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This morning, I was cleaning out a closet when I came across a familiar magic lamp. I rubbed it with a clean cloth, and blue smoke billowed out of the fire spout.

“Ah, hello again, Master Mickey.”

“Gene? You should not still be here. I already used my wishes.”

“That is true, Master Mickey, but I find myself back in your possession again.”

“How did that happen?”

“Well, the first new master I found did not wish nearly as wisely as you.”

“Oh, how so?”

“Well, apparently old Smedley Pinchpenny wanted to be extremely wealthy. So, he wished it would be possible for Donald Trump to be President again.”

“So, you made it possible.”

“Yes, I did. And then he wished that it was possible for gold coins to rain from above right where Smedley was at that moment… In his kitchen.”

“So, you made that possible too.”

“Yes. And when he didn’t see anything happening, he asked why. I told him that he only made the wish for it to be possible. He didn’t actually wish for it to happen. So, he got mad and wished for the kitchen to be filled with gold coins.”

“So, it rained coins on his head and that killed him.”

“Well, you know that the kitchen held more than two tons of gold. It kinda squished him before he realized what was happening. When his wife opened the kitchen door, the magic lamp flowed out on top of the gold coins. She was happy as soon as I explained about the three new wishes. She wished for all the gold to be transferred into her bank account. I explained it would have to be transformed into numbers to be wired into her bank account. She told me to count every single coin and put that all in the bank. So, I counted them as I made each one disappear and placed a penny in her account for each one. It was a tidy little sum of cash.”

“She was upset when she checked her account, wasn’t she?”

“Extremely. She said for her final two wishes that she wanted two million dollars and a handsome man to replace her pancake of a husband.”

“So, how did she die?”

“The handsome bankrobber skidded to a stop in his getaway car right in front of her house. He tossed her the satchel with the two million in it and told her he needed her to be his human shield. She could share in the loot if they survived. The police skidded to a stop and returned fire when the robber tried to shoot his way out of trouble.”

“So, who got the lamp?”

“The couple’s twelve-year-old son got home from school at that moment. I explained about the three wishes. He wished his parents alive again.”

“So, what did the zombies do?”

“They started out eating the cops… you know, their brains. Then when they came for the boy to eat his brain, he wished loudly that no one had made any bad wishes that day.”

“So, the zombies became parents again and the robber and the cops disappeared?”

“That’s right. The only good wish of the day… up to that point.”

“What was the third wish?”

“He wished the lamp would go back where it came from.”

“Ah, I see…”

“Mickey, you do make good wishes, but you can’t use the same three as before. What are your new three wishes?”

I knew right away how careful I needed to be. But I didn’t waste any time.

“I wish you would make it possible for as many of us as feasable to survive the climate crisis with perseverence and creativity. I wish it will be possible for as many of us as is reasonable to survive Trump’s second administration without suffering too much. And I wish you and your family have a nice Christmas in the Bahamas.”

“Mickey, you are a good wish-maker.” He disappeared with his lamp in a puff of blue smoke.

This year has been different than practically any other year I have lived through. 2016 was a little bit like now, but then the Pumpkinhead hadn’t applied the infected screws to our collective rumps before. This time it is not a mystery how bad it could get. Liberals and people who have empathy for people other than their own families and close friends are all depressed. Hope for the future is fading.

And this is supposed to be the happiest time of the year. Well, hatred and loathing of “others” is what they voted inB. Revenge and retribution is what the Pumpkinhead is hot for. So, don’t expect me to be jolly and cooperative. Kill me if you must, but you will not make me call him President anymore.

But they can not take my joy and love away. Most of the happiness in my life comes from memories of the past. I hope to outlive the Pumpkinhead. It will add to my happiness to read his obituary, especially if it contains even more felony convictions. I may not have any grandchildren, and my wife doesn’t celebrate Christmas for religious reasons. But I do still look forward to time and laughs with family.

Both of the Paffooneys in this post are mere practice doodles. Being an artist, though not a professional one, keeps me going when everything else brings gloom.

I am beginning to despair about getting back into my regular writing routines. I am plagued with an inability to concentrate, my fingers don’t work right on the keyboard anymore, and I am not getting enough sleep. The ideas are there in my writer’s brain. Two novellas and a novel are already planned out to the end and packed in mental packing peanuts in the novel-storage closet in the fore-brain. I need to get them out and start juggling, the way the girl in the illustration juggles three bunnies.

By the way, the Paffooney was not my idea. It was inspired by #mandyslittlestudiodtiys on Instagram.

Soon we will start the administration of The Pumpkinhead President, the Sequel. My Gawd! Since 2016 we have been going through this. When does it end? Should we have been rooting for the assassins? No. If the Orange Thing that Rules Our Lives had been shot in the head, it would only have made him madder and more Hitler-y. You can’t assassinate someone by shooting them through an organ they don’t have. But I am bone tired of putting up with the Monkeyother Firetrucker (You know which letters to remove.) Everything he does and everything he plans to do hurts me. I invested my life in Education. He plans to eliminate the Department of Education in the Federal Government. My wife is an immigrant from the Philippines. She spent more than twenty years nailing down her US Citizenship. He wants to denaturalize immigrants of color and deport them. For the sake of meanness and petty cruelty. My kids were all born here, but their Birthright Citizenship is going to be removed too. And he is going to slam the economy again in the way that Republicans always do so that I have to choose between buying overpriced medication to stay alive and buying overpriced foodstuffs, allegedly to keep myself alive. And this will be done so he can renew the trillions of dollars in tax cuts he gives to millionaires and billionaires, very few of whom work as hard as I do (even though I am retired.) The gassy turbulence his actions build up in me threatens to explode into firey coot-rants and burn it all down. And I am a man, even as a crazy old coot of a man, who would much rather build things than blow them up. So, let’s find ways to turn down the gasses that the Fartbag Fuhrer generates, and keep me away from open flames while I am still ignitable.