He was once an ordinary pet rabbit, transformed through an accident involving a time-traveler’s alien-created mechanical carrot.
He is a character in;
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Mike Murphy and Blueberry Bates (his girlfriend) (She forced me to write that last thing, Mike.)
Mike is a member of the Murphy clan who resides in Murphy Mansion with many other Murphys. Blueberry is the girl who chased him until she caught him and turned him into her boyfriend.
Seen in the novels;
The Bicycle Wheel Genius
Magical Miss Morgan
Catch a Falling Star (only Mike is in that one) (He forced me to write that, Blue)
Valerie Clarke
Valerie is a young Iowan farmgirl who lost her father far too soon. She loves skateboards, 80’s music, and boys, especially boys who can sing.
She is a main character in;
Snow Babies
Sing Sad Songs
She is also an important character in;
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Sherry Cobble
Sherry and her twin sister, Shelly, look almost exactly alike. They are, with both of their parents, practicing nudists. They love being nude at home on the farm, at the Sunshine Club in Clear Lake, and at school when they can get away with it (which is mostly a matter of girls’ locker rooms.)
Sherry and her twin are important characters in;
Superchicken
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
The Baby Werewolf
Orben Wallace, bicycle engineer
Orben came to Norwall after a tragic fire in his home and laboratory killed his family. He switched from physics to bicycle engineering and opened a new lab where it is rumored that he also created sentient robots, time travel machines, supercomputers, and had relationships with aliens and time travelers. Of course the only physical proof of anything are the bicycles he made.
He is a main character in; The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
He is also an important character in; Catch a Falling Star
Anneliese Stein
Anneliese is a gingerbread cookie brought back to life through magical baking skills of her human mother, Grandma Gretel Stein. She was also a human girl in the 1930’s and early 1940’s who also had, unfortunately, a Jewish father. Okay, I know… I will explain better later.
She is an important character in;
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
This will have to be finished another day. I have too many more characters to show you, and my Internet is giving out.
Yep, Sunset Village is the place where I am living now, the series of houses settled in the valley of pain and deterioration where soon the sun will go down and the world will end.
If we are lucky as a country, it will end for me some night in my sleep of natural causes. And it will not end for everybody in the world. But we can’t re-elect leaders who will burn it all down in the name of profits over people. And Donald Trump, a known hater of windmills and other renewable energy, was rescued from indictment over the documents he was keeping in Mar-a-Lago to share with guests and employees curious about nuclear secrets by a Trump-appointed judge in Florida.
Dang! End-of-the-world stuff! I hope you all are comfortable here in Sunset Village as the sun goes down behind the mountains.
I decided I wanted to be a novelist because of Charles Dickens. I loved the way he told a story with vivid characters, rising and falling crises, and story arcs that arrive at a happily-ever-after, or a how-sad-but-sweet-the-world-is ultimate goal. Sometimes he reached both destinations with the same story, like in David Copperfield or The Old Curiosity Shop. I have wanted to write like that since I read The Old Curiosity Shop in 9th Grade.
Thomas Hardy has a lot in common with Chuck. I mean, more than just being old Victorian coots. Hardy knows the Wessex countryside, Blackmoor and Casterbridge with the depth and understanding that Dickens bestows on London. Hardy can delineate a character as clearly and as keenly as Dickens, as shown by Diggory Venn, the Reddleman in Return of the Native, or Tess Durbyfield in the novel I am reading at the moment. These characters present us with an archetypal image and weave a story around it that speaks to themes with soul-shaking depth. Whereas Dickens will amuse and make us laugh at the antics of the Artful Dodger or Mr. Dick or Jerry Cruncher from a Tale of Two Cities, Hardy makes us feel the ache and the sadness of love wrecked by conflict with the corrupt and selfish modern world. Today I read a gem of a scene with the three milkmaids, Izz, Retty, and Marian looking longingly out the window at the young gentleman Angel Clare. Each wants the young man to notice her and fall in love with her. Sad-faced Izz is a dark-haired and brooding personality. Round-faced Marian is more jolly and happy-go-lucky. Young Retty is entirely bound up by shyness and the uncertainty of youth. Yet each admits to her crush and secret hopes. Tess, meanwhile, overhears all of it, all the time knowing that Angel is falling in love with her. And worse yet, she has sworn to herself never to let another man fall in love with her because of the shameful way Alec D’Urberville took advantage of her, a quaint old phrase that in our time would mean date rape. There is such bittersweet nectar to be had in the characterizations and plots of these old Victorian novels. They are more than a hundred years old, and thus, not easy to read, but worth every grain of effort you sprinkle upon it. I am determined now to finish rereading Tess of the Durbervilles, and further determined to learn from it, even if it kills me.
One of my most valuable books of magic is Uncle Scrooge by Piero Zanotto (with a forward by Carl Barks).
This book is filled with some of the best cartoons from Duckburg written and drawn by Carl Barks. Scrooge McDuck was first created by Carl Barks in 1947. Barks had inherited the Donald Duck comic book franchise from Al Taliaferro in the 1940’s. He used his animation training to create an artfully sequenced series of stories that transformed Donald from an enraged character screaming at life into a responsible Uncle with three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, as well as relatives like his unfailingly lucky cousin Gladstone Gander, crazy inventor Gyro Gearloose, villain Magica DeSpell, and the richest duck in the world, Uncle Scrooge McDuck. His run of amazing adventure comics created through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s fueled much of my art training and story-telling training as a boy through comics like the following;
I read these comics to pieces. I studied every panel in great detail. Carl Barks means more to me than most of the teachers I had in school… all but three or four of them. And I hope this little post of praise will inspire you to look into the man and his ducks, and find there the beauty, the wisdom, the adventure, and the humor that completely captivated me.
Much of what I draw is inspired by Maxfield Parrish, the commercial artist who created stunningly beautiful work for advertisers in the 1920’s and 30’s, and went on to paint murals and masterworks until the 1960’s. He is noted for his luminous colors, especially Parrish Blue, and can’t be categorized under any existing movement or style of art. No one is like Maxfield Parrish. And I don’t try to be either, but I do acknowledge the debt I owe to him. You should be able to see it in these posts, some of mine, and some of his.
Mine; (In the Land of Maxfield Parrish)
His; (Daybreak)
Mine; (Wings of Imagination)
His; (Egypt)
Believe me, I know who wins this contest. I am not ashamed to come in second. I will never be as great as he was. But I try, and that is worth something. It makes me happy, at any rate.
I do write poetry. But I must admit, I am not a serious poet. I am a humorist at heart, so I tend to write only goofy non-serious poems like this one;
So here is a poem that rhymes but has too much “but-but-but” in it. A poem about pants should not have too many “buts” in it. One butt per pair, please. So this is an example of spectacularly bad poetry. Why do we need bad poetry? Because it’s funny. And it serves as a contrast to the best that poetry has to offer.
As a teacher I remember requiring students to memorize and recite Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”. Now this sort of assignment is a rich source of humorous stories for another day. Kids struggle to memorize things. Kids hate to get up in front of the class and speak with everybody looking at them. You get a sort of ant-under-a- magnifying-glass-in-the-sun sort of effect. But in order to truly get the assignment right and get the A+, you have to make that poem your own. You have to live it, understand it, and when you reach that fork in the road in your own personal yellow wood, you have to understand what Frost was saying in that moment. That is the life experience poetry has a responsibility to give you.
Hopefully I gave that experience to at least a few of my students.
Bad poetry makes you more willing to twirl your fingers of understanding in the fine strands of good poetry’s hair. (Please excuse that horrible metaphor. I do write bad poetry, after all.)
But all poetry is the same thing. Poetry is “the shortest, clearest, best way to see and touch the honest bones of the universe through the use of words.” And I know that definition is really bad. But it wasn’t written on this planet. (Danged old Space Goons!) Still, knowing that poetry comes from such a fundamental place in your heart, you realize that even bad poetry has value. So, I will continue writing seriously bad poetry in the funniest way possible. And all of you real poets who happen to read this, take heart, I am making your poetry look better by comparison.
Wow, this is potentially a very short essay. The answer to what the title suggests is easily one of the many synonyms for “Zero.” “Nada” en español. “Nichts” auf Deutsch.
My sex-education history is very middle-class American from the 1950s and early 1960s. You might think I would’ve learned about the facts of life from my mother the registered nurse of many years. And fathers back then were expected to have that “awkward talk” with their sons about birds and bees in such a way that boys would understand about storks being nonsense and cabbage patches with babies in them were only for really weird cartoons.
But when asked, my mother said, “You will be learning about that in school when the time comes.” And my dad said, “You already learned about that, haven’t you?” To which he did not wait for a reply.
Ah, well, I got the information from a school friend who was almost a year older than me, and therefore he knew everything. He described for me how it worked. I was horrified and didn’t believe him. He tried and failed to show me how to masturbate, and tried to explain what a blow job was. So, I learned it all from “Buck” before that was ever even his nickname. And miraculously, everything he taught me had a glimmer of truth in it but was almost entirely wrong.
There were, of course, opportunities to see girls naked at various times. But when we tried to bribe them, we never had what they wanted. And the one birthday party where all the girls in my class got to see the boys skinny-dipping in the creek, an incident I wrote about elsewhere, I was lucky enough to only be standing on the bank, fully dressed, and watching the naked little boys splash and play when the girls were spotted watching at the top of the hill. So, my knowledge of female anatomy consisted of seeing sisters sometimes and wondering if what Brian said about them having sexual organs in the middle of their backs was actually true. How were we supposed to know? Being naked in co-ed situations was forbidden.
But then the worst happened. I was sexually assaulted by another boy, an older, bigger, and stronger boy. I was traumatized. And sexuality became a thing of my haunted nightmares. And nobody had, at that point in my life, ever told me the actual truth about where babies came from and what sex was actually all about.
I truly hated myself from the ages of ten through eighteen. I harmed myself, intentionally burning the skin on my lower back against the heating grate in our house during winter because I felt the need to make sexual urges and feelings go away. I seriously planned to kill myself as a sophomore in high school. My parents never knew anything about it. The high school counselor knew something was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him what was actually wrong because I was repressing the memory hard at that point, and didn’t know how to put anything into words. He had to settle for assuring me that I could tell him anything if and when I was ready. But the Methodist minister had taken it upon himself to teach us the actual facts of life in middle school. During confirmation class, he drew the reproductive parts both inside and outside, male and female on the chalkboard in the church basement. He explained how babies were made and how everything functioned. He explained that no part of the process was a sin in itself. Only the misuse of the process was frowned upon by God. He explained how masturbation was a natural part of growing up and sexual urges could be transformed into lifelong love and intimacy. It was the first ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds that were killing me.
And then came that Saturday afternoon where I had made up my mind to put an end to it with a kitchen knife. But before I either cut my wrists or stabbed myself in the heart as I had often thought about doing, I called a friend one last time. We didn’t talk about being depressed or what I was planning to do. But he sensed something was up. Of the many things we talked about, he managed to say I was a good friend and he liked being able to talk about things with me. I never told him the truth about it. But his generosity in that moment saved my life. I owe him what I could only repay by living a good life and being a good person. I am fairly sure he has done the same.
So, what does any of this have to do with what Mickey knows about sexuality?
Well, there are a few assertions I can make that are true for my life.
Sex is a good thing. It allows you to connect intimately with another human being. It nurtures love and family ties for however long the individuals involved are capable of it.
Children should be taught about sex from an early age. That is the only way to protect them from wrong information and being vulnerable to predators like the one who got hold of me.
Masturbation is not an evil thing. It helps you learn your body’s abilities and limits and prepares you for a sex life you can share with someone else. It also boosts your immune system and helps fight depression.
Sex is about love, not exploitation, power, or control over someone else. It is not to be used to harm anyone, although many use it in that way. Sex is only dirty and evil if it is used wrongly.
People need to hear these things about sex. Too many don’t know what they need to know at the time they need to know it.
I am not advocating free love, only good love, no matter how it is made good for you.
So, yes, I know… Mickey is an idiot. He is coming from a rather dark place to assert these things are true. But isn’t that what life is for? To use the hard things, the bad things, the dark and evil things, the things you had to overcome in the course of your life to make a little wisdom to pass along to someone else?
Be happy. Be well. And if you are having great sex in your life, you are allowed to enjoy it.
There are some days when you are in the middle of your daily essay and you suddenly lose interest in the topic you are writing about. So, you can either muddle your way through and tepidly write something that at least won’t totally embarrass you, or you can take note, like now, that some days are just like that.
I have written and posted something every day for 542 days in a row. My goal is two consecutive years worth of every-day posting. Sometimes that means a post like this one… deadline coming up and brain deflation… So, we make do. Or doo-doo. You get to decide which.
Today’s Paffooney is a tribute to a childhood hero, Aquaman. I drew the picture from a comic book inspiration source coming from DC Comics in the 1960’s. Aquaman is a B-level superhero with not nearly so many fans as the big three, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. He was, however, my second favorite after Spiderman. He was more important to me than the Avengers. And this was strange, because I only had the chance to read the sacred comic books in the old barbershop in uptown Rowan. I only remember about two different issues that I was able to read during the long wait for a haircut. (Haircuts on Saturday took forever, because all the bald and crew-cut farmers would take forever getting their hair cut. And they hardly had any hair! I think the barber cut each hair individually.)
Aquaman and Aqualad would journey together in an incredible undersea world of sea monsters, giant fish, scuba divers, villains like Black Manta, and Mera, a real hot underwater babe. Topo the octopus could play comic relief by playing musical instruments or getting drunk on old lost kegs of pirate rum. I became a part of the adventure. I’m not sure whether I imagined myself more as Aquaman himself, or Aqualad. Aqualand was dressed all in red and blue, my favorite colors. I liked his blue swim-trunks. I myself could never wear swim trunks without a fatal case of embarrassment over my knobby knees and hairy legs. I admired Aqualad’s smooth and muscled boy-legs, though not without some shame and embarrassment. Some suggest that the relationship between Aquaman and Aqualad was a homo-erotic thing just like Batman and Robin. But, hey… NO IT WASN’T! It was a hero and sidekick that mirrored the complex relationship between a father and son. My father and I could never talk at any deeper level than Aquaman talked to Aqualad. Yet my father had super-powers for solving my problems and helping me do things and make things. Yes, I think I loved Aquaman because he reminded me of my own father in his quiet competence.
And I had a Captain Action Aquaman costume, a Christmas present and wonderful treasure. I played with it so much that only the broken trident, mask, and swim fins remain. The rest was all broken and unraveled and disintegrated from being played with. The Aquaman in my Captain Action collection has replacement parts in it to make it more complete. Yes, I spent time and money putting that toy back together so that I might play with it yet again.
So why is the super-powered King of the Sea so important to me? After all, his super powers are to breath underwater and telepathically talk to fish. I think, reading back over this stupid little essay, that the most important theme is the father-son thing. I never owned a single Aquaman comic book as a kid, but I watched him on Saturday morning TV. He was one of the Superfriends. And my father had been in the Navy on Aircraft Carriers. Yes, Aquaman is my favorite because Aquaman is secretly my father.
Catch a Falling Star 