Mickey's Laughing Blue

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…

In 1927 in the mythical land of Austria, where they seem to know how to make candy… a condensed form of peppermint was created in a lozenge form and then placed into a plastic toy dispenser.  The spells that were cast to make this magical item probably had nothing to do with toad warts and bat wings and eye of newt.  It has more to do with Mickey Mouse, then Katzenjammer Kids, and Marvel Super…

Farmgirl is adapted from a picture borrowed from the Belmond Area Arts Council. I was born in Mason City, Iowa (the original River City of Meredith Wilson’s Broadway musical, The Music Man).  But my parents didn’t hold with no big-city Ioway sort of life, so we eventually moved to my mother’s hometown, Rowan, Iowa.  It was roughly about 275 people (if you count the squirrels… which a lot of the…

“What’s this with the made up words thing?  You can’t just make up words!” “Why not?  I’m an English teacher.  Who better to make up words?” “But you are making up nonsense words, and using them to make fun of Iowegians!  That’s, like, racist or something!” “Iowegians is a made-up word.  It is a play on Norway, Ioway, and Norwegian… and because a lot of white people in Iowa are of…

Life is full of crazy characters with silly sounding names. Pumblechook and Magwitch, Miss Pross and Jerry Cruncher, Sydney Carton. Little Nell and Dick Swiveller. Uriah Heep and Mr. Murdstone. Bill Sykes. Little Dorrit, Pip, and Tiny Tim. Bob Cratchit, Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge, Peggotty, and Oliver Twist. Wilkins Micawber. Sydney Carton quote; “I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he…

It is important for your mental health and well-being in the present age to question everything. As I laid out for you in the previous Thinkology post, the world is full of mental mousetraps, and evil thinkers are anxious to do all the critical thinking for you. If they can influence what you think is true, they can control you. To start with, you have to look at yourself naked in the mirror.…

The case has been made in an article by John Welford (https://owlcation.com/humanities/Did-King-Henry-VIII-Have-A-Genetic-Abnormality) that English King Henry the VIII may have suffered from a genetic disorder commonly known as “having Kell blood” which may have made having a living male heir almost impossible with his first two wives. The disorder causes frequent miscarriages in the children…

Little Frances Gumm from Minnesota She is older than both my mother and my father. In fact, if she were alive today, if she hadn’t died young when I was thirteen, she would be 101, passing the century mark. She was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota in 1922. And even though that’s right next door to where I was born in Mason City, Iowa, we were never really neighbors. Our families never met in…

Yes, this post is a shameless promotion. But this is a good book that not enough people are reading to truly appreciate that fact. When I was a boy in the 1960’s, there really was an old German lady who lived in a small tar-papered house, all ginger-brown in color, which we all called the Gingerbread House. She really did love to give out sweets and cookies and popcorn balls to the kids in our…

The angel of writing inspiration is angry with me. It has been too long since I buckled down to writing some WIP words every day. I used to do at least 500 words a day on the work in progress at the very least. Today, there were no words added to The, Education of Poppensparkle, He Rose on a Golden Wing, or The Haunted Toy Store. Three possible WIPs unfinished and available for daily attention.…