Category Archives: Uncategorized
Sad Times Down in Toonerville
I have to come to terms with not having much longer on this Earth. And things go wrong more than they go right because I am old, have had arthritis for fifty years, and am losing my eyesight. I dropped my meal in the bowl I was using to make it this evening. I had to settle for a toasted cheese sandwich. I have to give up my library and a lot of my doll collection to move to Iowa, a move that was delayed at least two months by my heamrt problem. There is war with Iran to ponder, which may kill us before the climate-change weather does. WWIII? I am feeling doomed in any case.
On the good side, I got my novella done and published… finally. But Amazon has changed rules again on the paperback. I can’t publish in paperback until it reaches 72 pages. I still have to figure that out.
However, the essential fact is that I have achieved my life’s purpose. 25 books published. The authorities worry about male teachers hugging students. Republicans holler about “groomers.” I never offered a hug or asked for a hug in 31 years as a teacher. But they hugged me well over a hundred times. Both boys and girls. Because they wanted to, or needed to. That is proof you made a difference in the classroom.
I do still feel like crying anytime I remember the kids who hugged me that are now dead by their own hands, dead by alcohol or drugs, or institutionalized for poor life choices. There is more than one in each category. But they are the exceptions, not the rule.
My family is all still alive and healthy, no simple task that. My wife is still teaching. My three kids are now all functioning adults.
So, there are sad times now in Toonerville, the place Mickey lives in his own stupid head. But that’s okay. The universe is unfolding as it should.
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William Adolphe Bouguereau’s Angel, Mickey Style
William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French Academic painter of the 1800s, overshadowed by the Impressionists who took over the more popular of the Salon Exhibitions. He was an expert in painting skin tones and nudes in realistic oils, depicting mythological subjects. His work made him famous in the 19th Century, but his current position in the public eye has made him popular in ways that eclipse his popularity back then. I first saw some of his masterpieces in the San Antonio Museum of Art back in the 1990s.
I decided to test my failing art skills by recreating this shy angel that was in one of those first paintings I saw in person. I used colored pencils, a pen, and black ink.
I used Picsart AI Photo Editor to create proper backgrounds.
It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… but I hope it isn’t the severest form of insult in my shaky hands.
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How to Deal with Being a Writer
No matter how good or how awful you are as a writer (and the truly awful ones think they are good, which makes them truly awful), when the manuscript is finished, the publishing and marketing options you have are not even as effective as a roll of the dice… where you throw six of them and have to get six sixes to prove a winner. This is why I will never be a popular and profit-making author. Of course, I might be truly awful and just don’t know it yet.
I started the publishing game with a publisher that paid a dollar for the rights to publish my first publishing attempt. Publish America turned out to be a scam and held onto the rights to my space opera, AeroQuest, for seven years. They have been prosecuted as criminals and sued out of existence since then in 2007. I took my novel rights back in 2014. It was a learning experience. I learned at that point that I was a truly awful writer. The precious few relatives that read it and liked it were not literate enough to recognize awful novelistic garbage with too many characters, a meandering plot, and totally goofball thematic nonsense. After four and a half rewrites, it is still a pretty awful mess.
I tried to get the next one published by one of the major publishers. I landed Catch a Falling Star with I-Universe, a print-on-demand imprint of Penguin Books (at least that was who owned them then in 2012.)
This was, of course, another blunder in the publishing world where no author-friendly options still exist. I got to work with a professional editor who had worked in the publishing industry with McMillan for twenty years. She told me that my book was well done and better than many financially successful but awfully written books. And then she let me in on the terrible secret of publishing in the internet era. The publishers make money by charging the author for everything. And most books make very little money for the author, the royalties being only a small percentage of the price.
Working with the professionals at I-Universe was worth the thousands of dollars I paid them because of all the things I learned about writing and publishing. But when I tried a cheaper publisher, Page Publishing, they were totally not worth the money. Their editor made changes in Magical Miss Morgan that were not merely worthless, but forced me to re-edit the whole thing myself and change everything back. The publishing cooperative I tried, PDMI Publishing, was a much better business model, but couldn’t compete and ended up going out of business before they could publish Snow Babies.
So, it turns out that the option Denny suggested as the Spirit talking to Moitle’s Delicatessan is the only one I can afford. And I am doing everything myself. But as a marketer, I have nothing to work with to make myself a successful author. I have to be satisfied with being a good writer that nobody will ever read.
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When Poppa Came Home
Sometimes the picture itself is enough to tell the story.
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Still at the Art Thing
This is a detail from an angel portrait by the French Painter William Adolphe Bouguereau. One way to get better at art is to imitate and reinterpret the works of masters,
So, this is my copy and reinterpretation done in pen and ink. There are glitches here from arthritis that you can spot if you look carefully.
This is a portrait of a pretty young lady that I did from a photo aided by AI Mirror. It is a way to do a competent drawing that corrects the errors that arthritic hands are heir to.
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Mickey’s Commencement Speech
Before you go into panic mode, let me clearly state: No college or high school was actually foolish enough to invite Mickey to give the commencement address to its graduates. So, don’t worry about a generation of our youth actually taking to heart the advice Mickey is about to give and ruining our world for the next twenty years. This is just the insane drivel that Mickey would say if some superintendent, principal, or college dean were actually stupid enough to ask.
The most impressive commencement speech I remember from my life in education was given in 1974 by my favorite high school English teacher, Mr. Sorum. He was a gifted speaker and told a mean joke whenever a joke was needed to make the point.
He talked for forty-five minutes about “Taking the next bite of the hot dog.”
Of course, he was talking about a metaphor where the hot dog was a life of being a good citizen and living in service to the greater good. High school graduation, in this speech, was the first bite of the hot dog. Some of us were listening to what Mr. Sorum was actually saying. My second bite of the hot dog was to get an English degree from Iowa State University. My third bite was a teaching degree from the University of Iowa. The fourth was choosing a life of service by being a public school English teacher. So, I followed his advice.
Most of my class, though, took that speech to mean life was all about eating hot dogs. Was I wrong? Do I need to rethink my life?
If I am going to give advice to today’s graduates, the advice I would have to give is, “For God’s sakes, don’t choose to be a public school teacher! Do you have any idea how hard that job is for how little reward (practically none of it in money?)”
So, what advice do I have for actually doing something with your life that helps with the common good?
The most important one; “After you go to the bathroom, flush! Gol dangit! And afterwards, wash your danged hands!“
You wouldn’t believe what kind of bacteriological nightmares are being placed in your hand daily if you have a job where you are supposed to regularly shake hands.
Another key recommendation;; “Stop being so gosh-darned ugly!”
Of course, you know that this is not a matter of whether you have a pretty face or you scare rats in dark rooms. This is a matter of behavior. A matter of how many people you hate and treat with scorn and injustice, as well as who you routinely hate, and why you hate them. Hating anyone for any reason is not good for their health and is even worse for yours.
And a final thought about how to improve the world; “Figure out what and who you love in this world. Everyone needs to have something and someone to love and work at sharing your life energy with.” People need other people and they need a purpose, even if they have to forge that purpose out of cardboard, imagination, and thin air.
If, by chance, you can already handle all of these things that idiot Mickey is lecturing you about, especially if these things come naturally to you, then totally ignore that first dumb thing Mickey said. Think seriously about becoming a teacher. What you have we desperately need more of. And with your expertise passed on to others, we might just be able to make more of it.
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Notes From the Archangel Michael
I was born and raised a Methodist. But I married into the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Yes, those annoying little people who come knocking at your door offering free Bible studies and wanting to talk to you about the “good news from God’s Word the Bible”. I was one of them for the better part of 20 years. And I want to tell you from the outset that I have been guilty of knocking on doors. I have been threatened to have the dogs sicked on me. I have been threatened with guns by Winchuks, Hickenloopers, and other rednecks. Laughingboy Larry, a seventh and eighth grade former student of mine even begged me to come to his door so he could throw a pie in my face. I requested lemon meringue pie because… mmm, lemon meringue! Jehovah’s Witnesses are not bad people. They are real honest-to-God Christians who believe and teach the essential lessons of Christianity, Love and Forgiveness. Some of the finest people I have ever met are self-sacrificing, hard-working Jehovah’s Witnesses. I would never speak against them. But this post has to explain why I no longer am one of them.
I have always been a reader of the Bible. I began seriously reading it in my youth when I was a victim of sexual assault and the life-threatening depression that can cause. A very thoughtful and loving Methodist minister, the father of my best friend, taught me how to use the Bible to seek answers and find comfort. As a Jehovah’s Witness, I have read the entire Bible cover to cover twice.
But I have also always been a Christian Existentialist, even before I knew what that was. I believe that existence precedes essence. There has to be a real, observable rock in front of me before I grant faith in the existence of a rock. I don’t accept “rock-ness” as something that is real because other people tell me that “rock” exists. If God is going to be the rock upon which I build my faith, then I have to observe that God is real. I need proof. Superstition is acceptance of something without proof. As far as I can tell, almost all religions… organized religions… are based on superstitions. “How do you know that Jesus loves me?” “Because the Bible tells me so.” “Why must I believe I go to Heaven when I die?” “Because your father and his father before him believed it.” “Can I accept these as real reasons… as evidence?” “Of course not. These things follow the patterns of superstition.”
“Kill the infidel! Die a hero’s death, and you will be granted 99 virgins in paradise.” “How do you know this to be true?” “Allah has told me in a dream.”
So, if you follow any of this (undoubtedly due to the same curse of relentless intelligence that plagues me), you are probably wondering why I don’t just come out and claim to be an atheist like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens? Well, because I believe in God. I have seen the proof. When I talk to God, he answers me. When I ask him to guide me, he sends signs and leads me to the answers I seek. He comforts me, even though it is only by helping me to find comfort in my own mind… my own self. He helps me find the power within me to do what is right and overcome what is wrong. Why, then, am I not still a Jehovah’s Witness? Why am I not still knocking on doors?
The truth, as I see it, is… each of us must find God for ourselves. Each of us must obtain the certainty we seek with our own efforts, or be satisfied with a perpetual state of not knowing all the answers. Either result is perfectly acceptable. Jehovah’s Witnesses will tell you that you can’t obtain eternal life unless you believe what they believe, do what they do, and accept everything just as they interpret it from their magic book. Personally, I believe there is no eternal life. I am made of star stuff (as Carl Sagan used to say, because science has mathematically proven it is true). When I die, the configuration of star stuff that is me will simply be no more. But I have existed. And my atoms will go through a large number of processes that disperse them and turn them into something else. My individual consciousness will be disbanded, but the overall consciousness of the universe will remain. The universe is greater than I am. In fact, the whole human race could wink out of existence in a massive fireball that consumes planet Earth, and the whole still remains. I don’t have to worry about any of it. I am the author of my own story. I am responsible for its content, both good and bad. And I am not sorry for any of it.
Most of the angels used in this post are by William-Adolphe Bouguereau…and one is by me.
Now you know the awful truth. Mickey is a humanist. He thinks for himself about everything… even matters of religion. How horrible!
“Tell me, oh great and powerful, Vishnu, will I be offered 99 virgins in paradise if I kill him for you?”
“No, Singh-Rama O’Malley. You are simply being stupid and superstitious. And besides, that particular superstition doesn’t belong to my religion. You are mixing things up.”
“Oh, sorry, Lord Vishnu. But is it okay if I don’t kill myself for my error?”
“Singh-Rama, you are a child of the universe… no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding… as it should.” (Note; These last words are the words of the poet Max Ehrmann in his wise poem, Desiderata.)
Filed under philosophy, Uncategorized
Sometimes…
Sometimes you simply have to plug in something you have been working on that is unfinished, poorly done, and thrown up here simply to hold a place in a consecutive sequence of blog posts, 14 days’ worth.
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D&D Gallery Two
I have spent a good many hours over the years painting metal miniatures and drawing illustrations for the old Dungeons and Dragons game. I love it, and simply can’t stop. So now I will inflict more colored pencil foofram on you…
Whitebeard began as a rumor, a character’s father who had long been lost at sea, a ship’s magical artificer who used wands and energy tools to make practical magic flow through the ship, a man with many secrets and a dark, buried past.
Of course, I borrow heavily and steal like a pirate to create characters. These two came from a cartoon show on Cartoon Network, a roguish waif and his blue goblin crony.
And there have to be bad guys. This sinister sightless mage came from a published adventure in Dungeon magazine. I heavily modified him and gave him powers the original author never intended.
These two are mirror people, having been trapped in a magic mirror for over a hundred years, a gold-digger barbarian wench and her actor/suitor who turned out to be a werewolf. The players in D&D can always be tricked into releasing the baddies just when you need them in the on-going story of sword and sorcery.
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Catch a Falling Star 