November 18, 2024 · 1:42 am

An Old Man Gets Older

This old coot is now older by a year, having had a birthday on the day I wrote this, but yesterday to be technical about it. Celebrating the big 68 is not that joyful since my father died on my birthday in 2020.

The incoming President-elect has already caused China to shift its food buying from US markets to Brazil. Now, more than 71% of the farm business in Iowa is going to be gone because of Pumpkinhead’s threatened tariffs. The fact that I own 33% of the family farm in Iowa will make that change hurt my personal economy. That’ll be me in the future pictured above, penniless and naked in the snow… well, unless climate change reaches the point that snow never falls again.

But I have decided to outlive the Pumpkinhead President. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of robbing me of my joy. I like to be naked. I fancy myself a nudist. And I will write and say things I want to say. Pumpkinhead will never hear me. Jack-o-lanterns never have ears carved in them. And Trump doesn’t know how to listen.

And I still plan to make pictures every day that I’m still not blind.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

November 17, 2024 · 1:24 am

Why Mickey Writes

Fools

If you are wondering, “How in the Heck can Mickey write nonsense like that essay he wrote yesterday?”, then please be aware that Mickey is pondering that same question.

Seriously, why would a writer publish personal thoughts and allude to personal tragedies?  Especially when they are about things that once upon a time nearly killed him?  (Please note that when Mickey starts a sentence with “Seriously” it is probably about to lead to a joke, the same way as when Trump says, “Believe me” we should  assume he is telling a lie and knows it.)

The answer is simply, writers write stuff.  They have to.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be writers.

It is really not something to do to earn fame and fortune.  Fame and fortune happen to rare individuals like J. K. Rowling and Steven King… and even Stephanie Meyer, to prove that it is totally random and not based on actual writing talent… except for sometimes.

David C2

You write to get your head right about bad things that happen in life.  You find that factor in Mark Twain whose infant son died, as well as most of the rest of his family, before him, forcing him to face survivor’s guilt and the notion that life is random and death does not come for you based on any kind of merit system.  Charles Dickens wrote about the foibles of his father, on whom he based the David Copperfield character Wilkins Micawber, a man who was overly optimistic and constantly landing in debtor’s prison because of it.  He also wrote in his stories about the women he truly loved (who were not, it seems, his wife) one of whom died in his arms while yet a teenager.  Dickens’ amused take on the innate foolishness of mankind gave him a chance to powerfully depict great tragedies both large (as in a Tale of Two Cities) and small (as in Oliver Twist).  I wrote yesterday’s post based on the connection between the nudity I write about in novels and my own traumatic assault when I was only ten.

You write because you have wisdom, an inner personal truth, that you are convinced needs to be crystallized in words and written down on paper.  It isn’t necessarily real truth.  Lots of idiots write things and post them in newspapers, blogs, and even books.  And it is often true that their inner personal truth is complete hogwash.  (But, hey, at least the hogs are cleaner that way.)  Still, your wisdom is your own, and it is true for you even if some idiot like Mickey reads it and thinks it is only fit for cleaning hogs.

Creativity

And you truly do have to write.  If I did not write my stupid, worthless novels, all the hundreds of characters in my head would get mad and start kicking the pillars that hold up the structures in my head.  I do have structures in my head.  My mind is organized in boxes that contain specifically sorted ideas and stories and notions.  It is not a festering stew pot where everything is mixed together and either bubbling or boiling with hot places or coagulating in the cold corners.  (That is how I picture Donald Trump’s mind.  It is certainly not an empty desert like many people think, because deserts don’t explode all over Twitter early in the morning like the stew pot metaphor obviously would.)

And so, I have done it again.  I have set down my 500+ words for today and made a complete fool of myself.  And why do I do it?  Because Mickey is a writer, and so, Mickey writes stuff.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, humor, insight, irony, Mark Twain, Mickey, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wisdom, writing humor

Tagged as

November 16, 2024 · 1:49 am

Anger Management Mickey Style

I am not happy. We should have been done with the Pumpkinhead Criminal four years ago. An insurrection is an act of treason. Look at how Putin dealt with his mercenary force, which simply marched back from the war front toward Moscow. Those guys are dead now. The law used to be that traitors were executed. This one gets to be a dictator.

In 2017 the Pumpkinhead really screwed me over. At that time I had been retired from teaching for three years. I had struggled to eliminate all my credit card debt and pay down medical debts. Pumpkinhead pushed through his massive tax cut for billionaires. There were also measures to raise taxes on certain classes of people who paid less taxes than the average worker. This included pensioners in education. So, even though my pension was funded by the money I paid into the pension system for teachers month by month for 31 years, he laid upon us increased taxes that went up by more than 100 dollars a month and would incrementally increase for five years after that. And then the rotted old gourd increased the massive wealth he and his billionaire friends got by retroactively making changes to the tax code apply to the entire year… from a tax law instituted in December. I suddenly had a $2,000+ tax bill that I could not pay off at tax time because no warning was given about how much more needed to be withheld from paychecks before the last month of the year. I had to file for a monthly payoff plan that lasted more than a year. I went bankrupt in 2017. Not the kind of bankruptcy that Pumpkinhead walked away from so many times, but a Chapter 13 bankruptcy where you have to have all your worldly possessions evaluated for possible attachment and make arrangements for a large monthly payout every month for five years. I have gone through this same period of rage before. I survived it by managing not to die in the pandemic and living longer than my parents to use a portion of my inheritance to pay off the bankruptcy. I also managed to outlast the Pumpkinhead who was defeated by Grandpa Biden in 2020. But now he has another impossible election win to blast me with.

I am through some of the stages of grief already. This last election was a cruel blow. I am already done with denial and bargaining. But ANGER? I would never seek to kill anybody. But I have been sorting through a number of murder fantasies. Many of them involve smashing pumpkins with hammers.

I am not, however, suited to long periods of rage and boiling anger. The clown dictator will not win against me. He can’t stop me from being a nudist because that occurs mostly in my imagination anyway. And he can probably throw me in prison for my books and my nude drawings. And he will probably deport my immigrant wife, even though she spent more than twenty years earning her US Citizenship. He cannot, however, spoil the bittersweet beauty of the poetry of life for me. I have lived a long and productive life. I have many more people who love and respect me than he does. And I do not suffer from his Narcissistic doubts and phobias.

The Pumpkinhead will not win against me. I will vote against him every chance I can get. I will testify against him before God. And I will no longer honor his MAGA Minions with responses on my Facebook and Instagram posts. I will no longer post on X. And I will get back to writing things that matter… at least to me. Firetruck You, Pumpkinhead. And I didn’t leave out the “iretr” part, so I didn’t use profanity.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 15, 2024 · 1:27 am

That Bluebird of Happiness

Blue birds

Yes, this is an old post from 2017 that is ironically about going back and rereading old posts.  Sorry about that.  But it made me laugh when I reread it.

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.

12080357_972883126091737_890351697960018123_o

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?)  vintage-coca-cola-ad-1950s-1960s-clownb

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.

GiveAgift_web_ad1_0

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.

Blue birds

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, goofy thoughts, happiness, humor, insight, inspiration, irony, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as

November 14, 2024 · 2:33 am

Mickey the Reader

scan0001

I like to think that I am different than other readers, that the quirky, insane way I practice reading makes me somehow unique and individual.  But if you have read very much of my goofy little blog, you probably realize already that I am a deeply deluded idiot most of the time.  So let me explain a little about how I go about reading.

  1.  I am basically guilty of reading anything and everything I can get my hands on.  And the stupid internet puts an infinite variety in your hands.  Some of it is toxic and probably will kill me… or land me in jail.  (Does the NSA really care about what Mickey is reading?)
  2. Here is an example of my internet reading this morning;  Diane Ravitch’s Education Blog , An Article from British Naturism, Rachel Poli’s Article about Fantasy Writing, and Naked Carly Art’s post about creating a painting.  My browser history portrays me at times as some kind of communist brainiac pornography-loving terrorist painter or something.  I hope the NSA is using telepaths to investigate me, because the reasons I look at a lot of this stuff is important.  It is a good thing I don’t write mystery novels so they would be upset down in the NSA break room about my searching out creative ways to kill people.
  3. Besides being Eclectic  with a capital “E”, I am also obsessive.  My daily reading project now is Garrison Keillor’s novel, Lake Wobegon Days.

I only spend about an hour a day reading this novel, but I am totally immersed in it.  I am living inside that book, remembering the characters as real people and talking to them like old friends.  I tried to read that book before and couldn’t make progress because I like so much to listen to Keillor tell stories on A Prairie Home Companion on the radio and it just wasn’t the same entirely in print.  When he tells a story, he pauses a lot.  In fact, that moment when he stops to let you reflect on what he just said is critical to the humor because you have to stop and savor the delicious irony of the scene.  His pauses are funnier than the words.  Man, if he just stood there and didn’t talk at all, you would probably die laughing from it.  So, in order to get into the book, I had to read it with Garrison’s voice in my head, pausing frequently the way he does.  Now the stories of Clarence Bunsen and Pastor Inqvist break me up all over again.  I will soon acquire and read everything he has ever written.  I truly love Garrison Keillor.

quote-welcome-to-lake-wobegon-where-all-the-women-are-strong-all-the-men-are-good-looking-and-all-the-garrison-keillor-99801

54673-28

So there is a description of how strange a practicing reader I am.  Think about how you read.  Is the NSA watching you too?  Do you ever read two books at the same time?  Do you read everything and anything in front of you?  If you are self-reflective at all, even if you are not pathological about it the way Mickey is, you may well decide that as strange as my reading habits are, they are probably normal compared to yours.

lakewobegonart620pw

Leave a comment

Filed under book reports, book review, Garrison Keillor, goofy thoughts, humor, reading, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as , , , ,

November 13, 2024 · 1:27 am

Things Are Not Fine in Carrot Castle

We were expecting Princess Kayflower to ascend to the throne after the sudden demise of King Brusselsprouts. King B had come to be referred to as Dark Sprouts because he kept foiling the evil former King Toadstoolsniffer in his evil attempts to overthrow and usurp the Throne. Rabbits, bunnies, and hares were all believing old Brusselsprouts would live forever. He was ancient, but he had a magical way of making the carrot crops bounteous and delicious, and he sometimes said stupid things in a way extremely old rabbits often do, but he gave off an undefeatable positivity that was reassuring to the older, wiser rabbits. And then he got brain freeze from an ice cream cone and suffered a bunny stroke.

Toadstoolsniffer leaped into action on King B’s demise, mostly because Kayflower was wrapped up in grief and funeral arrangements, and spewed forth a virtual geyser of misinformation and propaganda. The fat white bunny with orange powder on his face began claiming that there were weasels on the border, and that while he lived, King B had invited them into the city of Carrot Castle and let them eat bunny children wherever and whenever they wanted. This was not true. Only two weasels had shown up at the border, and the Royal Guard Hares easily chased them off with bucktoothed bites. Toadstoolsniffer then claimed that when bunny children went to bunny school, King B would have bunnies surgically changed into kittens, and baby rabbits surgically changed into puppies. The truth was that it was completely illegal to perform any kind of surgery on bunnies and baby rabbits without parental consent and medical need. It never happened. But the general rabbit population of the city-state tended to believe anything Toadstoolsniffer said because he said it in such a bigly white-rabbit way. And of course, everyone knew that white rabbits like Toadstoolsniffer were somehow superior to all others of rabbitkind.

So, in spite of all logic, loyalty, and adherence to the truth, the rabbits of Carrot Castle made Toadstoolsniffer the new king. He, of course, swiftly made an alliance with the weasels of Stoatia, letting them come wherever and whenever t.hey wanted into the city-state. They ate Kayflower first, then quickly reduced the rabbit population by breaking into the bunny schools and eating all the bunnies they claimed were now kittens and all the baby rabbits that were now puppies. And they all lived miserably ever after… unless they got eaten.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , ,

November 13, 2024 · 1:26 am

Making Characters for Traveller

Traveller_front_11

When I started playing the role-playing game Traveller with a group of middle school students, one of the first challenges to overcome was the creation of original characters and interesting new stories.  You can only play for so long with characters named Solo, Skywalker, and Vader.  Then, you must get creative.

What I am going to show you today are a passel of characters so creative, lame, and craptastic, that you will probably forever after have pity on those poor kids who chose to play the game with me.

x5

Harry Scipio Strontium 90 was a space detective.  He and his assistant, the dwarf Quark, were necessary to the game because player characters had a tendency to kill people, aliens, and destroy planets, routinely misusing the biggest and baddest weapons in the equipment handbook.  He relentlessly pursued player characters and villains across space and time.

x512345

The Geomancer was a deep space explorer who mysteriously never took off his space suit.  He bailed characters out of trouble when they invariably got marooned on airless asteroids, lost in dead space with no fuel for the starship, or imprisoned by cannibal plant people on an unexplored world.  In the end, it turned out that his mysterious space suit was actually empty, containing only gas and radiation, and possibly an alien spirit-entity.

x5010234567890jpg

Mantis was actually a player character.    The son of the high school science teacher was one of my most dedicated game players.  He decided that he had to have an evil player character.  He said to me, “Mr. B, we will make him secretly evil so that he does things that take the party into danger and betray them without their knowing.  It will be fun as they try to figure out how to save themselves.”  Now, Mantis was an alien super-scientist who had a very big head and small body, so he removed his own head and connected it to a large robotic body.  He stood imposingly taller than all the other characters at eight and a half feet tall.  His evil plots were initially rather lame and easily defeated.  It didn’t take the players long to figure out that he was working against them, and he spent a considerable amount of time as a detached living head on the starship’s auxiliary control panel.  He went through various penances and punishments, ultimately avoiding being flushed into space through the space toilet.

x501234567890jpg

Susano initially started out as Mantis’ evil experiment.  He was an enhanced clone with super powers and wings.  He was super charming and likeable, but supposed to further Mantis’ evil agenda.  They began to plot the take-over of entire planets like Djinnistan and Vilis.  But the longer the game went on, the more he became a son to Mantis, and the more he influenced his scientist father to use his abilities for good.  They would eventually help a band of rogues create a New Star League out of the ashes of the Third Imperium.  Teacher’s kids are often the biggest pains in a classroom, but that tends to be because they know all the teacher tricks already and are invariably more creative than the average classroom clown.  The last I heard from Mantis’ creator, he was an electrical engineer in Austin, Texas, and probably busy secretly planning to take over the world.  Though hopefully he didn’t remove his own head as a first step.

That is only a small sampling of the characters we created for Traveller, but at more than 500 words already, I need to be saving the rest for another day.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under characters, Dungeons and Dragons, heroes, Paffooney, science fiction, villains

Tagged as

November 12, 2024 · 1:18 am

I Love to Laugh

“Mickey, why can’t you be more serious the way smart people are?”

“Well, now, my dear, I think I take humor very seriously.”

“How can you say that?  You never seem to be serious for more than a few seconds in a row.”

“I can say it in a high, squeaky, falsetto voice so I sound like Mickey Mouse.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I can also burp it… well, maybe not so much since I was in junior high.”

THREE STOOGES, THE

“I distinctly remember getting in trouble in Mrs. Mennenga’s third grade class in school for pantomiming pulling my beating heart out of my chest and accidentally dropping it on the floor.  She lectured me about being more studious.  But I made Alicia sitting in the row beside me laugh.  It was all worth it.  And the teacher was right.  I don’t remember anything from the lesson on adding fractions we were supposed to be doing.  But I remember that laugh.  It is one precious piece of the golden treasure I put in the treasure chest of memories I keep stored in my heart.”

Groucho

“I always listened to the words Groucho Marx was saying, even though he said them awfully fast and sneaky-like.  I listened to the words.  Other characters didn’t seem to listen to him.  He didn’t seem to listen to them.  Yet, how could he respond like he did if he really wasn’t listening?  In his answers were always golden bits of wisdom.  Other people laughed at his jokes when the laugh track told them to.  I laughed when I understood the wisdom.”

727-1

“Laughing is a way of showing understanding.  Laughing is a way of making yourself feel good.  Laughing is good for your brain and your heart and your soul.  So, I want to laugh more.  I need to laugh more.  I love to laugh.”

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, comedians, commentary, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, irony, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wisdom

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 11, 2024 · 1:06 am

Melancholy Music

I began this little free-writing by listening to Handel’s Water Music.

Made with AI Mirror, a photo of the park, a Mattel Ricky doll from the Barbie series, and Picsart AI Photo Editor.

If you don’t recognize the writing-teacher term, free-writing is where you wing it and simply start writing, letting the mind go wherever it will. It is necessary today because of the jumble of thoughts and emotions swirling inside my stupid head since the criminal Pumpkinhead’s reelection to the world’s highest office. I simply need to write it down. I don’t live in a conservative’s fear-besotted, demon-haunted world. It is not normal to me, this paralyzing fear that the world is no longer in the control of rational people I more-or-less trust. I can no longer be sure that good things will happen in the future to offset the bad things that can’t be avoided.

Gregg Abbott, the Troll King of Texas, is just as bad as Don Cheetoh Trumpaloney when it comes to authoritarian tendencies. If he sees the Paffooney for this post, he’s going to think, “Child pornography! Throw this pervert in prison!” And I acknowledge that the plastic doll I used as a model was naked. He’s a vintage doll from Mattel that was originally sold wearing swim trunks which were lost to the original owner before she sold it to me on E-Bay. “Internet pornography!” screams Abbott. Everybody knows that pornography is banned on the internet in Texas (Well, sure, the Supreme Court ruled it protected by the First Amendment. But that’s no barrier to today’s Pumpkinhead-appointed Supreme Court.) Thinking bad thoughts without being a hard-right conservative will soon be illegal throughout the US. Of course, if you are a hard-right conservative who listens to Fox News, Mark Levin, and Tucker Carlson, thinking the gayest possible pornographic thoughts is okay… if you have Republican levels of money lying around at home.

“Here’s another nudist picture, Gregg, your evil majesty. I waited for thirty-four years to become a nudist because I didn’t want any morality protests during my time as a public school teacher. I have a right to think what I want to think, draw what I want to draw, and be what I want to be. These are all things that used to be legal back when the world was saner than it is now. Arrest me if you must.”

If the new dictator (Does that really mean a potato with a dick? Dicktater?) takes away Medicare and Evil King Gregg takes away teacher pensions, life will get harder. I hope to live long enough to fight back against what’s coming. Maybe even live longer than Trump and see him defeated. (Uh-oh, here comes Seal Team Six.)

,

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,

November 10, 2024 · 1:03 am

My Precious Things

david-cassidy

The dawn tomorrow is a hoped-for event, not a promise, not a guarantee.  For some it will not come again.  But that is what life is for, to be lived.   You must find the value in living and wallow in it while it is yours, and you must measure it not by the world’s measuring stick, but your own.

bus_leroy

pt1047

Looking at it mathematically with only the cold hard facts, my life has come to very little.  After teaching for parts of four decades, I was forced by ill health to retire from the job I loved.  As it will in this country where profits for corporations are more important than people’s lives, my personal fortune, that horde of wealth that is allotted for public servants like teachers, was absorbed by the health care and pharmaceutical industry, and health insurers managed to get away with paying out less than I put in through premiums for a lifetime.  After having to pay for the removal of the pool, and after having to go into bankruptcy because Bank of America decided to sue me instead of help in my debt resolution, I really have nothing left.  And if we can’t pay the property taxes that keep going up because the State is continually reducing funds to public schools, we may eventually lose the house.  Broke and homeless.  But they cannot take away my precious things.  It simply isn’t possible.

6a0120a6abf659970b01348734d01c970c-800wi   I saw a woman and her two kids getting breakfast at QT this morning.  The kids, a boy and a girl, were both wearing jackets and pajama pants.  They were both cute, and happy, and speaking Korean to each other.  And I realized after smiling at them with my goofy old coot grin, that I am not prejudiced in any way when it comes to other people.  They were Asian.  I notice details.  But that was an afterthought.  It really wouldn’t have mattered if they were black, white, purple, brown, or yellow.  (Though I have to admit I might’ve been slightly more fascinated by purple.)  Not being prejudiced is a precious thing.  It comes from a lifetime of working with kids of all kinds, and learning to love them while you’re trying to teach them to also have no prejudices.

And, of course, I still have my family.  I was a professional when it came to talking to kids, so I applied those professional skills to my own family as well.  I actually talk to my kids, and know them pretty well.  They have learned to draw and paint and tell stories from me, and may one day be better at it than I am.  They are musical and play instruments… and, hey!  Maybe we could form a family band!  All of those are also precious things.  Let’s see Bank of America try to take those things away from me.

91r2daaWw+L._RI_

And it may have occurred to you by this point why I am thinking about precious things and using pictures of my sister’s favorite TV show from the 70’s.  We just lost a singer and actor from that show whose music meant a lot to my family once, and always will.

And he was not a lot older than me.  And his life was not easy either.  But he lived with music in his heart and artistry in his soul.  David, you will be missed.  But your precious things still benefit us.  And some of us will probably be seeing you again soon to thank you yet again.

Leave a comment

Filed under artists I admire, autobiography, strange and wonderful ideas about life, TV as literature

Tagged as ,