They came in the mail every November in the 1960’s. Particularly important was the Monkey Ward’s catalog because there was a Montgomery Ward Catalog Store in Belmond on Main Street. Mom and Dad could order, pay for, and pick up things there, particularly Christmas and birthday gifts. The four of us; my little brother, my two younger sisters, and I would argue about who would get to look at it next for hours at a time (the catalog, not the store… although the man who ran the store sold tropical fish in the back, so I could look at that for hours).
I, of course, dog-eared different pages than my sisters Nancy and Mary did. And David was eight years younger than me and was into baby toys, blocks, and books.
Nancy owned the three on the left.
I was nutty about model trains… and so was Dad.
I am amazed at how cheap things were back then compared to now. Of course, things were more easily destroyed because of the cheaper plastics and simpler ingredients and materials common in the 1960’s. So, it is truly amazing how many of those toys I still have. And how many survived me only to be destroyed by my own children.
And it often wasn’t enough to look at just the Monkey Ward’s catalog. (Grandpa Aldrich always called it “Monkey” instead of “Montgomery”, a pretty standard old-farmer joke in the 60’s). Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich always got a copy of the Sears catalog. And we would pour over that to find treasures that Monkey Ward’s didn’t have. That was inconvenient for Mom and Dad. The nearest Sears store was in Mason City, 50 miles northeast.
I was 10 years old in ’66.
Mary Poppins was a 60’s Disney hit.
Just the mention of Christmas catalogs of old when discussing with sisters flashes me back to the time when I was in grade school and Christmas time was all about being good for Santa because… well, toys.
And old Christmas catalogs still fascinate me. I love to look back through ten-year-old Mickey-eyes at a simpler, kinder time. Although, if I’m honest with myself, it probably wasn’t really any better than now. I just choose to believe that it was.
There was a time when Tarzan was one of the ruling heroes of my boyhood fantasies of power and self-fulfillment. And, while Tarzan was a cartoon show on Saturday morning, comics by Burne Hogarth, movies in the theater in color with Mike Henry, or a weekly series on TV with Ron Ely, he was always Johnny Weissmuller to me. Weissmuller who played both Tarzan and Jungle Jim in the Saturday afternoon black-and-white movies.
I have to admit, I didn’t identify with the character of Tarzan as much as I thought of myself like the character “Boy”, played by Johnny Sheffield in movies like “Tarzan Finds a Son”. It was a significant part of my boyhood to imagine myself being like Boy, free from practically all restraints, able to gad about the dangerous jungle nearly naked with monkey pals and no fear. If I got into trouble by believing my skills were greater than they really were, I would save myself with ingenuity, and, barring that, Tarzan would rescue me. And, believe it or not, sometimes there were fixes that Tarzan got into that he needed me and Cheetah to be creative and get him out of. I knew in my heart that one day real life would be like that, especially once I grew into Tarzan and stopped being just Boy. That idea was in my head so loudly that several times I went to Bingham Park Woods, stripped down, and played Boy in the Jungle.
As in the previous essay about Heroes of Yesteryear, I learned important things from Johnny Weissmuller on Saturday TV. He taught me that all you really needed, even in the darkest jungles of Africa, was confidence and courage. You could stand up to any deadly danger without the protection of any armor, practically naked, in fact, if only you had that heroic goodness of heart. The little boy I was then still believes that whole-heartedly even in the aging body of an old man.
So, Tarzan continues to live in my memory, a part of me, an essential part of my education. He is me and I am he. But only in my mind. Me in a loincloth, swinging on a vine now… and probably going splat like an overripe melon on the jungle floor… well, that is too ridiculous to even imagine being real anymore. Yet he lives on in me. And he battles the metaphorical leopard-people of modern life through me. Unarmored. Confident. And unafraid.
I am now deep into the plot of my novel, The Boy…Forever. How deep you may ask? Well, at least up to my eyeballs.
I am busy looking at the story through the eyes of four characters, each telling their part of the story in a different way, but in first-person narrative.
I should explain that I am writing this novel as an epistolary novel, a novel made up of written artifacts.
So, let me comment on each of the four main narrators.
Anita Jones is telling her views of what happened in a series of letters to her cousin in Dallas, Dottie Jones. She starts off the plot by getting a letter from her cousin in St. Louis, Icarus Jones, that is basically a suicide note. Dottie’s answer letters are included in the novel, but only as commentary on the action, since she is far removed from the events being narrated. Anita is a highly sensible girl who has started a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship with Eddie Campbell, and her highly sensible life is thrown into serious disarray by her cousin’s somewhat bizarre plight.
Icky himself is only the author of the suicide note, so his involvement in the story, as the most important character (even mentioned in the title), depends on the narration of others.
…………………………………………………
Sherry Cobble is writing her Nudist’s Diary to chronicle life in the 9th grade in Iowa as a happy and enthusiastic naturist whose main goal is to recruit all of her 9th grade friends to be naturists. Her twin sister Shelly is also a nudist and is supposed to being doing her half of the diary, but her boyfriend has happily accepted the invitation to become a naturist already, and her interest in the diary has waned.
But Sherry’s diary entries soon reveal a serious conflict. Icky Jone’s girlfriend talks her step-father into moving all the way to Norwall, Iowa in order to be near to Icky. And Fiona Long soon becomes interested in Sherry’s boyfriend, Brent Clarke. In fact, she crashes Sherry’s Spring Nude Picnic party so that she can spend time playing football in the nude with Brent. And to make matters worse, Fi turns out to be a red dragon disguised in human form. Fi is obviously not one of the narrators of the book. So, her part in the story depends solely on what Sherry says about her.
Brent Clarke is the third narrator of the book. He is the leader of the local gang of farm kids and 9th graders known as the Norwall Pirated. He’s obsessed with police work and investigating bad guys. He keeps investigator notes in which he sees himself as a great detective. And it is his detective instincts that start him recording what he can learn about Tian Long, Fi’s stepfather. His suspicions lead him to the conclusion that Mr. Long is an evil Chinese dragon in human form.
Milt Morgan is the fourth major narrator of the story. He is a highly imaginative 9th grader who is supposed to be keeping a daily journal for his English teacher (who desperately wants Milt to become a better writer and put his high-powered imagination to better uses than thinking up ways for the Norwall Pirates to get into trouble).
Milt, naturally, hates to write, but does it on a typewriter, mistakes and all, because he is a story-teller at heart. And this story has a potential to stop any and all hearts involved. You see, in some ways, it is a story about a monster. A monster who wants to eat Icky Jones. It wants to eat him because… he is boy who can potentially live forever.
This is the most recent illustration done for the novel. This one above, not the one below.
And, finally, here’s a reminder about my book promotion, beginning today.
Canto 71 – In the Belly of the Dragon (the White Thread)
Inside the massive ancient device shaped like a dragon, the students of Ged Aero discovered a long corridor and a number of rooms that looked like the inside of a spaceship, yet not like any spaceship any of them had ever entered.
“It’s something like a Nebulon Space Whale,” said Gyro. “The walls and floors and ceilings are all made of pliable materials that bend and warp as the artificial creature moves, yet I can sense that it is entirely unliving in the same way as something made of stone or rigid metal.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty weird in here,” said little Mai Ling.
“Junior? Are you still in telepathic contact with its artificial mind?” Ged asked.
“Yes, Sensei. But it is complex. It thinks in algorithms faster than I can learn from it.”
“We have to master this wonderful thing,” said Phoenix. “It is the most elegant and brilliant travel machine I have ever seen.”
“Where is the control center… the bridge for the ship?” asked Shu Kwai.
“Directly above us,” answered Junior, straining to keep up with the flood of input from his unique form of telepathy.
“Can you find the way in?” asked Sara.
“I think I can open it.”
Red, blue, and yellow lights flashed in pulsating patterns along the red-brown walls. Then a hidden hatchway opened above their heads. A ladder that was made of some sort of high-tech bone or stone dropped to the floor.
“Permission to lead the way?” asked Billy. “I can use my clairvoyance to see what’s ahead.”
“Yes, Billy-san, lead the way,” said Ged with a satisfied smile.
Billy Iowa climbed like squirrel monkey, zipping up through the hole in the ceiling in almost no time. Then he signaled the others to follow. One by one they all scaled the ladder and entered the large control room of the dragon ship.
It was a room shaped like the top of the dragon’s head in the carved statue of the dragon gate that existed outside and all around the ancient device.
“This will be such a shame to shatter the walls and city gate in order to use this spaceship,” Ged muttered, intending to talk to himself mainly.
“As far as I can tell, we don’t have to destroy the gate or walls to free the dragon from them. It is showing me a schematic that suggests the whole thing teleports from here out into space. The structure of the city walls and gate were built to remain standing when the dragon leaves. It can also return and hide in the same place.” Junior had answered in an almost mechanical way.
“Junior? Do you need to rest your telepathy a bit?” suggested Sara.
“Um, well… let me do two more things first.”
The panels where the dragon’s eyes were located on the outside of the gate suddenly irised open, though nothing could be seen through them. The six holes in the ceiling that then opened up each lowered a helmet attached to a long, glowing filament that tethered it to the computerized brain above.
“What are these for?” asked Hassan.
Junior fell to his knees, practically exhausted to the point of unconsciousness.
“Junior!” Sara took hold of him and cradled him on her lap on the control-room floor.
“We… we are going to have to experiment. So much of this is too complicated for me to understand without a great deal of study.” Junior closed his eyes, and was immediately asleep.
“So, when do we move our stuff from the Palace into this thing?” asked Alec.
“There is no hurry. We need to give Junior time to learn this thing’s complicated operations. And we need to explore the whole of the ship. We cannot simply jump into a thing like this and take off. We don’t even know yet where we must go. Somebody is going to have to study those damned books of prophecy too.” Ged surveyed the faces of his students. Freddy, Rocket, Phoenix, and Billy had started grinning at each other when Ged had mentioned the word, “explore”. Gyro was lost in thought examining a helmet. Hassan was looking about with a bored expression. Jackie, Mai Ling, Taffy, and Sara were all gathered around Junior and tending to him or lending concern. Only Alec was glaring back at Ged.
My title for today is a bad pun. It is because the phrase “Sick Humor” has two meanings. I tend to get punny when my nose is runny. I have been sick for a week. Not actually flu, but a bad cold that seems pretty close. And, of course, close counts with horseshoes, flu, and hand grenades. I have been stuck at home, able to do little beyond watch the impeachment clown-show. And, of course, by watching, getting punnier and punnier.
rollingstone.com
You get punny enough and you tend to feel bigger than you are, primarily because you get full of natural gas that comes out of your mouth… and of course, out of somewhere else too. And if you let it all out of the mouth at once… where it pollutes the general atmosphere and makes it hard to breathe… or if you let it out of the other place… where it can be potentially explosive… you will deflate a lot, and get very, very small.
But, really, it is a matter of absurd comparisons (and also Republican impairisons) as words are twisted to make them funny (as in “oddly seeming” and not as in “really ha-ha!”) and criminals are called “honest brokers” and the coppers are tarnished as “deep-state delusionals”.
You are supposed to take medicine when you are sick. And laughter is the best medicine. But don’t laugh at idiots. Idiots with lots of money will hurt you. They will hurt you financially. They will hurt you physically. They can’t necessarily beat you up because it looks bad… and maybe because of bone spurs. But they can hire lots of somebodies to do it for them. And they can take over your government.
The sickness in the White House has no cure. The cancer will not be excised. It will kill us all. Sometimes the humor is sick. And sometimes the jokes are not funny. And the biggest joke will be when the Senate declares the cancer not life-threatening. The joke will be on us.
I am sick. I am trying to laugh it off. But it’s tough. Maybe I will look for funnier clowns to watch.
Three times now I have run a promotion with my best novels (available through Amazon) and have had limited results. But I am trying again for Christmas. While most everybody I advertised to on Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress thanked me for the link, only a handful actually went to the trouble of visiting Amazon and clicking on the free e-book. Some of my Iowegian friends probably weren’t clear on the idea of e-books, especially if they didn’t personally own a Kindle or an I-pad. But I have discovered the promotion is worth doing. The first time involved Snow Babies. I went on Twitter and sent links to writer friends hoping for a hit or two. Apparently only one person got the e-book for free and went on to read it, but she loved the book, told me it should be a classic of YA Literature, and gave it a five-star review.
My second book promotion, for Recipes for Gingerbread Children, did about the same tepid amount of free-book clicks for probably the same reasons. Although you can plainly see it may not have been wise to allow some of the reviewers from the fairy world to have a say in the promotion of this book. Fairies are not wild about having their existence outed, and Iowegians and Texicans don’t really appreciate it when you use irony for stuff.
Still, because it had two nudist characters in it, I also advertised it on https://www.clothesfreelife.com/, and so it got interest from the group of naturist writers who frequent that site. A gentleman by the name of Ted Bun got a copy and reviewed it with a five-star review even though it isn’t really a book about nudism. (Yes, I know some kinds of fairies prefer not to wear clothes, but they don’t count as nudists because they are not human.)
This past November I was able to promote another of my favorite books, Sing Sad Songs, with another Amazon free promotion.
It generated the same tepid response, even though it was free, but it got another five-star review. It was Ted again, but I have come to value his opinions looking at others of his reviews online and on https://www.goodreads.com/ . So, I have had a total of five five-star reviews on books I have written, all but one by fellow authors. Three of them came about by doing these book promotions. I only have five-star reviews on any of my books that have been reviewed. So, that’s good, right?
What does it mean? Well, nudists really seem to like my books. And nobody who read any of my books and hated it, hated it enough to write a review. And other writers of other novels seem to recognize something they really like about my work.
So, unless Amazon changes their minds about letting me use Snow Babies as a Christmas promotion, I will try again this coming week. Maybe I can get nudists to like that book too, even though there is no nudism in it… only a very cold and deadly blizzard.
No, I am not calling you an idiot, dear reader. I am the one providing the guidance material.
This idiot is not actually me… This is Doofy Fuddbugg. He is not overburdened with book-learning, but he can fix practically anything around the house or in the car. He can also tell a story pretty well that makes you laugh.
So, if I were to try to explain art day in an Idiot’s Guide aimed at explaining the essence of it to Doofy Fuddbugg, one idiot trying to educate another, I would explain that I am lazy on Saturdays. All I want to do is post pictures and not have to write a lot of heavily-thought-out words and ideas in the usual droning idiot’s essay of 500 words or more. So, I go through my WordPress picture file and find interesting pictures to post without having to draw or paint anything new.
I confess that I do not merely select pictures at random. I try to get pictures I haven’t used in a good while. This double portrait of Gretel Graymalkin, and what she looks like naked in the moonlight, hasn’t been used in a post since last year. And there is a bit of rhyme and reason to it too. Gretel is an idiot.
And this is a picture that any idiot can tell is a real picture of fairies in the park discussing the building of a new fairy circle after it finally started raining heavily again in Texas after almost a decade of drought. Of course, it has to be an idiot to tell that. Most people would recognize this as a pen-and-colored-pencil drawing photo-shopped over a photograph. Even the mushrooms are not real. I have it on good authority from fairy-kind that they are actually pixies in disguise.
And then there is this rare bird I drew a couple of years back. He is a surrealistic peacock who thought of auditioning for NBC before he learned they don’t still do those “Now in Living Color…” ads anymore. He’s surrealistic in that he could not possibly be real, unless he were really just a bowling pin and lady’s fan put together by a deranged painter with a mental disorder that makes him do decoratively dippy drawings on things you really shouldn’t be drawing upon in the middle of a bowling tournament.
And who can forget this idiot, an avatar of me as a purple Mickey in the style of the late great Don Martin of Mad Magazine fame? He’s the whole reason you get foolish lazy-Saturday posts like this at all, There has got to be a cure for that somewhere in the multiverse.
I am on the third day of a severe cold… or possible flu. Yesterday I couldn’t even write. Body aches, chills, fever, cough, and sore throat, All those things I used to enjoy so much as a kid, because it meant a day off from school, even though I had to suffer royally to get it.
I remember my mother used to think I was faking it if she couldn’t actually see the symptoms. And, of course, she would often take me to the doctor to get a shot in my behind if I actually did have them. She was a professional registered nurse, so you couldn’t get away with faking it, or even get a day off for a mild case.
Yesterday I was supposed to substitute for an English teacher at Perry Middle School. Seventh graders, I think. I actually thought about faking being well so I could make the money for the day and get a chance to take out my grouchy ill humor on seventh graders. That in itself always used to make me feel a little better. Yelling at kids for their evil behaviors is medicine for the soul.
So, I ended up giving them the gift of a day off from me, one of meaner subs who actually expects kids to work when the regular teacher isn’t there. Of course, I had a fever of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, so I didn’t really have the option to go in and infect everybody and give them heckfire from a cranky old man. The school district frowns on teachers who intentionally spread the flu, small pox, or the Black Death to their students. So, I stayed home and uncomfortably suffered quietly and alone.
Canto 70 – Frying Pans and Fires (the Green Thread)
Hooey, King Killer, and another Pinwheel Corsair known as Willie Culver knelt in rags and chains on the cold metal deck of the Bregohelma. Wormheart Toadsucker rubbed rubbery white hands together with glee over them.
“Pirates are you? Fearsome are you? Killed many men, have you?” crooned Toadsucker. “It will not help you now. The master has you in his power. You are doomed. DOOMED!” The ugly sycophant cackled in a particularly ugly way.
“Charming company we’re keeping,” King remarked to Hooey.
“We have to put up with him in order to get where we are going,” said Hooey matter-of-factly.
“Jeez,” said Willie Culver, “we’re gonna die and you guys are making jokes!” Willie’s young face was contorted with fear.
“Well,” said King, “I guess it’s because I wanta die, and the Doctor here believes we can’t no matter what we do. You know, Willie, he’s a Time Knight and supposedly knows the future.”
“I know seven of them, as a matter of fact,” said the good doctor. “It’s just a matter of making sure we arrive at the correct one.”
“And what did Sheherry mean right before she died?” added King.
“About what, exactly?” asked Hooey.
“She said to take care of our children. She’s dead. We don’t have any children, nor ever will have!”
“Oh, well… You have to find out some time… You actually have three children, all boys. All three of them are growing up in the distant past, safe places where they can be retrieved at the proper time.”
“What?” King was stunned.
“Sheherazade knew she was going to sacrifice herself to save you. I showed her the video of the possible outcome of the battle. She decided to have three children by you in the short time she had available to her. That’s why I had to take her in my time ship to give birth three different times within the space of a week here in this timeline.”
“I have three boys?”
“The eldest she named Prince. The younger two are Terran and Sejii. She told me where and when I am supposed to pick up each of them and hand them over to you.”
“Let’s find them right now!” King’s face was red and hot. The chords in his neck bulged with emotion.
“Well… We sorta hafta get back to my time ship first. That’s going to take a while.”
“Yeah, especially if we die,” said Willie.
“Oh, we aren’t gonna die,” said Hooey. “I have an ace in the hole yet.”
At that moment, Brona Tang entered the Brig.
“So, Bad Guy in red armor, what will you do to us now?” said King with a perilous grin.
“Oh,” said the electronically enhanced voice, “I thought about putting you all to death, but I know from my uncle, Sir Saurol, that you can’t kill a Time Knight without it being the thing he wants you to do. They have some kind of uncanny power over the future. I won’t fall into that trap again. It cost me too much when I killed Shan Sasaki.”
“Ah, so you are the one!” said Hooey, surprised. “I should have known you were the one.”
“I have a much better plan for you three. There is no way you could’ve anticipated being marooned on the prison planet I have in mind. It will mean a long, slow degradation and death.”
“A desert planet, then?” asked Hooey.
“No,” snapped Tang. “I told you that you couldn’t guess. I will take you to the planet Stanley. You can play with the scalies, dinosaurs, and damnthings there. They will be happy to meet and eat you.”
“Oh, gawd!” cried Willie Culver. “No one has ever escaped from there.”
“I welcome it,” said King. “You are giving me just what I want!”
Tang laughed and waves of fear rolled over the three prisoners. “You will languish and live out your days there in terror and pain. Maybe your friend Tron Blastarr will be joining you there. We’ve found his little pirate base at the place he calls Outpost.”
King glared at the armored Admiral. “So, you think you’re gonna beat Tron?”
“Oh, I intend to take my time about it,” said Tang. “I know that Arkin Cloudstalker is making his way there with his allies. I might even trap Conn and the Blackhawks there, destroying all my enemies in one barrel.”
“Dream on,” said King hotly. “Tron and Maggie are the best you’ve ever faced. You give them time to put together the space forces, and you’ll never live to regret it.”
“Ooh! I’m so scared!” said Admiral Tang.
“We’re scared!” mimicked Toadsucker. “We are worried about one-eyed star sailors and their skinny, red-headed wives too! Ricky and Lucy fight the evil Admiral.”
“Shut up, Worm!” Tang backhanded the lowly mutant across his ugly faced and made him sink, weeping, to the deck of the Brig.
“You make me mad,” said King Killer. “In fact, you make me wanta live long enough to escape your stupid prison and pay you back what you’re worth.”
“Rot on Stanley, you ugly monkey. The jungles there will take all three of you in a week.” Tang turned on his armored heel and walked away, his red cape swirling and billowing out behind him.
“We’re gonna die a horrible death,” moaned Willie Culver, tears streaming down his young cheeks.
“Willie, I intend to bring us all three back alive,” growled King. “Just to spite that red bughead. He made me mad!”
There is a reason why anything in my artwork starting with a rabbit is assumed to be autobiographical. I raised rabbits as a 4-H project from about the age of 10 and we kept rabbits in pens until I was finishing my undergraduate degree. (Rabbit chores fell to my little brother when I was away from home.) In many ways, I was a rabbit-man. My personal avatar as a school teacher was Reluctant Rabbit.
The panda known as Mandy in my cartoon world is an avatar of my wife, an immigrant from the Pandalore Islands.
There is often an exaggerated sense of adventure in my cartoonally weird Paffoonies, the very name of which is a fantasy word.
I have been known to actually believe gingerbread can be magical enough for gingerbread men to come to life once baked. It is the reason I bite the legs off first, so they can’t run away.
I have been known to see elves, fairies, and numerous other things that aren’t really there. In fact, a whole secret hidden kingdom of them inhabited the schoolyard in Iowa where I attended grades K through 6. They were all mostly three inches tall. The biggest ones, like dragons reaching only about six inches tall at their largest.
Of course I am afraid of death, evil, and… (shudder) mummies.I think of art and story-telling as a form of music. I am a troubadour whose songs (like this one) are often completely silent.My fantasy art tends to be more “comic book” than “art gallery”.
Catch a Falling Star 
Sick Humor
My title for today is a bad pun. It is because the phrase “Sick Humor” has two meanings. I tend to get punny when my nose is runny. I have been sick for a week. Not actually flu, but a bad cold that seems pretty close. And, of course, close counts with horseshoes, flu, and hand grenades. I have been stuck at home, able to do little beyond watch the impeachment clown-show. And, of course, by watching, getting punnier and punnier.
You get punny enough and you tend to feel bigger than you are, primarily because you get full of natural gas that comes out of your mouth… and of course, out of somewhere else too. And if you let it all out of the mouth at once… where it pollutes the general atmosphere and makes it hard to breathe… or if you let it out of the other place… where it can be potentially explosive… you will deflate a lot, and get very, very small.
But, really, it is a matter of absurd comparisons (and also Republican impairisons) as words are twisted to make them funny (as in “oddly seeming” and not as in “really ha-ha!”) and criminals are called “honest brokers” and the coppers are tarnished as “deep-state delusionals”.
You are supposed to take medicine when you are sick. And laughter is the best medicine. But don’t laugh at idiots. Idiots with lots of money will hurt you. They will hurt you financially. They will hurt you physically. They can’t necessarily beat you up because it looks bad… and maybe because of bone spurs. But they can hire lots of somebodies to do it for them. And they can take over your government.
The sickness in the White House has no cure. The cancer will not be excised. It will kill us all. Sometimes the humor is sick. And sometimes the jokes are not funny. And the biggest joke will be when the Senate declares the cancer not life-threatening. The joke will be on us.
I am sick. I am trying to laugh it off. But it’s tough. Maybe I will look for funnier clowns to watch.
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Filed under angry rant, cartoons, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, illness, pessimism, politics