The Coronavirus Isolation has put a lot of new limitations on our lives. But, I happened to have an unused Gingerbread House kit. So, for Art Day, the Princess and I decided to put it all together with supplies we already had on hand. Here, then, is the Beyer Family Gingerbread House 2020.
But, it wasn’t a total disaster. We can use our inherent craftiness to rescue it at least a little bit from total wicked-witch-housiness. Though I am sure Hansel and Gretel would still eat it.
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, artwork, family, gingerbread, homely art, humor, photo paffoonies
“Yeah, not exactly superhero-like, I know. My only super powers are teaching Middle-School kids and writing Indie YA novels. And those are powers that are easily ignored by the truly evil ones,” said Mickey, as if there were actual wisdom in his stupid, purple Mouse-Head.
“Well, you did write a pretty good novel in that last teacher story you wrote. It might make a difference if a few of the right people read it and understand what you are trying to say about education.”
“You’d have a pretty good point there if anybody ever read the danged thing. I have given away paperback copies, and now it’s free this weekend while so many people are stuck at home with lots of reading time and no reason not to click on the link to get it free for their Kindle or free Amazon cloud reader. Of course, it hasn’t even been reviewed one time. Not even by Page Publishing who supposedly edited and printed it before I moved it to Amazon.” Mickey had an ironic twinkle in his eye as he said it.
“Mickey, you are not very good at promoting your books. It is day two of the free book promotion, and you have only given away four copies.”
“I know, I know…” he said with a sigh. “But it is a pretty good story. The title character teaches English to sixth graders. And she is not only tasked with teaching some unique and somewhat challenging kids in the classroom, but she has to deal with difficult parents, an even-more difficult principal, and the fact that her little brother grew up to be a wizard and told the local invisible fairy kingdom that she was the key to helping them defeat the chaotic forces of evil from the fairy realm. You know, the same problems almost every teacher has.”
“It sounds like a book worth reading. And I should know. I have read the danged thing completely from beginning to ending about seven times. Of course, five of those times was because I wrote the previously-danged thing and needed to proofread it more than twice.”
“So, I am now trying to exert the full might of the Mickey and his miraculous super powers on you, the wonderful few who will actually read this dumb blog this far, but still haven’t clicked on the link. It is free, after all. What do you really have to lose?” Mickey shouted into the air of the internet.
Crickets were all we heard on this end.
Filed under announcement
This is my free e-book promotion for the month. If you are stuck at home as I am, and you need something to do, this is my teacher-novel that I liberated from the clutches of Page Publishing. It will be free for the clicking on it until midnight of Sunday night. I think you’ll like Miss Morgan. She’s the teacher I always wanted to be.
Being home-bound and jobless has its advantages. Plenty of reading time. Plenty of writing time. Got some house-cleaning done that hasn’t been done in a while, and plan to do more. No stress and hassles from 6th, 7th, and 8th graders… But no more extra money coming in from subbing, probably for the rest of the year. Or the rest of two years.
And the down-sides are huge. Two relatives have cancer and the pandemic may interfere with the treatments for both. My wife has been diagnosed with diabetes, putting her at risk just like me. My son the Marine was exposed to a friend who tested positive for Coronavirus this week. I won’t see him again for at least two to three weeks. And President Pumpkinhead is smugly praising himself for the great job he did pretending to care about the American public during this outbreak. The smug smirk and back-patting of himself is deeply offensive. And if there is a letup in the virus before November, he might get reelected.
Also, the big Marvel movie of the Spring has been rescheduled for later. Bummer.
We can’t get toilet paper. That stuff is made of gold or something. Crowds wait outside the stores in the morning to gobble it all up as soon as the doors open. As well as all the sandwich bread, beef and other meats, cooking oil, and bottled water. Why are they so relentless? How much toilet paper can people eat in a week?
But I have writing time and the ideas are flowing. And you can click above and get the book shown above for free. As of this writing three people have snapped it up already on the first few hours of the promotion.
Filed under announcement
The viruses are winning. And why are they winning? Because of people who say, “I don’t believe it,” and mean it, because they are either stupid (not the majority) or because they are too afraid of the obvious consequences to admit what they know in their hearts to be true.
We are not handling the pandemic well. The disease is out of control because so many carriers of the disease feel well enough to go out and have a good time while infecting everyone around them. And testing is not occurring to identify all of these happy, restaurant-going and green-beer-swilling Typhoid Marys. They are unknowingly (and more alarmingly, uncaringly) infecting the elderly, compromised, and vulnerable people in their lives. The Governor of Oklahoma took his family out to a restaurant to celebrate their obliviousness and later tweeted about it to tell us we should do the same. Congressman Devin Nunes of California went on television to tell his true believers that they might as well go out to bars for St Patrick’s Day. He said it wasn’t crowded. He ignored the potential consequences completely. There ought to be a law.
And we won’t even talk about Happy-Talk Trump, the moron criminal president, because… What’s the use?
There is no reason to believe that quarantines will cause problems with the grocery-store supply chains. There should not be shortages. People are having fist-fights to be able to hoard toilet paper. There’s almost no meat, bottled water, or bread at Walmart. Thank you, stupid people.
The worst of it is that this stupidity is exploitable. People don’t want to admit that they have to do hard things that they don’t want to deal with, not only Coronavirus, but also climate change, wealth inequality, racism, terrorism, or even such things as the browning of the American population demographics. They let the Koch Brothers and other evil billionaires convince them that money-making exploitations of the environment (that actually only make money for the billionaires) are in their own best interests. Those exploitations will doom us all.
But I am facing the end of my life no matter what complications I do or do not have ahead of me. It has been a good life. But everybody else in the world has a right to have the same sort of good life. And that will not happen on the paths we now tread.
So, I refuse to believe it. I refuse to believe that we, the people, are stupid enough, or callous enough, or lacking empathy enough to continue down these paths. And I am, by the evidence alone, a fool to not believe it. But there it is… the reason for my title and the theme of this rant.
Filed under angry rant, compassion, conspiracy theory, feeling sorry for myself, politics
Adagio 14 – The Battle of Farwind (the Blood-red Thread)
It was amazing to me how few casualties actually occurred in the capture of a planet like Farwind by a handful of commandos led by a traitor. The Battle of Farwind cost the Imperial Defense Force one traitorous commando commander, six unwilling Imperial loyalists, and fifty-two insanely-programmed Mechanoids. Our side lost no one at all. Ninety-two percent of the Imperial forces on the planet switched sides, preferring the command of the charismatic and humble Duke Han Ferrari to the iron-fisted rule of the maniacal Mechanoid Admiral Brona Tang.
Duke Ferrari quickly established a temporarily-appointed government of both like-minded intellectuals and professionals, and highly intelligent and motivated members of the political opposition. Massive elections were planned and were quickly carried out, but Ferrari rode a wave of popular acclaim into office where they would’ve made him Emperor if he chose, just as George Washington of Earth and Toakenn Ailiannaim of Samothrace had done before him. He took the office of Farwind Executive Prime, and made the popular alien entertainer William Bugbright his Executive Second. Bugbright was not a human-born entertainer of aliens, mind you, but a Kritiian, an insectoid alien, that had the head of a giant praying mantis, four chitinous arms, and could play two ukuleles at once while singing popular human songs in a particularly humorous off-key voice. It is little wonder he was the most popular living entertainer on holographic videos since the Galtorrians first discovered I Love Lucy reruns being broadcast on old-time television signals from the nearby planet Earth. Galtorrians, and even Galtorrian-human fusions, as you probably already know, love the comedy stylings of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz more than anything else ever used for entertainment on a thousand worlds. Incidentally, did you know that the first Galtorrians to land on Earth were surprised to learn that everything on the planet was not colored only in black and white and shades of gray? They knew about movies and television on their own, but they never actually discovered black and white. Choosing an entertainer as Executive Second was probably the canniest move that Duke Ferrari made in selecting his new rebel government. The Galtorrians and the Galtorrian-Human fusions were all enthralled and easily swayed by entertainers, especially those who could handle humor well. Teachers would never have conquered the Galtorrian Imperium if it hadn’t been for that one factor, humor, and the power of those who are funny.
So, you can see, the conquest of the planet Farwind was easily one of the most confoundingly absurd and easy conquests in recorded history. It was more amazing than Cortez conquering the Aztec civilization because Cortez lost men and had no visible sense of humor in any form that I can see, and I have been there via time machine, though only to watch from the bushes.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, novel writing, Paffooney, science fiction
Well, here I am now. Shut down and quarantined, not because I have Covid 19, which I don’t, even though I can’t prove that. Rather, it is because I am a high risk individual. Coronavirus could kill me easily. And also because the world is shut down around us. No school. Officially for this week, but probably for the rest of the school year.
So, what will I do now? Well, write more on my novel, of course. But this is not the 19th Century. There are ways to reach out to friends and family instantly, by phone, or Skype, or Facebook, or instant messenger… And you need to check on them. Keep them from feeling isolated and alone. Especially if, like me, you or any of them are at risk from this pandemic. We are not living in the days of the Black Death or the Spanish Flu. We are able to actively connect with others to keep the depression monsters at bay. And no one gets physically sick from a phone call. (I honestly hope that is the truth.) I talked with my octogenarian parents last night, and texted my 60-something sister just to talk and reconnect. My daughter talked to her grandmother in Iowa. My number two son has online friends in Europe and South America. We have family in the Philippines. And I can write this blog post for you. How is your family doing? Do you know somebody that is at risk? Reach out to them. It may be the phone call that saves their life, and then the invention of the telephone will be validated and justified.
And hopefully, with the use of modern communication devices, you won’t infect them with anything, and they won’t infect you. Not even Mr. Grupp.
Today’s artworks for Saturday Art Day are all filled with random things put together by chance and whimsy in order to mishmash together some kind of point about surrealism. This would be because this is a surrealist blog, and I am a surrealist artist and writer. Either that or it is because if you put fish in your ears, the color of the sky changes to swirling gold and purple. Those are some powerful fish!
Of course, Surrealism is more than just a pile of random things. As Salvador Dali did it, the random images were made as realistic as possible and connected together. There was some reason behind the juxtaposition of these otherwise unrelated things (like the line-up of weird uncles you get at the Thanksgiving table when your great grandma had nine kids, seven of whom grew old enough to have families of two or more kids, and everyone within driving distance is invited to grandpa’s farm house for a big-family family meal (even if they had to put a second kids’ table in the storm cellar).
Of course, the meaning that ties it all together can be a secret or hidden meaning. Salvador Dali was deeply in love with his wife Gala, who was thirty years younger than he. He had an older brother who died before he was born, making him forever feel like a “replacement child”. These things are expressed in his paintings. Did you ever discern that from his paintings of melted clocks and discarded masks being kissed on the lips by giant ants?
And what the hell does this even mean?
The Little Fool?
Subtitled; a novel of limited intelligence?
And it is a colored-pencil drawing of a candle, an empty skull, a budgie, a book, and a weird little goofy ghost dressed like Mr. Peanut… without the monocle or spats… does that make him naked?
And a pencil? Why?
Can you tell from my artwork that I chose a career of being a public-school English teacher over becoming a commercial artist or a cartoonist? Or that I was the victim of a sexual assault at the age of ten and then never told anybody about it until the guy who assaulted me was dead? Or that I was so afraid of my own body when I was young that I eventually had to become a closet nudist as an adult? And what does my artwork have to say about all of that?
And do you understand why Salvador Dali is an artistic hero of mine? And I love the movies of Stephen Spielberg for the exact same surrealist reasons?
If you regularly read this blog, or even just look at the pictures, you may have seen all of these pictures and heard all of these ideas before. I didn’t make this post from anything new. The only thing that is new… is how I randomly chose to put all of these things together in a way I haven’t done before.
Yesterday they canceled school at least until the 20th of March with an option to extend that for as long as needed. That protects me from infection, but puts my personal economics in jeopardy. No substitute teaching jobs in the coming week. Potentially they will cancel my two jobs lined up for the rest of March. Walmart sold out of bread, bottled water, and toilet paper in a couple of hours last night. I managed one loaf of bread in the check-out chaos. I wasn’t planning to buy bread last night, but if the week’s supplies are going to be gone…
So, here comes the potential pestilential apocalypse, full steam ahead and straight at us. Oh, well. It’s better than brain-eating zombies.
Filed under Uncategorized
Being a pessimist, I am fully expecting to die from Corona virus sometime in the next few months. Our moron criminal President has not done anything in a timely matter to head off the pandemic. In fact, he did a good job of preparing for failure by firing and disassembling the special CDC unit Obama had put together for responding to potential pandemics because of the Ebola crisis. (Trump has made a very special effort in his administration to undo anything good that Obama did in his presidency.
I am in the highest risk category when it comes to dying from the virus. I am not in a nursing home, but economically I have no choice but to keep being a substitute teacher, and that puts me in the center of germ and virus petri dishes that are middle schools and high schools. But, fortunately, I go into this perilous near-future with open eyes. If I die from it, I am prepared after a long full life, and I will die doing something I love to do. The economic hardships that fall on the members of my family when I am gone, will thankfully fall mainly on the credit-card abuser who caused most of that crushing debt and then refused to help me pay it all off.
I am now as confident as a total pessimist can be that Donald Jerblinkaninney Trump will be defeated in the next election. If I am still alive at election time, and he does win, that will be enough to kill me off right there. But even though it is no laughing matter, I will have the last laugh. Existence is eternal, and I have existed on this Earth, doing good things rather than bad.
Filed under angry rant, Paffooney, pessimism
Catch a Falling Star 
Sunday with Salvador
Today I am waxing on about the wonderful, mad, mad, mad genius of surrealist art, Salvador Dali. He was born in 1904 and died in 1989. And that’s really about all that I want to tell you about the physical parameters of his boundlessly creative life. He was alive in this world until I was already thirty-three. So, I got to see him on television and watch video biographies of him and his incredible artwork. Ones that included interviews. And if I get into his public persona, that will eat up the rest of his essay. Instead, I need to talk about his art, and how it modifies and magnifies what I am meant to be.
His most famous painting is the one that most clearly burned the image of melting clocks into our collective memory. He claimed, and others pretend to see it too, that it is a reaction to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. But when I look at it with the melting mask of Dali himself in the center, I see the artist’s perception of time in the spaces within which creativity moves. Time melts and has no meaning when you are painting and writing from an endless roiling flow of new ideas and notions. Time becomes as irrelevant in that context as the ants on the pocket-watch or the dead tree from which one deflated clock-skin hangs, There is no past or future, only the creative now.
And in that creative now, the artist sees himself. But if you look too closely, the self vanishes into the picture, the currently considered, fascinating work of art.
You see the boy with the hoop and wearing a sailor suit? That symbol, he always claimed, was his lost brother, the one who died before he was born. The one whose death made his parents decide to have another child. Without that brother, Salvador would probably never have been existing at all.
And do you see the disappearing bust of Voltaire? Or when you look closely at the slave market in the background, is it simply no longer there? Things that disappear… things that become other things… tricks of perception, the fooling of the viewer’s eye… These are what the artist actually wants you to see. Not the well-portrayed physical reality, but the ghost of the shadow of an idea that’s hard to define.
And then there is the idea of war. Two world wars that took place in the prime-time of his painterly life.
Life does crazy things to the sensitive, suffering artist, and it shows in his work if not in his public personality.
And consider the artist’s notion of birth and life and death. Narcissus suffers for the sin of love of himself. He becomes petrified with age, a narcissus flower growing from his head, now an egg, the symbol of birth and rebirth.
And here is an exploded portrait of his beloved wife Gala.
All the elements float eternally in the air.
And you can see inside each thing.
Inside the home is the wife and mother.
Inside the mother is the child.
Inside the child is the loaf of bread that keeps him alive.
Does the bread, then, stand in for God himself?
Dali and his work is not simple. It is deeply, incongruously complex. But that is surrealism. That is how it works. Without getting into other complex symbols and such Dali-esque puzzles like burning giraffes, eggs, and Venus De Milo with bureau drawers in her torso, that is how Salvador spends his Sunday with me. An artist beyond time and space, long dead, but still speaking to me. And teaching me beautiful, untold things and stories of things.
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Filed under art criticism, artists I admire, artwork, autobiography, commentary, surrealism
Tagged as Salvador Dali