Category Archives: goofiness

Scientifical Dog-Poop Theories

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I have been taking note of the Republican approach to science as displayed repeatedly in Congress.  I decided that this is the kind of science that can best explain the dog-poop phenomena, since it is, ultimately, about how the data feels more than measuring and quantifying and dealing with, you know, those fact thingies.

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You see, the problem comes in with the fact that my dog, Jade, is producing dog poop at record levels, and it is all becoming rather a burden.   Now the dog-poop literature, (yes it does exist, since dog lovers write about anything and everything to do with dogs), says that it is not uncommon for a healthy young dog to poop as much as 5 times a day.  But my dog seems to poop exactly one time more per day than the number of times you take her for a walk.  If we go out five times, she poops six.  If I take her out in the middle of the night for a sixth time, she poops seven.  What the heck?

My wife really hates the dog because she poops on the carpet so much.  (The dog, not my wife.  My wife is satisfactorily house-broken.)  There are places on the living room carpet she marked as a puppy five years ago where she insists on re-pooping practically every night.  No matter how often we scrub the carpet and box her ears, still, brown spots and poop lumps to greet us almost every morning.  Maybe she does it because my wife tells her how much she hates her and the dog wants to get even.  But that is the opposite of what the dog says.  She loves Mommy because Mommy gives the dog soup bones.  Somehow, it seems the dog believes she is giving us all a gift by pooping on the carpet and filling the house with her personal scent.  She poops for us because she loves us.

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Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

I drew the diagram at the start of this article to better explain my Republicanized theories of dog poop and dog love.  You will notice that, based on observations of total output, I have theorized that dogs must be almost completely hollow.  They don’t apparently store poop in their legs, but the rest of their dog bodies appear to be hollow poop-tubes that store nearly infinite amounts of poo.  Dogs also apparently have some kind of instant-poop-maker at the base of the throat so that anything they eat, dog food, my missing left socks, my son’s retainer, dead rats, whatever was growing behind the rice bag in the pantry, and whatever people food they can steal, is instantly transformed into poop.  Need to poop on the floor because dad didn’t give you any of the bacon at breakfast?  Eat a sock.  Fill up with instant poop ammo.  The poop on the floor will prove how much you love dad and why he should give you bacon more.

So, now that I have studied the poop problem, what solutions could there be?

Well, I have threatened the dog to use corks and other sorts of plugs, but that wouldn’t solve the problem so much as merely delay it.  And I dread the impending explosion in the living room that such a plan suggests to a vivid imagination like mine.  I have thought about feeding her less, but it seems she can still use the puppy beg-eye to such good effect that she could subsist entirely on people food conned out of my son and daughter.  So, I will use a Republican congressional solution.  Since their response to poverty is to give more money to rich people, and the solution to climate change is to cut pollution restrictions, then obviously I need to feed my dog MORE!  I need to cram it down her greedy little throat if necessary.  That will fix it.  Or bring about fat, exploding dogs all the sooner.

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Filed under family dog, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney

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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Short and Sweet

No, I am not talking about a midget girlfriend today.

I am talking about brevity.

Some of the best writing gets directly to the point.

You have to know how to say exactly what you want to say.

Then say it.

Like, “Tootie is a Cutie.”

And once said, the point made is…

Sheer poetry.

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The Rest of my Classroom Gallery

Here’s what’s left in my camera from school white boards and lessons.

Photo0107 Photo0110 Photo0112 Photo0118 Photo0123 Photo0126 Photo0127 Photo0133 Photo0137 Photo0139 Photo0144 Photo0146 Photo0149 Photo0142There you have it, the results of 31 years of doodling on the chalkboard (which became the dry erase board).  And yes, I did tell them the cartoon fairy drew all the pictures.  Especially when they were in my class for the second or third year when they asked, “Who does all the pictures on the board?”  And yes, I started doing this back in dinosaur days in white chalk on a green blackboard, followed by colored chalk, which later became a gray marker-board for washable marker, and finally became dry erase white board.  And I really bought my own chalk and markers too.  Teachers do that, you know.

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The Rules for Collecting

20141207_150302  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.

20141207_150408   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.  20141207_150449

20141207_150510  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.

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And let me not forget Rule #5, the most important rule…  Thou shalt play with the dolls you collect.

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I Love to Laugh

“Mickey, why can’t you be more serious the way smart people are?”

“Well, now, my dear, I think I take humor very seriously.”

“How can you say that?  You never seem to be serious for more than a few seconds in a row.”

“I can say it in a high, squeaky, falsetto voice so I sound like Mickey Mouse.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“I can also burp it… well, maybe not so much since I was in junior high.”

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“I distinctly remember getting in trouble in Mrs. Mennenga’s third grade class in school for pantomiming pulling my beating heart out of my chest and accidentally dropping it on the floor.  She lectured me about being more studious.  But I made Alicia sitting in the row beside me laugh.  It was all worth it.  And the teacher was right.  I don’t remember anything from the lesson on adding fractions we were supposed to be doing.  But I remember that laugh.  It is one precious piece of the golden treasure I put in the treasure chest of memories I keep stored in my heart.”

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“I always listened to the words Groucho Marx was saying, even though he said them awfully fast and sneaky-like.  I listened to the words.  Other characters didn’t seem to listen to him.  He didn’t seem to listen to them.  Yet, how could he respond like he did if he really wasn’t listening?  In his answers were always golden bits of wisdom.  Other people laughed at his jokes when the laugh track told them to.  I laughed when I understood the wisdom.”

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“Laughing is a way of showing understanding.  Laughing is a way of making yourself feel good.  Laughing is good for your brain and your heart and your soul.  So, I want to laugh more.  I need to laugh more.  I love to laugh.”

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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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Cartoon Board-Work

I admit it.  I was a goofy teacher.  Kids never knew for sure whether I was serious, joking, or halfway in-between.  I worked for hours sometimes preparing the chalkboard, or later, white board, for the days lesson, putting key points and reminders up in cartoon form.  I used characters, symbols, jokes, pokes, and silliness to get the idea across.  Principals and others who evaluated my teaching always wondered why my classroom sounded so raucous and wild from outside the door with kids laughing, music playing, and sometimes desks being shuffled and shoved around the room.  The perfect-classroom-is-a-quiet-classroom crowd always hated my teaching style.  But the ones who came in and participated, got involved in paying attention and watching the kids interact with the content loved it.  I am not bragging.  My lesson plans were a mess filled with booby traps, explosions waiting to happen, un-intended consequences (also called teachable moments), and brainstorms that threatened at any moment to electrocute somebody with lightning.  Teaching is a dangerous business.  But the point is, there is an art to teaching that brings out the artist in you.  I offer the following evidence;

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The 1957 Pink and White Mercury of Imagination

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Yes, she was a real car.  My dad bought her in the 60’s as a used car.  But she was a hardtop, not a convertible.  She was the car he drove to work every day in Belmond.  We called it the “Pink and White Pumpkin”, my sisters and I, referring to the pumpkin in Cinderella which the fairy godmother changes into a coach.  But it would only later become the car of my dreams.

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You see, she was killed in the Belmond Tornado of 1966.  Her windows were all broken out and her frame was twisted.  So the pictures of her, though they look exactly like my memories of her, minus the rust spots, are not actual pictures of the car in question.  Our next door neighbor, Stan the Truck Man, was a mechanic always on the lookout for salvage parts.  He took her apart piece by piece while she sat in our driveway.  We continued to sit in her and play in her until all that was left was the bare frame.  My friend Werner told me for the first time about the facts of life and where babies really came from in the back seat while she was being gradually dismantled.  Of course, I was nine at the time and didn’t really believe him.  How could that grossness actually be true?

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But she still lives, that old dream car…  She is the reason that I objectify my imagination as a ship with pink sails.  My daydreams, my creative fantasies, and those long, lingering plays in the theater of my imagination as I am drifting off to sleep all start in the three-masted sailing ship with pink sails.  And that dream image was born from the Pink and White Pumpkin.  I have sailed in her to many an exotic place… even other planets.  And when I die, she will take me home again.

 

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Spokes-Dog

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At breakfast I cooked smokies, small-sized fried sausages.  Jade, our family dog got up to the table with the rest of us.

“I can eat twenty of those!” Jade said.

“No you can’t,” I said.  “You are a dog and eat from a bowl on the floor.  I didn’t even set a plate on the table for you.  This is not dog food.”

“Dad?  Did you see these coupons for Taco Bell on the table?” said the Princess.

“Oh, you mean, the Taco Bueno ads?  Remember what the last trip to that other place gave us?”

“Oh, yeah.  That was a horrible day spent in the bathroom,” she answered.

“The next time you go to Taco Bell, take me! ” said the dog.  “I loved the taco meat I found on the table last time you made the mistake of leaving some there.”

“Well, I do know that Taco Bell is universally loved by dogs.”

“How do you know that?” asked the Princess.

“Don’t you remember the Taco Bell dog?  Or were you too young when he was popular?”

“I think I was too young.”

“Look him up on the internet.”

“Oh, yeah!  I kinda remember that.  He was a talking dog, just like Jade.”

“Yes, but I think he mostly spoke Spanish.”

“He’s handsome!” said Jade.  “But look, he’s on television with very short fur… he’s naked!  That would be very embarrassing.”

“Yeah, when it comes to TV spokes-dogs, you’d probably prefer Spuds Mackenzie.  He had more style.”

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“I never heard of him,” said the Princess.

“Well, he was before you were born.  He was the Budweiser spokes-dog.”

“Did he talk too?”

“Just party language.  He was always chilling by the pool with beautiful human girls.”

“Let me see more of him!” demanded Jade.

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“Wow!” said Jade.  “A dog who drinks beer and plays guitar!  I think I’m in love!”

“That was so long ago, though,” I said.  “He is probably dead by now.  The average life span of a dog is only about ten years at the most.”

“Oh, now I am depressed,” said Jade.  “And you know the only cure for that is to give me some of the breakfast sausages!”

So, as I gave a dog a sausage, I was deeply regretting the whole talking dog thing.

 

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