Category Archives: goofy thoughts

December 1, 2017 · 3:45 pm

Life as a Texican

20171129_172505

We here in Texas are still the way God made us.

Stop cringing so much when you hear me say it. Texas is where God goes to spend the Winter. Everything is practically perfect in Texas. The weather never varies more than 60 degrees in any single hour. Our tornadoes and hurricanes are way bigger and way more destructive than you get in other States. You think your school systems are producing learners who are spectacularly dumb? They don’t even begin to compare with learning levels here in the Lone Star State. Why, we are the Lone Star State mainly because we don’t want too many stars for our college graduates to count. You think health care in your State is poor quality and high priced? We have million dollar mortuaries that are profitably close, no more than a block or two, from every hospital. We break records in the number of bankruptcy filings over hospital bills while our health insurance providers are making record-breaking profits! You can’t beat that with a stick! No, I mean it. Look how big my stick is, and I couldn’t successfully beat it.

And we choose only the best politicians to represent us. Senator Ted Cruz is not only a former front-runner in the 2016 Presidential race for the GOP nomination, he’s the Zodiac Killer in addition to that. Just ask the internet. If the internet says it, it must be true. And Representative Louie Gohmert of the Texas First District is so bald you can be blinded by the Texas sunshine reflecting off the top of his stupid head. And his name reminds you of TV’s Gomer Pyle, someone Louie is almost as smart as. And he’s a Texas Tea Party Congressman who does Tea Parties so well he makes the Mad Hatter jealous. And Senator John Cornyn tells jokes that make country people laugh. After all, he has “corny” in his danged name!

And Texas motorists are among the best in the country. No, check that, they are the best! No other State has the kind of yearly highway kill score that Texas has. Believe me, pedestrians routinely get bounced off the hood and into ditches, slow-going vehicles and semi trucks are routinely forced off overpasses to beautiful fiery displays of chaos and carnage below. Texas killer grandmas in their shiny Lincoln Continentals with the longhorn horns on the grill will kill you deader than the local rocks. Nobody drives faster and more aggressively than a Texas killer grandma.

We have way more millionaires and billionaires than other stupid States. And we outscore them all in the numbers of poor people and immigrants holding down three jobs at once and still needing food stamps to live.

Yes, everything’s bigger in Texas. We’ve got all y’all beat all to heck!

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.”

THREE STOOGES, THE

“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.”

Groucho

“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.”

727-1

“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.”

Mickey the Reader

scan0001

I like to think that I am different than other readers, that the quirky, insane way I practice reading makes me somehow unique and individual. But if you have read very much of my goofy little blog, you probably realize already that I am a deeply deluded idiot most of the time. So let me explain a little about how I go about reading.

I am basically guilty of reading anything and everything I can get my hands on. And the stupid internet puts an infinite variety in your hands. Some of it is toxic and probably will kill me… or land me in jail. (Does the NSA really care about what Mickey is reading?)
Here is an example of my internet reading this morning; Diane Ravitch’s Education Blog , An Article from British Naturism, Rachel Poli’s Article about Fantasy Writing, and Naked Carly Art’s post about creating a painting. My browser history portrays me at times as some kind of communist brainiac pornography-loving terrorist painter or something. I hope the NSA is using telepaths to investigate me, because the reasons I look at a lot of this stuff is important. It is a good thing I don’t write mystery novels so they would be upset down in the NSA break room about my searching out creative ways to kill people.
Besides being Eclectic with a capital “E”, I am also obsessive. My daily reading project now is Garrison Keillor’s novel, Lake Wobegon Days.

I only spend about an hour a day reading this novel, but I am totally immersed in it. I am living inside that book, remembering the characters as real people and talking to them like old friends. I tried to read that book before and couldn’t make progress because I like so much to listen to Keillor tell stories on A Prairie Home Companion on the radio and it just wasn’t the same entirely in print. When he tells a story, he pauses a lot. In fact, that moment when he stops to let you reflect on what he just said is critical to the humor because you have to stop and savor the delicious irony of the scene. His pauses are funnier than the words. Man, if he just stood there and didn’t talk at all, you would probably die laughing from it. So, in order to get into the book, I had to read it with Garrison’s voice in my head, pausing frequently the way he does. Now the stories of Clarence Bunsen and Pastor Inqvist break me up all over again. I will soon acquire and read everything he has ever written. I truly love Garrison Keillor.

quote-welcome-to-lake-wobegon-where-all-the-women-are-strong-all-the-men-are-good-looking-and-all-the-garrison-keillor-99801

54673-28

So there is a description of how strange a practicing reader I am. Think about how you read. Is the NSA watching you too? Do you ever read two books at the same time? Do you read everything and anything in front of you? If you are self-reflective at all, even if you are not pathological about it the way Mickey is, you may well decide that as strange as my reading habits are, they are probably normal compared to yours.

lakewobegonart620pw

10 Comments

Filed under book reports, book review, Garrison Keillor, goofy thoughts, humor, reading, strange and wonderful ideas about life

November 12, 2017 · 4:11 pm

That Bluebird of Happiness

Blue birds

I often go back and re-read old posts, particularly when I discover that someone else has read them. It is amazing to me how differently I perceive things from when I actually wrote the post. As you write, squeezing huge, boulder-sized portions of hot, magma-like burning ideas and passions out through writing orifices not nearly big enough to accommodate, you usually hate what you wrote and are still writhing in pain from the creation of it as you try to edit it, trim it and brush its unruly hair. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor to make you cringe?) But given time and distance, you can really appreciate what you wrote more than ever before. Things that you thought were the stupidest idea a man ever put in words suddenly have the power to make you laugh, or make you cry. You are able to feel the things the writing was intended to make you feel. You begin to think things like, “Maybe you are not the worst writer that ever lived, and maybe that’s not why nobody ever reads your books.” But then, of course, your sister reads the post and tells you that you write like a really old, really crabby, really ancient old man. And you use the word “really” too much too. I know I deserve that, Sis. Especially the “really” part.

12080357_972883126091737_890351697960018123_o

Here’s a post that I reread and liked today about Bob Ross.

This is the thing about happiness; It is elusive and rare as a real-life blue bird. But capturing it for a moment is not impossible. And as long as you don’t try to salt its tail and keep it prisoner, you can encourage it to sing for you. (Much better metaphor this time, don’t you think?) vintage-coca-cola-ad-1950s-1960s-clownb

When I am accused of being gloomy, old, and boring, I can happily admit it and make it into something funny. I am something of a conspiracy nut, but not so serious that I believe all my own assertions. For those people who took offense at this conspiracy theory of mine; Coca-Cola Mind Control, I would like to point out that “Hey, I was joking. I actually like clowns.” Even though there is a serious side to everything and there can’t be laughter without some tears, I am basically happy with the way things are.

GiveAgift_web_ad1_0

I started listening to “Live Happy Radio” on Sunday mornings on KLUV in Dallas. They point out on their program of endlessly droning happy-talk that happiness is something that you can work at. Like humor writing in blogs, it takes practice and practice and time. They even asked me to share the word about their happy magazine and products, so I am doing exactly that right here. Sometimes you simply have to put your cynicism in a jar on the shelf next to the lock box where you keep depression and self-loathing. So you can find their Live-Happy folderol right here.

So I am bird-watching again with an eye out for the bluebird. You know the one. It is out there somewhere. And I need to hear that song one more time.

Blue birds

4 Comments

Filed under artwork, goofy thoughts, happiness, humor, insight, inspiration, irony, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as Live Happy Radio

November 4, 2017 · 3:48 pm

Starships

One of the things I discovered by relentlessly playing outer-space D & D is the unique setting for fiction presented by the basic interstellar starship. Here you have a cookie-cutter setting with a basic set of requirements that can’t really change. It takes the crew as the primary cast from one possible site of adventure to the next, offering a complete barrier to carry-over conflicts and interactions, and also providing a setting for forced internal conflicts that can have profound story consequences.

0701b5854bb6475be8f38690f015275c

Starships are an enclosed environment where you cannot simply run away from your troubles. Especially when you are alone aboard with a hungry flesh-eating alien and surrounded by empty, airless, interstellar space. You have to confront both inner and outer demons face to face. There is no mileage available to put between you.

It has a certain set of requirements for who is on board and available to be hero friends or friends turned adversary. There must be a pilot. Somebody has to know how to drive the thing. There must be an engineer. Somebody needs to be able to fix things and keep things running. Somebody needs to know how to manage food and drinking water and the general odor of this enclosed place. That last is a position that is too often overlooked in movies and science fiction novels. Scotty cannot be expected to clean the toilets on the Enterprise. And somebody needs to be in charge.

06-xboatfullcut

Express boats in Traveller are one-man-crew affairs, basically in the service of carrying information between the stars, an interstellar postal truck of sorts. These can be the setting of man-versus-himself sorts of conflicts. If starships are in our future, and it is obvious with global warming we don’t have a future without them, then we are going to have to confront the concept of living with boredom. Boredom can become mindless or it can become raving insanity. This is why, in my Traveller games the X-boats all carried the current favorites among episodes of I Love Lucy reruns. Aliens have been watching that stuff for years now in real life. It will one day be a galaxy favorite.

23347892392_e7ca23aaf3_b

Starships are also filled with a fascinating complexity. There will be times when there is no gravity so up and down can become irrelevant. If the heat goes out, deep space can freeze you solid. If you go outside, you need a space suit so you don’t blow up from your own internal pressure suddenly released in a pressure-free environment. And you have no air outside the spaceship. James Holden’s favorite coffee maker could malfunction and foul the air with poisons from burned plastic, causing a serious problem-solving situation that could result in you needing to get really, really, a thousand times really good at holding your breath.

210198

And, of course, there is the obvious conflict of meeting another starship with lasers and meson cannons and nuclear missiles all controlled by a captain who is a homicidal maniac and knows your sister and really, really wants to get revenge on her whole family for what she said about his zilfinbarger back on Metebelius III.

So, as a role-playing gamer, and as a creator of science fiction, I really, really love starships. I will probably talk about them a time or too more until it gets really, really annoying… almost as annoying as the whole “really, really” thing.

4 Comments

Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, goofy thoughts, humor, science fiction, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as space travel, starships, Traveller role-playing game

November 2, 2017 · 3:58 pm

A Girl Called Dilsey

Mary Murphy, mother of Dilsey and Little Sean… among others.

If you have never written multiple novels about the same set of characters, you will not have inside knowledge of the process I am going to talk about in this goofy blog post. Because you don’t fully understand what I am talking about, you are welcome to call me an obsessive-compulsive fool. I am definitely a fool, but I prefer to believe the obsessive-compulsive part is off base.

I fell in love with Dilsey Murphy.

“You’re kidding!” you say with a disbelieving smile. “You fell in love with a fictional character from one of your stupid hometown fantasies? Nonsense! Not only is she not real, she’s just a supporting character.”

I think that might be the one thing I love most about Dilsey. She’s never the one demanding to be on center stage. She’s a shy, sweet-natured girl from a big family who does the best she can to avoid being the ant under her brothers’ magnifying glass. And yet, when she is called upon for empathy, or a little bit of sister wisdom, she mines the gold from King Solomon’s mine.

A new picture of Dilsey Murphy wearing her father’s old Carl Eller T-shirt.

You may not know this if you are not a writer of fiction, but a lot of the character-building process consists of compiling the character’s personal facts, personal history, and back story, developing an in-depth storehouse of details that may, in fact, never get used in any book, short story, or other writing. In order to create a character that feels real to the reader, an author must know the character far more intimately than the reader will ever be made privy to.

Dilsey is a member of the Murphy family who live in Norwall, Iowa. Her parents are Warren Murphy and Mary Murphy. Her father was a member of the infamous Murphy Boys, all of them brothers, that played brutal linebacker defense for the Belle City Broncos high school football team in the 1960’s. Mary Murphy is famous for being a small woman with a very large personality. The family is Catholic and of Irish heritage, determined to avoid church and yet hoping to get into heaven. They ar e also devout Minnesota Vikings football fans.

Dilsey’s older brother is Danny Murphy, a skinny, goofy kid that grows up into a reliable problem solver and mature young man. Danny eventually falls in love with Carla Bates, the sister of Blueberry Bates, Mike Murphy’s girlfriend. Danny and Carla marry in 1992.

Dilsey is the second oldest, born in 1977, so she is a young teen in most of the stories she appears in.

Mike Murphy is her younger brother, a member of the Norwall Pirates, a kids’ gang and 4-H softball team. Mike is a year younger than Dilsey. His girlfriend, Blueberry Bates, has a terrible secret, one that makes Mary Murphy turn resolutely against her even though she previously loved her. Mike and Dilsey refuse to abandon Blueberry even when Mike is forbidden to see her any longer.

Tim Kellogg is Mike’s best friend. Dilsey believes him to be a jerk and a hopeless goon. And yet, even though Dilsey hates him and is a year older than Tim, he is the only boy she dreams about naked. They eventually go on dates in high school and it is rumored that they will be married in 2000, though my hometown stories never progress beyond the 20th Century.

Dilsey is based on my unmarried sister and my daughter, though she really isn’t very much like either one in the long run.

Okay, so I know I haven’t sufficiently explained why I am so much in love with Dilsey Murphy. I, of course, take that as a challenge. I will write more stories. You will fall in love with her too.

Spastic Enjoyment of Conspiracy-Theorist Treasure

So, I understand that the JFK documents are now released to the public. Old George HW Bush stipulated the date in 1992, 25 years ago. So I should be thrilled, right?

Here is Politico’s article on what you should do about the document dump; How to Read the JFK Assassination Files

feat-43

But, of course, Donald Trump held back some of the files at the request of the CIA and FBI for reasons of (supposedly) national security. Because, of course, the Russians and the North Koreans could obviously make use of the knowledge of what the Secret Service agents were having for breakfast in 1963. It couldn’t be because there might be clues to a connection between the CIA, the assassination plot, LBJ, and agents who are still living, or whose loved ones have enough money to hire lawyers and make trouble.

What was that smile and wink about on Air Force One in the aftermath?

And we shouldn’t believe that after 53 years the CIA and FBI haven’t had enough time to clean up and sanitize the document trail that might’ve connected them to the plot hatched at Clint Murchison’s house before the event happened with LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover present at that party. They couldn’t have been talking about the murder the way LBJ’s mistress claimed in interviews, right? If conspiracy theorists are to be believed, the delay in releasing the documents was authored by Poppy Bush who may have been there at the event and may have been working in the CIA at the time despite the protestations that he wasn’t there, and wasn’t in the CIA, and those pictures that look like him weren’t really him at all.

Actor Bill Paxton was identified in this photo as having been in Dallas that day. Is that why he died before the release of these documents?

I have heard government and FBI types already telling us that there is really nothing to be found in these documents that will prove anything conspiracy theorists say. There will be no smoking gun. (Why would there be a gun among documents anyway? And the smoke would have to be coming out of it for over 50 years.)

So the documents will be pointed to as proof that Oswald did it, and the questions people have are pointless and meaningless and we should stop asking them. After all, the history books are already written. So why should we care?

It is true that some conspiracy theorists are red-faced rage machines like Alex Jones. Some will claim that shape-shifting lizard men from outer space are behind everything. But the public face of conspiracy madness is often used by perpetrators to aid in covering up the truth. How many know about the work of reporter and Kennedy Friend Dorothy Kilgallen, what it had to do with revealing the truth, how she mysteriously died, and how her work then disappeared? Here is a Daily News report about Dorothy Kilgallen.

downlo3ad 523826587

Can you read that article and still think that there is no reason to believe anyone but Oswald did it? Do you really believe that the government is telling us the whole truth? Even with the latest document dump?

Personally, based on the first picture I put in this post, I think the whole thing is a mistake. The shooter was really trying to kill Trump, and hit JFK by accident.

2 Comments

Filed under conspiracy theory, goofy thoughts, politics, Uncategorized

Tagged as JFK Assassination documents

October 25, 2017 · 3:16 pm

Small Town Inspirations

Pesch Street

I grew up in a small rural town in North Central Iowa. It was a place that was, according to census, home to 275 people. That apparently counted the squirrels. (And I should say, the squirrels were definitely squirrelly. They not only ate nuts, they became a nut.) It was a good place to grow up in the 60’s and 70’s. But in many ways, it was a boring place.

20171023_085521

Yes, there were beautiful farmer’s daughters to lust after and pine for and be humiliated by. There was a gentle, supportive country culture where Roy Rogers was a hero and some of the best music came on Saturdays on Hee Haw where there was a lot of pickin’ and grinnin’ going on. There were high school football games on Friday nights, good movies at the movie theaters in Belmond and Clarion, and occasional hay rides for the 4-H Club and various school-related events like Homecoming.

20160726_100749

I lived in a world where I was related to half the people in the county, and I knew at least half of the other half. People told stories about other people, some of them incredibly mean-spirited, some of them mildly mean, and some of them, though not many, that were actually good and actually true. I learned about telling good stories from my Grandpa Aldrich who could tell a fascinating tale of Dolly who owned the part of town called locally “Dollyville” and included the run-down vacant structure the kids all called the Ghost House. He also told about Dolly’s husband, Shorty the dwarf, who was such a mean drunk and went on epic temper tirades that often ended only when Dolly hospitalized him with a box on the ear. (Rumor had it that there were bricks in the box.)

And I realized that through story-telling, the world became whatever you said that it was. I could change the parts of life I didn’t love so much by lying… er, rather, by telling a good story about them. And if people heard and liked the stories enough, they began to believe and see life more the way I saw it myself. A good story could alter reality and make life better. I used this power constantly as a child.

There were invisible aliens invading Iowa constantly when I was a boy. Dragons lived in the woods at Bingham Park, and there were tiny little fairy people everywhere, in the back yard under the bushes, in the attic of the house, and building cities in the branches of neglected willow trees.

Donner n Silkie

I reached out to the world around me as an artist, a cartoonist, and a story-teller and plucked details and colors and wild imaginings like apples to bake the apple pie that would much later in my life feed the novels and colored-pencil pictures that would make up my inner life. The novels I have written and the drawings I have made have all come from being a small town boy who dreamed big and lived more in stories than in the humdrum everyday world.

1 Comment

Filed under artwork, autobiography, colored pencil, dreaming, fairies, farm boy, goofy thoughts, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

October 13, 2017 · 2:12 am

Adjusting the Barbie Shelf

20171012_174513

I put up Christmas lights over my bed again to use as winter night lights. But this year I installed hooks to hold them. Needless to say, the drilling and hammering of hooks made numerous Barbies and other dolls leap headlong off the shelf and into my bed below. So, once the construction stopped I had to lift them back up into place. But there were new places for old residents and new residents to fill old places.

20171012_181036

Most of the Minions now occupy new spots where they are less likely to dive off the edge. Their little unposeable feet don’t balance very well, so it is helpful to put them where they are held back from suicide a bit by Barbie legs and other Minions. Frankie Stein from Monster High joined the guitar-girl Barbie next to Stacy dolls and My Little Pony Fluttershy.

20171012_181112

Esmeralda is a Goodwill-rescue Disney doll that joined the shelf near bare-chested Ballerina Barbie, also a Goodwell rescue doll. I haven’t figured out how to keep Ballerina Barbie’s bazzoom-ohs covered by the buttonless jacket she wears.

20171012_181137

The third and final picture shows the remaining shelf leapers back on the shelf with Cat-Burglar Barbie added where she’s never been before. My Little Pony Applejack decided she was too tired for upright just before the picture was taken. Oh, well, leaping off shelves really takes it out of you.

I know there is more to show of the Barbie shelf, but it will have to be saved for another day. All the leapers came from the East end where all the hammering happened.

5 Comments

Filed under collecting, doll collecting, goofy thoughts, humor, photo paffoonies

October 1, 2017 · 3:40 pm

What to Write About Today…

12096620_963421697050052_2260260537112465232_n

I have to admit it. I am pretty goofy.

Probably not Harpo Marx levels of goofy.

But close.

So, I have gone back and looked at what I have been writing about during the course of my relentless three-year write-a-thon. I am artist enough to recognize patterns. At least, I can recognize the big and obvious ones. Okay, I admit it, sometimes, while thinking, I am really only pretending to think. That makes me kinda like Harpo, doesn’t it?

I reread one of what I think are my best works just now because somebody viewed it online for some reason I will never know. The essay is Toccata and Fugue in D Minor written on March 23rd of 2017. In that essay, I compare a super-condensed version of my life story to Johan Sebastian Bach’s masterwork, one that is represented in Disney’s masterwork Fantasia. My thesis was basically, “Living life is like a piece of classical music.” Yep, total nonsense.

But that is not nearly as nonsensical as the nonsense I wrote in The Dancing Poultry Conspiracy Theory. That one should make me ashamed of myself. Not to mention the danger inherent in revealing a thing that governments of the world have worked so hard to suppress the knowledge of. There is something seriously wrong with any government who would let wackos use the mysterious martial art of Ententanz Fu on anybody.

atriptothemoon-e1465209024839

I also fairly recently wrote a poem about writing poetry. It was called The Secret Behind Poetry and in the course of the poem I carefully reason out that I have no idea at all what the secret behind poetry is.

I am epically good at writing bad poetry. That is why I was chosen to host the Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge which I did badly, getting no entries at all from Planet Earth, and being forced to settle on the submissions I posted in The Ixcanixian Bad Poetry Challenge

As I have not yet been vaporized by Ixcanixian skortch rays, then I guess I did the challenge badly enough to satisfy the intergalactic poetry lords of Ixcanix. I offer that here as proof that I am really pretty bad at writing poetry.

879261033-Edgar-Allan-Poe-Life-Quotes

I am also pretty good at taking an idea and turning it upside down to get a good look at its bottom and to flatten its top a bit. I did that in an essay called Pessimism as a Super Power.

I suppose it is really about losing a writing contest, but the thesis is valid. One can save themselves a lot of grief by always expecting the worst outcome to happen. You are never disappointed according to what you expected unless it is turned into a pleasant surprise. I also admit that is really a Benjamin Franklin idea, but if you turn Ben upside down, he’s already a bit flat on the top of his bald head and he has an interesting pantalooned bottom. (That is supposed to be a joke, so try not to be too disgusted with me.)

So, what will I actually write about today? What is the pattern I am supposed to follow? Well, it seems pretty obvious, I am basically unpredictable. So maybe today I will just recycle some old posts and pretend I have been thinking.

5 Comments

Filed under commentary, conspiracy theory, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, poetry

Tagged as Metacognition

Category Archives: goofy thoughts

Life as a Texican

I Love to Laugh

Mickey the Reader

That Bluebird of Happiness

Starships

A Girl Called Dilsey

Spastic Enjoyment of Conspiracy-Theorist Treasure

Small Town Inspirations

Adjusting the Barbie Shelf

What to Write About Today…

Catch a Falling Star FB Page

Recent Posts

Stars We’ve Caught

Catch a Falling Star

Follow Blog via Email

Categories

Meta