May 26, 2025 · 12:00 am

Dumb Guy Does Book Promotion

So, I am trying to use what I am learning from AI art programs to help me do a better job of promoting my writing adventures with the loopy, unrealistic goal of making money with books. I know… stupid Mickey thinks authors ought to make some money off the books they’ve published too. What a stupid guy that Mickey is. He doesn’t know that money made from books on Amazon goes 99% to Jeff Bezos. He’s the one risking death in space inside his super penis rocket. That means he deserves the larger share of any money my writing may have earned on his super, super-sized everything delivery service. All hail the penis-flying bald man who invented sending books everywhere by drones!

So, let me go ahead with the promotional picture I created for the nudist short-story collection, Adventures Without Clothes. My story, “The Kelpie” is in this book which sends all proceeds to Doctors Without Borders. Good book. Good story by me. Great nudist fiction by Ted Bun, Will Forest, Paul Z Walker, and other contributors from the naturist/nudist fiction creators from the internet. It is doing better profitwise than any other book that I am associated with, including my very best books..

You can see I posed naked in the mountains with the book to lend a sense of adventure to the promotion. I actually posed naked for this picture, since I am supposedly a nudist myself. My wife and daughter refused to have anything to do with the taking of this photograph. I had to learn how to make my computer tablet take the picture according to voice commands. And the mountains didn’t want to be in the picture either (Which caused me no grief since I didn’t want to freeze my personal dillybonger off.) I cheated by inserting the mountains with Picsart AI photo editor. Dillybonger saved, mountain and family not embarrassed to death.

So, naturally, you now want to click on the link above to get your personal copy of this wonderful book based on my fabulous naked promo picture.

So, let’s try that same thing again with another recent book, my book of Evil Poetry bound in paperback form under a black cover with a large skull on it. That’s the way to sell a book of poetry, right? By calling it evil and failing to scare you with another picture of my horrid naked self. The brown shirt is not photoshopped on. I was really wearing clothes this time. The waterfall is again an invention of Picsart AI.

Of course, good poetry is capable of many things. It can make you laugh. It can make you cry. It can make you hurt. And it can make you die (at least a little. Besides, cry and die rhyme a little.)

And nowhere am I claiming this is good poetry. It is probably, definitely not GOOD POETRY. I condemn it wholly as EVIL POETRY in the very title. You should try it anyway. I was good in the picture, wearing my clothes and everything. And if you like poetry there are some things you may like in this book. And if you hate poetry, you will definitely find things here to bolster that point of view. And it is illustrated with some good to mediocre artwork.

So, now you know what happens when a dumb guy is allowed to play with AI and digital tools. And also allowed to promote his own books with his own naked pictures and terrible jokes.

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May 25, 2025 · 1:43 am

The Reaper’s Presence is Near

Yes, since my unfortunate heart event, I have been thinking about death too much. It is a reality we all face, and yet, it is not healthy to give in to it before it actually happens. Obsession is more like a disease to be avoided than a possible cure. But there is a lot of speculation on the nature or existence of an afterlife, both religious, philosophical, and scientific, that can be absorbed from the internet, books, and the wisdom of elders. In fact, there is a good deal of observation and learned conclusions I can draw from my own experience as a lifelong learner and seeker (a fancy way of saying an ancient know-it-all crazy coot.)

My inner self, having lived life naked in the snow.

So, here is what I believe… not what I know because I cannot prove it… But what I believe is based on how I put together everything that I have come to think is true.

All things come together as one thing. If there is a God, the entire universe is God. It is suggested by Quantum Physics that consciousness, in the form of fundamental information at the subatomic level, flows everywhere in the universe. The entire universe is the mind of God. Zeus, Jehovah, Allah, Buddha, and Odin are all the same God. The entire universe is alive and wise and we, each of us individually, are a tiny part of that whole.

A Shinto wise man summarizes it all this way,

You begin life as a drop of rain when you are first born. You drop down from the sky to the pavement below. As you grow and learn, you rise up in the sunlight like an evaporating raindrop. And when you grow old, you come down again, a raindrop heavy with experience. And when you die, you land back in the great wide ocean, a part of it all once again.

There is nothing to fear about death. I don’t need to be upset about its nearness. The universe is unfolding as it should. And I am not dead yet.

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May 24, 2025 · 12:55 am

Story-Telling for Art Day

One never knows what mysteries can be uncovered inside the bird house.
The plot of the story depends on what happens next in the picture.
Details make the real story clear.
Pictures tell a story even if the story-teller falls asleep in the process.
A picture can spin a fairy-tale even if it doesn’t show a plot.
Pictures easily establish a setting.
Pictures can allude to many, many other things.

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May 23, 2025 · 12:59 am

The Boy in a Barn

I am not dead. That cannot be reiterated often enough. But because I am not dead via surgery, putting a pacemaker in my chest and making me into a cyborg, I am now in a painful and very limiting recovery. I am going to have to give up driving a car. I am going to delay moving back to Iowa. But not forever. I want to die there in the land of my birth, where a majority of my ancestors and relatives are buried.

So, unable to do much beyond sleep, watch TV, and draw, I decided to make an art fart that reminded me of home on the farm.

Using my electronic stylus and the Digital Drawing Pad app on my touch-screen phone I worked on the essential figure first, doing considerable editing on the face, especially the eyes.

I roughed in more details so the boy wouldn’t be naked or bald.

.I spent time refining details, my arthritis still showing in the result.

;I then used the AI Mirror app to smooth out details and make the boy less aggravated in the area of his snarling puss. (Look up the word if you think it is being used inappropriately.)

I then used Picsart AI Photo Editor app to put him in a barn and slathered more detail work on it with my stylus.

So, it was something to do while recuperating, and gives me a chance to show you steps in the process of making a Paffooney. (Yes, a made-up word and still not inappropriate.)

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May 22, 2025 · 1:41 am

Aeroquest Art So Far

These are the pieces of art and illustrations that are going into the re-writing project of my novel Aeroquest.

I decided to totally rework the novel and illustrate it more fully because it was always supposed to be a science-fiction satire and parody that was more cartoonish than literary.

It is a story about a teacher conquering a space empire. It arose from a science-fiction role-playing game that filled my days in the 1980’s and early 90’s.

It parodies Star Wars, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, Dune, and much more besides. And it includes many of my own wacky inventions about what the future might hold in store.

Here is the original teacher in space and some of his first class of students.

Many of the main characters are based on the actual role-playing characters made up by the boys and young men who played the game with me. Many had to be re-named, however, because, like Tron Blastarr above, they often had movie-character names.

This important character was a parody of Professor X of the X-men, from the comic books and well before the movies.

It was a simple matter to give him psionic powers and transfer him into outer space. Oh, and get him out of the wheel chair too.

The character’s creator was the son of the local high school science teacher.

Ninja powers were a thing with teenage boys in the 80’s.

Combat is an important part of the role-playing game.

We became well-versed on weapons and tactics… and how to manipulate the rolls of the dice… by cheating if necessary.

How else do heroes overcome impossible odds?

Two more player characters that play a critical role in the novels.

Again with the parody characters that came from player-character ideas stolen from TV and the movies.

Aliens are necessary to this kind of story.

I am near to completing this third novel in the series.

The Nebulon aliens, though very human-like, are blue of skin. That is not easy to depict in a black-and-white drawing.

The initial idea for the fourth novel’s cover.

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May 21, 2025 · 4:01 pm

I am STILL HERE

I went to the emergency room on Friday.

Heart rate repeatedly 37 beats per minute. Heart failure is imminent at that low rate.

I was wheeled directly to the intensive care unit. A temporary pacemaker was immediately shoved through a vein in my hip directly to my heart.

Of course, they don’t settle for that. Once my heart stabilized, they switched the pacemaker off again, thinking it was a side-effect of my blood pressure medicine that caused the problem. It was. My heart beat normally for eight hours. Then my heart rate got bad again in the night. The pacemaker was switched back on, stabilizing me until morning. Sunday morning, they turned it back off again. I stayed stable for another few hours, and they told me they would take the temporary pacemaker out again and send me home on Monday. My body had recovered from the side effects.

But my heart had other ideas… at the same time of night as the previous bad night started.

They left the thing off for the rest of the night, and without telling me ahead of time, they scheduled me for a permanent pacemaker.

I actually spent a lot of that night thinking I was going to die. I saw the number 37 again, and I knew they weren’t being honest with me about what was going to happen.

But Monday morning brought a serious surgery. And they control the pain, but you have to be conscious for that implant surgery. That was a wonderful experience I hope never to have to go through again. But I probably will.

Life is simply poetry.

So, why do I live my life in prose?

Because I am intensely didactic,

Is the reason, as I suppose.

And that’s the ordinary level

At which I drink from Life’s firehose.

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May 16, 2025 · 12:06 am

Why We Doo

I remember when Scooby Doo, Where Are You? premiered on Saturday Morning Cartoons in 1969. I was thirteen and in the 7th grade. I had been six during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, seven when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, ten when I was sexually assaulted in 1966, and still twelve when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon in the Summer of 1969. I was obsessed with monsters, horror comics, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the Pirates threatening Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island. I knew what fear was. And I was mad to find ways to combat the monsters I feared.

Don’t get me wrong. I was under no illusions that Fred, Daphne, Velma, Norville “Shaggy” Rogers and Scooby Doo were the answer to all my fears as viable heroes and heroines. They were goofballs, all of them, based on the characters I vaguely remembered from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I was aware that Shaggy was just Maynard Krebs in cartoon form (the hippie character portrayed by Gilligan’s Island actor Bob Denver.)

One of the critical things about the show for me was the fact that there was a rational explanation for the monsters. They were men in masks, special effects and projector tricks, or remote-controlled mechanical things.

And the way you overcame them and saved the day was by having Shaggy and Scooby act as bait, cause the traps to get sprung at the wrong time, and then fall on the villains, trapping them under the butt of the talking dog.

Villains and horror could be overcome by laughing at them. They were more likely to be clowns than carnivores. And even if they were carnivores, the teeth were not real.

There was a universal truth in that. Danger and horror and fear were easier to handle when you could laugh in spite of those things.

And to top it all off, those meddling kids and their stupid talking dog were with me my whole life. Those cartoons got remade and spun off so many times that my kids learned to love them as much as I did. And those four meddling kids and that talking dog are still making new stories even now.

Give us your creepiest or goofiest smile, guys!

And that is why we do the Doo!

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May 16, 2025 · 12:06 am

Another Day, Another Dollar… 25 Cents After Taxes

I once again woke up today and discovered I was STILL NOT DEAD!

With the extra time I got, I totally wasted it doing drawings with digital tools and AI editing apps.

This is the original colored pencil drawing I manipulated into the image above. I used AI Mirror and Picsart AI Photo Editor to create the new figure and background.

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May 15, 2025 · 12:52 am

The Conundrum of Limited Time

I woke up this morning, and surprisingly, I was not dead.

It matters, at least to me.

I am not afraid to die, but I am not in a hurry to solve the final mystery of my human life. I could definitely use more time. I don’t have any grandchildren yet. I have not had time to enjoy being a nudist, a novelist, and a farm owner. I have not had time to tell my whole story yet, either.

I HAVE NOT HAD ENOUGH TIME TO FINISH MY AeroQuest Saga YET.

Every true autobiographical story has many actual layers. I have not finished all the deeper layers, the swirling-ever-changing layers, the brightly colored layers, the dark layers, or even the laquer on the top coating.

I still have major novel projects to finish, He Rose on a Golden Wing, Kingdoms Under the Earth, The Clarke Farm Reunion, and Music in the Forest. You might be curious about those titles almost as much as I am, and I have written parts of all of those in my head at the very least.

But tomorrow is not guaranteed. I still have the worrisome symptoms, my doctor won’t be back from vacation until the first week of June, and I can’t now afford another emergency room visit or hospital stay even with Medicare. So, I could wake up dead in the morning. And then this post is my swansong.

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May 14, 2025 · 12:44 am

Possibly Goodbye

I am going to die. And I am okay with that. My life has a good beginning, a challenging middle, and a satisfying end. I don’t have to lie about anything. I don’t fear going to hell. There is no hell. But there may well be something beyond. It is possible that I have lived before, and that I will possibly live again.

I know you may now be worried that I am talking from a position of depression and suicidal ideation. But I am not. If I am going to wake up dead in the morning, it will be from heart failure in my sleep. I have awakened in the wee hours of the past two days, shortly after 2 am. My chest was hurting on the left side, a thing it regularly does because of arthritis and muscle spasms in my rib cage due to my affinity for being a side-sleeper, sleeping on my left side. I also felt funny in the head, though I was not laughing. My arms both tingled. I had a pounding pain in my neck and in my left temple. I took my blood pressure monitor on Tuesday and found normal blood pressure, but a heartbeat of only 40 beats per minute. That, of course, is emergency-room territory. So, as advised during an early incident, I waited for the monitor to reset and took my blood pressure again. 40 a second time! My blood pressure was rising as I zoomed into panic mode. I took it twice more, one 70 beats per minute, but another 42 beats after that.

Before waking my wife, who had to get up for her school-teacher job by 6:30, I woke up my sensible 23-year-old daughter and repeated the monitor test. The first test was 42. My daughter pointed out that the monitor sleeve was so tight that my left arm turned purple. Readjusted it yielded 78. Still lower than normal for me, but much better than the tight-sleeve readings. By that time, my heart was thumping along real well and I felt much better overall. So, I went back to bed and lived a normal day after that. Exercising during the day helped a lot.

But at 2:30 am this morning, the whole thing was repeating itself. I was almost certain it was emergency-room time. I was reluctant to test my blood pressure. I exercised my arms and legs as vigorously as possible before carefully applying the monitor sleeve. 77 beats per minute. I was in the emergency room for reasons only in my imagination in early April, so that was a relief. I did not go back to sleep for fear of waking up dead. I ended up living another normal day today, though kinda groggy from lack of sleep.

The possibility remains that I may wake up in the morning to find that I have died in my sleep. Lady Death may be waiting to take me away. But I have this chance to say goodbye now before finding out if there is indeed an afterlife or not. For all who actually know me in person, I love you. Even those of you who will celebrate my passing. And for those of you who only know me by this blog and in my books, my writing will still be around for a bit. You can really get to know me better than most. No regrets. A good life in spite of the hard parts… or maybe because of overcoming the hard parts.

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