So, apparently, according to my Republican friends, Joe Biden is a Communist bent on destroying the Constitution, the Economy, and America in general. The January 6th Insurrection was a peaceful protest except for the Antifa bad actors who wore MAGA disguises and the people actually on trial are innocent.
Pundits across the spectrum are saying the Republicans will win.
I hope you all enjoy your Fascist dictatorship under Herr Ronald DeSaniflush. I expect to be executed within a couple years’ time for promoting radical and dangerous ideas like empathy, fully-funded education, and the equal value of all races, cultures, and religions.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is a question I can’t help thinking about even though I am an atheist. Although, to get technical about it, it is a question I think about because I am technically an agnostic. I do not know if God exists or not. So, when I pray to him and ask the question, “God, are You real?” He says loudly, “Don;’t be stupid, Mickey! That is the least important question in the universe!”
I have to wonder at that. If God will punish me forever in a firey pit where I will have to listen to Ben Shapiro talk endlessly while I am lying naked on a bed of broken glass and maggots for not believing in God and not using the proper name for God or not singing the right songs and not talking about the right holy stories about God’s chosen people, then I might want to avoid that outcome.
Then God declares from on high, “Stupid Mickey! There are no rewards or punishments coming from God. How hypocritical would I be if I declared myself a God of Love and Forgiveness and then set the universe in motion only to destroy or torture sentient beings who do things I don’t like, or reward behavior I do approve of? If I really exist, I am beyond trying to correct any supposed flaws in creation. If I did that I would not be God, and therefore not real.”
So, if that’s true, and admittedly I got that truth from loud voices in my own head, then how can I be good without religion?
“Stupid Mickey! You simply do what you know you should do due to the totality of your experiences and education.”
But that pronouncement from God leads me to wonder, “What if my experiences and education lead me to decide to do bad things? I did turn myself into a nudist after I retired as a teacher.”
“But if you believe that what you have done is evil and wrong, you would correct the behavior, would you not? You drew that portrait of a nudist girl with love and care for what you should not violate about her young life. She was pleased by it. Nothing you did in the process was sexual.”
“Are you saying, God, that what I did was actually good?”
“You are the only one who can answer that question, Stupid Mickey. After all, if God had wanted people to be nudists, He wouldn’t have had everyone be born fully dressed in clothing.”
“Is that supposed to be a joke, God?”
“Stupid Mickey, I am just a loud voice in your head, remember?”
“Oh, right.”
Several moments of silence follow.
“So, is it okay with you that I believe I am an atheist who believes in God?”
I like to complain a lot in this blog, especially when I’m sick and feeling as rotten to the core as I do today. But I have to remember that for every bad thing I list on my pile of grouchy ole coot rants, there is usually one or more good things to offset it. So, I will endeavor to test that by making two lists.
Good List;
I sold three books today on Amazon I also reached a page total of 672 read on Kindle Unlimited for the month of October which is only half over so far.
The US Government has finally struck out to battle climate change, spending lots of money to promote actual clean, renewable energy sources, actually working towards taking carbon dioxide out of the air and reentering the international climate change initiative. We may now be able to actually save our planet from imminent heat death.
The Texas government, if it falls into the capable hands of Beto O’Rourke, will fully fund public schools once again and provide free and fairly equal education to all regardless of income level, race, religion, or who your friends are.
I have watched and loved every single Marvel Movie and TV series they have put out on Disney+ and the movie theaters. Most recently Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, and She-Hulk, Attorney at Law. I have also watched and mostly loved all their Star Wars movies and series.
Bad List
The number of books I sold today is the highest number I’ve ever sold in a single day when I was not buying the books myself. So, I am still the mostly ignored author of some books that I think are actually very good in quality and content. The same asterisk applies to the Kindle pages read. Most ever in a month, though it is not the full equivalent of probably about five books. It is a good thing I don’t rely on the money I make by writing to live.
The Republican Party (or more accurately, the SIth Empire,) are poised to retake both legislative bodies in the US Government. That will lead to legislative efforts to undo any and all climate-change repair efforts because the Koch Brothers want to continue raking in high fossil fuel profits until after they are both dead when they don’t really care if the rest of all life on earth dies as well.
Republicans cheat, so they will also win the governorship of Texas, meaning that Emperor Abbott will continue to deprive school districts of the money it takes to succeed in teaching everybody, will then declare that public schools are failing, and move all education into for-profit learning factories where white people with money will get only the best (except in science class, and maybe history) while everybody else will have to study from books they make themselves with Dollar Store crayons and newsprint paper.
All the YouTube review videos seem to hate and cut down everything on Disney+. The critics seem for the most part to have an, “I hate women” and “I hate woke agendas” and “I prefer perfect white American heroes” mindset. Their opinions are nonsense doo-doo. And I don’t watch anything I know I am not going to enjoy. So, why do they? I only watch their videos when they trick me into thinking they are not going to be like that.
So, I guess things are equal. But why are the bad things all in larger paragraphs?
You see, I believe in God… but my God is a bit bigger than most people’s God. In fact, most of the people who come closest to what I believe are atheists. My God is all of existence, the good and the bad both. He is above my understanding, but it is my place to constantly try to reach for Him and know Him and, sometimes, even be Him. Things that are impossible to accomplish, and yet we all do it on a daily basis.
My God does not punish sin. My God does not reward faith. My God does not ask anything of me beyond being. But since I exist, and since I believe that love and beauty are good things, if I want the universe around me to manifest love and beauty, then I must make it so. I must live as a loving person and a singer of beautiful songs… even if I can only sing silently in words on a page.
However did someone as dopey as me come up with something as dopey as this? Let me tell you a story.
When I was ten, an older boy, a neighbor, trapped me, de-pants me, and abused me. It was not love in any way. It was sexualized torture. He made me feel pain. He took away my sense of well-being. He made me afraid to touch or be touched by others. He made me believe my own physical urges were a terrible thing that God would punish me for. I wet my pants in school more than once, because I feared the boys’ bathroom at school. I no longer tried so hard to make the other kids laugh. I sank into depression. And ultimately, I thought about ending myself in painful ways, ways I felt I deserved.
Reverend Aiken is the one in the cowboy hat. His son, Mark, was my childhood best friend.
But I was blessed. My best friend’s father was the minister of the Methodist Church and, eventually, both churches in our little town. And in the late 60’s, the Methodists decided to be very progressive on matters of human sexuality. When I was twelve, he taught all the kids in my age group about sex using a blackboard and a willingness to frankly discuss anything we needed to know. Of course, he never quite figured out what my terrible secret was, in fact, I couldn’t have told him about it if I wanted to, the memory was repressed and I couldn’t call it up until that day in college when it all came back to me at age 22. But he knew it was there. He is the one that taught me that faith in God is about love. It is not about punishment, especially not punishment for biological urges and physical needs. People need love, and should never be castigated or humiliated because they seek it. And he told me that I was not to blame for the acts of others. The notion of original sin, that we are all born despicable because Adam goofed, is nonsense. All people, even the bad ones, are God’s children and worthy of love. People can be redeemed from anything. And it is the job of worthy people to be the love that informs the universe. We must do good deeds and love, honor, and, most of all, render aid to others. Because that fills the universe with goodness and light.
Both the good Reverend Aiken and my abuser are dead now. I deeply love one, and I forgive the other. And it’s because that’s what God is… love and forgiveness. It has to be so.
Did you listen to that song from YouTube? If you made it this far through this rather difficult ramble without listening to it, I recommend you click on it and give it a try. It is about King David sinning with Bathsheba, and repenting his sin before God. And in the end, there was no punishment for him. So, I, too stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.
Today I needed to write something short and sweet to be done with it, and yet, actually do it. This was because I had to drive all the way from Dallas to the Air Force Base in Witchita Falls, Texas, to pick up my number two son to reunite him with his car so that he can drive to his new assignment at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Not a glamorous job to be sure, but necessary and useful.
On Tuesdays, I am now writing the 5th book in the AeroQuest series. I am greatly enjoying revisiting the terrible mess I made of the original book. Believe me, I am working hard to straighten out and make sense of the convoluted story and the plethora of comic characters. It is inspired by a cross between Frank Herbert’s Dune trilogy and Douglas Adams’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
The real news for today is that I am conducting a free-book promotion for my book Sing Sad Songs. This is a very good, very sad story about a boy who has lost everything and now must make a new life for himself in a new country, with a new family, and possibly a new girlfriend simply by singing sad songs.
But I didn’t really have enough time to work on a post for today. So, it ends here for today.
The planets and all the stars have their appointed ends.
Through science and observation and logical extrapolation….
We learn how small we really are in the vast universe around us.
And we see how impermanent everything is…
We are made from the dust of exploded stars. All elements beyond helium and hydrogen were formed in the flaming hearts of distant, ancient suns.
And when we die, we dissolve back into the elements from which a volatile and creative planet with a life-filled biosphere created us. And may decide to create us anew.
So, we will one day be mere dust again. Free to create something new.
We are but the words of the puzzle, making one crossword one day, and another anagram the next.
But the stories we make of those random, meaningless words…
Are the reason for existence.
And they are just as eternal and undying as anything else is.
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!)
The truth of the matter is… I have nothing to write about. At least, not results of efforts, progress to report, or a list of things accomplished.
What I have managed to do in the last three weeks is 1.) Destroy my car’s transmission on a pothole so that I have to walk to the bathroom at the grocery store every morning to use the bathroom. After all, we have no working toilets at home that I can afford to have fixed. Sinks and showers, sure. But not toilets. Three non-working toilets that would cost over a thousand dollars and a dug-up floor in order to TRY to get one working via plumber expertise. 2.) I have also gotten enough walking done to get my diabetes under control. 126,060 steps recorded on my phone app plus many, many others taken without my phone in my pocket in the month of September so far have returned my A1C to pre-diabetic levels even though I have had diabetes for 22 years. 3.) I have started two new writing projects even though I have two others almost finished that were supposed to be done back in June but still remain incomplete by a few hundred words and thirty pages of proofreading. Truthfully, writing is stalled in a never-ending spin cycle. I am writing but not finishing. Just going round and round.
I am still a nudist who has to wear clothes all the time. Even at night. Things are bleeding that shouldn’t be and going to the doctor is out of the question because it is too far to walk.
But somehow we will make it through. The world is falling apart. But it is always falling apart. Life is held together by Band-Aids and rubber bands. The only thing that has changed is that I am even older now and much more easily tired out.
I hope at least you can enjoy the pictures. I know my ironic humor has gotten a bit rusty and ruined by old age.
Yes, my mother died a year ago. I am in my middle 60s, she was in her late 80s when she passed away. That is a long time to have someone in your life, more than 60 years of love and care. She was a registered nurse working in hospitals in Iowa and Texas for more than 40 years. She taught me about service to others. It is the main reason I became a teacher of children rather than a comic book artist.
She also taught me to make porcelain dolls. We went together on a kiln from California, each of us paying half of the thing’s value. She and her doll-making friends led the way, learning how to fire the porcelain, paint the dolls, give them wigs, make their clothes, and basically give them life. She taught me this art too.
This is one she made for me. The pattern was called “Tom Sawyer.” I call him Tom. He’s entirely lifelike. That is why he has to live in or near my bedroom. My wife doesn’t like the way he looks at her. And so she claims he could come to life in the night and do goblin-like tricks against her.
Personally, I defend him since he has taken the blame for things I actually did on more than one occasion.
Nicole (Below) is also one she made with her own hands. The clothes on these dolls were made with her sewing skills as well.
She is the one at the root of my doll-collecting mania.
Yes, the Queen is dead. I heard the news from England. But she has also been gone from my life for a year now. My heart is still broken. And I feel bad for the one in England too. But I didn’t really know her.
Catch a Falling Star 
What Will One Day Be…
No king rules forever.
No man we know of lives eternally.
The planets and all the stars have their appointed ends.
Through science and observation and logical extrapolation….
We learn how small we really are in the vast universe around us.
And we see how impermanent everything is…
We are made from the dust of exploded stars. All elements beyond helium and hydrogen were formed in the flaming hearts of distant, ancient suns.
And when we die, we dissolve back into the elements from which a volatile and creative planet with a life-filled biosphere created us. And may decide to create us anew.
So, we will one day be mere dust again. Free to create something new.
We are but the words of the puzzle, making one crossword one day, and another anagram the next.
But the stories we make of those random, meaningless words…
Are the reason for existence.
And they are just as eternal and undying as anything else is.
And there-in lies the reason for hope.
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