Mickey's Laughing Blue

My title for today has at least a double meaning, if not a triple or fourple one. “Fourple?” you say. Yes, four plus the color purple. Purple, after all is the dominant color used in the video game “The Legend of Hoodwink“. And, of course, the video game is not real. It is the virtual reality video game used in the story as the secret land that the orphans and their mother’s friend flee the…

Do not waste another day, Even if you can only play, For each new day is a gift from heaven. Each new week, composed of seven, Is there for you to do something great, And that is how you work out your fate.

The classic line from the visionary poet Theodore Roethke; **** This is a look back at an essay from 2017**** But the truth is, before you can BE you must first BECOME. I know what you are probably thinking.  “What is this idiot rambling on about now?” Well, sometimes you simply have to spout a lot of love and hoo-haw and just pretend it means something.  That is the core, I think, of what…

The Naturist I am a naturist… I need to be naked… There needs to be nothing… Between my skin, the wind, the water, and the sun. My soul has to flow… Into the world… Into the wind, the water, and the sun… Because everything… Me included… Is all one thing. Two Little Wolves Every soul in the world is given two wolves to nurture. You need both to survive. One is strong and wicked…

Rowan, Iowa… Not the place I was born, but the place where I got to be a stupid kid, and have the lessons of the good and god-fearing life hammered into my head hard enough to make a dent and make it stay with me for more than half a century. I got to go to grade school there. I learned to read there, especially in Miss Mennenga’s third and fourth grade class. Especially in that old copy of…

image borrowed from TVtropes.com I firmly believe that I would never have succeeded as a teacher and never gotten my resolve wrapped around the whole nonsense package of being a published author if I hadn’t picked up a copy of Mort, the first Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett that I ever encountered.  I started reading the book as a veteran dungeon-master at D&D role-playing games and also as a…

Susu in the cornfield. The girl from San Antonio The cat girl with the rainbow colors. Again, these pictures were made with the assistance of Picsart AI Photo Editor and AI Mirror programs.

Where do I begin?  There are just too many ideas in this one topic to enumerate them all here.   I just got scammed again in my bank account.  A fake Microsoft account tried to rob me through my debit card number, and I have no idea how they got the number.  I had to close both my debit card and checking account, with direct bill payments about to go out.  I have to pray that the account changes…

She was only a puppy when we found her. She was wandering the street right in front of our family van. We took her into the house with us, and I gave her a piece of salami. She was weaned, but still a puppy. Giving her the food made her imprint on me. I became her mommy at that moment. I would, for the next fourteen years, be the most important human in her life. We tried to find out where she…

I have never been an attention-seeker. In the Elysian Fields of modern society, I have never really been the honeybee. I have always been the flower. I had a reputation in high school for being the quiet nerd who ends up surprising you immensely in speech class, at the science fair, or at the art show. I was the one they all turned to when everybody in the conversation had already had their…

Here’s a scene that was 50% real

As you get older and closer to the last page of the novel of your life, it is entirely appropriate to take stock of the treasures you have accumulated in a long and rewarding life. In fact, you will probably have heirs looking to reap their inheritance after your long-awaited passing. My children, unlike those of certain Republican politicians, don’t have much to gain by discovering the perfect…

There is a place so like the place where my heart and mind were born that I feel as if I have always lived there.  That place is a cartoon panel that ran in newspapers throughout the country from 1913 to 1955 (a year before I was born in Mason City, Iowa).  It was called Toonerville Folks and was centered around the famous Toonerville Trolley. Fontaine Fox was born near Louisville Kentucky in…

Well, here it is, my most recent work of art. But what does it mean? Why are they nude? Why are they clowns? I am asking you. It is always up to the viewer to decide what an image makes them feel. In our society, nudism makes viewers uncomfortable and feel awkward. But they are covered up in clown makeup, real identities obscured. People find clowns in makeup creepy. What are they hiding? How…

Life is never quite like the way it is in your head.  Things you don’t believe are true will constantly surprise you with the reality they belt you over the head with at the most inopportune of times. Today’s colored-pencil Paffooney masterpiece is a case in point.  I never believed it was possible to take this good of a picture of it.  It is a horror movie to try to light this picture so I can…