This Saturday Art Day is about whatever danged pictures I whimsically decide to show you. I am not proud of them all. I am too focused on being a better artist. But today you take what you can get.
The Trials of 2021
2021 was better than 2020 in two important ways. One, no more Tronald Dump as Commander in Chief. Two, I was able to get vaccinated and no longer had to hide from imminent death.
Unfortunately, as revealed on Television on January 6th, The Mad Mango who had been in charge through four horrible years and two Impeachments managed to convince the core of the Republican Party that they would find ruling the United States far more profitable if they adopted an Authoritarian Dictatorship as their model of governance. No policies, no benefits for the ruled, no equality in American society.
And immediately the cultural yelling party that dominates the daily news cycle did not focus on the mess the Cinnamon Hitler left behind with the mishandling of the Covid pandemic, or the unrest in society caused by the Insurrection and attempted coup. Instead, they were horrified that the heirs of Dr. Seuss okayed the non-renewal of printing contracts on a few Dr. Seuss books because of racial insensitivity and non-profitability. And they began to vilify the Muppet Big Bird just because he did a segment showing kids that getting vaccinatd was safe and okay. The world is dying and the Republicans are busy attacking puppets and defending racist cartoons.
My daughter finished her first year of college, entirely online. She is the first of my three kids to go to college. The two boys are both older and hoping to use the chance they earned or will earn from the military to go to school later.
My oldest son has finished his service with a permanent disability caused by a training accident. But he is not completely immobilized. And he now has a fiance whom he plans to marry when the pandemic finally dies down.
My middle child put in over a year as a jailer for the Dallas County Sheriff”s office, and now has enlisted in the Air Force.
My wife, now a U.S. citizen after over twenty years of working on it, is still teaching middle-school ESL. She has a few more years to retirement.
As a writer I decided to create a couple of novellas, essentially an extra-long short story. Cissy Moonskipper’s Travels is a science fiction novella about a young girl who finds herself all alone on a starship in an unknown solar system.
Horatio T. Dogg, Super Sleuth is a dog-and-his-boy story about a dog detective who follows a murderous rat with his educated nose.
As the year is ending, I have another AeroQuest novel ready to be published, and I am more than halfway through my work in progress, The Necromancer’s Apprentice.
My skills as a writer have not really deteriorated, so the writing is still good. But my output is down because my health is deteriorating. I can’t see as well as I used to. I have more arthritis pain than I am used to. My diabetes is still basically under control without taking insulin. And I am now officially on Medicare.
But the biggest regret I have about 2021 is that I lost my mother and my cousin Karen (the unlabeled person on the far right of this picture.) The world of my youth is now gone. Only my grandparent’s farm is still there, now jointly owned by my two sisters and me. Mom passed away from a heart problem complicated by kidney failure at the worst possible time. I am now the oldest surviving member of our immediate family. And becoming a land-owner has helped me pay off my bankruptcy, but I would change things back to the way they were if only I had that magical power.
Filed under autobiography
Saturdays With The Herculoids
When I was a kid in Iowa in the 1960’s Saturday morning television was the singular source of fuel for the imagination. I loved the various adventure cartoons. Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Thundarr the Barbarian, and the Herculoids were the source of endless lets-pretend games in Granpa’s grove and in the old barn.
I suppose the characters I envisioned myself being the most often were Zandor and his son Dorno. These two practically naked people lived on a primitive planet that had to constantly be defended from space-faring invaders and free-booters that had ray-gun technology on their side. The only weapons that the practically naked barbarians were able to use against the villains were exploding rocks that were shot out of a slingshot by Zandor and Dorno and Tara, or out of the horn-gun on the head of Tundro the living tank-beast with too many legs. Of course, Igoo the giant rock ape could bop ’em with his big stone fists, or Zok the lightning dragon, could zap them with tail and eye lasers. And Gloop and Gleep, the living Play-Doh blobs, could also always shape themselves into flyswatters or springs or wet blankets, or… well, you have to see it to really get it.
I learned valuable lessons from watching the Herculoids and then pretending to be them. First of all, I learned that back-to-nature, practically-naked barbarians were morally superior to those who solve their problems with technology. I also learned that you can win fights with exploding rocks and yelling, “Zandor! Look out!” at the right time over computerized flying robots with lasers and disintegration rays. There was also the thing about never knowing when an old Space Ghost villain like Brakk or Moltarr was going to show up, and you needed to be ready to defeat them by doing the same things to them that Space Ghost had done to them in previous episodes. And for some reason, bad guys come with a psychological need to capture Tara or Dorno or both Tara and Dorno and put them in cages.
I hope there was nothing psycho-sexual embedded in those old episodes. That would be a terrible thing to do to an impressionable young boy who loved to watch the cartoons. Explain to me again, Alex Toth and Hanna Barbera, why are Zandor, Dorno, and Tara practically naked all the time? Oh, yes, it was a tropical planet. It must have been hot there.
Anyway, I must end this homage now, before I start analyzing how this somewhat bizarre cartoon actually affected me as a child. I loved the Herculoids. I still love them… no matter how goofy and weird they are.
Filed under Uncategorized
Re-Minders
Lately I have been having memory troubles. You know what I mean, when you walk through a doorway with a definite purpose in mind.and then, on reaching the other room, you have no earthly idea what that purpose was. It happens to me regularly. In fact, I can even start writing a sentences, and then I… What was I talking about? Oh, yes. I need to practice writing some more spectacularly bad poetry, before I forget how to do it.
Re-minders
Sometimes…
My mind slips out of my left ear…
And I can’t remember things.
So, I have to search under the table…
To find my mind…
And then I remember that that’s not how a mind works.
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Forgetfulness
Tell me now, before I forget…
What was I supposed to remember?
Was it something religious, important, and good…
That comes towards the end of December?
Was I supposed to buy something for somebody then?
I wrote a note to myself in September…
Oh, gosh! How could I ever forget that?
Now the fire is nothing but embers.
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Finding Fairies in my Hair
Why do I have elflocks all snarled up in my hair?
Surely some fairies have been twisting it up there.’
But if I can catch one and make him confess,
He claims I don’t comb it, and that’s why it’s a mess.
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Doofy Me
If I forget everything I ever knew,
Would it be possible that I am still smarter than you?
Old Socrates said he knew nothing at all.
And so he asked questions from Winter through Fall.
I hope I retain enough brain to remember
That everyone needs to wear clothes in December.
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Yep, I still obviously remember how to write spectacularly bad poetry. It is my contribution to literature. Virtually all posts will be able to say, “At the very least, I am a better poet than Beyer.”
Filed under autobiography, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, poem, poetry
Monkey Mathematics
(colored pencil, pen, & ink – entitled “Math Monkey” – by Leah Cim Reyeb (my name backwards))
It has been said that if you have an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, and unlimited time, they will reproduce all the works of William Shakespeare. Not only that, they will produce every other work of literature in every language on Earth that has ever been written… and that ever will be written, for all time. Not only that, but every version of Hamlet that has one misspelled word, two misspelled words, three misspelled words… and so on to infinity.
I was having an argument recently with a boy from Brazil who insisted there was no God and Creator. He claims to be an agnostic, but argues like an atheist. He was trying to “save” me from my erroneous belief that there is an underlying intelligence and purpose to all of creation. His intentions were good, but he failed to convince me before sailing off back to Sao Paulo. Alas, I am unrelentingly still convinced that I am not wrong, as he apparently believed all school teachers are by definition. Yes, it is written that way in the teenager’s guide to life, the universe, and everything. “Teachers are clueless and only teach you the wrong stuff” – page two hundred and three, in Chapter Twelve, Adults are Always Wrong. And, of course, I’m blaming it on the monkeys. It’s always those danged monkeys and their typewriters.
I tried to explain that the whole infinite-monkeys thing is based on flawed math. After all, math was invented by enraged Greeks who danced around naked in caves worshiping circles, squares, and right triangles. Pythagoras must’ve really hated school kids. He gave them all this froo-frah to learn about whole numbers, integers, algebra, and geometry and stuff, and then threw in theorems and equations to give them something to mind-numbingly practice at their desks in Math classes until they were no different from infinite-monkey typists.
If you take a pile of bricks up to the top of a mountain and then throw them off, even if you throw them an infinite number of times, how often will they actually land in the configuration of the Parthenon? …And the Parthenon with one brick out of place, and then two bricks, and …wasn’t the gol-danged Parthenon carved out of marble, not bricks? If you believe all of reality is based on random chance, then you obviously are figuring that out with infinite-monkey math. I’m not saying the Theory of Evolution is wrong. That is ordered and principled in ways that fit Occam’s Razor and is probably just as correct as the Theory of Gravity (which we don’t fully understand, either, yet we don’t go flying off into space with each rotation of the Earth).
“Wait a minute!” screams the head monkey. “Are you saying you believe in Evolution, or in Creation?” (I am constantly hearing nearly-infinite monkeys screaming that nowadays.)
Shoot, I think both things are true. You can’t deny what science offers proof for, fact or theory. Yet, God speaks to me and comforts me, even though he doesn’t actually answer prayers. The evidence of God is in all that he created, including the process of evolution, the monkeys, the typewriters (well… man-made is made by God too if he created man with inventive capabilities, right?), and even the voices in my silly head that I interpret as God talking. Am I guilty of Infinite-monkey math? I try not to be. But I also try not to argue with Brazilian teenage agnostics about the existence of God. Oh, well… can’t win ‘em all.
Filed under Uncategorized
Infinite Monkeys
The theorem goes, “If you sit an infinite number of monkeys behind an infinite number of typewriters and let them tap away at random for an infinite amount of time, they will eventually come up with all the works of Shakespeare, and in addition to that, all the works of literature that have ever been written and ever will be written.”
Now, that is a daunting theorem. All the great works of literature by Mickey will be recreated by monkeys? And even worse, they will probably produce much better versions of all of it. Plus versions of it written in German, Mandarin Chinese, Urdu, and Californian (a really difficult language to translate.) All languages ever created on all the planets of the universe, as a matter of fact. The proof is there. It hinges on the mathematically precise definition of “Infinite.”
But you have to remember, infinite is the biggest number there is.
So many variations will be there in the truthfully infinite amount of stuff that infinite monkeys will produce that one version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet will have a final act where, instead of everyone dying or accidentally killing themselves, Hamlet will talk them all into putting on yellow chicken costumes and dancing with hula hoops as a means of acquiring absolution for their sins.
And a version of it will also exist where all the letter “B’s” will be replaced by “P’s” and all the vowels will be doubled so that Hamlet’s famous soliloquy will begin, “Too pee oor noot too pee, thaat iis thee quueestiioon…”
Accurately imagining the conditions required to have infinite monkeys tapping out infinite works of literary art means that any ridiculous thing that Mickey thinks of will have to actually be typed out by one or more (or infinite) monkeys in all of that infinite monkey writing. Somewhere Eugene Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros will have nothing but characters who are rhinoceroses at the beginning of the play who turn into human beings by the end of the play. (That is the exact opposite of the real French absurdist’s play, for those of you who did not have to read such stuff in college literature courses.)
In fact, in order to think up all the ridiculous variations of every work of literature would take Mickey an infinite amount of time. Mickey probably doesn’t really want to live that long.
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And then there is also the question of the physics of infinity. Is the universe itself, I mean, the one we all live in presently, actually infinite? Astrophysicists don’t think so according to current observable data on the astronomical model of this universe. And then you have the problem of infinite monkeys made of infinite matter. The universe would be filled to overflowing with infinite monkey-matter. And that leaves no matter or space to be used for infinite typewriters. The whole universe would be monkey-matter. And that would also mean no room for bananas, or, in fact, any monkey food of any kind. What is going to motivate the infinite monkeys to work for an infinite amount of time on their monkey literature which they won’t have typewriters to write on anyway?
And then there is another horrible thought that occurs to me. In this picture to the left, do you see the evil monkey? Believe me, if you have an infinite amount of monkeys, one or two (or possibly an infinite number of them) will definitely be evil geniuses.
And evil monkeys do evil monkey-business.
At least one or two (or possibly… you know…) evil monkey geniuses will disassemble infinite typewriters to make infinite doomsday devices. Typewriters will be re-engineered into computers and will become filled with monkey-viruses that will rewrite the operating software of the universe. And then, everything becomes an infinite monkey-villain paradise where the evil geniuses among the monkeys will live the perfect life for monkey criminals full of monkey crimes and monkey debauchery and the kind of infinite chaos that infinite monkey-villains enjoy.
This thinking about infinite monkeys leads to one very definite infinite-monkey conclusion; WE DO NOT WANT TO MESS WITH GIVING INFINITE TYPEWRITERS TO INFINITE MONKEYS!!!
That Bluebird of Happiness
I often go back and re-read old posts, particularly when I discover that someone else has read them. It is amazing to me how differently I perceive things from when I actually wrote the post. As you write, squeezing huge, boulder-sized portions of hot, magma-like burning ideas and passions out through writing orifices not nearly big enough to accommodate, you usually hate what you wrote and are still writhing in pain from the creation of it as you try to edit it, trim it and brush its unruly hair. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor to make you cringe?) But given time and distance, you can really appreciate what you wrote more than ever before. Things that you thought were the stupidest idea a man ever put in words suddenly have the power to make you laugh, or make you cry. You are able to feel the things the writing was intended to make you feel. You begin to think things like, “Maybe you are not the worst writer that ever lived, and maybe that’s not why nobody ever reads your books.” But then, of course, your sister reads the post and tells you that you write like a really old, really crabby, really ancient old man. And you use the word “really” too much too. I know I deserve that, Sis. Especially the “really” part.
Here’s a post that I reread and liked today about Bob Ross.
This is the thing about happiness; It is elusive and rare as a real-life blue bird. But capturing it for a moment is not impossible. And as long as you don’t try to salt its tail and keep it prisoner, you can encourage it to sing for you. (Much better metaphor this time, don’t you think?) 
When I am accused of being gloomy, old, and boring, I can happily admit it and make it into something funny. I am something of a conspiracy nut, but not so serious that I believe all my own assertions. For those people who took offense at this conspiracy theory of mine; Coca-Cola Mind Control, I would like to point out that “Hey, I was joking. I actually like clowns.” Even though there is a serious side to everything and there can’t be laughter without some tears, I am basically happy with the way things are.
I started listening to “Live Happy Radio” on Sunday mornings on KLUV in Dallas. They point out on their program of endlessly droning happy-talk that happiness is something that you can work at. Like humor writing in blogs, it takes practice and practice and time. They even asked me to share the word about their happy magazine and products, so I am doing exactly that right here. Sometimes you simply have to put your cynicism in a jar on the shelf next to the lock box where you keep depression and self-loathing. So you can find their Live-Happy folderol right here.
So I am bird-watching again with an eye out for the bluebird. You know the one. It is out there somewhere. And I need to hear that song one more time.
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 13
Angry Wizards Aren’t Good for Your Health
On the way back to the willow castle Bert and Homer were reciting some kind of comedy routine they had seen on some Slow One’s tele-bish-yawn set at what they called the Nurse-Sing Home. It was something done by two Slow Ones named Cabbit and Klaustello. It was talking about a bees-ball team. And the dumb guy, Klaustello wanted to know the name of the guy on first base. But the other guy didn’t understand the question because the team had stupid names. And then they both got really mixed up, but the dumb guy got boiling mad about Who’s on First? It really wasn’t all that funny.
“Why does Klaustello care if the first guy’s name is Who?” Derfentwinkle asked.
“What kind of game is bees-ball anyway?” I asked.
“It is the All-Mermerrican Sport,” said Homer.
“I think they take a bunch of angry bees and make them into a ball to throw at the players of the other team,” said Bert
“And the other team takes their bees-ball bat and try to defend themselves from the stings by swatting the angry ball of bees,” said Homer.
I began to think it was funny when I pictured in my head the expression on the face of the bat when the stupid Slow One grabbed it by the feet and swung it at a ball of bees.
But most of the time, only the two crows thought it was funny.
And then we all landed safely on the roof of Cair Tellos’s main keep.
“Arrest them all immediately!” shouted the Wizard Pippen. The pentagram on his chest-plate was glowing with bright blue protection magic.
“Not Bob the apprentice. He’s Master Tragedy’s loyal student,” argued Prinz Flute, the faun-child who was Pippen’s only son.
“If he was supposed to be guarding the prisoner and let her escape, then he deserves the punishment too. Set up the chopping block right here, right now.”
The crows took off almost instantly. Dollinglammer used her butterfly wings to follow them before the Sylphs with the halberds could grab her. But Derfentwinkle and I were both caught.
The Executioner of Cair Tellos in his jet-black hood and black-banded armor set up the wooden chopping block right in front of us. A guard pushed me down to it so that my neck was against the place on the chopping block carved to fit it. I was about to really lose my head, and I was not happy about it.
“Father, please, they were returning to the castle. How do you know that Bob didn’t recapture her, and was bringing her back to us?”
“You are right, son. We shouldn’t cut his head off first.”
The Sylphs with the halberds picked me up again and forced Derfie down to take my place.
“Here, now! Those children belong to me. You overstep your authority in doing this!” shouted Master Eli as he showed up, red-faced and huffing with the effort of his climb up to where we were captured.
“If you punish them yourself, we’ll just end up with more pigeons around here. What’s the lesson learned from that? More fat pigeons?”
“A better lesson learned by far than if you cut off their heads. Students learn nothing without their heads attached. At least when they have their heads still on there’s a chance of beating sense into them. Or do you have a head-reattaching spell I don’t know about?”
“Okay, but I won’t have young Sylphs who are supposed to be prisoners flying out of here to go tell my secrets to the evil elves in the swamp. Or that Bluebottom friend of yours.”
“Oh, believe me. They will tell me more secrets of his than they will ever tell him about you.”
Then Master Eli tilted a vial of potion over Derfentwinkle’s head, instantly shrinking her down almost to nothing before picking her up and putting her away in a side-pocket of his red overcoat.
“Be warned, Sorcerer. You are not above suspicion yourself.” Growled the Wizard Pippen.
“Come with me, Bob. We have lots of work ahead of us.” Master Eli stormed away from the fuming wizard and I scurried after him with one hand on my recently-threatened neck.
Comic Book Heroes Who are Older Than Me
I don’t know if you know this, but I am in reality older than Spiderman. I am also older than the Fantastic Four. All of the Avengers except for Captain America are younger than me. Well, you could argue that Thor and Hercules were around longer than me. And the Sub Mariner, And the original Human Torch, the one that Ultron would eventually turn into the Vision. But I am turning 65 this year, and only the Golden Age comic-book characters are actually older than me.
Superman, from the date of his actual creation, not first publication, is turning 88 this year. Schuster and Seigal drew the first Superman strips in 1933.
At the beginnning of June, 2021 the Spirit will be 81 years old. Created by Will Eisner in 1940 the Spirit got an entire full-color page in more than 20 newspapers with a total circulation of more than 5 million copies nationwide. Denny Colt got his super crime-fighting powers by basically being a ghost, back from the dead to punish his killers and other criminals every Sunday until 1952.
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Sheena, Queen of the Jungle is turning 83 this year, being created in 1938 by Jerry Iger working with Will Eisner, among others. She looks pretty good for her age. But, consider this, she is based on the character Rima the Jungle Girl from William Henry Hudson’s 1904 novel Green Mansions. Rima, if she had become a comic book character too would be 117 this year.
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The Shadow, too, is pretty damn old. He celebrates his 91st birthday this year if you consider his pulp fiction origin in 1930. He was also the narrator of a radio show before actually becoming a comic book hero. The old man of this essay was a billionaire who could become invisible thanks to his mind-control powers. And he also had peerless martial arts prowess. He is an obvious inspiration to Bob Kane’s Batman.
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Batman and Robin, as understudies to the Shadow are virtually the same age. Batman was created in 1939 in Detective Comics, and Robin would appear for the first time before the year was out. That makes them both 82 years old this year.
The first time they appeared in their own title was in 1940, so that makes the Joker, Alfred Pennyworth, and Catwoman 81 years old.
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Alex Raymond’s imitation Buck Rodgers comic, Flash Gordon, first appeared in newspapers in 1934. That makes Flash, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov all celebrate their 87th birthday this year.
The Green Hornet is 85 years old.
Wonder Woman is 80 years old.
So, even though I am old and creaky, reading comics with the older superheroes in them makes me feel like a kid again. An old, creaky kid.
Filed under comic book heroes, comic strips, commentary, humor
Catch a Falling Star 
The Cowboy Code
When I was a boy playing cowboys and Indians with cap pistols and rubber tomahawks, we all knew that cowboys had a code. The guy in the white hat always shoots straight. He knows right from wrong. He only shoots the bad guy. He even shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand if he can. Westerns are about right and wrong, good and bad, and the unyieldingly good knights of the plains.
And boys believe what they see on TV and in the movie theaters. People who make television shows never lie, do they? In fact, Wyatt Earp was based on a real guy who really lived and really shot the bad guys at the gosh-darn real OK Corral.
Daniel Boone was a real guy too. He faced the opening up of new lands full of deadly dangers. And when Fess Parker played him in 1964, wearing Davy Crockett’s coonskin hat, he walked the earth like a guardian angel, making everyone safe by the end of the episode. He even knew which Indians were good and which were bad. Mingo was always on Daniel’s side. And when they spoke to each other about the dangers they faced, it was never about killing the people they feared. It was about doing what is was right, about helping the community at Boonesboro to survive. Being encouraging… looking forward to a more settled future created by following the cowboy frontier code.
So, I am left wondering what ever happened to the cowboy code? I listen to Republican presidential candidates talking about dipping bullets in pig’s blood to kill Muslims, and building walls against Mexican immigrants, and why our right to carry assault rifles is sacred, and I wonder what happened. Didn’t they experience the same education from the television versions of the Great American Mythology? Didn’t they learn the code too?
I am old enough now to know that cap guns are not real guns and you cannot solve problems by shooting somebody. But that was never the point of the cowboy code. We need straight-shooters again in our lives, not to shoot people, but to tell the unvarnished truth. We need wise people who can tell who are the good Indians and who are the bad We need them to shoot the weapons out of the bad guys’ hands. And I know that’s asking for leaders to be larger than life and be more perfect than a man can actually be. But Daniel Boone was a real man. Myths and legends start with a fundamental truth.
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Filed under autobiography, commentary, cowboys, humor, insight, philosophy, politics, Uncategorized
Tagged as autobiography, childhood beliefs, cowboy code, Daniel Boone, humor, politics, Red Ryder, Roy Rogers, Wyatt Earp