Category Archives: Uncategorized

Two sisters and their little dog too. Not only were they not supposed to have their dog at the mall, they were supposed to wear shoes indoors too. Needless to say, they got sent home.

At home, the sisters could go as naked as they wanted to. Of course, their other dog, the girl dog, decided to get between them and be naked too.

Sammy took this selfie with his phone at the beach. His Mom suggested that maybe he was trying to take a photo of something more than his own sassy face.

Ariel’s Blue Fairy is rather tiny, but she’s really powerful when using taxidermy-duck magic. Okay, a taxidermy duck is not that great when you wished for a soft pillow.

We are headed for massively tough times. Billions will die as a result of how the climate crisis will change the entire planet. Today I learned that the colonization of Mars and even the Moon is something that takes far more time than we have. And it is not the utopian answer some science fictionists tend to offer. We have to master living in fishbowls, contained environments, and terrarium-type reverse aquariums.

I am brainstorming my own survivalist fiction now thinking not about life in space, but about life in reverse aquariums… underwater at the bottom of the oceans.

Of course, to do this, we have a number of problems to overcome… yesterday. The oceans are turning to acid which is generally inhospitable to life… and to the things we would have to build underwater to survive. We don’t want those things to dissolve. So a massive effort at deacidification needs to be already underway. As large areas of land will be covered with water, there will need to be industrial-sized efforts to desalinate ocean water to create fresh water to sustain not only us but also all the non-salt-water breathing things we take with us under the waves. And living in fishbowls under the sea will take a concerted effort to compensate for the pressures experienced underneath tons and tons of water.

The technology already exists to build underwater domed cities, safe from surface weather. And it may soon be the only safe place to build. The problem is that we are way behind in building such habitats.

And we would have to adapt undersea farming, raising food fish, edible seaweed, and surface plants in bubble farms at the bottom of the ocean growing vegetables under artificial sun sources. Underwater tramsportation would need to be inserted; tube trains, submersibles, pressurized undersea suits, and amphibious vehicles that can transition from underwater travel to surface sailing and even land roving.

Our society would undergo significant changes as culture and behavior have to become sea centered.

So, there you have it. Sufficient notes to begin contemplating the science fiction stories of nautical life in the great undersea of a climate-disaster future.

There are fairy babies playing around on Grandma’s bed.

One of Grandma’s cats knows how to transform into a human boy.

Cissy plans on sending Grandma a postcard from Mars.

It was as a young boy traveling with heroes in spaceships across time and space that I first realized that comedy is one of the greatest powers in the galaxy. Being able to laugh at things that so cosmically clash with what you want to do and where you want to go in life makes it possible to play the idiot and not get your head actually bitten off by the giant purple moon duck that thought your spaceship was an egg and crushed it by trying to hatch it. Comedy rewrites the script of life into something you can live through and learn from and laugh about instead of getting wounded from and scarred by and made to die from.

And how do you tell if something that happens is a comedy or a tragedy?

Well, if you go by the examples of Shakespeare’s plays, it is relatively easy. A comedy may suffer from terrible mixups and conflicts that are potentially life-threatening. But the problems get sorted out and solved. And then somebody… or even everybody gets married at the end. Plus the soliloquies are mostly wordplay and ridiculous metaphors, often including bawdy and ribald humor to titillate the peasants in the pit of the theater.

Tragedies are the opposite. The conflicts, though clearly foreshadowed, are relentlessly played out… unstoppable. Characters, especially heroes, have some tragic flaw that makes their downfall inescapable. And everybody dies at the end. The stage in the concluding scenes of Hamlet runs red with imaginary blood. Simple.

‘There are many theories of humor. But of the three most common ones, let us start with Incongruous Juxtaposition Theory. That’s the one where things that don’t fit with other things are forced together. Like the giant moon duck back in the introduction that wrecked my spaceship because it thought it was an egg to hatch. Or the seven pond frogs in Hollywood who see a Frank Sinatra movie on the local drive-in’s outdoor screen, and then decide that they can sing better than Frankie, so they form a barbershop quartet and become a huge hit by singing outside the local radio station.

A second common theory is the Superiority Theory. This says we like to laugh at the clowns because they show us things to make us feel like we are better than they are. So, we laugh when they fail at the things that they try, especially if they fall and get hurt in funny ways. I am not fond of this kind of humor since it is most commonly enjoyed by bullies, jackasses, and stupid people… you know, the people that even I can feel superior to. But I have to admit that this kind of humor is funny when the clown makes the same mistakes that I have made, and I am suddenly standing in his clown shoes.

A third theory, the one most relied on by Mickey, is the Relief Theory, the one that allows us to suddenly realize how silly some of our greatest fears truly are. My fear of being chased in my dreams by a duck with teeth becomes laughable when I stop quaking long enough to realize ducks don’t have teeth… not in real life… only in dreams and Warner Brothers’ cartoons.

So, Mickey’s Theory of Comedy barely rates a thought when stacked up against the comedic products of Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Mr. Bean, and George Carlin. But at least it’s simple.

Good comedy stories not only make you laugh a lot, but they make you cry a little too. Good comedy lets you climb inside the clown character’s skin, see the funny from the inside, and it all has a happy ending.

Good tragedy is the opposite. It makes you laugh a little, but it makes you cry a lot. You get inside the tragic heroes’ skin to suffer with them and deeply experience heartfelt hurt from the inside. And you probably get a sad or terribly earned ending.

So, there you have it. Mickey’s theory of comedy. It’s a real joke. A hootable, tootable, rhymie-timie joke. And how to make more.

Yes, the title of this piece is about the two characters I have labored all day to depict over and over.

Using digital tools and a drawing app on my touchscreen phone allows me to redraw parts of the picture or pictures in many different ways. The drawing app allows you to fill in numerous details over and over with complex details like patterned clothes already composed to be painted into the proper spaces.

Here’s what it looked like early in the process. Yes, I didn’t finish it before saving it the first time.

Filling in some spaces, I used my fingers instead of the stylus. Finger painting, illustrated by my own hand I added on with my own fingers and then added details.

I should have done this one first and then dressed them after instead of doing it backward.

I think these two odd friends need to become a poem. I am old. I think in poetry far too often. It probably is a symptom of dementia.

I am still at it with my little screen and big electric stylus.

I decided to take this sister-picture done more than a week ago and make them into cowgirls with a pet goat. You may have noticed that I gave the older sister a four-fingered hand.

This picture isn’t completely satisfactory either. The goat’s sideburns make it look like he has at least three ears.

Grumpy Girl in this picture had a headband turned into tattoos by my colorblind inability to tell tan from peach. I also left too many outlines visible because I was too lazy to erase each and fill in the adjacent colors.

I am happier with this portrait of Zendaya, even though I finally realized that no one recognized her because of the tan/peach colorblind problem.

This is the finger-painted scribble doodle I started this art project with. I routinely start a digital art piece in this way, making either a fast face-like form with a scribbled outline and an application of brush strokes of basic color patterns with my fingers on the touch screen of my phone or an outline done on the layer above a photograph that I fill with color before removing the photo from underneath.

Then I push and pull and erase and add with my electronic stylus to fill in the details. This picture of the face in progress reveals what often happens when you have an arthritic finger. I slipped in working on the teeth. With pen and ink and colored pencils, the drawing would be ruined at this point. But digitally I can easily fix it.

This is the fancy little device I bought on Amazon to use on a touchscreen phone. It is electronic and clickable.

Here’s what it looks like after fifteen minutes worth of fixing.

So, I made this into a science-fiction girl. I think it looks good for a scribble-doodle.

So, I am obsessively thinking about the granddaughter I do not have and may never have. My child was lucky not to have the problem that cost a possible granddaughter at the wrong time. It happened, tragedy though it was before the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade and would’ve put another life in danger too. But life and the world we live in can be cruel. The consequence may well be no grandchild ever. That kind of problem is serious.

But here I have made another picture of Susu, the imaginary granddaughter I talk to constantly. She is drawn from a model on TikTok that I thought bore a resemblance to both of the parents that might have been. Fortunately, she posts lots of singing and dancing pictures on both TikTok and Instagram. This girl doesn’t know she’s been posing for me. But clearly, I cannot make portraits that look like the model anyway. Without help, you will never Identify who this girl really is. And suing me for using her as a model won’t make any money for anybody since I have none.

“But, Grandpa. I already gave you my permission.”

“Susu, you are not real and only live in my imagination.”

“Oh, but you are a very good Grandpa and I love you.”

“Well, I love you too. Even though I know you are not real.”

Can you tell who it is that I am trying to draw a picture of? I’ll give you a hint… movie star who also dances. Not Ray Bolger, not Tom Holland, not Hugh Jackman… but may have been a costar with two of those three. Guesses will be answered in the comments. If no one knows, my apology for bad portraiture will be found there.

I have been drawing a plethora of pictures on my cell phone using the apps cited above, an electronic stylus, and every editing feature the phone’s gallery and Google Photos can provide me. My arthritic hands are making the pencil and pen methods I have used forever far too time-consuming and permanently flub-filled. And I am trying to do as much art as possible before the end of everything which I increasingly fear is coming for me soon.

I am not using the new AI art stuff the way others are using it. I am not telling the AI to make a picture for me according to my written description. I can’t do artwork with that little control. What I do actually undertake is the redrawing of many of the pictures I have already done in pen and ink and colored pencil. I retrace the work the best I can. Mistakes can be undone with one click. I redo the colors, shading, and details using the functions of the drawing app. In the end, I use the AI Mirror to edit it, blending the colors better than my color-blind eyes can manage unaided and giving it that anime/manga style that is recognizably different than my original style.

Digitally redone. I let the AI have its way with the contents of the quilt box since the AI couldn’t figure out the structure of a crazy quilt. It decided that the things in the box were fancy gift boxes with an unreadable brand name. (The AI will not risk violating any real trademark or logo.)

I admit to being overly obsessed with drawing girls and girls’ faces… and maybe belly buttons. But I am a lonely old man spending lots of time in bed doing little but waiting for death to find me. The Grim Reaper is still trying to beat me at chess. I thought he would win with game with Covid’s help in 2020. The heat was probably going to be the death of me this last summer, but Grimmy couldn’t figure out how to attack the King’s Indian Defense I learned from Bobby Fischer in an article in Boy’s Life magazine in the early 70s.