Category Archives: goofiness

May 24, 2016 · 3:41 pm

A Thing That I Know…

You probably guessed it just from the title.  I started this post without any idea at all what I was going to write about.  And so I had to rummage around in the back rooms of my silly old brain looking for stuff to put out there that wasn’t too moldy, but definitely had been thoroughly cooked and stored away for a while.

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So here is something I know…  If you want to make someone pay attention to you, make a joke.  You can do that by surprising people with something that they immediately recognize and realize that it is totally backwards to what they saw before.  In other words, when I say or write things that make people wrinkle their noses at me, I am not merely being weird.  I am being a humorist.

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Here is something else I know…  If you want to have an idea that is worth having, you need to look at things from a totally different angle.  If I want to know myself better, I need to reflect on how Charles Schultz would draw me.  I would be half Linus and half Charlie Brown because I am most profound when I have my blanket to comfort me, but things constantly go wrong for me and I see myself as a loser… but I have people who love me, and a dog that battles the Red Baron.

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Another thing I know… If you want to make something, you have to follow the rules, and only occasionally break them.  This post began with a simple enough rule.  It had to have simple statements of things I have learned over the course of my life, and the pictures all had to come from a randomly selected picture file on my laptop.  I save all kinds of weirdly chosen and goofy things in my art and memes files.  So how dangerous can that rule be?  Of course, I also want to put up a bit of my own artwork, and this file that I chose doesn’t seem to have any in it.  So, I have to break the rule… but only this one last time.

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Now, I know you will probably look at this and think to yourself, “What the hell is wrong with you, Mickey?”  Or maybe you will say it out loud in your most disgusted voice.  But I do know this…  If you are old and you have lived long enough to have learned a thing or two… or possibly three, you can simply start writing and the ideas will be there.  And it might turn out to be something you will be glad you wrote and shared.  This is simply a thing that I know.

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May 13, 2016 · 3:51 pm

Secrets of the Muck Cave

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I recently revealed the existence of a new superhero in Dallas, the Magnificent Muck Man, master of muck and mud and maddening stench.  Remember, his superpower is the ability to produce smells so awful they paralyze, neutralize, and even euthanize every opponent.

Now, every superhero needs his secret lair.  Batman has the Batcave.  Superman has the Fortress of Solitude.  The Avengers have Avenger’s Mansion… oh, uh, maybe they’re not all secret.  But, anyway, Muck Man has the Muck Cave.  Yes, it is based on my house.  I am old.  I have six incurable diseases.  So cleaning is difficult.  And I don’t always smell that good myself.  But I am not trying to claim I am Muck Man’s secret identity.  The fool almost revealed his secret identity by smelling bad in an elevator… so I have to be more careful not to out him.

Anyway, the Muck Cave is Muck Man’s secret lair and base of operations.  It is a normal-looking residential suburban house, on the outside.  Inside, it is a hideous maze of garbage piles, discarded soiled laundry, random dog poo from Muck Dog, and a layer of wetness from incessantly overflowing toilets.  Okay, there is another secret out.  Muck Man has kids at home.  How else do you explain how an ordinary house becomes an unnatural flowing fountain of filth?

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Muck Man is not alone in his fight against evil.  He has a couple of sidekicks that haven’t left the Muck Cave in disgust yet.  They are teenage swashbuckling Mucklets that aspire to one day become Teen Titans.  In fact, Muck Woman has a huge crush on Robin, such a huge crush that she refused to take the name that Dad… uh, Muck Man… suggested.  She did not want to be called Muck GIRL.  She did not particularly want to hang out with trained muck-rats either, but for a chance to hang out with Boy Wonders on weekends, well…

Muck Lad, however, likes his name… almost as much as he likes living in the Muck Cave.  Teenage boys and filth-laden rooms in the Muck Cave are simply made for each other.  And Muck Lad can’t wait to use his patented stink-saber on evil.  It’s like a Star Wars light saber, except it creates a blade of solid stink that can cut through anything.

As the new superhero team prepares to get into crime fighting, I have it on good authority that they plan to go see the new Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War tonight.  I believe they plan to take notes on how it all works.

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Filed under artwork, Avengers, cartoons, comic book heroes, daughters, family, goofiness, humor, kids, Paffooney

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April 21, 2016 · 3:23 pm

Gooseberry Pie

I would like to contend that a blog is a form of self-portrait.  Do you want to argue with me?  Have a piece of Gooseberry Pie….

You see, gooseberries aren’t made from geese.  They don’t look like gooses… er, goosei… um, geese.  They aren’t the favorite food of a goose, unless, maybe…  Mother Goose.  The name is a corrupted form of the Dutch word kruisbes , or possibly the German Krausbeere.   You know, because people who speak English don’t know how to talk right.  They don’t have anything to do with geese.  In the same way, a person’s name doesn’t really help you understand the person that wears it.  You have to dig deeper.  Do you know, I have never actually tasted gooseberry pie?  I have seen and even picked the gooseberries.  They are danged ugly, spikey-furred snot-green berries.  I am not tempted in any way to put one in my mouth.  And yet, I should not judge gooseberry pie before I taste a piece.  I know people who adore gooseberry pie.  Maybe you are one of them.

The point is, blogs are exactly the same thing.  An artist, a writer, a producer of something, or a day-dreamy noodling goober has put together a blog to display their wares, show off their creations, and share their words and wisdom.  You have to look at them, warts and all, and actually take a bite.  You have to try them out and test them.  Follow them over time.  Read, absorb, and appreciate… not merely zoom through and look at the pictures… and maybe click “like” at the bottom of the post.

Of course, I admit, I do the very thing I am advising you not to do.  The first few times I visit a blog, I scan through and only focus on a few things that catch my falling stars.  (oop!  Shame on me… I should say “catch my fancy”.  Forgive me for lapsing into Mickian brain farts for a moment there).  But if I am lured into coming back, I dip deeper and read more… tasting it thoroughly, as it were…  And much of what I taste there will end up in my own recipe somewhere down the line.  I begin to learn who that blogger is, and their writing style… sometimes even their thinking style (though I don’t read minds… only smell brain farts and odoriferous mental cooking smells) and I picture them as people in my minds eye.  Sometimes I wonder if they match in real life the person I am picturing.  Of course, the answer is no.  People don’t look like what you think they should look like.  They don’t even look like what they think they look like either… even in photos.  So let me end this goofy pie-based argument about why blogs are self portraits with a few self portraits I have created that aren’t really what I look like , even if it is a photo.

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Me in the mirror, 1980

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Scary pictures of the artist as a creepy old man…

 

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The novelist me…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A wizard selfie taken at Mad Ludwig’s Castle in Bavaria.

 

 

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Who I am and who I was…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Seriously grumpy me…

Gag!  Enough of the gooseberries already!  Or are they gross-berries?  I think that I really don’t look anything like me anymore.

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April 12, 2016 · 3:03 pm

April Showers

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I have always believed the point of April showers was to bring May flowers.  But the showers this April are merely making the flowers wet, since they are already here.

Last night was like that.  Drippy rain followed by thundershowers… quaking in safety as the world gets wet.

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I worry about global warming and the possible end of life on Earth.  But flowers each spring are a hopeful sign.  The world is renewing itself after the winter of our discontent.  In fact, a couple of years ago, the daffodils came out in February and got frozen to death in the week following their bold attempt to bloom early.  It just goes to prove that daffodils are the dumbest of all flowers.  I drew a portrait of one of them.  Daffy O’Dill posed for this shortly before his fateful encounter with the weed whacker.

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But pictures of the flowers in our yard are like the pictures of sunrises that I collect.  As I get older and enter the late winter months of my little life, they give me hope and consolation.  I hate to think that when my life ends the rest of humanity will soon follow.  Pessimists like me have good reason to think such things might be the case.  But there is also reason for hope.  Flowers are a sign of hope.  Flowers are a sign that life renews itself.  Flowers bloom, and the bees come, and seeds develop, and everything continues to grow.  Flowers make God smile.

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So, the rain came down, and in spite of possible hail and thunderstorms, wind and possible tornadoes, there are flowers.  In fact, look at this humongous rose growing in our neighbor’s tree.  If it actually came from outer space, it may be very well looking to eat us… eat our evil dentist at the very least.  And I found a novel way to get another good post out of my flower pictures.

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February 22, 2016 · 4:36 pm

Life Inside

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There is a certain amount of frustration that comes with age and arthritis and limited ability to move.  A good share of the time I am stuck within my bedroom/studio.  Bad weather and weather changes, as well as the strains of housework, stiffen my back into immobility.  So, I am stuck exploring not the outside world, but the inner world of stories, pictures, and my own imagination.

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Of course, one has to beware of a life lived in imagination and isolation.  Some of it can be kinda wicked and dangerous.  Okay, maybe not, but definitely in danger of overwhelming goofiness.  As you can see, I take a bit of my artwork and use photo-shop to make even goofier arty things.  I experiment and stick stuff together just for the heck of it.

I suppose this is probably evidence a good psychiatrist could use to keep me locked up for a while.  But I’m kinda stuck anyway in my little room.

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January 30, 2016 · 5:07 pm

The Uncritical Critic Watches Another Quirky Movie

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Yesterday was a weird day.  If you looked carefully at the mental map I made of Mickey’s head the other day, you realize that Uncle Slappy’s Big Box of Weirdness occupies a key position in the top center.  I had a traffic accident in the parking lot of Long Middle School yesterday morning, banging bumpers with a lady named Vilma.  The sun was in my eyes, and she started to go, then suddenly stopped for no reason I could see.  No damage was done to anything but my pride.  My wife put her parents, Tatang and Inang, on an airplane yesterday bound for the Philippine Islands, going home for a visit.  Afterwards, my wife was feeling mortal, betting me that she was going to die before me even though I have the head start of six incurable diseases and surviving cancer once already.  There are no symptoms for her impending heart attack, so I will probably win that bet.  But the point is, it was a weird time yesterday to stumble weirdly over a weird and wacky movie on Netflix called Moonrise Kingdom.  It is a Romeo and Juliet sort of story about two twelve-year-olds who fall in love at first sight, and though their families try to keep them apart, they end up together.  Thankfully it is not a Shakespearian Tragedy where everybody dies at the end, though Sam is struck by lightning and the big storm nearly drowns all the boy scouts.  It is more like a Shakespearian Comedy where everybody gets married at the end, though the twelve-year-olds don’t get married at the end… rather, they are married by the middle.

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Wes Anderson is the genius director behind movies like;

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None of which I have seen, but now have to watch ALL of them sooner or later.  Kinda like the mad quest to see every Tim Burton movie ever made.  I am one of the few idiots out there who think Dark Shadows was a truly wonderful movie, and along with Edward Scissor-hands, one of the finest things Johnny Depp has ever done.

In Moonrise Kingdom Anderson uses tracking shots at the beginning that shift quickly from one room to the next in a way that invokes an old-time slide show.  The story is set in 1965 in Maine, and is filled with all kinds of iconic references to things we 60’s kids all vividly recall.

The movie also tells the love story of Sam and Suzy with a painter’s sense of iconic pictures that focus you on important plot points and themes.

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And there are numerous quotable bits that make the movie what we teachers refer to as a text-rich environment, complete with phony kids’ books and maps and notes.

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The all-star cast is pretty good, too.

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This is now one of my new favorite movies.  It is a happy-ending-type fairy tale with no fairies in it.  It is full of ineffectual and incompetent adults who have rules of behavior like grown-ups and motivations like goofy kids… just like real life.  The plot is driven by the notion that anything you do in life is a mistake, and mistakes have consequences, but you have to do them anyway because, well… that’s life.

Am I telling you that you should watch this movie too?  Well, you should… but, no.  I am simply gushing about this quirky movie because I like it, and yesterday was a very weird day.

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November 20, 2015 · 8:20 pm

Fairy Tales and Dragons (with pointillism)

Going through my old drawing portfolio, I found my children’s book project from my undergrad college years.  I have no idea now looking at the illustrations what the story was even about.  I lost the actual story, and I never made a cover for it.  But here is a look at old hopes and dreams and a way of seeing the world that begins; Once Upon a Time…

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I have no earthly idea what the heck this story is even about, but I do like the pen and ink work, and probably couldn’t repeat it if I had to.

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November 14, 2015 · 2:48 pm

The Notion That Pictures Are Stories

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There are things that you have in your pointy little head sometimes that can’t be said in words.  They are like the sparks of truth you find in dreams… they make no sense at all if you take them out of the theater that plays in your head and shine the light of actual day upon them.  They only have meaning inside your mind, where it is dark and safe and ideas percolate, breed, and become dangerous.  There is enough magic in dreams to solve the world’s problems.  And yet, if try to take it out into the real world to use it, it evaporates and becomes a pointless silly pile of goofiness.

Case in point, in dreams it is marvelously wonderful to be naked in the jungle.  Nothing between you and the raw nature around you.  It works in dreams.  It works when you read Rudyard Kipling’s The First Jungle Book.  But in real life, the sun will burn you, the rats will chew your bare toes, and the mosquitoes will drink all your blood.

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What viewed from the outside is irrational and unfathomable, makes perfect sense from the inside looking out.  What do these words even mean?  You must be asleep to really know.  I speak of that inner knowing… that faith that resides deep down inside of all of us that we do have answers to the most terrifying questions of life.  That sense that if you make the leap of faith, you will not fall… you will fly instead.

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Case in point, people are not literally blue.  But when you sleep, perchance to dream, it can seem the whole world is blue, and not just merely literally you.  Blue skin, blue heart, blue eyes…  It hurts to be alive.  But if you are hurting, you have to believe you really are alive.  The pain brings clarity, certainty… it is why you pinch yourself to wake yourself up from dreams.

I know this all sounds witless, rambling, and goofy, but that is the general point.  The truth, if the truth exists, is found in rambling, witless and goofy.

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November 6, 2015 · 3:53 pm

Up and Down and All Around

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The day I am having today is not one of my best.  Ill health, bad traffic, doctor visits, headaches, unexpected expenses, all make a real Monster Mash our of the daily dance of life.  But I am happy with recent posts, even though my wife gave me a major eye-roll and huffing sound for posting about girls who fell in love with me.  Still, I can’t  figure out why my blog traffic is so up and down during times when I feel like my writing is really good.  Some of my best posts seem to get the fewest readers, and some of my most embarrassing messes are insanely popular.  Ah, life!  You are such a Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Roller-Coaster Mystery.  But I can write a short post and get away with it today because I have been writing thousand word posts and my 500-word average is in no danger.  So, I offer this silly Paffooney picture for you to look at and wonder about.  A picture is worth a thousand words, right?  And why is Frankenberry looking at Pinky Pie with an expression like that?

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September 14, 2015 · 1:58 pm

Talking Dog

My family dog, Jade, stalks the kitchen and pounces on any dropped crumb or left-behind scraps from the kitchen table.  She even raids the pantry when she thinks she can get away with it.  And why does she do this?  I seriously believe that she thinks all she has to do is eat enough “people” food and she will turn into a people.

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So, last night, it happened.  I was eating leftovers for a bedtime snack.  Believe me, there aren’t many leftovers in a house with two teenage children living in it.  I found some cheddar cheese chunks and a few stale potato chips.  You know, the perfect snack for a diabetic whose blood sugar sometimes crashes in the middle of the night with a balanced snack of protein and carbohydrates.  I stretch the definitions constantly.  And Jade, the family dog, was watching intently with really large puppy eyes… every… single… bite… I… took.  And when I got down to potato chip crumbs, about all number two son and the Princess had left me, I couldn’t help but let some slip through my fingers.  Guess whose tongue washed the floor all around my feet.  And, apparently, after chewing a hole in a bag of bread last week, the potato-chip crumbs put her over the magic number of people food calories.

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“So, Dad, when are you going to teach me how to drive?”

I did a double-take.  “I can’t teach you how to drive.  You’re a dog.  They don’t give any licenses to dogs other than dog licenses.  Besides, you are only 4 years old!”

“You are going to teach Henry how to drive after his 16th birthday.  And I’m 28 in dog years.”

“I am not letting the family dog drive my car.  The insurance company wouldn’t like it.”

“But how am I going to go to the store and buy my own kibble?”

“You don’t have any money.  You are a dog.  How will you pay for the dog food?”

“Well, I could use Mom’s credit cards, right?  That’s free money, isn’t it?”

“I already had to sell my soul to the Devil to keep up with Mom’s credit cards.  Or was that Bank of America?  I forget which evil corporation now completely owns my soul.”

“Well, I could get job.”

“What can you do?  You don’t even have a pre-school education.  Who will hire you for anything?”

“I’ll work cheap.”

“Every bag of dog food costs twice what you can make an hour at minimum wage.  That means you have to work two hours to afford one bag.  And what are your work skills?”

“I’m good at sleeping.  I’m cute and cuddly.  And I’m very good at pooping in the park.”

“There are no mattress-tester jobs that I know of.  You don’t even want to know what kind of job that second thing would get you into.  And if you are a people, no more pooping in the park.”

“No more pooping in the park?  Those walks on the leash every day are what I live for.”

“And you will have to wear clothes from now on.  We can’t have you going around everywhere naked, can we?”

“Dogs are meant by God to be naked all the time.  Wearing people clothes is embarrassing.”

“Still…”

“Okay!  Okay!  I get it!  My life as a dog is pretty sweet the way it is.  But now that I am at least a part-time people… can you teach me how to open the refrigerator and work the can opener?”

I put my palm to my forehead.  There’s not going to be much left to eat in the house from now on.

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