Category Archives: cartoons

November 14, 2021 · 4:02 pm

Human Beans

People are not really vegetables… even though I have seen IQ scores as a teacher that might say otherwise. But I often use the pun of calling them Human Beans.

Your basic human bean.

Western style beans

Of course, being a Texan means having a healthy appreciation for beans as a staple food. Cowboys used to live off of beans and beef jerky, and if Louis L’Amour is to be believed, they even made tea from mesquite beans. That makes your average cowboy made up of over 50 per cent beans. Of course the rest of him is mostly gas caused by the beans in his diet, whether it comes out as a fart or as a Texas tall tale… And yes, I admit it, I get a lot of my writing ideas from eating beans.

A Boston baked bean

We must also be aware that Texas has no corner on the beans market. We all know Boston baked beans by reputation. They, like the ever-hapless Cubs, had a habit of never winning the World Series. And now, in the last two decades, it has actually been difficult for the other teams to keep them from winning it all. But we shouldn’t mix up beans with baseball metaphors. Baseball is like life. Full of long and boring parts punctuated by intense moments of hitting, scoring, committing errors, and player versus player individual drama. And concession stand food! Beans, however, can taste good in chili draped over the ballpark hot dogs which cost more than a restaurant meal at most reasonable restaurants. And I promise you, you will never hit a home run over the fence by hitting it with a bean.

A Mexican style re-fried bean

And I wish to point out that this last human bean is not a racist cartoon. Beans are not part of the human race. They only have legs in cartoons and would come in last even when racing a snail. And all beans are created equal in the sight of God. Kidney beans, butter beans, navy beans, string beans… all beans are just beans, no matter what the color of their skin is, and no matter how they add flavor to a casserole. All beans are just in it to live life the best they can, and if that’s not enough… they can be planted as seeds to raise the next generation of human beans.

Leave a comment

Filed under cartoons, foolishness, humor, metaphor, Paffooney

October 28, 2021 · 3:36 pm

Penguin Proverbs

Penguins

You know how creepy penguins in cartoons can be, right?  The Penguins of Madagascar are like a Mission-Impossible Team gone horribly wrong and transformed into penguins.  The penguin in Wallace and Gromit’s The Wrong Trousers disguised himself as a chicken to perform acts of pure evil.  Cartoonists all know that penguins are inherently creepy and evil.

I recently learned a hard lesson about penguins.  You know the joke, “What’s black and white and red all over?  A penguin with a sunburn.”  I told that joke one too many times.  Who knew the Dallas metroplex had so many loose penguins lurking around?  They are literally everywhere.  One of them overheard me.  And apparently they have vowed a sacred penguin vow that no penguin joke goes unpunished.

As I walked the dog this morning, I spotted creepy penguin eyes, about three pairs, looking at me from behind the bank of the creek bed in the park.  When I went to retrieve the empty recycle bins from the driveway, there they were again, looking at me over the top of the neighbor’s privacy fence.

“Penguins see the world in black and white,” said one of the Penguins.

“Except for purple ones,” added the purple one.

“Penguins can talk?” I tried unsuccessfully to ask.

“Penguins only talk in proverbs,” said one of the penguins.

“But the purple one gives the counterpoint,” said the purple one.

“The wisdom of penguins is always cold and harsh,” said one of the penguins.

“Except on days like this when it’s hot,” said the purple one.

“You should always listen to penguins,” said one of the penguins.

“Of course, people will think you are crazy if you do,” said the purple one.

“People who talk to penguins are headed for a nervous breakdown,” said one of the penguins.

“Unless you are a cartoonist.  Then it is probably normal behavior,” said the purple one.

“Is this all real?” I tried unsuccessfully to ask.

“Everyone knows that penguins are real,” said one of the penguins.

“But there are no purple penguins in nature,” said the purple one.

So, I sat down to write this post about penguins and their proverbs with a very disturbing thought in my little cartoonist’s head…  Why am I really writing about penguins today?  I really have nothing profound to say about penguin proverbs.  Especially profound penguin proverbs with a counterpoint by a purple penguin.  Maybe it is all merely a load of goofy silliness and a waste of my time.

“Writing about penguins is never a waste of time,” said one of the penguins.

“And if you believe that, I have some choice real estate in the Okefenokee Swamp I need to talk to you about,” added the purple one.

 

2 Comments

Filed under artwork, birds, cartoons, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, philosophy, surrealism

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 16, 2021 · 2:34 pm

Ah! The Funny Face!

To celebrate the funny face, you really have to smile.

The goofy look, the bizarre expression, that lingers for a while.

Have a face that’s funny? It really is a gift.

To look for happy people, use the chuckle-sound to sift.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, goofiness, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as

October 14, 2021 · 1:43 pm

Mickian Fantasy Art

There is a reason why anything in my artwork starting with a rabbit is assumed to be autobiographical. I raised rabbits as a 4-H project from about the age of 10 and we kept rabbits in pens until I was finishing my undergraduate degree. (Rabbit chores fell to my little brother when I was away from home.) In many ways, I was a rabbit-man. My personal avatar as a school teacher was Reluctant Rabbit.

The panda known as Mandy in my cartoon world is an avatar of my wife, an immigrant from the Pandalore Islands.

There is often an exaggerated sense of adventure in my cartoonally weird Paffoonies, the very name of which is a fantasy word.

I have been known to actually believe gingerbread can be magical enough for gingerbread men to come to life once baked. It is the reason I bite the legs off first, so they can’t run away.

I have been known to see elves, fairies, and numerous other things that aren’t really there. In fact, a whole secret hidden kingdom of them inhabited the schoolyard in Iowa where I attended grades K through 6. They were all mostly three inches tall. The biggest ones, like dragons reaching only about six inches tall at their largest.

Of course I am afraid of death, evil, and… (shudder) mummies.
I think of art and story-telling as a form of music. I am a troubadour whose songs (like this one) are often completely silent.
My fantasy art tends to be more “comic book” than “art gallery”.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, autobiography, cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, colored pencil, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, surrealism

October 13, 2021 · 2:13 pm

Life Can Be Goofy Sometimes

Well, the lab said it was not Covid. It was not even the flu. Apparently Number Two Son just had a very bad cold. And I am pretty sure I have only got what he has. Same symptoms, but started two days later. So, I don’t even have to worry about going in for a Covid test.

This post, it turns out, is number 3,002 on this blog. The milestone post is the second one from yesterday.

I am juggling three books at once. I am writing another novella, Horatio T. Dogg, Super Sleuth which I am now using for Tuesday posts. I am editing AeroQuest 4 : The Amazing Aero Brothers, getting it ready for publication. And my main work in progress is He Rose on a Golden Wing, in which I am on rough draft chapter… er, Canto 6, though I’m not dead certain since I stopped numbering them and am simply citing classical music pieces to signal each new section of the story. The idea being that the reader should listen to that specific music while reading that section, just as I listened to it while writing the first draft.

That’s basically what all of life is… random silliness… God being Goofy… “Hyuck!”

But it is not really totally random. Rather, Goofy is off-kilter and meandering, but blessed with an overall pattern. And when he is a clock-cleaner and gets bonged on the noggin by a construction beam, he doesn’t step off the edge and fall to his death; he magically steps from suspended beam hanging from the construction crane to the next one and the next one hanging forever in mid-air.

We merely tumble endlessly through life as if it were a screwball slapstick comedy with moments of real grief and real pain and real love sandwiched in between the slices of your daily bread that you have probably prayed for… at least at some point in your life.

This illness that struck while wife and daughter were away had the side effect of preventing me from visiting the nudist park on Saturday where I had hoped to meet more nudists and do a bit of research for future nudist tales. So, I guess that was probably the reason God struck us with Apollo’s Arrow of Illness. The whims of Heaven are ever inscrutable. At least until I figure out how to responsibly “scrute.”

But however life proceeds from this particular place in time and space, it has turned out better than it might have otherwise. I am not saddened or forlorn due to this outcome.

1 Comment

Filed under autobiography, cartoons, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney

October 7, 2021 · 3:45 pm

Rise of the Bargain Bin Goon – Part 2

The vile Greek God of computer malfunctions, Sparkensputter Failtolodicuss, put his curse on this post yesterday as I almost had it completed.  He waved his dead skunk, the symbol of his unique power, and made WordPress delete my work and instantly save the changes.  I did some cussing and vowed to try and reassemble the post today.  It was intended to be a continuation of Action Figure Cartoons, starring Captain Action.  We shall see if Sparkensputter manages to thwart me again today.  He is hell at thwarting.

20160527_140447

So here is a brief and goofy explanation of what has happened so far.  Captain Carl Action and the Action Guy Action Team defeated the evil Dr. Evil as he tried to take over Mickey’s library.  You can find that whole mess in Mickey’s vault by clicking here.

Captain Carl Action not only defeated the evil Dr. Evil, he removed and stole Dr. Evil’s evil removable brain.  So Emperor Ming of Mongo, an evil incarnation of the evil Dr. Evil, came up with a plan to retrieve the brain by un-boxing one of Mickey’s mint-in-box bargain bin dolls… er, action figures.  You can review that whole mess here.

So, that brings us to today’s episode in the seemingly endless story of the sequel of a seemingly endless story.

Captain Carl Action has taken the evil brain of the evil Dr. Evil to the Action Guy Action Team Headquarters in the Fortress of Ineptitude, located on top of a useless computer in Mickey’s studio.

20160828_211117

As seen in this dramatic scene, you can probably tell that the Action Guy Action Team Headquarters is run by the Captain Action Council, made up of Captain Action in his Flash Gordon costume, the mint-in-box Captain Victor Action, and the vintage Captain Action in his Steve Canyon costume.  You can also probably tell by Steve Canyon’s goofy brain-eating bug comment that none of them are any brighter than Captain Carl Action.  They have all decided to rely on the dolls of Mickey’s big-headed dolls collection.  That decision also reeks of lack of brightness.

20160828_211616

Captain Carl Action has once again delegated primary responsibility for the situation to a group of dolls who are very good at guarding Crackerjacks.  It was fortunate that DC Comics recently released a new set of DC Super Hero Girls to attract Mickey’s collecting OCD.  It meant that big-headed Supergirl was available now to be an actual super-powered guardian.  Still, she had to find a strategy that would succeed.  So she turned to her crackerjack team for advice.

20160831_141713

Now, I hate to second-guess Supergirl, but why is she asking an evil bunny for advice?  And how did an evil bunny even get on to a gig like being part of the big-headed dolls’ crackerjack team?

20160831_141815

Shelf of Severed Heads?!!!?  That doesn’t sound right.

 

20160831_142207

Oh, my!  This is really not looking good for our heroes.  Stay tuned until next time… whenever the heck that is… same batty time, same batty channel.  And phooey on you,  Sparkensputter Failtolodicuss!

Leave a comment

Filed under action figures, cartoons, collecting, doll collecting, goofiness, humor, playing with toys

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 29, 2021 · 3:13 pm

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik

It is, of course, one of the most powerful, masterful, and best-known pieces of music ever written.

Mozart completed the “little serenade” in Vienna in 1787, but it wasn’t published until 1827, long after Mozart’s untimely death.

The Serenade is incorrectly translated into English as “A Little Night Music”. But this is and always has been the way I prefer to think of it. A creation of Mozart written shortly before he hopped aboard the ferryman’s boat and rode off into the eternal night. It is the artifact that proves the art of the master who even has the word “art” as a part of his name. A little music to play on after the master is gone to prove his universal connection to the great silent symphony that is everything in the universe singing silently together.

It is basically what I myself am laboring now to do. I have been dancing along the edge of the abyss of poverty, suffering, and death since I left my teaching job in 2014. I will soon be taking my own trip into night aboard the ferryman’s dreaded boat. And I feel the need to put my own art out there in novel and cartoon form before that happens.

I am not saying that I am a master on the level of a Mozart. My name is not Mickart. But I do have a “key’ in the name Mickey. And it will hopefully unlock something worthwhile for my family and all those I loved and leave behind me. And hopefully, it will provide a little night music to help soothe the next in line behind me at the ferryman’s dock.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, cartoons, classical music, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, Hidden Kingdom, magic, metaphor, music, Paffooney

Tagged as ,

August 23, 2021 · 7:33 pm

Life is a Cartoon Car Chase

Our strength as human beans is not from the power of fang or claw, nor even from the power of Hercules’s muscles (since only Austrian dudes named Arnold and CGI Hulks have those,) but from our adaptability.

Of course, we are bound to call upon that power soon. There are those religions that say the world will end by 2026 (which wouldn’t be quite as concerning if one of those religions wasn’t climate science, based entirely on factual observations and measurements.) So, we will need to adapt to breathing carbon dioxide and develop fire-proof skin as the surface temperatures rise above the flash-point temperatures of cloth, wood, and eventually steel.

Now that the spoiled mango with a yellow bird’s nest on his head is no longer King of America, we have to adapt to a two-party political system where the GOP (Greedy Old Perverts) are led by Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam (who love guns and are immune to consequences; you can blow up dynamite in front of them and it only turns their face black and singes their eyebrows and moustache,) and the Donkey party are led by Bugs Bunny (in a dress and calling anti-maskers morons) and Daffy Duck (who only thinks of himself and his stupid, impulsive self-destructiveness.)

And somehow we have to get that whole mess to save us from a swiftly warming ocean, the profit-making corporate polluters, and a population that is working harder and making less money for it than they were half a century ago.

Maybe (as in the Paffooney where the flying saucer is about to snatch the kid bounced out of the rumble seat) the aliens will save us.

But we have to adapt. We have a tendency to be suspicious of outsiders and people who look different than us. And, boy! Do the Zeta Reticulans ever look different than us! Well, except for Jeff Bezos. He’s actually an artificially intelligent robot created by aliens. He actually began life as an electric duldo in the 1980’s.

The aliens need to teach us how to use cold fusion and zero-point energy instead of fossil fuels. And how to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turn it into wood the way all the trees we have cut down used to do.

If we can rapidly adapt to changing situations the way cartoon characters do during car chases, we will all be okay.

2 Comments

Filed under aliens, angry rant, cartoons, humor, Paffooney

August 2, 2021 · 5:25 pm

An Original Superhero

20160511_085104

I love Marvel Comics, and, as a result, I am also falling in love with the Marvel Superhero movies.  I spent this morning drooling over the Flash TV series which has that wonderful comic book wiseacre flavor.  And I decided that Dallas needs its own superhero.

So, using the toxic pollution in the city air and the natural ability of the human body to adapt to anything, Muck Man is born.  Yes, Muck Man, the toxic hero who smells so bad that bad guys don’t have a chance.  Severe odor is his super power.  He can remove his shoes and take down a regiment of evil villain minions with a wave of foot-fungus incredo-stink.  He can radiate infected ear-wax smells through the earwax antennas on his helmet.  And, of course, he can go fully nuclear with a Muck Man power fart.

The Magnificent Muck Man has a secret identity too.  He is a mild-mannered retired school teacher by day, pursuing a mundane and forgettable career as a writer until the city is threatened by a super villain.  And he is coming.

20160511_085121

Behold, the Angry Orange King.  He is tramping toward us in Angry Tramp Boots looking to tramp all over the basic human rights of people he doesn’t like.  Especially poor people he doesn’t like.  He gives rude finger gestures to the masses with the fingers of his tiny, tiny hands.  And he likes to build gigantic things and make other people pay for them.  He has recently defeated the homegrown lizard-man super villain that represents our state.  He used his super villain power to hang insulting nicknames on people, and we all know that nicknames can be fatal, especially to lizard-people.  Many would argue that the Angry Orange King hasn’t won total victory yet.  He still has to defeat one more opponent before the frightened nation turns the keys to the kingdom over to him.  But there is no guarantee that he will be beaten, as no other contender has beaten him yet, despite everything the wise monkeys claim to be true.

So the confrontation is set to happen.  Blow-hard insult master against the world’s greatest source of stinky justice.  Who will win?  Nobody knows for sure.  But for me, I tend to side with goodness over evil.

Leave a comment

Filed under Avengers, cartoons, characters, comic book heroes, conspiracy theory, humor, Paffooney, satire

Tagged as , , , ,

July 31, 2021 · 7:14 pm

A New Day Art Day

So, how do you follow up a thing like starting a new religion like Quackatoonity? Should you follow it up?

I mean, this is Art Day. And I need a theme for Art Day. How about, “Art with no ducks in it?” Well, Ducks are always watching from somewhere. So, I guess that’s a no-go.

Of course, I could always try to prove the “toon” part is real. I am a cartoonist. I do do cartoons. (Haha! He said, “doodoo!” Shows you the level of humor he will sink to.)

This cartoon is a bit creepy and definitely surreal. This was done more than a decade before I even met my wife. But the two boys seem to be four years apart in age, just like my real-life sons. They do not, however, have visible horns on their heads. This is supposed to be surreal, not photographic.

So, there’s a weird cartoon story for today’s Art Day post on a New Day. And nowhere in sight will you find a duck in it… OH, NO! THERE’S A DUCK IN IT!!! How does Donald do that?

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, cartoons, colored pencil, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as