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”.
That phrase, “the Reds and the Blues,” is important to me because Red means “Happy” and Blue means “Sad.” Opposites that make a whole when taken together. This picture is of a boy that might have been my son if I had married the blond girlfriend that was closest to me (at times) in the 1980s. It is called, “Long Ago It Might Have Been.”
But Red also means “Anger.” Here’s a band of red-uniformed soldiers marching into the threatening darkness of the future. They are leaving the Blue mountains of sadness behind where Blue also means, “in the distance.”
Red, of course, is also symbolic of “Love.”
Blue can also mean, “Magic and Mystery.”
Blue can also mean, “Cold and even Depression.” While Red can mean a “Cardinal, the symbol of Resilience and Hardy Constitution.”
Red, Blue, and Yellow, especially when supported by the other colors, mean, “Completeness.”
The only advice I am actually qualified to give here is… don’t take any blogging advice from me as worth more than diddly-squoot.
Life is like moose bowling because… In order to knock down all the pins, you have to learn how to throw a moose.
That being said, my blog views are gradually going up year after year. I am followed by readers all over the world, and some of them actually read my blog regularly, rather than just looking at the pictures and occasionally hitting the like button.
I have not yet, however, learned to throw the moose. I started this blog in order to promote my published writing. I now have seven published books available on Amazon. I made $2.60 in royalties during 2018 so far. So, as a marketing ploy, it has been a total failure.
But as a tool in my writing life, here are some things I definitely count as benefits;
Writing a blog post every day makes the ideas flow more easily and does away with any threat of writer’s block.
Writing every day is practice and it makes me a better writer.
I have learned how to engage with an actual audience.
I am able to try out various writing ideas without worrying about success or failure.
So, all of these things add value and keep me at this blogging thing which didn’t exist in my early life when I was planning for becoming a writer when I left teaching.
If you are tempted to make the huge mistake of following my advice and emulating me, I would warn you, I do not make a living as a writer, and I never will. I am a writer in the same way I am a diabetic. I can’t help it. I wouldn’t change it even if it were possible. I have a body of work that I intend to continue to build on until I am no more. The creation of it is a necessity of my existence. And I certainly don’t regret a single syllable, though what happens to it when I am gone is not important to me in any way that matters. I hope my children will keep it as a legacy, but I only do it because it shapes the story of my life.
And so, I continue to throw meese (or mooses… or moosi… or whatever the hell the funniest plural of “moose” is) and continue not to knock down any pins.
The fight had been almost boring as the waves of rot warriors shambled forward, trying to aim their various spears, guns, and lasers, and then being disassembled by the student Psions of Ged Aero’s Dojo. Shu Kwai had been the most destructive, able to rip out electronic controls with a mere thought. Phoenix had also laid waste, melting the circuitry out of the Mechanoid-zombie army of Mong the Unmerciful. The minions of Mong had melted like margarine in a microwave. Ged had found himself in his armored cat form with nothing to actually do.
The invaders soon found themselves virtually in control of the Ruined Palace of David King. Jackie teleported back to the Celestial Dragon and picked up Gyro. The little Neulon whiz kid hooked up some software in an injector device he had pulled together by rearranging molecules with his mind. He then linked it to an uncrushed rot-warrior skull and pulled out a map of the complex through the skull’s control link to the building’s computer system.
“What’d you find there, Smurf?” Phoenix asked almost immediately.
“I am finding Emperor Mong in his suite surrounded by rot-warrior generals trying to destroy two guys called Triumvirs with an even bigger horde of rot warriors than we just polished off,” said Gyro, grinning at his own manipulative genius at controlling computers without relying on Junior’s special Psion power.
“What?” said Phoenix, frowning.
“He’s telling you he found the Emperor in his private living quarters focusing his attacks on somebody besides us,” said Shu Kwai with an icy superiority.
Phoenix frowned at the nearly naked boy in his white loincloth. Ged could feel tension building again between the two.
“Okay,” said Phoenix, “so what do we do now, Ged Sensei?”
“We go pay Mong a little visit,” Ged answered, now back in human form and dressed in the jumpsuit and fedora hat he had brought with him.
“Has he detected us?” Rocket asked Gyro.
“I don’t know for sure, but maybe not. He is in… I don’t know how to say it in Galactic English. The kapooiac.”
“I have a feeling that means the fresher… or restroom… probably,” suggested Phoenix.
“Let’s go quickly,” ordered Shu Kwai, “so we can maintain as much surprise as possible.”
Gyro led the way through bone-littered corridors. The whole place had the feel of an old black-and-white monster movie. This wasn’t surprising, since the Galtorrians had based much of their culture on the TV programs they intercepted from ancient Earth in the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, Galactic English had become the norm in the Orion Spur due to the fact that the Galtorrians worshipped the TV comedyI Love Lucy. Through artificial cobwebs and gray stonework, they wound their way down into the bowels of the palace. Finally, Gyro stopped them before a blank stone wall.
“There is a secret door here,” he said with a sweet blue smile.
“Good,” said Phoenix. “I’ll open it!”
A wall of flame swelled outward from Phoenix’s fingertips. The wall of artificial stone and plasticrete melted away before them, revealing Mong on his personal throne. It was not his throne of office, either, but rather the natural place one goes when he can no longer keep his bowels from emptying from fear.
“Eeuw! Gross!” cried Jackie, staring at the emperor with his pants down.
Mong was cringing while staring out from under his golden skullcap with the carved dragon as its crest. His Fu Manchu moustache was wet with tears of fear.
“Oh, great Ged Aero! You are the one my agents have been telling me about, aren’t you?” Mong’s voice was squeaky and timid, surprising from so sinister a caped figure, even with his pants down on his throne and toilet paper in hand. Shu Kwai, Rocket, Phoenix, and Gyro all laughed about this man they had so recently dreaded.
“Mong, I have come for her,” said Ged. “I want Tara Salongi back.”
“What? I don’t have your young lady! But you have to defend me! Protect me from those clowns and I will gladly give her back to you!”
The pitiful evil emperor was pleading in such a sniveling, groveling manner that Ged couldn’t bear it.
“Do you have her? Or don’t you? All I require from you,” said Ged, “is to lead me to Tara and then flee this planet for your pitiful life. If I don’t get her back, I will hunt you down and tear you to pieces.”
There was a large, startling crash as someone tore the fresher door on the opposite side out of the wall.
Ged’s eyes flashed with anger, an emotion that none of the students present had ever actually seen in him before. It chilled them all to the bone.
An armored clown stepped through the hole. He was obviously a cyborg, but far more sophisticated than any rot warrior they had yet encountered.
“So, Mong is not out of champions yet!” declared the Harlequin menacingly.
Part of the Traveller Role-Playing Game is dealing with alien races. So, as a game master for the Traveller Adventures back in the 1980’s, I had the opportunity to create alien races of my own. Truthfully, the alien Telleron race that I created for the novel Catch a Falling Star already existed in my cartoons and fiction stories before I began playing the role-playing game. The Nebulon Race, however, was invented entirely for the game. Only later did they become a part of my fiction.
So, what are Nebulons? Gyro Sinjarac on the left in the picture is an example from Aeroquest of a Nebulon. They are aliens who are human in every respect except for their blue skin. Interestingly they can even successfully interbreed with Earther humans. This is apparently due to either the evolution of Nebulons from Earther explorers, or, more likely, the galaxy being seeded with Earth humans and Earther DNA by the mysterious alien race known only as “the Ancients”. What is not debatable is that Nebulons have unique skin. The blue skin with high levels of natural copper sulfate in it has evolved as a protection from interstellar nebula radiation. No one who has learned their language and studied their culture has ever identified a planet of origin. Instead, the Nebulons have been a space-born race since humans first encountered them, travelling in their symbiotic space-whale space cruisers. They are a mysterious deep-space race of alien beings who use organic symbiotes, in other words, living creatures, as their pervasive technology.
Junior Aero makes an excellent example to use to explain what Nebulons are. You can see by this picture that not only does he possess the Nebulon blue skin, but also the bright yellow hair, the red heat-transfer cheek organs, and the small stature that makes them easily satirized as “Space Smurfs” in honor of Peyo’s beloved blue comic characters.
The Nebulons as a race are often cited as evidence of the evolutionary trend of intelligent races towards neoteny, the retention of childlike features into maturity and adulthood. Even the oldest and the most physically fit of the adult Nebulon population resemble children and young teenagers rather than Arnold-Schwarzenegger-like humans. But believing them to be soft and weak like children is a mistake that often yields tragedy for those who contend against them, especially in battle. The Nebulons have often fought in space wars like the 5th Unification War, both for and against the human-led Imperium.
But the Nebulons are not automatically at odds with humanoid races in any way. They are generally happy in demeanor and temperament, easily befriending other races, even the snake-eyed Galtorrian humans that tend to dominate the Imperium. They seem to be particularly fond of Pan-Galactican Space Cowboys, having helped them during the border conflicts with the mysterious race known as the Faceless Horde.
So, there is a glop of information about an alien race from my science-fiction comedy writing that you can sort out as you like, and can probably learn from as a science fiction writer yourself. They are probably an excellent example of what not to do when creating a science-fiction-style alien race of your own.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fairly sure that life on Planet Earth is doomed to extinction by global warming and the acidification of the oceans. The Koch Brothers and Exxon decided back in the 1970s that short-term profits were more important than the continued existence of their own children and grandchildren. Hatred, Greed, and Narcissus are still the animating angels behind everything this human world stands for.
The naked truth = being naked is good for you.
The naked truth behind this post is that the good guys actually held off the minions of the three evil angels. Election deniers for the most part not only lost a majority of their races but also conceded, the act that the Orange President refused to do, thus breaking a sacred tradition that really does prevent violence during transitions of power.
I fully expected a week ago to have all the gains of the election of 2020 wiped out. I thought radical Repulsivecans would take over both the House and the Senate. Impeachments of Joe Biden would begin. Trumpalump would be headed back to the Siege Perilous known as the Presidency. A fascist dictatorship would replace democracy. This sunshiny outlook exists among other reasonably smart people who are not me.
But the good guys held back the Red Wave that everyone anticipated. The good guys still hold control of the Senate. And if they lose the House, it won’t be by much. And the ballots are still being counted on that narrow victory, no matter which way it goes.
So, some very important things could still happen in the near future.
We might still be able to fight climate catastrophe and preserve life on Earth.
We might move towards a fairer, more progressive tax system that takes away from the wealthy who can afford it and lifts the tax burdens on the poor and middle class.
We might finally, after a long drought, fully fund public schools in a fair and research-based way. Education would be more engaging, useful, and free. And we would benefit from living in a society where we are not commonly surrounded by stupid people.
It would be nice, for once, to hold onto the good things placed in our hands for more than just a couple of years. We will go through all of this again in two years. We may well be under Repulsivecan’s hands again under President Ron DeSaniflush next time. We may be in another recession or even a depression. But I’m a pessimist on purpose. I now, briefly, get to celebrate being wrong about this last election. And I am happy.
Yes, this is an old post from 2017r that is ironically about going back and rereading old posts. Sorry about that. But it made me laugh when I reread it.
I often go back and re-read old posts, particularly when I discover that someone else has read them. It is amazing to me how differently I perceive things from when I actually wrote the post. As you write, squeezing huge, boulder-sized portions of hot, magma-like burning ideas and passions out through writing orifices not nearly big enough to accommodate, you usually hate what you wrote and are still writhing in pain from the creation of it as you try to edit it, trim it and brush its unruly hair. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor to make you cringe?) But given time and distance, you can really appreciate what you wrote more than ever before. Things that you thought were the stupidest idea a man ever put in words suddenly have the power to make you laugh, or make you cry. You are able to feel the things the writing was intended to make you feel. You begin to think things like, “Maybe you are not the worst writer that ever lived, and maybe that’s not why nobody ever reads your books.” But then, of course, your sister reads the post and tells you that you write like a really old, really crabby, really ancient old man. And you use the word “really” too much too. I know I deserve that, Sis. Especially the “really” part.
This is the thing about happiness; It is elusive and rare as a real-life blue bird. But capturing it for a moment is not impossible. And as long as you don’t try to salt its tail and keep it prisoner, you can encourage it to sing for you. (Much better metaphor this time, don’t you think?)
When I am accused of being gloomy, old, and boring, I can happily admit it and make it into something funny. I am something of a conspiracy nut, but not so serious that I believe all my own assertions. For those people who took offense at this conspiracy theory of mine; Coca-Cola Mind Control, I would like to point out that “Hey, I was joking. I actually like clowns.” Even though there is a serious side to everything and there can’t be laughter without some tears, I am basically happy with the way things are.
I started listening to “Live Happy Radio” on Sunday mornings on KLUV in Dallas. They point out on their program of endlessly droning happy-talk that happiness is something that you can work at. Like humor writing in blogs, it takes practice and practice and time. They even asked me to share the word about their happy magazine and products, so I am doing exactly that right here. Sometimes you simply have to put your cynicism in a jar on the shelf next to the lock box where you keep depression and self-loathing. So you can find their Live-Happy folderol right here.
So I am bird-watching again with an eye out for the bluebird. You know the one. It is out there somewhere. And I need to hear that song one more time.
Descend with me into the place where ideas come from, deep beneath the clothing you cover yourself with to protect yourself from the unknown. You come into this life naked. You can be wrapped for burial when you die, but if anything steps out of the dead body, it will not be wearing clothing. You face the inner demons and devils of life only with your naked self for defense.
Children seem, as a rule, to be more open to creativity. They are closer to the simple recombining of ideas that lead to new and creative thought. Children are also more open to living life naked. Shyness and negative body images are things that have to be carefully taught, along with racism, classism, entitlement, and a narcissist’s love of only the self. It is natural to be naked. We do not have to be taught how to be that.
I am now old and withering in body and energy and health. But as a senior citizen, I have embraced the urge to become a nudist that was always a part of me. I tend to see myself as a child when I think about the inner me, the me that lives near the actual source of all creativity. I do, in fact, more often than not, portray myself as a naked child. Though, I must warn you, my joy in my own nakedness was taken away from me at the age of ten. It took many years to get it back.
But the nakedness I am talking about in this Art Day post is not the literal nakedness of the old and spotty me. It is the willingness to stand emotionally naked in front of the world through the medium of this blog and use some of my deepest secrets as the puzzle pieces to put together a totally revealing picture of the me that is my creativity. I risk much to stand naked before the world. No armor to deflect the spears and arrows. No camouflage to hide me safely away from whatever attacks may come from those who see me for the first time, naked as I am, even when I am wearing clothes.
I wish to sing a song of myself, in the way Walt Whitman did in his Leaves of Grass. I need to make my body electric not only open to anyone and everything, but to actually become a part of all of it… to be one with all of you.
Some will look upon the fruits of my creativity and say I created something beautiful. Others will be offended and accuse me of misusing my gifts for some evil or perverted purpose.
But deep down and far below I have uncovered the naked truth. And I do not need to hide anything by trying to wear clothing as a disguise. I am a nudist. I am nothing but me. I have the curse of being creative, and that has led me to showing you what is within me, the things I have created, and the thoughts that gave birth to them. The naked me.
I have significantly slowed down in my production of fiction. Not so much because I don’t have any ideas to write about, but because my eyes are limited in function by glaucoma that I am treating with eye drops. And also because my fingers on the keyboard are slowed by arthritis and the repeated need to make corrections from hitting so many of the wrong keys.
I currently have four novel projects where I have started writing and begun to fill pages. AeroQuest 5 : It Ain’t Over Yet continues the slogging rewrite of my first published novel, Aeroquest. It was simply a matter of following the story arcs set up in books 3 and 4. I have about six chapters done with absolutely no idea how many more are yet to come.
I have had a sudden-inspiration novel hit my brain, and I am also well into the story of The Haunted Toy Store.
The biggest project I have going is the novel I have been working on since 2021. He Rose on a Golden Wing is about teen depression and using imagination and a tight circle of friends to overcome it. The novel draws together story threads that began in four previous novels. And it dovetails with another story, Kingdoms Under the Earth, that deals with a health problem that overcomes a group of younger characters that is happening at the same time. Kingdoms does not exist on paper, or in computer file, at all yet. That story is merely percolating in my head as the prior writing continues to involve cross-over points and story links
This picture is inspired by Disney’s Fantasia, and so will not be used in any of my books. I do not wish to be copyright-sued by Disney.
The novella seen to the left is about two chapters from being finished. But it got caught up in the need to reformat it as I transformed it from a document on my Chromebook to the more friendly word-processor on my HP laptop.
I have almost completely lost the momentum on finishing that… which should have been finished six months ago.
While all of this is on my to-do list, I have also begun planning and doing drawing for a book I will call Naked Thinking, a non-fiction meditation on being a nudist, drawing and painting nThouude figures, and baring my soul in the books I write (Though I do not plan to bare my own naked body in the process… probably… at least not in a photo.)
So, with all of this nonsense going on in my writing life, you can see why I always seem to be arguing that I do not have writer’s block.
So, what are Nebulons? Gyro Sinjarac on the left in the picture is an example from Aeroquest of a Nebulon. They are aliens who are human in every respect except for their blue skin. Interestingly they can even successfully interbreed with Earther humans. This is apparently due to either the evolution of Nebulons from Earther explorers, or, more likely, the galaxy being seeded with Earth humans and Earther DNA by the mysterious alien race known only as “the Ancients”. What is not debatable is that Nebulons have unique skin. The blue skin with high levels of natural copper sulfate in it has evolved as a protection from interstellar nebula radiation. No one who has learned their language and studied their culture has ever identified a planet of origin. Instead, the Nebulons have been a space-born race since humans first encountered them, travelling in their symbiotic space-whale space cruisers. They are a mysterious deep-space race of alien beings who use organic symbiotes, in other words, living creatures, as their pervasive technology.
Catch a Falling Star 
Happiness in Hand
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still fairly sure that life on Planet Earth is doomed to extinction by global warming and the acidification of the oceans. The Koch Brothers and Exxon decided back in the 1970s that short-term profits were more important than the continued existence of their own children and grandchildren. Hatred, Greed, and Narcissus are still the animating angels behind everything this human world stands for.
The naked truth behind this post is that the good guys actually held off the minions of the three evil angels. Election deniers for the most part not only lost a majority of their races but also conceded, the act that the Orange President refused to do, thus breaking a sacred tradition that really does prevent violence during transitions of power.
I fully expected a week ago to have all the gains of the election of 2020 wiped out. I thought radical Repulsivecans would take over both the House and the Senate. Impeachments of Joe Biden would begin. Trumpalump would be headed back to the Siege Perilous known as the Presidency. A fascist dictatorship would replace democracy. This sunshiny outlook exists among other reasonably smart people who are not me.
But the good guys held back the Red Wave that everyone anticipated. The good guys still hold control of the Senate. And if they lose the House, it won’t be by much. And the ballots are still being counted on that narrow victory, no matter which way it goes.
So, some very important things could still happen in the near future.
We might still be able to fight climate catastrophe and preserve life on Earth.
We might move towards a fairer, more progressive tax system that takes away from the wealthy who can afford it and lifts the tax burdens on the poor and middle class.
We might finally, after a long drought, fully fund public schools in a fair and research-based way. Education would be more engaging, useful, and free. And we would benefit from living in a society where we are not commonly surrounded by stupid people.
It would be nice, for once, to hold onto the good things placed in our hands for more than just a couple of years. We will go through all of this again in two years. We may well be under Repulsivecan’s hands again under President Ron DeSaniflush next time. We may be in another recession or even a depression. But I’m a pessimist on purpose. I now, briefly, get to celebrate being wrong about this last election. And I am happy.
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