Yes, I know this is supposed to be a Saturday Art Day Post, but you can make art in many different ways. That can include pictures made with a camera while I play with dolls… er… action figures and try horrifically to be funny. There is an art to that, right? Maybe?
It is a difficult thing to be an atheist who believes in God. Sometimes it takes an oxymoron to find the Truth. And you often have to go heavily on the “moron” portion of the word.
The thing I find most distressing about faith is the fact that those who have it are absolutely convinced that if you don’t agree with them and whatever book of fairy tales they believe in and interpret for you, then you are not a True Believer and you do not have real Faith.
I remember being told by a Mormon girl in one of my classes that I was her all-time favorite teacher, but she was deeply distressed that, because of my religion (I professed to be a Jehovah’s Witness at the time) I was doomed to burn in Hell forever.
Hey, I was raised in Iowa. I have experienced minus 100 degree Fahrenheit windchill. I am among those who think a nice warm afterlife wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
But I am no longer actually a Jehovah’s Witness. So I guess that helps with the whole Hell-burning thing. The Witnesses are a religion that claims to understand the Bible is full of metaphorical truth, and yet insist that it is literally true. They don’t believe in Hell, which, honestly, is not actually mentioned or explained in the Bible as we have it now. But they do believe your prospects for eternal life on a paradise Earth are totally contingent on knocking on doors and telling other people that they must believe what you believe or experience eternal destruction. I have stopped being an active Witness and knocking on doors because I got old and sick, and all the caring brothers and sisters in the congregation stopped coming around to visit because number one son joined the Marines, and the military is somehow evil hoodoo that cancels out any good you have done in the past. Being a Jehovah’s Witness was really hard work with all the meetings (5 per week), Bible reading (I have read the entire Bible two and a half times), door-knocking, and praying, and you apparently can lose it all for saying, thinking, or doing one wrong thing.
According to the Baptist preachers, Jehovah’s Witness elders, religious zealots, and other opinionated religious people I have known and dealt with in my life, if I do not believe what they believe and agree with them in every detail, then I do not know God and am therefore an atheist. So, okay, I guess I am. If I have to be an atheist to believe whole-heartedly that everyone is entitled to sincerely believe whatever the hell they want to believe, then I’ll wear that label.
On a personal note, my favorite verse of the Bible has always been 1 John 4:8, “He that does not love has not come to know God, because God is love.” That is why I claim to be an atheist who believes in God. I know love. I love all men, women, children, animals, sunrises, artwork, paintings of angels by Bouguereau… everything that is. And I even love you if you exercise your freedom to tell me, “Your ideas are totally wrong, and you are going to burn in Hell, Mickey, you bad guy, you!” Mark Twain always said, “I would choose Heaven for climate, but I would prefer Hell for company.” I am not going to worry about it. I will be in good company. Some things are just bigger than me. And trying to control things like that is nonsense. Sorta like this post.
It began for me in 1977 with this wrap-around cover illustration. I knew there were a lot of this guy’s books on the shelves of the college bookstore along with works by Robert E. Howard, Roger Zelazney, and Theodore Sturgeon. And I knew this guy had also written paperback books under the name “Andrew North”, a name I had seen on the twenty-five cent novels in the drugstore where you could buy the really good pulp fiction novels only slightly used.
I had never before bought one of his books. And the book money I had for the fall quarter at Iowa State was supposed to all go towards the book-list given to me as a Junior-level English major. But the naked kid on the cover had a wired-up collar around his neck. And I had only recently recovered long-suppressed memories of being a victim of a sexual assault. I had to have it. I had to know what that illustration had to do with the story inside.
So, I bought a book that I judged by its cover.
And it was not the wrong thing to do.
The main character was a boy named Jony, the naked boy on the cover of the book. He is taken by alien beings as a study specimen along with his mother, the pregnant woman on the back of the wrap-around illustration. The story starts with Jony in a cage, treated like an animal. His mother, also a study specimen has been mated to a Neanderthal-like humanoid specimen who cannot speak, and she has given birth to twins, a boy, and a girl. They are kept in separate cages by their inhuman captors.
Jony manages a mass escape, taking his mother and his younger siblings with him, and releasing as many of the other study specimens as he can. Luckily they escape onto a very earth-like planet. But unluckily, the mother is in very poor health and dies soon after escaping. Jony is then responsible for his little brother and sister in a wilderness that is not empty of others. Luckily, the others they first run afoul of are the bear-like ursine aliens who share their need to not be recaptured by the zoo-keeper aliens.
It was a perfect novel for me. I identified strongly with the main character, who had been violated in a very personal way by monsters. And then had to build a new life in a world full of potential other-monsters. Andre Norton shared my pain and helped me overcome it.
But she also fooled me big-time. She was not a he.
She was a librarian and editor of pulp fiction who wrote enough sci-fi and fantasy in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s to finally become a full-time author.
She was already on book number 29 when she retired from being a librarian to write full time.
And I would go on to own and read several of her other books, which were good, but never quite lived up to that first one I read. Of course, that may have been because of the timing and circumstance that led me to a book that I actually needed to read. That book set me on the road to recovery from my personal darkness. And it may have sparked in me the need to eventually become a nudist. And more important than that, it may have led me to a lifelong need to teach reading.
Andre Norton was a real writer. And she made me one too. Though I never knew who she really was until after I bought that book because of the picture on the cover. And I never got around to properly thanking her for all of that… Until this very moment.
Say the magic word.
I have always felt that any situation or problem can be resolved.
If only you can say the right words.
And if this is true in any real way,
I know it because I was an English teacher.
And I was made of words.
Not bullets. Not anger. Not violence. Not money. Not fear.
Only words. Good words. Honest words.
I-love-you words.
Today’s magic word is “Sunrise.”
Because if you see it tomorrow morning,
You have been given a gift that is priceless/
You have a new beginning.
Anything can happen and be accomplished. and be cherished.
So, when you have it, the magic is proof of the great Amen,
“Let it be so.”
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I find myself still alive for some reason. I am in poor health, but able to stay alive relatively easily by being vigilant even though I am battling a urinary tract infection, which brought Jim Henson to his end of the creative process. But, since I am still alive, I can still create new stuff. Reason enough to celebrate.
I am currently working on a new Cissy Moonskipper novella called Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons. And I am also doing a lot of AI-assisted drawing. So, I am not completely done creating.
However, several unfinished projects need to be addressed before I die. A pair of novels, He Rose on a Golden Wing and Kingdoms Under the Earth have a lot to say about what I believe is important in the categories of Life and Love and Laughter. I also have an unfinished novella, The Education of Poppensparkle, and an almost complete novel The Haunted Toy Store. The fifth book in the AeroQuest series, It Ain’t Over Yet, still needs to be finished, and it might need to become two books. There is a lot to do, and probably very little time to do it.
I also have an idea to create Mickey’s First Book of Paffooneys. A Paffooney is an original drawing or artwork connected to a Short-Short Story or Essay. I confess it would be mostly a collection of cartoons. And yes, this Paffooney directly above is made with AI Mirror and a picture of a harlequin mask from Mardi Gras. I can’t help it. I am more creative than it is safe to be as an ordinary Earthling.
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Once I was finally able to scan pictures again, I did some scanning of old pictures that only got the camera treatment before on my blog.
But why stop a drawing at just the pen and ink, when there is potential for so much more?
So, I took the Microsoft generic paint program and my generic photo editor to not only this pen and ink of the Jungle Princess, but a few other pictures as well.
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This is what she looks like after being attacked with color by my arthritic old hands. (There was a day when I could have handled intricate details more cleverly, but that was many, many days ago.
Anyway, I have added new dimensions to Leopard Girrrl with color.
Now I need to add more complications to the basic story of the picture.
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Here is an older pen and ink.
This is Dorin Dobbs, one of the dueling plotlines’ protagonists from the novel Catch a Falling Star.
But, of course, Dorin is a more complex character than this old black and white.
So, color needs to be added.
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I had this one actually already painted in…
But in order to use it in this project, I needed to enlarge it to make it fit into the other picture.
Making this unlikely pair work together in a story is one of the challenges of doing surrealist stories. They have to be grounded in realism, but also bring jarringly different things together. Like the Jungle Princess going on an adventure with Norwall’s Lying King.
But, putting these two together is still not enough. Let’s try some other things.
The Jungle Princess together with Tomboy Dilsey Murphy is an unusual pairing.
Or what about the blue faun from Laughing Blue?
Or even Annette Funicello?
Ridiculous, I know. But don’t they look like satin sofa paintings?
And how surreal is that?
The song was a hit in 1973 when I was a high school sophomore, the time when I almost ended myself for the severe depression that the repressed memory of being assaulted at ten infected me with. And it was Jim Croce’s second number-one hit, top of the charts, released after he had already passed in a plane crash. It was a song about saving up time to spend with someone you loved more than life itself. A sad song, given the impossibility of putting time in a bottle, unfortunate considering Croce’s time ran out before the song even hit the airwaves.
We loved that song so much that it was the first choice for a Prom Theme the next year when I was a junior and in charge of the artwork for decorating the high school gym for Prom. Yes, doing all that art was one of the things that kept me from putting a knife in my own chest the previous Spring. I savored that song. I designed wall posters and backgrounds for the walls during the dance. And I did it all again when the theme was changed from “Time in a Bottle” to “The Circus.” I drew a leopard in a circus wagon life-sized. I captured a moment in time in tempura paint on a massive sheet of paper. I remember three of the girls fighting over the piece when the Prom was over. I wonder if someone still has that leopard somewhere. I don’t remember which girl won the fight.
My best friend in high school, Byron, who later went on to get a medical degree and become Dr. Bonte in Minnesota, is now gone. He died from muscular dystrophy a couple of decades ago. My mother and father are both gone now. Both of my father’s siblings, Aunt Jean and Uncle Skip, are also gone, along with their spouses. My mother’s older brother, Uncle Larry, is also long gone of cancer. In fact, my Uncle Don, and Uncle Larry’s wife are the only members of my parents’ generation in our family who are still living. They were all alive in 1973 when “Time in a Bottle” played at least five times a day on the Iowa rock and roll station on AM radio, WHO from Des Moines.
I guess all of that is in my Memory Bottle? I can’t actually spend any of the time with them. But I metaphorically can. And I have left the fruit of my experiences in 24 books so far, another Bottle Out of Time. 24 bottles metaphorically.
So, now that I am ill, almost seventy and definitely closer to the grave than the day of my birth, maybe I don’t need to despair. I can remember the song. I can open a bottle of vintage time. Somewhere it’s 1973 again. And someone is listening to a ghost voice on the radio singing,
“If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you“
That may be all we ever need to require of time. Once we’ve lived it, it is ours forever.
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The Pink Dresser
The white cottage that was home to Taro and Sonno’s family didn’t look like any of the house-type structures that Cissy was used to from her limited time on civilized planets or in holo-vids. It didn’t have any of the right angles, square corners, or perfectly straight lines that most spaceports and planetary cities used in such structures. It was more like it had been molded out of clay by a huge child of some sort. And she noticed the window structures looked exactly like whale eyes in the greater hull of the space whale. They probably functioned like whale eyes too, meaning the whale watched everything.
Cissy was sitting at the table with Taro and Suki watching Diznee and Sonno try to calm the crazy-sad tantrum of Friday the Lupin dog girl. Sonno sang an indecipherable lullaby of great beauty while little Diznee wrapped her naked little girl body around Friday on the pad that served as a bench or bed, cuddling the inconsolable dog girl until the exhausted child fell into a fitful doze.
“So, why does the prince want to execute us, anyway?” Cissy asked nobody in particular.
Suki said something complicated to Taro. Then, to Cissy, she said, “Our people and your people have a history of hostility between them. Since the first Earther explorer entered the Great Nebula we have been treated with little besides suspicion, aggression, and exploitation.”
“But I am twelve. I never had anything to do with Nebulons my entire life. Why does Prince Porodor blame me?”
Suki said a whole string of Nebulonin words to Taro. He answered back with a long string of, “Ek-ek-akakaw tac and something more that Cissy couldn’t follow,” that Suki had to translate.
“Taro says that it all goes back to Porodor’s father who was the Vorranac Warlord. An Imperial task force started a war with the clan by attacking while the space whales were grazing at an Imperial-owned gas giant. They targeted the space whale that the warlord was commanding from and killed it with the warlord on board. Porodor was too young to be crowned warlord, and that is how he lost the office to my great uncle.”
Wylo had been listening to the conversation from the corner of the room where he had been eating the blue food that Sonno had prepared for him. He got up and came to the table.
“Porodor has more than just that as a reason to hate Earthers. It was an Earther colony on the edge of the Imperium that he attacked and rescued my family and me.” Wylo’s eyes were as serious as Cissy had ever seen a pair of dark blue eyes.
“You were enslaved by Earthers?” Cissy asked.
“My grandmothers were taken as slaves. Both of my parents were born from Earther fathers. That’s why I turned out pink instead of blue.”
“Oh? Can Nebulons and Earthers make babies?”
“It is believed that Humaniti and Nebulons had common ancestors millions of years ago,” Suki said seriously.
“How can that be so?”
“All intelligent races in the galaxy were probably created by the Ancients,” Wylo said. “In a way, all life is the same.”
“It still doesn’t seem right that we have to die just for being who and what we are,” said Cissy, beginning to feel angry.
All were in agreement.
And suddenly there was a delighted squeal from Friday.
“I gots un dresser on! Un pink wun!”
Everyone looked at Friday, standing there in a frilly pink dress like the ones Cissy had made for Friday on board the Happy Luck.
“How…?”
“It’s the Danjer suit,” Suki said. “It read Friday’s mind while she was dreaming. It’s a living creature that wants to please its master.”
“Ent I purdee now?” Friday cooed.
Cissy laughed. It was not over yet. In fact, the battle to survive was just beginning.
Catch a Falling Star 
The Return of Muck Man
Since I have so far miraculously survived the 2020 pandemic, I have nothing better to do then to relate the whiff-a-typical story of the world’s smelliest superhero as he makes his semi-triumphant return to the public eye… like a horrific mud-ball to the face.
If you recall the newspaper accounts of mild-mannered reporter Dark Bent, or even if you don’t, we recall that Muck Man was put into a community-imposed exile until such time as he would actually take a bath with soap and water. Being unable to find soap and water that was even willing to get within a quarter mile of him, MM started with sand baths in Death Valley until he was finally able to sand-blast away the outer hard crust of his personal odor.
You need to remember too at this point that MM’s super power is olfactory based. He alone among heroes had a personal stench so powerful that criminals would swoon into a coma at the mere mention of his name.
But after significant sand-baths, and once that horrific outer layer was gone, the water spirits were unable to determine who MM really was, and so allowed him to bathe in Lake Michigan where the water’s own funkiness managed to partly hide MM’s rancid smell. His super-scent finally hidden in the folds of Lake Michigan’s highly-polluted, almost water-like contents, MM’s country-encompassing foulness no longer was detectable to MM’s arch-nemesis.
Meanwhile the nefarious villain known as the absolute pinnacle of oleaginous corruption, the Monkey King, had hidden his swamp-monstery monsterness in the swamps of Washington D. C. where they were barely discernible in the midst of swamp gas and elephant ideas. His plan to take over the USA was going swimmingly. The Pachyderm Party was uniformly aligned behind him ready to blanket the countryside with toxic elephant poo. And, believing that if they could hold onto power long enough for elephant poo to fossilize into stone, they planned to dominate everything forever.
So, in secret, in his newly smell-reduced Muck Lair, Muck Man began planning the greatest stink-assault ever launched.
“But wait just a second, Dad!” cried Muck Lad. “You will be defeated again if you don’t come to the realization that your super-power and his super-villain’s power are really the same power. You can’t fight stink with stink.”
“Well, then, how do you defeat a super-evil super-villain with super-stink power coming out of his mouth directly from his very good brain?”
“Well…” said Muck Woman (who insists she is Muck Woman, NOT Muck Girl, even though she’s MM’s daughter) “You don’t fight fire with fire… you have to use water. So, get almost-squeaky-clean Uncle Joe B. to hold a convention before his about how the next president should help the country come out of the pandemic with fewer additional deaths and help the economy to recover by taxing the people who can afford to fix the problems, and let the American public compare it to the Monkey King’s elephant-poo festival. That way the villain can practically defeat himself.”
And so, according to mild-mannered reporter Dark Bent, that’s what Muck Man did to defeat the super-villain again. This time without generating a super-stench. And hopefully that will lead to a less-smelly world.
“But…” complained Muck Man, I was left holding on to the the world’s largest weaponized super-fart. And it exploded in my pants. Now, I have to live with consequences.”
” At least we can take comfort in the fact that Mickey is somehow still alive. And a cleaner world is better for all of us.” proclaimed Muck Woman.
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