
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Things You Probably Ought to Know about Mickey
As Mickey’s go, the one who is writing this is a moderately interesting example of the breed. Still, there are things you probably ought to be made aware of. A sort of precautionary thing…
First of all, this particular Mickey is an Iowegian. That means he comes from Iowa, the State where the tall corn grows. It is a prime reason why his jokes are corny and his ears have been popped (oh, and he does actually have two, unlike the picture Paffooney where only one is showing). His fur is not actually purple. If anything now, it is mostly silver-gray. But the Paffooney is a magical portrait, and purple is the color of magic. He has a goofy, and sometimes fatal grin. You may not be able to prove that he has ever actually grinned someone to death, but it is likely he could always dig somebody up.
Another irrefutable fact about this Mickey, unlike many many Mickeys, is that he used to actually be a public school teacher. He taught the little buggers for thirty-one years, plus two years as a substitute teacher. He did twenty-four of those years in middle school… twenty-three of those in one school in South Texas. His mostly Hispanic students managed to teach him every bad word in Spanglish… err, Texican… err, Tex-Mex… or is it Taco Bell? Anyway, they taught him every bad word except for the word for cooties… you know, piojos. He learned that word from an old girl friend.
A despicable thing about him… (you know despicable, right? It’s that word that Sylvester the cat always uses) is that he actually likes kids. That’s just not normal for someone who teaches them. Teachers are supposed to hate kids, aren’t they? But he never did. It is true that he yelled at them sometimes, but he never did that because he hated them. He did that only for fun. And he actually apologized to kids sometimes when they got into behavioral trouble, because he said it was the teacher’s fault if kids are bad, and, besides, the kids are so surprised by that, that they forget all about the behavior and can be flammoozled into acting good.
The last and most wicked thing you need to know about Mickey is that he cartoons up a storm sometimes. He loves to draw everything that is wacky and weird. He has more goofball colored pencil tricks than a Charles Shultz and a Dr. Seuss rolled together in a sticky lump with a George Herriman stuck on top in place of a cherry. He steals ideas and techniques from other artists and steals jokes from comedians, undertakers, and random juvenile delinquents. He also puts together lists of wacky oddball details that don’t quite fit together and weaves it into purple paisley prose (somewhere in this whole messy blog thing he has also defined purple paisley prose and how to make it… in case you were curious.)
So there you have it. The Truth about Mickey. The sordid, simpering, solitary facts about Mickey. The straight poop. (wait a minnit! How did poop get there? Not again! I thought I had cured that!)
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Mermaid In Coral and other Drawings

No, she didn’t lose any fingers to sharks. Those fingers are curled in and I made the shadows too dark.




The Mermaid Joins the Circus of the Air Breathers
Yes, you can see me getting mileage out of character drawings by changing backgrounds, details, and sometimes faces. It is a shortcut to artwork only possible now with computer software to help, though I did a lot of this too when AI wasn’t available… which, in truth, it still isn’t.
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Why Being Smart is a Pain

It’s not easy being green. People see you when you try to hide in plain sight. Just stand around like a normal person… look like a normal person… talk like a normal person… don’t use that lexicon full of exotic vocabulary… say simple words… Don’t worry about looking stupid. Stupid people fit in and are easily accepted. But they see through me.
“Hey, Mickey, why do you always look so green? Why are you such a know-it-all?”
Being too smart is a curse. You don’t fit in anywhere. Nobody will talk to you because they don’t understand you. You talk in paragraphs with topic sentences and supporting details. They talk in words and phrases, mostly profanity, and hate-filled words. You understand what they say, but would really rather not understand them.
And I am not a know-it-all. Socrates always said that he knew nothing at all. That’s because nothing that can be known is one hundred percent provable. And I am not as smart as Socrates. So, I must know less than nothing. They made him drink poison for being too smart and teaching kids to be wise guys.
“Mickey, weren’t you a teacher?”
“Um, no…?”

Yes, somewhere near, a mallard or a pintail or a wood duck or a Muscovy duck has his beady little duck eyes trained on the back of my head. I can feel the hatred from afar. And it is invariably a duck with teeth… a full set of Michael-biting dentures sharpened to a .pirahna-like edge
“But, Mickey, phobias like that only happen in the brains of crazy people.”
Yes, mental diseases and traps of thought and overthinking are caused most often in the brains of people who are too smart. Smart people can perceive dangers that stupid people can’t. Sometimes they are real things, real dangers. Sometimes they are not. Keeping your balance on the highwire of daily life over the bottomless pit of bad things that could happen, is hard work. And missteps will happen.
Hide me from spying ducks, my friend, and I will try to tell you in upcoming posts how to learn and what knowledge is really all about.
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Sunday Pictures Drawn on Friday and Saturday

“Friday Night on the Back Porch”

“The Young Buck”

“PoppenSparkle, My Little Fairy Friend.”

“A Nudist Fantasy, Father and Daughter in Florida”
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Delicate Beauty

It is probably evident that comments or verbalized reactions can easily enhance or spoil the beauty of these works of art. “That’s just AI junk ,” “Mickey is some kind of pervert,” “Pastel colors make me feel calm and quietly happy,” “Sleeping nude provides better, more restful sleep,” “Getting the lighting right can make or break the beauty of the picture.” There is a place for comments below if you have anything to add. Don’t beat up my pictures too badly.




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A Perspective on Paffoonies
A balloon filled with loony baboons piloted by a buffoon poltroon with a laugh like the State bird of Minnesota (the common Loon) was whipped round and round by a cyclone (an Iowa State alum like me) until it worked like a blender to tender the gruel (or is that grool?) that makes the makings of a Paffooney. Yes, I took letters from many of those words and pasted them together with Elmer’s glue to create a new word to apply to a picture that accompanies a short piece of Mickian writing.
The girl in the Paffooney above should not be construed to be the poltroon who pilots the balloon. Breanna laughs more like a canary than a loon. That particularly pallid poltroon looks more like Ted Cruz, hence I chose to put Breanna in the picture in place of the Grandpa Munster look-alike that would otherwise offend your eyes. Paffoonies should be interesting to look at. Not sickeningly horrid.
The idea of a Paffooney is that it must contain a little bit of me… Illustrate a piece of my soul so to speak. It has to show a little bit of the self-examination that makes me bend and twist who I am until it fits into the pretzel-shaped container of who I am meant to be. I suppose I am meant to be an artist. Michael was, anyway. Mickey? Well, he’s a cartoonist. Don’t believe me? You could go to Google Image Search and search Beyer Paffooney. You will get a collection of what the algorithm thinks a Paffooney is, and hopefully at least a few of the ones I have created with my magic word attached that the algorithm judges you are mature enough to see.
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Retirement has Drawbacks

I am old. I have been retired now for ten years and three months. Can I still claim to be a teacher? Well, of course! A teacher remains a teacher even after death. It’s like not being able to undo the fact that you are someone who was once born alive.
My body is old. I have seven incurable diseases and conditions, maybe eight. And I have survived skin cancer twice so far. Arthritis has been with me since age 18. The fiftieth anniversary of my diagnosis occurs in the Spring of 2025. Diabetes has been with me since the year 2000. Diabetes has caused eczema and diabetic depression. It may also have contributed to my glaucoma. I have had severe allergies since childhood. That caused bouts of chronic bronchitis which has caused COPD in my lungs. I also have hypertension, with my high blood pressure sending me to the emergency room at least once. And I had chronic prostatitis for a decade which permanently enlarged my prostate. I am battling prostatitis again now, having had a difficult week including an adverse reaction to antibiotics. I could go into further detail, but I have already given murderers numerous ways to murder me and make it look like natural causes. Good thing nobody reads this blog.
Oh, and I have symptoms of possible Parkinson’s Disease.
So, being retired has its drawbacks. Mainly because you mostly have to be old and ready to die to retire. And by the Texas Teachers’ Retirement System’s reckoning, I have lived five years longer in retirement than I was supposed to. Danged old teachers who don’t die when they’re supposed to!
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Recovering

I was battling high and low blood pressure for two days. Today I finally leveled out at normal again. That cuts into my ability to read and write every day. Will get back to normal… I promise.
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