Bloom County Fan Art By My Awesome 10-Year-Old

I didn’t think my son would like Bloom County much because of all the 80s references. But I was wrong, because he is brilliant. So here’s his fan art.
 

Bill the Cat

fanart017
 
Giant Purple Snorklewacker

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Opus as rock star
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And here’s my fan art tribute to his fan art. Less brilliant, but what can you do.
 

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The entire Bloom County roundtable is here.

The Kangaroo Who Changed the World

Long, long ago, before you were born, there were no people. There were no lamps. There was no television. There weren’t even cats!

Kangaroos ruled the earth!
 

kangaroo001

 
This was the Ice Age. The kangaroos had especially thick, shaggy fur, so they weren’t too cold. But life was hard, because everything had to be made of ice. They had to make their chairs out of ice. They had to make their watches out of ice. They even had to make their mittens out of ice. And mittens made out of ice are not very warm.

When everything is made out of ice, there is not much to do. So mostly the kangaroos played golf. When their ice golf clubs shattered, they sat down right where they were and made new ones. Between playing golf and making golf clubs, they kept busy.
 

kangaroo002

 
Only one kangaroo was dissatisfied. Molly did not like golf. Molly liked to read. But you can’t make a book out of ice. So she was sad.

One day, she reared up on her big kangaroo feet and she said, “I am SICK of ice! I am SICK of golf! I am going to go change the world RIGHT NOW!”
 

kangaroo003

 
Her parents scratched their heads and twiddled their whiskers. “Are you sure?” they said.

“YES!” Molly said.

So her father packed her an ice bag full of ice to take with her, and her mother gave her her very best golf club, and they both hugged her and tried not to ask her again if she was sure because they knew that would annoy her.

So Molly went outside and lifted one foot up and then the other foot up and then she looked way up and then she jumped to the sun.
 

kangaroo004

 
The sun was surprised. She didn’t have many visitors at this time of year. But she’d always been taught to be polite.

“Hello, Molly,” she said, trying not to melt Molly’s mother’s best golf club. “What can I do for you?”

Molly put her paws on her hips. “It is time to change the world!” she said. “I need you to start getting hotter and melt all that ice RIGHT NOW!”

The sun thought a bit. “I’m sorry, Molly,” she said. “I like watching golf. No changing the world today.” She smiled. Then she blew up, which was her way of saying, “Come back next Thursday, or possibly not at all.”

Molly drifted back to earth. She felt a little discouraged.

Down, down, down…wham! She landed on the golf course on her right ear. It hurt.
 

kangaroo005

 
She got up and went back to mom and dad. “The sun was polite and yet also kind of mean,” she said. “My ice melted and my ice bag melted and my golf club melted and I landed on my right ear. It still hurts. Also I don’t think I changed the world.”

Her father kissed her ear and her mom gave her an ice cookie. They went outside and there was a big hole where Molly had landed on her ear,

And in the hole were cats! They came out and purred and rubbed against the kangaroos, because rubbing against the ice was uncomfortable.
 

kangaroo006

 
“Huh,” said Molly, as a cat licked her ear. “I guess I changed the world a little bit. That’s not so bad.”

Maybe, she thought, she’d try again next Thursday.
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I wrote this in hopes that a children’s book publisher might take it, but the agent I talked to said it was too weird and never write her again. My 10-year-old liked it though, and drew pictures for it (in very light pencil for some reason, which is why the scans are not so great.) His drawings were published earlier this week at The Book of Imaginary Beasts, which was edited by HU writer subdee.

There’s Something Besides Fire To Contend With Here!

So as I mentioned earlier in this roundtable, my son has been really into the Marston/Peter Wonder Woman. So I asked him if there was a panel he’d like to draw from Wonder Woman #28. He picked this one.
 

 
And here’s his version of it.
 

 
I figured I’d draw it as well. Here’s mine:
 

 
My son looked at it and said, “that’s a mess.” My wife looked at it and said, “her chin seems a bit prominent, doesn’t it?”

Everybody’s a critic.

Betatown

 
Some shapeless face speaking about robots,
And boredom quivering in the jowls of art
Flop like salmon in the brain cells of the heart.
Oh tragic face of fish, who knows not which was what’s.
 
In memory a flickering, a future passed like prunes
As detectives loomed and knitted new trench coats.
Grad school will keep you ever young, the careful notes
Ring like leaky bivalves in the analog spittoons.
 
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The Godard Roundtable index is here.

Zine: 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

A little while ago I reprinted some drawings from a 2002 zine I made in which I illustrated Wallace Stevens’ 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. A bunch of people (okay, two people) expressed interest in seeing the whole thing…so here it is. (Click pages below to move through the zine.)

PKD Through History

We had a little chatter about Philip K. Dick a couple weeks ago in comments, so I thought I’d reprint this tribute. It originally ran on Poor Mojo’s Almanac.
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I.
“France is the name of our starship,” Maximilien Robespierre tells Danton, “and France is the name of the planet from which we come. But the true France is our destination, the land of equality and virtue to which mankind has always been rising, which you and I shall finally attain!”

Robespierre straps on his blaster and inspects the ship. He checks each porthole for cracks, examines each control panel for tampering. He discovers seven men smuggling Thermidorian Brainburning Petals, sets his weapon to “Guillotine”, and executes them on the spot. He calls his crew together and paces in front of them. “Citizens,” he cries, “it has come to my attention that giant green alien psychic royalists are seeking to invade our democratic ship! Even now their agents may be teleporting on board; even now they may be among us, attempting to introduce their evil morale weakening substances into our untainted bloodstreams! We must be strong, we must be vigilant, we must shoot to kill anything we see that is green or giant or that demonstrates unnatural mental powers!

A ragged cheer rises from those assembled; the men raise their blasters, the women toss flowers. Already, though, Robespierre can see that several of the citizens are tinged with green; even some of the children appear to be larger than any three normal men. After he dismisses the assembly, Robespierre commands the ship’s computer to play patriotic songs, but still he feels weak and sad as he stands alone with Danton on the bridge. “It is hard,” he says, “this voyage, without knowing how long we must travel or exactly where we are going.”

“Yes it is,” Danton agrees. Robespierre notes that the other man does not move his lips when he speaks; as he watches, in fact, Danton grows enormous, his face becoming a vast expanse of green.

Robespierre retreats to his own quarters. He sits down at his plain desk and listens with eyes closed as the Muzak version of the “Marseillaise” drones from his nondescript terminal. “Computer,” he says. “What percent of the crew aboard this ship are aliens?”

“One hundred percent,” the computer says.

Robespierre nods. When he opens his eyes, he sees that his desk is covered with purple Thermidorian Bulbs.

“Computer,” he says again, keeping his voice steady. “Does that include me?”

“You are an alien,” the computer says.

Robespierre feels tears on his cheeks. All our efforts, he thinks. All the lives lost for nothing. We will not create a new age of reason, we will not free ourselves from tyranny. We will never reach France.

“Yes,” says the computer, although Robespierre did not speak aloud. “We are already heading back. We are returning to France.”

II.

Salesperson Immanuel Kant pitches over the counter medication on prime-time holovid. “Feeling down?” he asks, grinning furiously into the camera even as he pops a small white capsule into his mouth. “Are you depressed, dreary, anxious? Luckily for you, there’s a product that can help. After years of measuring, quantifying, parceling, and splicing, our scientists have finally discovered the formula for God. Caught in the middle of a nuclear holocaust, an alien invasion, a meteor shower, a messy divorce? Then try Numenol, the amazing drug that can make you divine! That’s Numenol — for fast, fast transcendence! Available in tablet or capsule.”

Unemployed Aerocar Repairman Immanuel Kant sits in his run-down apartment in the sky-bubble city of Konigsberg on the planet Jupiter and watches the salesperson on the holovid. “That’s what I need!” he thinks to himself. “Instant revelation — a way out of this mess of my life! ” He half turns on the couch to address his wife in the kitchen. “Say, honey,” he calls. “Have you heard of this new drug, Numenol ? I think I’m going to run down to the drugstore and pick some up!”

His wife, Supermarket Cashier Immanuel Kant, comes out of the kitchen. He smooths his dress. “Actually,” he says, “I bought some just the other day. The effects are very strange. Not at all as advertised.” He glances contemplatively out of the window. On the street below, underneath the towering atmosphere dome Immanuel Kant walks arm in arm with Immanuel Kant as Immanuel Kant navigates his aerocar amidst the skyscrapers in which Immanuel Kant attends meetings directed by Immanuel Kant concerning the new plans for a hundred Immanuel Kants to colonize yet another planet far off among the stars.

Night falls on Konigsberg and Immanuel Kant stands outside a holovid store. Behind the glass, five rows of 3-d images of Immanuel Kant jabber incessantly into the darkness. Immanuel Kant spits on the sidewalk in disgust. “A fine job you’ve done,” he says angrily. “I could have spent the rest of my days quietly enough here. I had problems, sure, but they weren’t insoluble. And now look at me! I’ve murdered a man on Venus and been raped in the Alpha Centuri system, down the block my wife hates me and on the other side of this world I’ve contracted a horrible disease that’s making my face melt. I have lice and a headache and a cold and I can’t find work or food or cash to pay the rent. I trusted you to make me God, and instead you’ve just made me more confused and miserable than I ever was before!”

The hologram Immanuel Kants each raise an admonishing index finger. “Now Immanuel,” they say. “We understand that things seem hopeless at the moment and that you feel like you’re no further along than you ever were. But we’d like to remind you that these things take time. We’ve gotten omnipresence now, so surely omnipotence and omniscience and eternal youth etc., won’t take us much longer. You’ve just got to have a little faith, keep smiling, and we assure you that you won’t be disappointed. Trust me. You have your own word on it.”

Kant turns from the screens, his fists clenched. But what can I do? he thinks. He looks up at the stars, shining high above the sleeping city, even as, in a spaceship somewhere far above the dome, he looks down upon Jupiter, upon himself. His hands relax, he draws a deep breath. Behind him, Immanuel Kant on the screens watches Immanuel Kant with shoulders slumped walk alone into the darkened town.

III.

Saint Bernadette looks out the window of her parents cubicle on Venus and sees a girl no larger than herself standing without any breathing equipment on the surface of the planet. She puts on her own respirator and goes outside.

“Why can you breath out here?” Bernadette asks.

“Que soy era Immaculado Conceptiou,” says the girl. “I am the Immaculate Conception, Mother of God.”

The Virgin Mary becomes an instant celebrity. She appears on talk shows and launches her own satellite to relay pre-taped advice round the clock. She personally visits as many family cubicles as she can. “I have been sent by Earthgov to let you all know the colonies have not been forgotten,” she says. “There is still a place for your souls on earth after death.” Everywhere the colonists are happier. Bernadette’s own parents begin to smile on occasion, where before they had been always silent and grim.

When Bernadette turns twenty, two policemen come to take her to a detention camp. “You are sick,” the first one explains. He is huge; his purple uniform stretches before her like a wall. “We’re very sorry to have to do this to a saint,” the second one says, gently taking her wrist. His eyes are blue and sad. “But you have asthma — we can’t allow such deviations. Our population must be pure if we want to continue to survive.”

“Mary could cure me,” Bernadette says.

“The policemen exchange glances. “Perhaps,” says the one with blue eyes.

At the camp Bernadette lives in a room with many other men and women. Some of them are lame, some are blind, some can’t hear. Every day they all go to the surface to farm the Venusian dust. Bernadette’s asthma grows much worse.

One night she wakes up and finds the blue-eyed policeman leaning over her. His flashlight casts eerie shadows on his face. “Are you awake?” he asks.

She nods, feels a shiver of fear. “Yes,” she says.

“Listen,” he says. He focuses on a spot to the left of her head. She notices that he is not wearing his hat — his hair is pale in the dim light. “Listen, I can see that you’re a loving type of person. I think that’s why you’re sick. I don’t think you have asthma at all. It’s psychosomatic, a symptom — it’s a kind of cry for affection. This world, Venus, it pulls us apart from each other.” He reaches out awkwardly, takes her hand in his own. “I want to help you,” he says, “If you’ll love me….”

Bernadette looks in disbelief at her own hand in the policeman’s grip. He thinks I’m going to get better because he says so, she thinks distantly. He’s as sick as me, sicker. He has no grip on reality at all.

“Leave me alone,” she says aloud. Her breath whistles as she inhales. There is a shallowness in her chest.

The policeman lets go of her hand. He takes a step back and shines the light at her face, so she can’t see him at all. “All right,” he says. His voice is ugly with anger. “If that’s the way you want it. I know your game. You’re too good for me, right? You want to be sick so your precious Virgin can come and heal you. Well, let me tell you something. The Virgin, she doesn’t exist, see? She’s an android. And Earthgov didn’t even send it, either, because Earth’s been a dead planet for years now — they blew themselves up long ago. It was Venusgov that built Mary, to raise morale among the stupid farmer underlings like you. So how do you like that? You just gave up your chance to live for the sake of a machine.”

Bernadette lies alone in the dark as the policeman stamps down the long hallway to the door, slams it behind him. She wonders if anyone else in the whole room is awake. She can’t hear over the sounds of her own gasping breaths. She sucks air into her lungs as hard as she can, but she can’t get enough. That man’s killed me, she realizes. I don’t even want to live now. She tries to convince herself that he was lying, but she can’t do it. He had seemed so confident and she has no energy. Everything is taken up by the need for the next breath, and the next. The Virgin a robot, she thinks. But she wasn’t lying. Made without intercourse. Soldered and hammered, rather. Immaculate Conception.

The room fades, disappearing into black as Bernadette’s strength ebbs. Then there is blinding light. Mary bends down, takes Bernadette in strong metal arms.

“Will you heal me?” Bernadette asks. “Will you take me to Earth?”

“All are healed,” Mary says. “All are taken to Earth.” Around the room, from every bed, the crippled rise dancing on metal limbs, the blind open photoelectric eyes, the mute begin to sing from stereo voice boxes. Mary’s face is a painted mask of tenderness as Bernadette inhales with plastic lungs the poisoned air of Earth.

IV.

Philip K. Dick leaps from his chair, suddenly awake. “I had a dream!” he exclaims. “A dream that all of history had turned into my novels, that I was writing the script of reality!” He blinks twice rapidly, scratches his beard and looks around the room. The party has ground to a tired end; no one is listening to him. Maximilien Robespierre lies unconscious on the couch. Saint Bernadette sits on the bare wood floor, sucking on an unlit hash pipe and staring wide-eyed at the toe of her shoe. Immanuel Kant leans on a broken lamp, wearing underwear, socks, and an expression of dazed befuddlement.

Phil isn’t discouraged. He raises his voice, waves his arms, downs a fistful of amphetamines. “So what that means,” he shouts, “is that when I die is the Apocalypse, when I stop writing for a moment everything stops! We’re not even here right now since I’m not at the typewriter!”

Kant lets go of the lamp, crosses his arms on his chest, shouts something inarticulate and falls to the floor with a crash. Friedan has woken up and is making a vague effort to roll Robespierre off the couch. Bernadette begins coughing violently.

Phil bites his lip. He looks from Kant to Bernadette to Robespierre to Friedan. “Don’t go anywhere,” he says. “I have to get going…got work to do, got to bring you all into being!” But he doesn’t leave. Instead he takes two hesitant steps forward and squats down beside Bernadette. She is still coughing. “Stop that,” he pleads. Instead she coughs harder, bending so far forward that her face almost touches the ground. The hash pipe falls from her fingers and the burnt ashes jump from the bowl, scatter across the floor. Phil stares at them helplessly. They look like a burning spaceship, a metal hand, a frightening alien face. Still he keeps looking, desperately hoping to find some pattern beyond indifference and pain, some way to create the world.

Statement of Purpose

(adapted from The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron with Mark Bryan; Media Marketing: How to Get Your Name and Story in Print and on the Air by Peter G. Miller; and from the graduate admissions and promotional materials of writing programs at Brown University, Stanford University, the State University of New York at Buffalo, the University of Houston, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Michigan, and Washington University in St. Louis)

To write is to bring representation and the suggestion of scientific method to the marketing of enlightened self-promotion. It is to be intimately connected to a high-tech ecosystem which overflows organically into a newer, better Graduate Record Examination. That is why, as a writer, I am a talented person. I reparent the artist-child who yearns to be a recognized authority; I pay too much in order to wear weird self-empowering clothing; I think of the universe as a vast electrical sea and of myself quoted in a national magazine. When I — a peripatetic Jungian — go to your cultural mecca to explore the beautiful irreverent shorthand of a profound, profane corporate brochure, the snowflake pattern of my soul will emerge, and, spiritually unblocking, I will become a controversial activist for ethnic and gender collages.

My life has always included strong internal directives. Well-packaged ideas, I call them. Although not always filled with sex and violence, they combine the comfortable nondenominational noncourse educational experiences of Poet Laureate Robert Hass with the sensuous television consciousness of solvent self-affirmer Sharon Olds, and accompany these attempts at conceptual and discursive emotional incest with literary modeling by Kafka, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Pound, and Stevens. I tell this story not to drop names, but for reasons of ego and commerce. I want to work seriously with a unique community of writers, scholars, and critics in a program which, while current, is not overly specific.

As a kid my dad thought my art was an “unruly multisubjective activity.” That made me feel I was a multidimensional management consultant in pursuit of lush plants, plump pillows, experimental nonlinear interactive space: in other words, of one wonderfully nurturing self-loving something. As I have grown deeper, I have continued to rediscover that my creativity requires a sense of flow and stability different from other’s humility. I believe that the rituals of power and authority which traverse your writing package will fully open to me this sense of abundance — will allow me to perfect my craft and to immerse myself luxuriously in a rewarding publishing and teaching career. In return, I am certain I can contribute to your collective intellectual process by helping your institution maintain its competitive synchronicity.
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Note: We’ve been talking about artist statements and the evils thereof in comments here. In that vein, I thought I’d reprint the Statement of Purpose I wrote on my MFA applications way back in 2000 or so. I applied to grad school for three years. Writing the statement of purpose the first year almost made me hang myself. So I tried something else the following years. The result was the same (I didn’t get in) but the risk of self-destruction was appreciably lessened. Plus, the Chicago Review printed it, which was nice. I think that this is its online debut, though.