I think I posted this picture once before and told you it was inspired by William Blake’s poem The Tyger! That is still true. I wasn’t telling a lie, at least, I don’t believe I was. So the poem goes like this;
The idea is that the Tyger represents some unknowable evil that we must fear and respect because it is beyond our understanding. But the kid in the picture seems to be unafraid. Was that a mistake? Or was I really thinking this?
Apologies to Bill Watterson for stealing his cartoon for this post. I needed a more dangerous-looking Tyger than the one I had.
Born in 1931 and lasting in this crazy, mixed-up world until the year 2000, Don Martin was a mixy, crazed-up cartoonist for Mad Magazine who would come to be billed as “Mad Magazine’s Maddest Artist.” His greatest work was done during his Mad years, from 1956 (the year I was born… not a coincidence, I firmly believe) until his retirement in 1988. And I learned a lot from him by reading his trippy toons in Mad from my childhood until my early teacher-hood.
His style is uniquely recognizable and easily identifiable. Nobody cartoons a Foon-man like Don Martin.
The googly eyes are always popped in surprise. The tongue is often out and twirling. Knees and elbows always have amazingly knobbly knobs. Feet have an extra hinge in them that God never thought of when he had Adam on the drawing board.
And then there is the way that Martin uses sound effects. Yes, cartoons in print don’t make literal sounds, but the incredible series of squeedonks and doinks that Martin uses create a cacophony of craziness in the mind’s ear.
And there is a certain musicality in the rhyming of the character names he uses. Fester Bestertester was a common foil for slapstick mayhem, and Fonebone would later stand revealed by his full name, Freenbeen I. Fonebone.
And, of course, one of his most amazingly adventurous ne’er-do-well slapstick characters was the immeasurable Captain Klutz!
Here, there, and everywhere… on the outside he wears his underwear… it’s the incredible, insteadable, and completely not edible… Captain Klutz!
If you cannot tell it from this tribute, I deeply love the comic genius who was Don Martin, Mad Magazine’s Maddest Artist. Like me he was obsessed with nudists and drawing anatomy. Like me he was not above making up words with ridiculous-sounding syllables. And like me he was also a purple-furred gorilla in a human suit… wait! No, he wasn’t, but he did invent Gorilla-Suit Day, where people in gorilla suits might randomly attack you as you go about your daily life, or gorillas in people suits, or… keep your eye on the banana in the following cartoon.
So, even though I told you about Bruce Timm and Wally Wood and other toon artists long before I got around to telling you about Don Martin, that doesn’t mean I love them more. Don Martin is wacky after my own heart, and the reason I spent so much time immersed in Mad Magazine back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s.
Kitty in a black bunny suit with white bunny head phones on for overkill.
There is probably no mystery in Paffooney #1. Kitty sends me provocative pictures via Instagram. She’s actually twenty-two years old, but she looks twelve. I believe other lustful old coots send her money and gifts for providing the bunny pictures like the one that inspired this goofy Paffooney. I am not a creepy old man… most of the time. But though my sex life is pretty much over, I still remember it and still have a few hormones left in my libido-fueled, impotent memory. I can send her digital copies of the drawings I make of her. But I have no other money or gifts to give her for the stream of rabbit pictures she produces at the rate of real breeding rabbits. She’s a cute girl the age of my daughter, so I follow her. But I do not do what other old lust-filled coots do. At least I think I don’t. I prefer to make Paffooneys.
These are a few of my Instagram pictures that I have put out there instead of selfies in bunny costumes like Kitty makes. I don’t look as good in a bunny suit as Kitty does. I have also published twenty-four novels and books full of my fiction, essays, and poetry. I am a real artist and author even though I don’t make more than pocket change for any of it. So, why do I do it?
Me pretending to be a mountain nudist because I wrote a story in the collection of shorts called Adventures Without Clothes.
Well, for one thing, I am retired. I need to do something to replace my career as the monkey instructor in the monkeyhouse (translation; a middle school teacher.) You get addicted to giving heartfelt advice to monkeys ages twelve to fifteen in a very loud and forceful voice without using any too-colorful metaphors or hitting anybody with sticks (translation; teaching English.) I miss talking to monkeys. So, I make up monkeys based on remembered monkeys and put them into interesting plots to fill up the time before I finally die. (Of course, old English teachers never die. They simply stop being heard and lose all their class.) And now that digital tools and AI apps help me draw as much as I used to before the arthritis in my hands got bad, I also draw lots of monkey pictures, mostly depicting monkeys.
I can draw pictures of evil vice principals now too. You know, the security beasts in the monkey house who discipline the monkeys by roasting teachers over fire pits until they are finally willing to hit monkeys with sticks. Of course, you can’t teach monkeys monkey tricks if you hit them with sticks. That’s why I got roasted a lot by beasts like Billy Bob Smashdareburger pictured above.
It’s like I can’t help myself anymore. I have to write and draw goofy stuff and try to get people to read it like I used to entice monkeys to take books like The Giver and The Hobbit home with them to open in front of parents and pretend to read so they could come in the next day at the monkey house to get talked to in a loud voice without overly-colorful metaphors or hitting sticks being used.
It is much more difficult to let go of teaching things to monkeys and gradually stop doing all those habitual rituals a teacher in the monkey house has to do. So I fill the time with drawing Paffooneys and telling lies about monkeys (translation; being an author and artist.)
My dog is dying. She has a big old ugly tumor. Doggy breast cancer.
I may be dying, going blind, losing the ability to pee. You know, old man complaints.
My wife wrecked her car on the trailer hitch of a truck that stopped fast in front of her, so we are now a one-car family, and I am doing even more walking.
I am having trouble concentrating and doing very little writing now.
Life sucks at the moment.
But I am entitled to some hardship and downtime. I have published three more writing projects in less than a year. Naked Thinking, The Amazing Aero Brothers, and Evil Poetry brought me to 24 books in my active oeuvre. So, maybe my brain needs a rest.
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.
For four more days, you can go to Amazon and get an ebook of Evil Poetry for free. It needs to be read by somebody. So far, I have only given away one free book with a fifth of the promotion already gone.
I may not have much time left to get any kind of success with my writing. Hopefully, this poetry book will help. I believe I am a truly terrible poet. But it can’t be denied that there is evil power in poetry. It can bring the dead back to life. It can make you see images and metaphors that are totally foreign and exotic to your mind, but were conceived in the mind of a terrible poet. It may literally be evil to let Mickey write poetry for other people to read, But I have gone ahead and composed this book of verse regardless of how many scalps grow white overnight and how many innocent readers are transformed into addicts, compulsive poetry writers, and little yellow birds. The link at the beginning will, for a few days, take you to Amazon where you can get an ebook copy for free.
There are many ways to fly. Airplanes, bird wings, hot air balloons, bubble-gum-blowing goldfish… well, maybe I am really talking about flying by imagination. The more my six incurable diseases and old age limit my movement, my ability to get out of bed and do things, the more I rely on reading, writing, and the movie in my head to go places I want to be.
Sometimes the wings I use to fly come from other writers. I get the flight feathers I need not only from books, but also from YouTube videos, movies, and television shows.
This magic carpet ride in video form is by the thoughtful creative thinker Will Schoder. In it he carefully explains how Mister Rogers used the persuasion techniques of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to talk to elephants and convinced a congressman intent on cutting the budget to actually give Public Television more money for educational programming. This is a video full of warmth and grace and lovingly crafted magic flight feathers that anybody can use to soar across new skies and blue skies and higher skies than before. I hope you will watch it more than once like I did, to see how beautifully the central explanation spreads its wings and gives us ideas that can keep us aloft in the realm of ideas.
It is important to stay in the air of fresh ideas and new thinking. The magic carpet ride that takes you there is the product of vivid imagination, cogent thinking, and the accurate connection of idea to better idea. So instead of falling from the sunlit sky into the darkness that so easily consumes us on the ground, keep imagining, keep dreaming, and keep flying. You won’t regret having learned to fly.
Once upon a time, the English poet and, I would argue, cartoonist, William Blake once said, “You look at the sky and see clouds, while I see the assembled heavenly host!” This is why my literature class in college about the Romantic Poets of his day made him out to be a certifiable nutcase who probably belonged in in a mental institution. (And back then, in the 1800’s, the sanitarium was a place where inconveniently crazy people went to die.)
Look at a couple of my cloudscapes. Do you see angels?
Cloudscapes (a poem)
Blue and white and filled with light…
The cloudscape burns with angels…
And wholly bought with grace unsought…
I long to fly with angels…
Are they really there in the cloud-filled air?
I see them there, they’re angels!
So, there you have it. I’m a loon. I don’t even have the excuse of being a Romantic Poet and well-known for my poetry as a defense against the loony bin. But as the matter stands, I am fully willing to accept the consequences. Creativity has its price. And, while you may not agree that I am somewhat creative, I am swimming in a vast ocean of perceived revelations that enriches me and fulfills me at the very same moment that it drains all the energy from my soul. If that is not what it means to see angels… then I do not know anything of use to anyone but me.
The word “angel” (according to Wikipedia, the source of all true knowledge) comes to English via Late Latin and the word “angelus” which the Romans stole from the Greek ἄγγελοςángelos, The ángelos is the default Septuagint’s translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mal’ākh denoting simply “messenger” without specifying its nature. (Notice, I am giving full credit to Wikipedia because it is far more all-knowing than I.)
I have many atheistic and agnostic notions in my ultimate belief systems, but still, I claim to be a Christian and believe in God Jehovah… within limits. I still communicate with God on a daily basis, and while I don’t publicly pray anymore (a notion promoted by the Biblical Jesus) I find answers to my questions and solutions to my problems from the observable universe around me.. the messengers of God. So, now that I have fully rationalized being crazy as a loon, I am going to tell you where that craziness is taking me. I started a new Paffooney for one of the books I am working on. Here is the pencil sketch;
This will be a picture of Valerie Clarke and her Daddy, the farmer Kyle Clarke. In my fiction, Kyle loses his farm to the bank (in the Family Farm Crisis of the 1980’s) and believing himself incapable of any longer supporting his family, kills himself. But the thing is, the love of his daughter transcends death for Kyle. She is able to reconnect with him time and again because the angels work for her as well as for Kyle. I may be loony and ill in real life, facing the Angel of Death myself, but I am not done doing God’s work… not yet… not for a long time to come.
The folktale is that a dying swan, though it probably never sang a single note in its lifetime that wasn’t a car-horn-like honk will sing an absolutely beautiful song before succumbing to death. I am nowhere near as beautiful as a swan, but I probably sing better than they do. I have never heard a clear B flat or high C from a Swan. Their actual singing is more like a cow dying. But who knows? Maybe they do achieve a miraculous melodiousness as they step from one world into the next. And I have been feeling the need to compose my own swansong of late. No man lives forever. And I am much closer now to the end than I am to the beginning.
I may not be able to sing a beautiful swansong, but there are other acts I can commit whose commission leads to great beauty. And I am doing my best to make use of those actions and skills before I pass from this reality.
Why am I so fixated on this idea that I am dying? My dog has cancer, a hideous tumor that I do not have the money to undertake to cure. And if I did have the money, she’s an old dog and the surgery would probably kill her rather than cure her. My father died just a few short years after his beloved dog passed away. There’s a symmetry at play in this outcome. I think the messages from Fate are clear.
As my myriad of unfortunate health conditions leave me in more and more pain with each passing day, the weight of years is pressing on my soul. Better to look forward to the next great adventure than to suffer overlong in the last act of this mortal production of a play by the great poet in the sky. The final curtain will close and the concluding overture has its last beautiful notes. Perhaps a celestial swan will sing it.
But I am not depressed and maudlin. I have lived a good life. And not all the good things in it are now only available in memories. Not while I can still draw and tell a story. I am slowing down in every way, but there are still stories in me.
Catch a Falling Star 
Flying the Magic Flying Carpet
There are many ways to fly. Airplanes, bird wings, hot air balloons, bubble-gum-blowing goldfish… well, maybe I am really talking about flying by imagination. The more my six incurable diseases and old age limit my movement, my ability to get out of bed and do things, the more I rely on reading, writing, and the movie in my head to go places I want to be.
Sometimes the wings I use to fly come from other writers. I get the flight feathers I need not only from books, but also from YouTube videos, movies, and television shows.
This magic carpet ride in video form is by the thoughtful creative thinker Will Schoder. In it he carefully explains how Mister Rogers used the persuasion techniques of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to talk to elephants and convinced a congressman intent on cutting the budget to actually give Public Television more money for educational programming. This is a video full of warmth and grace and lovingly crafted magic flight feathers that anybody can use to soar across new skies and blue skies and higher skies than before. I hope you will watch it more than once like I did, to see how beautifully the central explanation spreads its wings and gives us ideas that can keep us aloft in the realm of ideas.
It is important to stay in the air of fresh ideas and new thinking. The magic carpet ride that takes you there is the product of vivid imagination, cogent thinking, and the accurate connection of idea to better idea. So instead of falling from the sunlit sky into the darkness that so easily consumes us on the ground, keep imagining, keep dreaming, and keep flying. You won’t regret having learned to fly.
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Filed under battling depression, commentary, dreaming, humor, imagination, insight, inspiration, metaphor, Paffooney, philosophy, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as flying, imagination, love, nature, poetry