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Wizards on Ice

I re-post this mainly because of the pictures.

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I need a quick and cold post for today, so I will turn to the ice wizards of Talislanta.

Ice Alchemist

Viktor, the ice-alchemist, and his son Zoran-viktor are Mirin, a sort of ice-elves who live in the frozen ice-world of the far north.  Viktor’s people are cold-resistant enough to wear bikinis in freezing weather (but smart enough not to).   So Viktor managed to become the Mirins’ most powerful user of the magic of chemistry by developing hot stuff. In the picture he is brewing a bit of the really, really hot explodie stuff that melts a Mirin bad guy.

Juan Ruy

Juan Ruy, the Mirin prince,  built many ice castles out of his magical substance known as iron-ice.  It was far harder to pierce than steel and impossible to melt with fires less hot than dragon’s breath.  With it he built frozen castles vertically to the highest heights.  And they still stand…

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In Defense of Corny Jokes

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It will probably be clear that I am writing this post because I am currently reading 1941 daily strips from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.

But I am definitely going to talk about corny jokes, not cheesy jokes, because I grew up in Iowa, not Wisconsin.

And, yes, that is example number one.

There is a certain way of telling a joke or tall tale that is unique to the farmyard.   And it does not contain chicken poop, but rather, corn.

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Of course, as you can see by this corn-colored definition of what corny means according to Collins Online Dictionary, the word is supposed to be an insult to corniness in jokery.  That doesn’t sit well with the people of Iowa, where the tall corn grows.  We are also obvious, sentimental, and not at all original.  And we are proud of it.  Corny360_2017-06-19-17-17-44-339

To tell a corny joke right, you have to set a simple scene, and make it clear what happened, and give the audience a simple cue for when to laugh.

For instance, there was the time that Cudgel Murphy had a cat problem with his car, the 1954 Austin Hereford that he has driven since dinosaurs walked the earth.  It seems there was this time in 1988 when he kept having engine trouble.  The engine would sputter and cough and die, and when Cudgel opened it, he would find a half-eaten dead pigeon or other random bird carcass gumming up the works.  He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how dead birds were getting into his car engine.  But his grandson Danny happened to see the neighbor’s big tabby tomcat carrying a pigeon he had killed under the front of Grampy’s car, apparently enjoying a fowl meal in the dark with a nice warm engine to lay the food on.  Sure enough, when they checked the engine later, there was the half-eaten dead bird laying across one end of the fan belt.

So Cudgel set up a vigil, assigning times for himself, Danny, and his younger grandson Mike to watch for signs of that damned cat taking another bird under the hood of the Austin. With only two day’s worth of watching under their belts, Mike came running into the Murphy kitchen with the news.

“Grampy!  I seen that damned cat taking a dead bird under your car!  He’s in there right now!”

So Cudgel rushed out, turned the engine on, and stomped on the gas.

cudgels car

There were some worrisome thumps and bangs under the hood, and then the cat shot out from under the front of the car spewing howls and cat curses all the way up the nearest tree.

Cudgel laughed hard and finally caught his breath to say, “How about that, Mike?  I’ll bet James Bond doesn’t have a car that can shoot angry cats out the front!”

Now, before you chastise me for enjoying cruelty to cats, I hope you will remember that Cudgel Murphy is a fictional character, and I am merely illustrating the idea behind corny jokes.  And, besides, that cat really had it coming to him.

 

 

 

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Diz, Boz, the Bard, and Me

This post makes a good re-blog because I am now more than 12,ooo words into the actual writing of this novel. It is moving faster than most of the other novels I have written so far.

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I wrote the other day about the fact that my writing is music in my head.  Now, I realize there are probably a number of things wrong with my head, and Lord knows, it may truly need a good cleaning… er, well, not a brainwashing if that’s what you had in mind.  No, what I need is to clarify the meaning of what I said, to restate in a less metaphorical and obscure way.

I have this insane notion that I am a good writer.  Believe me, I am aware of the fact that every Indie author with a self-published novel has the same crazy fantasy right now.  I imagine that my humor is like Mark Twain’s, my characterizations like Charles Dickens (Boz), my themes and insights like William Shakespeare (the Bard), and my creativity akin to that of Walt Disney (Diz).

I plan to write about it in…

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Norman Rockwell

Here is America’s most beloved illustrators. I love him. You probably do to. So let me share this with you one more time.

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When I was a boy in the 1960’s I looked forward to Grandma Aldrich’s Saturday Evening Post arriving at the end of her farm lane in the mailbox.  We were at Grandpa and Grandma’s farm north of town almost every day.  I often went to get the mail.  This one magazine was supremely important to me, not because I liked to read the articles, that was too much like school, but because of the wonderful pictures on the cover.  Norman Rockwell had established himself by that time as THE cover artist.  He wasn’t on every single issue, but he was on most.  And the world inside his paintings was filled with the kind of gentle humor, beautiful color, and wisdom tempered by love that I wanted to imitate.  I wanted to paint just like that… and if I couldn’t, then I would find a way to tell stories in words…

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On a Hot 4th of July…

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On this patriotic holiday in Texas, I am stuck at home with my daughter in the triple-digit Texas heat.  Of the four room air conditioners in the house, one is shut down as my wife is in Alaska and doesn’t need to run hers.  That saves me money, so that is a good thing.  But the large one that is supposed to cool both the kitchen and the living room which have no wall separating them keeps drawing so much power that it trips the circuit breakers and now will not run without serious cool-down time.  We are trapped in bedrooms where we can survive.

We may attempt to go to an air-conditioned movie theater later on this holiday.  But right now, we are merely surviving the heat the best we can.  And so this metaphorical situation we find ourselves in, clinging to small areas of coolness to survive a hot world, is basically how we have been forced to live since the pumpkinhead became our king and since I’ve been bankrupted by ill health, age, and a patently unfair economy.

By the way, the picture is not a drawing of me and my daughter.  I am much older, hairier, and beat-up looking than that guy.  My daughter is older than Valerie in the picture too.  These are fictional characters.  Kyle Clarke and his daughter Valerie from the novel I have not yet finished, When the Captain Came Calling.

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{Old Photographs}

I love old photos. Especially family photos. Let me share these once again.

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One of Facebook’s gifts that I actually appreciate is the connection it has given me to old photos.  Being connected to family members and old high school friends that live far away and I haven’t met face to face for a very, very long time gives me access to shared photos that have existed for a very long time.  I never would have gotten access to them if somebody hadn’t posted it on Facebook.  Example number one is a photo of Son Number One who is now a Marine stationed in (No the government did not remove this portion.  That is paranoid old me.)  The picture shows Dorin as a ring-bearer at a family wedding in the Philippines when he was not yet two.  I was teaching at the time and couldn’t go with them, so, though I have seen copies of this Photo in relatives’ houses, I never had…

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Raw Photos

Sometimes with balky equipment, you must find work-arounds. My phone camera refuses to talk to my laptop, so these are unedited photos I hope to use in a future post.

So I published these as unchanged, unedited photos which I successfully pointed and clicked on to copy them to my laptop for photo editing.

 

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Animal Town in Daylight

Here’s a cartoon re-blog to both amuse and horrify you. Animals aren’t really like that… but people are.

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This is a place I explore in cartoons and daydreams.  It is a little town known as Animal Town for fairly obvious reasons.  It is populated by silly anthropomorphic animals who wear clothes and keep naked people as pets.

Animal Town Animal Town is one of the all-time silliest places to visit in the cartoon dreamland of Fantastica.

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Mandy Panda and little brother Dandy are my constant companions and guides when I tour the dangerous streets of wild Animal Town.  In my cartoons, Mandy is an immigrant from the Pandalore Islands.  She is also the cartoon version of my wife.

20160429_202559 Three of the Town’s most important head monkeys.

It was Mandy who introduced me to the government officials who run Animal Town.  Judge Moosewinkle is the head of the Animal Town court system.  He is a hanging judge, so I am very careful about littering and loitering when I am in town.

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The Truth About the Bard – Part Two

Can’t have part one without part two, now can we? So here is part two. I hope you weren’t holding your breath.

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William Shakespeare was not William Shakespeare.  An odd truth to speak, I know, but true never-the-less.  I didn’t really believe it until the second time I read my favorite play, The Tempest.  He says it himself in the Epilogue;

Prospero.
Now my charms are all overthrown, 
And what strength I have’s mine own, 
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true, 
I must be here confined by you, 
Or sent to Naples. Let me not, 
Since I have my dukedom got 
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell 
In this bare island by your spell; 
But release me from my bands (10)
With the help of your good hands: 
Gentle breath of yours my sails 
Must fill, or else my project fails, 
Which was to please. Now I want 
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant, 
And my ending is despair, 
Unless I be relieved by prayer, 
Which pierces so that it assaults 
Mercy…

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The Truth About the Bard – Part One

If you didn’t have enough to think about with Trump and Russia, then here’s a neat little conspiracy problem that I love to play with.

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I came to believe that William Shakespeare was a made-up character pretty much by the same means as the world first noticed the inconsistencies.    In 1848, a young religious scholar named Samuel Mosheim Schmucker, put forward a parody of arguments against the physical existence of a historical Jesus Christ.  The fact that no written works by Jesus own hand had ever been seen or discussed in historical documents was used to claim that Jesus was very possibly a made up character created by the Apostles Paul, Peter, and John.  No physical evidence of his existence remained that wasn’t tainted by the fervor for relics, even fabricated ones, that ruled the Middle Ages.  He posited, as a joke, that in the same way Shakespeare hadn’t written his own plays.   After all, here was an unlikely person, an actor who had never been far from the city of his birth who…

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