Category Archives: goofiness

August 26, 2015 · 2:10 pm

Ray Bradberry Pie

Yes, yes, I know it is supposed to be Ray Bradbury, not berry. But now that the master has gone, I don’t want to think of him as bury which is too grave a term. He was a master of metaphor and rhythm and image in writing. His work is much more berry-flavored, and if you really intensively read a novel like Dandelion Wine, you can very easily get drunk on the richly fermented contents of his beautiful writing.

angel by Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905)

Mental Pie

I’d like to offer you a piece of my mind,

Though not a lecture, rant, or complaint,

But rather a piece of mental pie.

Its taste will be very sweet, you will find,

As I’m constantly thinking in ink and paint,

That gives you wings and allows you to fly.

You see, I think the literary mind does not have to sink to mundane and dark and dreary thoughts and ideas to accomplish lofty goals. Often it is the special dollop of sugary metaphorical conceit that makes a Ray Bradbury or Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut to soar through the astral plane of ideas. I know that’s cartoony thinking, and somewhat loony besides, but I am often frustrated when it seems that the only “realism” modern readers and audiences accept is what is gritty and bloody and depressingly painful. Oh, I get it. Douglas nearly dies in the course of Dandelion Wine. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Billy Pilgrim all suffer as much as we laugh in order to make their points in the novels they inhabit. But the misfortune makes the moment of taking flight that much sweeter. And it is in the language. The loving description of everyday things and everyday events that become extraordinary through extra-close examination. Sometimes silliness and humor and logical reason are not enough, and we have to speak in poetry. We put in metaphors as peaches and plums. Sensory details are raspberries and strawberries. Sing-song rhythms and elegant pacing makes the batter whole and delicious. And I know this whole post makes no earthly sense. But sometimes you write for earthly reasons… and sometimes you try to reach heaven. That is what Ray Bradberry Pie is made of.

The Quest for Pinkie Pie

The day before yesterday I wrote a post for 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion that basically tore my heart out. It made me relive one of my worst defeats as a teacher who cares about teaching and students. I have to admit that I spent an awful lot of time crying the past three days. But I am not a sorrowful Sad-Sack with a sourpuss’ simpering sarcastic smile. Not I. I come back from downers by doing silly stuff… kinda like over-dosing on alliteration in that S-filled sentence. So what silly stuff am I up to after a triple-down darkness-dealing downer like the one from that post? (When Compassion Fails) I took up the Quest for Pinkie Pie.

I borrowed the My Little Pony image above from Jessica Ann Hughes whose very eloquent post laments the series update as a sexualization of the thirty-year-old toy franchise in the newer series, My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic.

But I have to argue that it doesn’t sexualize anything beyond the surface. After all, these ponies are really little girls that have charming little-girl personalities and act in stories that have little-to-nothing to do with sex. Yes, I have seen the wedding episode where Twilight Sparkle’s big brother gets married, but that episode is about trusting your own instincts when something seems wrong. If somebody like me is getting sexual vibes from that cartoon, then something is seriously wrong and that somebody should seek therapy to avoid becoming some kind of pedophile. I mean, it is important to self-censor. When I was getting a soda at QT this afternoon, I was happy to see two pretty girls in short pants for the first time in a long time. Texas weather has been rainy and dreary for the past few weeks and the sun has finally come out. But… wait a minute! Why am I looking at middle school girls’ legs? I am a miserable, broken-down, spotty old man. And I have been busily watching this My Little Pony show on YouTube where all these little girl ponies are walking around naked all the time! But, am I not over-reacting? Yes, the ponies have big eyes and shortened muzzles… but I haven’t been obsessing about ponies because of hormone imbalances or something. I thought the whole Brony thing was ridiculous up until a very short time ago. I mean, grown men watching a cartoon about little-girl ponies and singing the songs and buying the toys and wearing ponies on T-shirts. Is there therapy for that? I am hoping so… because I think I’m going to need it.

My doll-collecting mental illness began, as I tried to explain and tell lies about yesterday, when I was a child who had been given dolls for birthdays and Christmas (I meant to say Action Figures… No! Really!) and only really had sisters to play with at home (my little brother was eight years younger than me, and my friends from school lived in the country, miles away from town on farms.)

As a young man, I regained my dolls… I mean Action Figures, and tried to restore them (not play with them… I never said play with them). When I got married, my wife and I actively began collecting them. She was initially charmed by my love for my old pieces of plastic. We began looking for what was out there. Captain Action and G.I. Joes for me, Barbies for her. When she lost interest (or found a cure for that particular mental aberration), I kept on. The rules for collecting included; Twelve inch tall figures. Never pay more than $20 for a toy. Never spend more than $50 a month. Find rare dolls for little money. Rescue dolls who somebody once loved and played with, or that are on the verge of the ignominious end to be found in the department-store dumpster.

Rainbow Dash started me down the slippery slope to Brony-ism. I just happened to find, on an after-Christmas clearance table at Walmart with all the other damaged toys that didn’t realistically survive the seasonal play-with-it-in-the-store-while- mommy-shops damage, a cheap and forlorn Rainbow Dash with extra hair. She looked at me with those big, sad eyes and pleaded with me to buy her and save her from the dumpster (or the sadistic little girl that would buy and dismember her because she was just a cheap thing from Walmart). I’m too stupid to resist.

Then I began examining my purchase because I didn’t really know what it was… the Brony-thing warning lights were going off somewhere in the back of my goofy-old-man head, but it took some research before I learned what Equestria Girls were and that there were six of them. Six of them! A set of six to collect! But also the original ponies! A set of twelve!

And the disease had me.

So, here you see the tangible evidence that I am acutely infected. Brony-itis? Possibly. Fatal? Hopefully not. If you’re counting, they still are not all here. Apple Jack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash as Equestria Girls. Apple Jack, Rarity, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie as ponies. But no Fluttershy at all. And… what’s this? No Pinkie Pie? The most popular pony with little girls, I could not find her in Equestria Girl form? Well, I could… but not for under $20. I went shopping at Toys R Us yesterday with the Princess in tow. We bought toys, but no Pinkie Pie for less than twenty one. And this collection represents $14 in January, $30 in February, and $25 already this month. I’m guessing the rules might save me from this disease yet. Does that mean no Pinkie Pie ever? Well, I watch the stupid cartoons incessantly now on YouTube… I’ve learned that Friendship is Magic and as long as you can remain true to your friends, you can overcome almost all of life’s problems… together… with love. And Pinkie Pie is totally random… and funny… and everyone’s friend. There are good lessons being taught to little girls and old men who watch these things. Pinkie Pie’s is probably the most important one of all… So Pinkie is my favorite. I haven’t found her yet in a way that stays within the rules, but I am not some creepy old man who breaks the rules. I have the rest of my life to complete this quest.

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Filed under doll collecting, goofiness, humor

Tagged as Bronies, doll collecting, humor, My Little Pony, photo Paffooney, Pinkie Pie, playing with dolls, satire, the quest

March 11, 2015 · 4:51 pm

Goofy Squared

There are a number of really, really goofy facts about me that I will reveal in today’s post… No one is trying to blackmail me over these things, believe it or not. I have no money. And I have no reputation to protect. I am nobody. Just a silly, goofy, loony old nobody. But I have a few chuckles now and then at my own expense.

Revelation #1; The clown nose in the picture was a souvenir from Cirque du Soleil. We went to see them in a parking lot in Frisco, Texas. They had an actual circus tent. When I was five, I told my parents I wanted to be a clown when I grew up. Nobody believes me when I say it, but I achieved that goal. They say, “But you were a school teacher!”

And I say, “How is that different?”

Honestly, I have worn a clown nose and played harmonica in front of a classroom full of twelve-year-olds. I can make teenagers laugh so hard the principal has to check to make sure they are not gleefully setting me on fire or duct-taping me to the wall. (Duck-taping sounds funnier, but you have to be accurate when describing real events from modern schools.)

Revelation #2; I am a closet nudist.

I used to be associated with the AANR, a nudist/ naturist organization in the latter part of the 1980’s, I met the nudist publishers through stamp collecting and they tried to recruit me. I bought books and videos from them. I have actually been naked for an entire day… once. I knew nudists in Austin where a former girlfriend stayed over several weekends with her sister who lived in the clothing-optional apartment complex on Manor Road. I am not brave enough to walk around physically naked in front of people on a regular basis though. So, I am a closet nudist. Only a nudist in my closet. I get a lot of mileage out of naked jokes in my fiction, though, because, well… naked is funny.

Revelation #3; I keep scrapbooks filled with collages made of pictures from magazines, newspapers, photos I’ve taken, pictures I drew myself, poems, short snippets of things I find funny or ironic or autobiographically important, and secrets like I am sharing with you today. (The picture of Goofy seen here is one I colored myself from one of the old coloring books left over from my kids’ coloring book days. I hate to see unused coloring book pictures go to waste.) I call these my magical tomes because I use them as source material for the spells I weave in my fiction. I also use many of the images for drawing and painting as models. I also discovered I can borrow whole images and make new art using my cheap-o substitute photo-shop program.

Revelation #4; It is totally by accident that I have come to look like the most important character in Snow Babies, the novel that PDMI is slowly publishing for me. Catbird Sandman is an old hobo who wears a coat that has so many patches on it that it has become a patchwork crazy quilt. He wanders around the country, appreciating the world and its people, and using his considerable store of mysterious abilities to charm, help, and change people. He carries around a book, a well-worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and quotes from it, treating it like a sort of Bible-like source of spiritual wisdom. The character looks like Walt Whitman. And now, though not intentionally, so do I. I grew the beard and long hair because of psoriasis. It attacks me under the edge of my jaw line and all around the back of my head. It is easily scratched and bloodied, and then infected when someone cuts my hair or I try to shave. So I have given up that battle and gone all hippy-dippy. It sorta fits with the whole jobless, shiftless, former nudist sort of persona that I have been cultivating as an author.

So what is the equation Goofy Squared all about? Well, if you take the square root of the four Goofy revelations in this post, you come up with Goofy times two. So Goofy obviously equals one. And I think I have clearly proven that I am the goofy one.

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Filed under artwork, goofiness, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as artwork, autobiography, clowns, humor, novel characters, paffooney, teaching, wisdom

February 11, 2015 · 1:49 pm

Goofy Days

I struggled to get started today… weird clouds covered the pinks and purples of a Dallas dawn as I stumbled through walking the dog. I think I mentioned before, I believe, that our goofy dog (who fortunately does not wear a hat and drive a car, so she is not a Goofy dog) has become a record-setting poop factory, pooping out five times a day and producing what I suspect is actually five times her own weight in doggy poo in a single day. If only it were worth money! I felt ill with an acrobatic stomach doing inner flip-flops while trying to transport twenty pounds of poop to the trash can. My arthritis made my joints crackle and walking was a total pain. But I made it. I walked the dog… deposited the poop…made breakfast for two kids… eggs for one, sausage for the other (I am not so much a dad as I am a short-order cook at breakfast time)… I avoided talking about religion or politics… I dropped them both off at school… and then I went back to bed. I woke up in time to hop in the car again and pick them up from their early release day. And on early release days they don’t feed the kids even though they don’t release them until after the noon hour. So rather than cook again… Taco Bueno! It is overpriced and really bad for you… especially with an upset stomach… but, hey, we didn’t have much food left in the pantry anyway. So, in spite of feeling like sudden death by heart attack would be a blessing… I made it through the morning of a weird and wacky, goofy, goofy day. And now my work for the day was nominally done. So I sat down and tried to think of a post for this blog. (44 days in a row with at least one post, you know) No luck. I couldn’t think of anything to write. And my schedule of ideas took way to much work to use on a goofy day. So, I took a picture of my toys… some of them… and tried to tell myself that I could turn that into a worthy post. The evidence is clear, however… I most certainly could not.

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Filed under goofiness, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as goofiness, humor, photo Paffooney

February 3, 2015 · 1:40 pm

Futterwacken

Yes, Futterwacken, the dipsy-doodah dance of the Mad Hatter. That is what life has been for me of late. This is my first school year in 33 years wherein I will not be teaching at all. The two jobless school years in 2005 to 2007 saw me teaching a cappella without a safety net (in laymen’s terms, substitute teaching- where a good sub can be called at the last possible minute to fly across town to take the class from hell that the regular teacher can’t tame with a whip and a chair. (Personal survival is entirely optional.) ) (Wow! I never pulled off a parenthetic expression inside a parenthetic expression before.) Being now in the eighth month of the Mad Tea Party of retired-teachery-ness, I have never truly been so free and schedule-lite before. I have pulled off repairing siding and painting the house while being arthritic and extra-wobbly on an aluminum ladder. I have registered two children for school three times (my son Henry in two different schools this school year). I have written and completed three novels (The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, The Magical Miss Morgan, and Superchicken). I have signed a contract to get one published in extreme slow-motion (Snow Babies). And I have managed this blog with the latest accomplishment being 36 daily blog posts in a row and uncounted Paffooney pictures, both photographical and colored-pencilical. I have invented three new words in this blog post alone (according to my computer spell-checker who was apparently an anal-retentive old-maid school teacher from the New England countryside in a past life.) So, imagining myself as a Mad Hatter, dancing a disjointed dance where my head spins like a top, is not so far out after all. Let me share with you one last wacky Paffooney choice for no particular reason…

Or maybe this Paffooney was to honor the comic book artist Murphy Anderson who inspired it. (Yeah! I’m gonna go with that explanation).

Toy Tiger

Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright!

I see thee holy in the night,

This for that, and that for this,

Shoot the gun,

And never miss!

A sillier poem there will never be,

And Tyger! Tyger! this poem’s for thee.

The first stuffed toy I ever owned was a tiger. It was almost as big as me the first time I remember it. I got it from Mom and Dad sometime before I started remembering things in my life.

When my oldest son was born I bought him a stuffed toy tiger. It was bigger than he was at the start. I don’t know why, but now that my son is a Marine in dress blues, looking spiffy and military trained… It just seemed important to remember a toy tiger.

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Filed under goofiness, humor, Paffooney, poetry

Tagged as drawing, goofiness, humor, paffooney, pen and ink, really old memories from a really old goof, silly poem, tiger

December 10, 2014 · 8:59 pm

Final Star Trek Confessions

I am sorry, but today’s post will probably bore you unless you are a doll-collecting, obsessive-compulsive bag of mixed nuts like I am. These are the kinds of details that only interest the true collect-a-holic. You see in the picture my mint in-the-box Star Trek Barbie and Ken, 1996 30th Anniversary Edition. It was a difficult track-down. Now, you Google it and you can get one for 25 dollars on e-Bay without breaking a sweat. When I got hold of this in 1998, however, it was a bit tougher to find. It started with a trip to Goodwill. My wife loves the bargain clothing and especially the shoes. (She’s from the Philippines and has a touch of Imelda Marcos Footwear Disease.) While there, with my young son in tow, in the toy section… I discovered two loose Barbie and Ken dolls that actually weren’t naked. Barbie’s head was severely damaged, and she had lost a leg. Ken was in practically un-loved, un-played-with condition. Both had uniforms. The Star Trek uniforms you see here on the two figures in front. (Ken was missing the shoes, phaser, and communicator, but the original accessories were pretty small and pitiful anyway. Barbie had no fishnet stockings and no shoes, along with no working head.) Of course I had to buy these wonderful items. They cost me 25 cents apiece. Gonga! I hadn’t known that such a 12″ action figure existed! (Okay, really a doll, but, you know…) I immediately began a search of toy stores and junk shops in South Texas. At the time we had relatives in Dallas. So I went prowling there too. You wouldn’t believe the looks I used to get from parents wondering what a forty-something old man by himself wanted in the Barbie section of KayBee Toys. Now they see my gray hair and figure, ah yes, shopping for his granddaughter (of which I have none, but I digress.) Finally I found the rare item in a San Antonio flea market stall. And it only set me back fifteen dollars. Wotta find! It made my goofy old collector’s heart glad for a couple of months afterwards… heck, that’s not true either! Sixteen years later it still makes me giddy.

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Filed under Barbie and Ken, doll collecting, goofiness, irony, toystore quests

Tagged as Barbie and Ken, collecting, happiness is a collectible doll at an affordable price, humor, photo, photo Paffooney

December 8, 2014 · 9:10 pm

The Rest of the Star Trek Collection

I am guilty of owning more dolls in my Star Trek collection. Here is the Next Generation set.

You may notice that I still have work to do. No Commander Data… No Geordy La Forge… No Wesley Crusher (if such a doll even exists)… These figures are all dressed for a TNG movie that practically nobody liked.

I also have two Star Trek Voyager dolls, Captain Janeway and Seven of Nine.

It is probable that no other figures from this series exist in twelve inches.

Captain Sisko is the only figure I have ever seen for Deep Space Nine, though I have a suspicion that more exist, at least the female crew members, and maybe that wonderfully devious Ferengi Quark.

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Filed under collecting, doll collecting, goofiness, humor

Tagged as action figures, collectibles, doll collecting, geekiness, goofiness, humor, obsession, photo Paffooney, Star Trek

December 7, 2014 · 10:23 pm

The Rules for Collecting

Oh, no… My secret is out. I am a doll collector. (Wait, wasn’t I supposed to claim they are “action figures” so that I can get away with being a man who, at the age of nearly 60, still plays with dolls?”) I got started down this dark path back in 1965 when my parents bought me a G.I. Joe sailor for my ninth birthday. It was the beginning of an addiction that has dogged me even down to this very day.

There are some things that just aren’t easy to admit to, like being gay, or being a socialist, or being a werewolf. Well, I am not gay and I am not a socialist, so don’t worry about that. Those are not really terrible things to be when it comes right down to it. I have friends that are gay, friends that are socialists, and friends that are… um… well, enough about those things. I am writing about the terrible scourge of doll collecting. In order to control such a rare and debilitating disease, I had to come up with a set of rules that would keep me from becoming a penniless hobo living in a cardboard refrigerator box in an alley with thousands of Barbie dolls. So let me explain the sacred rules that have kept me at least partially sane for almost fifty years.

Rule #1; Thou shalt only collect and obsess over twelve-inch dolls and action figures. That allows for literally thousands of choices to pursue, and rules out the many size variations like the three-inch G.I. Joe’s and the three-inch Star Wars figures and all the Mego eight-inch superheroes who were everywhere in the Seventies and Eighties, but now are rare and expensive.

Rule #2; Thou shalt not collect and obsess over dolls and figures that cost more than twenty dollars. This is the poverty prevention rule that keeps an obsession from breaking the bank and wreaking havoc throughout the rest of my life. I have only broken this rule on rare occasions for hard to acquire dolls or figures, and most of those were actually presents paid for by somebody else. I can blame the exceptions mostly on people who know about my weakness and exploit it for their own personal reasons… hopefully because they just like to make me happy.

Rule #3; Thou must seeketh the lost and forlorn doll and redeem it from destruction. Whenever I can, I look for dolls at Goodwill stores and yard sales. I have bought a ton of naked and sometimes broken Action Man, Barbie, Max Steel, Ken, and G.I. Joe dolls. I then try to find or make clothes for them. My daughter went through her Barbie period in a most destructive manner. She didn’t merely discard dolls and Disney princesses, she beheaded, dismembered, disrobed, and chewed them. I have rescued and repaired many of them, but only after securing her promise that she doesn’t want to play with them or eat them any longer. I should note, though, that I no longer acquire dolls in this way, now that she is middle school aged and wouldn’t be caught dead with a doll.

Rule #4; Thou shalt not let your daughter be the the only one who has fun pulling them apart, but you will put them back together again in ways that make them into something new.

So, these are the sacred rules of collecting which shall not be violated in the pursuit of this weird religion, the bringing together of a multitude of dolls.

That is my “Enterprise Collection” above. Specifically the “Original Series Enterprise Collection”. Look more closely.

Spock is holding a Vulcan harp-thingy (whose name I won’t quote here because I don’t want to seem too much like a Trekkie… and besides, I forgot what it is called and am too lazy to look it up again… What can I say? I’m old.) Kirk is wearing a Wrath of Khan movie uniform.

This green Barbie doll is a Goodwill rescue turned into a green Orion dancing girl with paint, sequins, material from a quilting project, and a hot glue gun.

Uhura was the hardest member of the team to track down and acquire. After Kaybee Toys went out of business, I had to turn to the internet to get hold of this beauty. I also had to pay $24.

You may also have noticed that Sulu is missing from my Original Series set. Well, I’m still working on that one. But I do owe a debt to J.J. Abrams for making a new movie version of Star Trek and inspiring a new set of twelve inch dolls.