September 16, 2022 · 1:20 am

Essential Sorting

The internet is a golden treasure chest with an attached bag of holding for me.  In other words, a lot of the writing I do depends heavily on a resource that didn’t really exist until I was almost 40 years old.  I save stuff from my eclectic surfing forays in computer files that tend to become amazingly complex garbage dumps.  So today, I decided to sort one of them to go through stuff I thought might make an interesting blog post.

So, let me show you some of the treasures I have found that could become upcoming blog posts.   I will go through the sorted files from July of 2018.

The Dragon Prince

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This is a funny, fascinating, D&D-type adventure series from Netflix and the creators of Avatar, the Last Air Bender.

I have recently watched the entire first season, and love this show enough to write a gushing love-review.

Fresh Off the Boat

This is a show on regular TV, the ABC network.  It is about an immigrant family originally from China.  I think I am married to the spiritual twin of the lead female character, an obsessively controlling Asian wife who has to have her fingers in every single pie in the neighborhood.

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It is chocked full of little things that are both bizarre and funny about Asian cultures being assimilated in this country.  And the kids are cute and extremely talented.

fresh-off-the-boat-cast

Gene Colan

Gene Colan was one of my favorite comic book artists in the 70’s and 80’s.  I will probably do a more in-depth biography post on him in the future because he really helped me learn to draw in pen and ink.  I copied his work from Daredevil, Howard the Duck, and Tomb of Dracula.  But all of the work I will show you is done not by me, but by Gene.

Miscellany

This is the stuff that didn’t need its own folder.

 

Twitter Nudists

This is one I might not be able to use and still maintain a mild R-rating.  But I am, in fact, a member of the online nudist community.

Theodore Roethke

This one was already turned into a good blog post.

Lovely bliss quotes Theodore Roethke Quotes
PhotoLiaison.com

The Wizard of Ozz

It goes without saying, nobody can have too many Wizard of Oz pictures.

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September 15, 2022 · 7:08 pm

On a Day With No Mojo

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.

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September 15, 2022 · 2:19 am

Mickey’s Secret Identities

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Yes, there is very definitely a possibility that there is more than one me.

If you look carefully at the colored pencil drawing above, you will see that it is titled “The Wizard of Edo” and signed by someone called Leah Cim Reyeb.  A sinister sounding Asian name, you think?  I told college friends that my research uncovered the fact that he was an Etruscan artist who started his art career more than two thousand years ago in a cave in France.  But, of course, if you are clever enough to read the name backward, you get, “beyeR miC haeL”.  So, that stupid Etruscan cave artist is actually me.

It turns out that it is a conceit about signing my name as an artist that I stole from an old episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show and have used for well over two decades through college and my teaching career.

And of course, the cartoonist me is Mickey.  Mickey also writes this blog.  Mickey is the humorist identity that I use to write all my published novels and blog posts since I published the novel Catch a Falling Star.

Michael Beyer is the truest form of my secret identity.  That was my teacher name.  It was often simplified by students to simply “Mr. B”.  I was known by that secret identity for 31 years.

Even more sinister are my various fictional identities occurring in my art and my fiction.  You see one of them in this Paffooney.  The name Dr. Seabreez appears in Catch a Falling Star as the Engineer who makes a steam engine train fly into space in the 1890’s with alien technology.  He appears again in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius as a time-traveler.

The young writer in the novel Superchicken, Branch Macmillan, is also me.  As is the English teacher Lawrance “Rance” Kellogg used in multiple novels.

So, disturbing as it may be to realize, there is more than one name and identity that signifies me.  But if you are a writer of fiction, a cartoonist, an artist, or a poet, you will probably understand this idea better.  And you may even have more than one you too.

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September 14, 2022 · 2:08 am

Character References, Part 3

When choosing whose picture to publish of all the many made-up people that live in my head and my fiction, I often wonder, do I have an accurate sense of who is important and who is merely minor?  I offer now some characters I don’t feel comfortable leaving out.

Mazie Haire

Mazie Haire

One of the Haire Sisters, rumored to be a witch, and proud to prove it to you, Mazie is a severe and highly focused individual with a knack for seeing and convincing you of the truth.  So, maybe she really is a witch.

She appears in;

Snow Babies

When the Captain Came Calling

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Milton John Morgan (Milt)

I can’t tell you about the witch without mentioning the wizard.  Milt Morgan is the Merlin of the Norwall Pirates (an adventuring gang and 4-H softball team).

He is one of the founders of the gang and the one who got them into the most trouble in the 1970’s.

He appears in;

Superchicken

The Baby Werewolf

The Boy… Forever!

The Wizard in his Keep

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Torrie Brownfield

Torrie is the hair-everywhere boy with hypertrichosis, the werewolf-hair disease.  He was genetically doomed to life looking like a werewolf.  He was discovered living in hiding in Norwall by the Pirates’ gang who decided they simply had to make him a member.

He is, of course, the main character of;

The Baby Werewolf

And also appears in;

Recipes for Gingerbread Children

Harker

Harker Dawes

Harker is a clown-character based on a real person living in the real town of Norwall.  He buys the local hardware store and runs the business into bankruptcy.  He is not only a ne’er-do-well, but he also is a truly loveable fool.

He plays a key role in;

Snow Babies

He is also in the upcoming novel;

Fools and Their Toys

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Dilsey Murphy

Dilsey is Mike’s slightly older sister who seems to be in a lot of my stories.  She is a tomboy and a Daddy’s girl.  She is also beloved by her irascible Grampy, Cudgel Murphy.  Mike Murphy both hates her and loves her, but mostly just depends on her.

She is in;

Magical Miss Morgan

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

and a large number of upcoming stories

cudgels car

Sean “Cudgel” Murphy

Grampy of the Murphy Clan, Cudgel is the meanest old man you’d ever want to meet.  He is excellently suited to the job of teaching kids to swear.  And he only drives his Austin Hereford, “The finest car made anywhere in the whole goddam world in 1954!”

He appears in;

Snow Babies

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

Crooner

Francois Martin

Francois, the French orphan, is the main character in my novel,

Sing Sad Songs.

He paints his face in clown paint and sings beautifully enough to save his Uncle’s business.  I am halfway finished with this new novel.

So, now I feel like I have exhausted myself in character introductions and will probably eschew a “Part 4”.  But with Mickey, there are no guarantees.

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September 13, 2022 · 2:59 am

AeroQuest 5… Adagio 22

Adagio 22 – Outpost Demographics Analyzed by a Genius

I, Googol Marou, am the most qualified person in the universe to break down for you the basic facts about Tron Blastarr’s pirate-base home world.  If you want a basic genius-level analysis, you naturally turn to the scientist who invented a telescope that could visually reconstruct events of the past gathered from planets viewed from my little telescope at sometimes thousands of light years of distance, thus looking thousands of light years into the past.  And of course, I had twelve years of exile to work with in compiling the data from our little corner of the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius  Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.

You see, Outpost was an airless planet on the frontier of the Galtorrian Imperium.  It was unique in that it had been settled entirely by disgruntled privateers from the Coreward War with the Faceless Horde in the two short years between the end of the Horde War and the beginning of the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Shan, heralding the beginning of The White Spider’s new web of interstellar civilization.

I bet you can’t read that paragraph aloud at high lip speed.  At least not without breaking a tooth.  I dare you to try it.

The planetary system went from a world of zero population and zero Medium-Class Earthlike worlds to twenty billion intelligent beings and over 450,000,000 space fish of various species in only five standard planetary years (gauged from the orbits of both Earth and Galtorr Prime, two very similar Goldilocks-zone worlds of the Imperium.)

It began with the surviving members of the Pinwheel Corsairs, Tron’s highly successful space force of warships.  They built the initial installations for crew habitats, a starport, and shipyards.  They were soon joined by many other survivors of the Horde War, looking for someplace to be after being thoroughly beaten and betrayed by both the Faceless Horde and Admiral Tang’s Imperial Space Navy.

Outpost had its own source of hydrogen fuel in the two gas-giant planets in the system, each of which had multiple moons.  Then they stole an Ancient artifact made so long ago that we couldn’t even determine if the Ancients were actual people, or maybe sentient mushrooms battling to fill the universe with mold spores… but sentient mold spores, that made life everywhere.  (Okay, I admit it.  That is all just a conspiracy theory.)  But the Crown of Stars could do something really Ancient science-y.  And then Trav Dalgoda stole it. 

Tron and Maggie tracked the Goof down to a new planet recently liberated and reclaimed by the Aero Brothers.  And the Goofy one had, in the meantime, discovered another Ancient thingy called the Hammer of God.  This thing could build whatever you could think of (as long as you were telepathic enough to tell the Hammer what you were thinking of.)  The Hammer could make whole cities instantly using nanobots and sentient energy beams.  And so, Tron and his people used it to build cities all over Outpost. 

And so, the pirates of Outpost needed people to come live in their new cities.  They found Lupin space pirates willing to live on Outpost in return for help with their rotten spaceships.  They also found massive flotillas of Nebulon space whales, living spaceships that breed on gas giants and contain cities full of little blue Nebulons.  Although they were unwilling to live on Outpost itself.  Instead, they wanted to live with their space whales and other space fish around the gas giants with their various moons and plenty of space for the breeding of even more space fish.

And then Arkin Cloudstalker not only brought his Lady Knights with their White Sword Corsairs to Outpost but also the weird alien Lazerstone who was made of intelligent rocks.  And there was a wealth of psionic crystals in the sands of Outpost that Lazerstone could turn into numerous clone copies of himself, complete with a hive mind.  Millions of Lazerstones came to life on Outpost and started wearing the special armored suits invented by Tron’s boy sidekick, Hassan the Space Elf of Djinnistan.

And so, that is the crucial insight into the reasons why Outpost was the key to the war between the New Star League and Admiral Tang’s Galtorr Imperium.

A Nebulon pilot

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September 13, 2022 · 12:21 am

A Character Reference, Part 2

Yesterday an inconvenient internet outage interrupted my fountain of character gushing.  So let me splash a couple more on here.

tim

Tim Kellogg

Tim is a school teacher’s son who is sorta, kinda, based on my own oldest son… and maybe a little bit on me.  He’s clever, creative, a natural leader, and only slightly evil part of the time.

Tim is a main character in;

Catch a Falling Star

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

Magical Miss Morgan

Grandma Gretel

Grandma Gretel Stein

Gretel is a German survivor of the concentration camps who sees and talks to fairies on a regular basis.  She also bakes magically delicious gingerbread cookies.  And loves to tell stories to those who eat her cookies.

She is a main character in;

Recipes for Gingerbread Children

She is an important character in;

Superchicken

The Baby Werewolf

The Necromancer’s Apprentice

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The Primary Cast of Recipes for Gingerbread Children (left to right) Grandma Gretel, the cookie baker, Todd Niland, handsome young farm boy and cookie-eater, Sherry Cobble, nudist and junior high cheerleader, and Sandy Wickham, cookie-eater and Todd Niland’s crush.

My Art 2 of Davalon

Farbick

He’s the alien Telleron pilot and good guy aboard Xiar’s space ship who gets shot during the failed invasion of Iowa and helps save the planet in the near future.  He’s a main character in;

Catch a Falling Star

Stardusters and Space Lizards

Davalon (re-named David by the couple who adopts him)

Dav is the alien boy accidentally lost on earth in Catch a Falling Star, and leader of the young explorers in Stardusters and Space Lizards.

Superchick

Edward-Andrew Campbell, the Superchicken

It is possible E-A is really me.  He bears my high school nickname.  He is a boy trying to cope with being the new kid in a tightly knit little Iowa farm town.

He is the main character in;

Superchicken

I fear I am still a long way from done with referring to characters in my books.  But more waits for another day.

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September 12, 2022 · 8:17 pm

The Queen is Dead

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.

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September 12, 2022 · 2:01 am

A Character Reference

Humble Admission

Millis

 

 

Millis

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

 

 

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       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)

Val in the Yard

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

 

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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

HD-Blue-Sky-Orben-1024x648

     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

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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.

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September 11, 2022 · 9:28 pm

The Sunday Sermon from an Idiot

I heard a bit of religious argument today delivered by Ben Shapiro. He argued that you can prove God exists by the design of the observable universe. Basically, the “Clocks don’t exist without a clockmaker” argument. But that wasn’t the real point he was making. He was trying to say that atheists are liberal intellectuals lying about why they don’t believe in God, so therefore they are evil and we should hate them. A complicated, judgemental, and hate-filled thing to argue, like most of the arguments I hear Ben Shapiro make. His particular digestive issues must be really painful if he’s always that angry.

But the idiot in the title is not Ben Shapiro. (I am also not saying that Ben is not an idiot. I am just saying I am not calling him that here.) The idiot of the title is Mickey. This is Mickey’s Sunday Sermon. Mickey should get all the blame for this.

Mickey is a Christian Existentialist. I think I have explained that before as a way of saying, “Mickey is an atheist who believes in God.” Really that means he is an agnostic, someone who is not able to prove that God is real, but wants to believe… if only that were logically possible.

You notice that I started this sermon with the Maxfield Parrish picture of a girl sitting on a flowerpot. And why is this picture the start of a sermon? Well, to the flowers in the flower bed, the girl with the watering can looks like God. She who makes it rain when the weather is too hot and dry. But notice too, there is no flower bed in the picture. Only a puddle behind the girl. Did God overwater the flowers? Or did the flowers decide as a matter of faith that they didn’t need water, and believed they were made of sugar crystals so hard that they actually became sugar and melted when they were watered? What a stupid thing for Mickey to think about, let alone say! That picture has nothing to do with religion!

So, why is religion important to someone like Mickey who claims to be an agnostic? Well, a very smart man told me there are three functions of religion in society. It is needed for the maintenance of behavior, belonging, and belief. Society looks to the various churches to set a standard for how you behave towards others. That’s the Shalt Nots that teach the congregation not to commit murder, theft, adultery, or swear, or do the many other things that seem bad to religious leaders and also the laws that govern the general public.

They also look to religion to provide places for people in society to gather together, to develop a sense of belonging, a community. In churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, and other sacred-type places people gather to share proper religious ideas, teach their children, listen to sermons, and gossip about their neighbors, especially neighbors who are not in the building. Shared values and working-community undertakings are fostered and nurtured in these groups.

And if not everyone sleeps through the sermons, these religious groups all share, encourage, and agree to alter their basic beliefs.

None of these functions are themselves a bad thing. One could argue they are essential to the life of a civilized nation. Religion is good for you in many ways, even if you are not a true believer. Studies have been done that show true believers have less stress and are healthier than non-church-going individuals.

So, here’s what the idiot actually thinks. Religion is good for you. It is important for society to function properly. However, religious extremism is pushing this very natural part of human life too far. It can result in the burning of old women as witches, the Westboro Baptist Church protesting military funerals, the burning of black churches in the Southern United States, and some of the very badness that the holy books generally forbid.

And, truthfully, you don’t have to believe to benefit from the existence of religions. You simply have to hope that believers don’t believe too hard and pass judgements they’re not entitled to prosecute.

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September 11, 2022 · 2:33 am

Advertising on E-Bay Ignorantly

skortch

You are probably not going to believe this, but there are certain things you simply cannot safely sell on E-Bay.  My first good novel, Catch a Falling Star, took years to write.  The research, interviews with survivors, fighting off remaining alien invaders left behind when the Telleron invasion failed, and clean-up of sites and inconvenient witnesses took at least from 1990 to 2012.  And then, as part of my marketing-by-blogging strategy for the book, I took a box of leftover skortch pistols and listed them for sale on E-Bay.  They turned out to be a very popular item.  It took the first skortch ray almost a year to sell for a measly five dollars.  It was bought by a woman with a very annoying husband.  She apparently bought the item as a joke, thinking it would not actually work as a molecular disintegration weapon.  But after she surprised her husband with it and then posted the surprising results on Facebook, I quickly sold out the rest of the 26 pistols in the box and made almost $800. I am told by concerned investigative reporters that crotchety old men, ugly wives, and particularly Dennis-the-Menace-like kids were disappearing all across the Midwest.  I also learned that one skortch ray pistol came into the hands of a Republican political operative before the election in 2016.  That fact may have accounted for the disappearances of large numbers of registered Democrats in both Michigan and Pennsylvania in the weeks before the election.

I wanted to inform you that I may have done something stupid on E-Bay.  Therefore I am re-posting the drawing I did of Studpopper the Telleron demonstrating the firing of an example skortch pistol created by Zillokahsitter Industries on Telleri Prime with Sylvani technology.  If you should see one of these in the hands of a spouse that thinks you are grumpy too much of the time, I would suggest an almost instantaneous program of self-improvement.  And if you see one in the hands of someone in a red MAGA baseball cap, immediately put on your own red hat and say something inordinately stupid so they will assume you are one of them, and hope they skortch themselves by accident before they get around to skortching you.

Sorry about that.  I should’ve thought this whole thing through more carefully beforehand.

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