariots of Fire guy playing the vampire role that would later have a part in the downfall of Johnny Depp.)  The lead player in our group, a kid who was such a nerd that he would go one to be in the intelligence division of the Marine Corps, decided his character would have to be the vampire Barnabas Collins.  He reasoned that the only way to fight big evils was to fight back with evil that had been converted back to goodness.

And his instincts were good.  Barnabas and his lady love, Victoria Winters, were the only player characters not eaten by the minions of Nyarlathotep in the first adventure.  And Victoria had to be raised from the dead by having Barnabas turn her into a Vampire.

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Of course, the very next challenge would be from a white witch voodoo priestess from New Orleans, the Vampire hunter Sofia Jefferson.  (She was an NPC, not Sofie’s player character).  And she had a special potion that, given to a vampire, would restore it to normal human life.

This was a problem for Barnabas, because he really depended on his powers as a vampire and was not willing to go on without those powers.  So the vampire hunter had to be avoided without killing her and putting an end to her good work fighting evil.  If you can’t tell from the picture, Sofia was blind, yet could see with uncanny vision through sightless eyes.

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The next player character added to survive more than one adventure borrowed Luis’s vampire idea by making his character from the movie Darkman, a Liam Neeson movie about a doctor who had burned his face off, but could become other people by wearing their cloned skin.  He was the lead investigator to help solve the werewolf problem in the bayou , and took on the dark circus adventure where the foolish sideshow people were trying to make money exhibiting the captured Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

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There was a lot of death and horrible murders in those game sessions, but not committed by the player characters.  They had to keep good notes and draw conclusions and manage their characters’ powers and assets.  Notes like these;

And so, while the game never ended to my satisfaction, the players did get the feel of acting in a horror movie and fighting on the side of goodness against evil.  It was weird, but definitely worth doing.

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May 22, 2021 · 7:15 pm

That Spirit of Adventure (in pictures by Mickey)

There is a life of Adventure out there, beyond the castle gate.

And you must seek and find it, my young, impatient son.

And you must seek to find it, in order to be great.

And maybe slay some dragons, to prove just what you’ve done.

Or maybe take a fatal risk, to shine light upon your fate.

And travel down life’s highways, to prove the honors that you’ve won.

But show some caution, and patience, don’t be late,

For the Spirit of Adventure is not a ghost, my son.

But, it may be a mummy when you meet upon that date,

So take some good advice, my boy, and speedy you must run!

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May 21, 2021 · 6:59 pm

The Magical Recipe

I made a vow that I would be more funny. But that is a difficult promise to fulfill. So, I decided to ask for some advice.

And I have the benefit of a vivid imagination, which I have had since childhood. And so, that means I know an awful lot of imaginary people. And of those, the magical ice-dragon of Doofenburgh supposedly has the best sense of humor in the nine realms. So, I went to ask his advice.

“Oh, great and laughable comedic ice dragon Bloojuice! I have come seeking a way to write a humorous blog today guaranteed to make anyone who reads it laugh so hard they will blow milk out of their nose.”

“Mickey, you know you are not the dungeon master this time around. And you are messing with a powerful, magic-using ice dragon. What if I decide to eat you, since that would be funny.”

“Well, I should remind you, then, that I have six incurable diseases. Possibly seven now that the pandemic is nearly over. Don’t you think it’s possible that I might taste pretty bad?”

“Good point. Well, my recommendation to you is to brew up a magical stew. I shall give you the recipe for humor potion with boogers in it.”

I gagged in my mouth a bit at the booger thing, but I nodded agreement to the plan. I got Bob the Apprentice to drag the silver cauldron in to begin.

“You know this thing is stainless steel, right, Master?” Bob said.

“Oh, of course. I called it silver for magical reasons.”

Bob accepted that readily. Poor Bob is not bright.

“Now what, oh ludicrous lizard Bloojuice!?”

“Remember that student you had, the one that was nutty about being a body-builder and becoming super-strong?”

“Yes, of course. Miguelito the Muscle Maniac.”

“Right. And remember that time he visited his little sister’s kindergarten class and pushed his sister and two of her friends on the swings using alternating two-handed pushes?”

“Yes, Sarita and her pals Dondi and Alejandra.”

“And he got carried away and pushed too hard. Alejandra fell butt first directly into the lap of the teacher monitoring recess. Dondi went up and over the bar so many times that he ended up tied to the top of the swing set. And Sarita was launched over the merry-go-round, landing on her soft little head, saving her from breaking any arms or legs?”

“Yes, but that story is about children getting hurt. That’s not very funny.”

“It worked for years on America’s Funniest Home Videos. And that whole TV show Malcolm in the Middle. So, write it down and put it in the pot.”

So, I did. “Now what?”

“Put the boogers in.”

So, I took hold of Bob’s ankles and shook him upside down over the cauldron. I may have gotten a bit more than just boogers and pocket change into the stew.

“Now it will make people laugh so hard that milk shoots out of their noses?”

“Well, only if you run around to everyone who reads it and force them to drink some milk.”

“And if I do all of that and still nobody laughs…?”

“Then come back here and I will try eating you.”

Okay, I guess I’m doomed.

‘

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May 20, 2021 · 6:55 pm

Back to the Basics

I have reached the point where I need to stop griping and complaining and just get back to being funny. So much of this blog has been trying to twist up bowties of honesty and irony and make them twirl as I wear them. Or insulting the orange-faced former Prexydent because he has been so successful in making my life harder and more painful.

As a writer, I am most effective at evoking the past, both distant and recent, and pointing out what was silly, what was necessary, what was sad, and what was beautiful about growing up in this chaotic world full of irony, honesty, and twirling bowties.

So, let me promise to be more funny going forward… well, at least fifty percent of the time. Because no one can laugh one hundred percent of the time and still have lung power enough to breathe with. But I believe humor is what this life is supposedly all about, and I need to spend more time laughing about it and wasting less time moaning about it..

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May 18, 2021 · 6:51 pm

Novel Tuesday Review

This novel should see publication within a month… or maybe more, depending on how lazy I really am.

For some time now I have been using Tuesdays to show an entire chapter or canto of a novel currently being written. It has resulted in a number of novels being created that I might otherwise have given up on. They may not be my absolute best work, but they are good enough for self-published projects. I have basically been working with novels that needed to be rewritten in order to pass muster with my own in-built “crap detector.” I took apart my first novel, Aeroquest, and turned it into five novels, AeroQuest 1,2,3 and now 4 with 5 soon to begin.

This will be the next novel I take up in this space. It is the tail-end lump of remains of the original novel including the final battle for dominance in the fractured Galtorr Imperium, the rescue of Ged Aero’s infant daughter, the final establishment of the New Star League, and avoiding the destruction of the entire universe in a struggle at the event horizon of a black hole called Little Swirl. I only have to add about 75 percent more detail, action, and event to the story in rewriting it.

You may have also seen other novels come into being in this Tuesday space. Here are the results of those.

These Tuesday posts, then, have been and will continue to be a chance for you to see novels in progress coming together (or failing to come together) as the author (namely nutty old Mickey) works out what they are all about and what happens on the next page written.

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May 17, 2021 · 8:21 pm

The Oubliette

Every Dungeons and Dragons player, especially game masters, know about the oubliette.  In the foundations of towers in the castles of the French you often find a windowless room with the only entrance in the ceiling.  It is a dark hole where you throw captives you want to simply forget.  In fact, the name comes from the word in Middle French, “oublier” which translates to “forget”.  Now, of course, as a former school teacher, I know about oubliettes.  I have been in one more than once.  I have tossed bad kids in there more than once.  But the thing I had to learn about “forget holes” is that there is always a way out.

Eli Tragedy

I had a principal who decided I had betrayed him because he overheard me talking sympathetically to a teacher he had been berating for asking that he discipline students she sent to him for disruptive behavior.  He overheard me saying that he would be more understanding if he tried to manage a class himself once in a while.  For my indiscretion he took away my gifted class and gave me in its place a class composed entirely of students who had been repeatedly sent to him by teachers for being disruptive and unmanageable.  It was a class from hell.  Really… from hell… Satan’s stepson was the first student he put in that class.  I was told I would have to discipline them entirely without help from him.  But as tough as it is teaching twenty dysfunctional learners at once with no outside help, it was do-able.  In fact, I liked some of the kids in that class.  (Hated some too, though, because you can’t always like every kid no matter how crappy they act.)  I didn’t manage to teach them much English.  They all spoke Skuggboy fluently the whole time.  But I did endure.  In fact, when that principal was suddenly jobless two-thirds of the way through the year and replaced by a new principal, I got a chance to get some back.  She overhead Satan’s stepson doing his comic stand-up routine in response to my specific directions and came in to remind him who was in charge in the classroom and who deserved respect.  That reminder lasted for a good fifteen minutes and was a prelude to a parent-principal conference that same afternoon.  I saw his evil smile turned upside down for the first time that school year.

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Whenever I put a student in the oubliette (asked them to stand outside the classroom door until I could talk to them about their bad behavior) I never left them there more than five minutes.  I would quickly give the class the directions they needed to continue on their own, and then I would go out to execute the prisoner.  It usually was an explanation of how I wanted them to behave, and then giving them a choice, whether they wanted to go back in and do the right thing, or they wanted to visit the office with a written explanation by me of exactly what they did wrong.  Even though nothing would probably happen to them in the office, they rarely chose that option.

So, there is always a way out… but there are many forms of the oubliette, and no one is immune to being sent there.

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May 15, 2021 · 7:28 pm

Songs Sung with Paint Brushes and Colored Pencils

I tend to draw and photograph and make artistic images about the things that I love.

Swashbuckling adventure.

Magic.

Scantily dressed young girls.

Iowa landscapes.

Forgotten dreams that came back to me in the night.

Spaceheart and Mai Ling.

Stories with amazing features and paintings with soft sable brushwork.

Painted in oil.

Revealing who I used to be…

And who I still am.

Songs sung with paintbrushes.

And colored pencils.

Drawings done with syncopated tunes.

And full-color half-notes.

The people and places and faces…

Of who I am and who I love…

For life is a poem sung out loud.

And to live is an artform.

So we must make art to live.

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May 14, 2021 · 7:46 pm

Ich Bin Jetzt ein Naturist

The actual card is inside this plastic case. I thought it might be a bad idea to show my membership number and everything.

Yes, my membership card for the AANR arrived in the mail yesterday afternoon. AANR is the American Association for Nude Recreation. My membership is for two years in the South West Region.

But before you immediately unfollow me for my blazing stupidity, let me explain a bit why this nonsense is actually a good thing.

You see, I have had a very long road of avoiding becoming a real nudist. A former girlfriend introduced me to the whole idea of nudism back in the 1980’s. But, I was terrified of being naked in front of other people, mostly because as a victim of a sexual assault as a child, I had traumatic memories about nakedness, but also because my parents and grandparents had taught me to be ashamed of showing off my nakedness to anyone outside the family. And also because I was a middle-school teacher at the time and parents doubt your abilities to keep their children safe if they know you like to prance around outdoors naked.

But I find I have a certain need for nakedness in my life. It is not a sexual thing. Rather it is a sensual thing. And surprisingly, God made us to be chemically dependent on being naked at least for a portion of our lives. Going without sunlight deprives you of enough vitamin D to cause serious depression, self hatred, and even thoughts of self harm. And oxytocin is generated in the pituitary gland in response to being naked among like-minded others. It’s the chemical that makes Scotsmen more fertile than other men if they don’t wear underwear under their kilts. Now, with diabetes, arthritis, and psoriasis plaguing my old flesh, I find that being nude helps immensely. Naked under the sun dries and cools the skin to fight psoriasis plaques, balances my blood sugar quicker, and warms my aching joints.

And I think most people from childhood onwards experience a longing for the innocent freedom of being without the restraints of clothing. I admit to being more than a little obsessed with childish nudity as displayed in many of my artworks. But that does not in itself make me a pervert or a pederast. It is not a sexualized obsession. To be honest, naked children are sexually kinda icky. They don’t engender feelings of arousal, but rather an urge to parentally protect and watch over them, keeping them safe from the demons that ruined my own childhood.

You actually gain confidence and self-control by practicing social nudity with other nudists. This is something I had long suspected was true, but didn’t actually learn until I went for a day to the Bluebonnet Nudist Park North of Dallas.

And it may well be that having the membership card and using that to legitimize the stories I write about nudists and nudism is the only benefit I will get from the membership. I have a desire to go camping in a tent with other nudists, or participate in a nude bike ride in California or New Orleans. But my health keeps me from doing those things totally on my own. And my family members think I am crazy and want nothing to do with going along to help with those plans.

So, I am left being a nudist mostly by myself, and mostly for reasons of writing humorous stories about it.

But now that I finally have an official membership card, I can truthfully say, “I have now lost my long-running battle to not become nudist. Mickey now officially is one. On paper at least.

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