Category Archives: goofy thoughts

August 4, 2016 · 4:14 pm

Truthfully…

Truthfully… for a fiction writer, a humorist, a former school teacher of junior-high-aged kids, telling the truth is hard.  But in this post I intend to try it, and I will see if I can stand the castor-oil flavor of it on my tongue.

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  • The simple truth is, I rarely tell the unvarnished truth.  And I firmly believe I am not alone in this.
  • Yesterday I battled pirates.  (While this is not literally true, it is metaphorically true.)  They were the scurvy scum o’ the Bank-o’-Merricka Pirates who are suing me for over ten thousand dollars despite my efforts of the last two years to settle 40 thousand dollars worth of credit card debt.
  • I hired a lawyer, but in spite of what he told me, I expect to lose the lawsuit and be wiped out financially.  I also believe Donald Trump will win as President.
  • I am a pessimist.  And it helps me through life.  I am always prepared for the worst, and I can only be surprised by happy and pleasant surprises.
  • My son in the Marines has developed an interest in survivalist gear and chaos-contingency plans.  We are now apparently preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse.
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  • I like to draw nudes.  I have drawn them from real-life models who were paid for their participation.  But no bad things happened.  It was all done with professional integrity even though I am an amateur artist.  Chaperones were a part of every session.
  • In high school I identified as a Republican like my father.  In college I became a Democrat (Thanks, Richard Nixon) and voted for Jimmy Carter.  I argued with my father for eight years of Ronald Reagan and four years of George H.W. Bush.
  • My father has now voted for Barack Obama twice and will vote for Hillary this fall if he is still able.  We spent most of our conversations this summer exchanging “Can you believe its?” about Donald Trump.
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  • I have been collecting pictures of sunrises for three years now.  I stole the idea from my childhood friend who now lives in Florida and takes beautiful ocean sunrise pictures over the Atlantic.  But I do it because I know I don’t have many more sunrises to go.  I have six incurable diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, and COPD.  I could go “BOOM! …dead” at any given moment.  I believe in savoring it while I have it.
  • I was sexually assaulted when I was ten years old.  I can only tell you this particular truth because the man who assaulted me and inflicted physical and emotional pain on me is now dead.  It is liberating to be able to say that.  But I regret forty years’ worth of treating it is a terrible secret that I could never tell anyone.
  • Telling that last truth made me cry.  Now you know why telling the truth is not easy.

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  • I really do love and admire all things having to do with Disney.  And when I was young, I really did want to find a picture of Annette naked.  There was no internet back then.  That quest helped me learn to draw the human form.  I know how bad that sounds… but, hey, I was a normal boy in many ways.  And I don’t draw her naked any more.
  • Finally, I have to say… in all honesty… I don’t know for sure that everything I have told you today is absolutely true.  Truth is a perception, even an opinion.  And I may be wrong about the facts as I know them.  The human mind works in mysterious ways.  I sometimes think I may simply be bedbug crazy.
  • (P.S.) Bedbugs are insects with very limited intelligence.  They cannot, in fact, be crazy or insane.  Their little brains are not complicated enough for that.  But it is a metaphor, and metaphors can be more truthful than literal statements.

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July 29, 2016 · 4:22 pm

The BFG (a review by the Uncritical Critic)

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I was predisposed to like this movie from the outset.  After all…  Spielbergh… Roald Dahl… a musical score by John Williams… almost Robin Williams as the BFG!  But I don’t like this movie after all.  I LOVE it!!!

I am easily stunned by gorgeous settings, CGI magic, and artistically done visuals.  I am easily captivated by cute and gifted young actresses like the one who plays Sophie, Ruby Barnhill.  And I am especially won over by the smiling face of the BFG himself.  He reminds me so clearly of my Great Grandpa Raymond (who was no less a magical being in my life than the BFG is in Sophie’s).

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The fact that the BFG’s job in Giant Land is the capturing, bottling, mixing, and gifting of dreams is the most winning feature of all.  And he uses it in the epic plan to overcome the bestial, cannibalistic, (and possibly Trump supporters) other, bigger giants.  He is a metaphor for the story-teller himself… enduring hardships and harrowing adventures to capture, package, and deliver the stories that are so important to life and people’s ultimate happiness.  It is true for Roald Dahl, the darkly silly genius who wrote the story.  It is also true for Steven Spielberg, the craft-master and movie-maker who put it on film.  It is true also for the magician of movie music, John Williams.  I hope, someday, it will also be true for me.

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So many things about this movie are the epitome of the best movie-theater experiences.  I do not understand how it could’ve done so poorly in the box office.  I believe it will become one of those beloved and much-watched DVDs like Spielberg’s previous fairy-tale masterpiece, Hook, did.  I pray that it won’t simply become an overlooked asterisk in the history of cinema.  It is too good of a movie experience for that.

 

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July 28, 2016 · 12:48 am

Love and Hate and Politics

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I cringed through a few of the speeches in the Republican National Convention.  Speech after speech talked about how bad Hillary Clinton is, how terrible ISIS is, how Obama has betrayed us and failed us, and other warm fuzzy stuff like that.  They make me sick to my stomach with fear.

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Was there anything to like about the RNC in Cleveland?  Well, their logo was nice.

I could complain about the plagiarism thing, the Ted Cruz booing thing (although that actually made me smile), or Donald’s deep, dark speech of the coming apocalypse.  But I would rather do like the Democrats seem to be doing this week.  I would rather talk about the good things they can and will do if only we are smart enough to give them the chance.

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They contrasted their policies in favor of ending discrimination based on race, gender, and orientation with the anti-crime and anti-terrorism howls of the Republicans. Instead of talking about how satisfying it would be to throw the other side’s candidate in jail for imagined crimes, they told us about Hillary’s record of standing up for women, children, and the handicapped.  They gave us specifics about what she has done and who she has helped and what she has learned from Bernie Sanders.  Sanders graciously made her the unanimous choice by throwing all of his delegates behind her.  There was peace and harmony (beyond a few former Bernie supporters who were so mad about the DNC email leak that they may vote Trump out of spite).  Cory Booker’s speech suggested that instead of talking about what we are afraid of, we should be talking about working together in a spirit of love and friendship in order to do great things.  Trump, of course, had an angry tweet in response to that, suggesting he knew things about Booker that could shame him.  Booker replied that he loved Donald Trump and felt honored that the orange one considered him worthy of an angry tweeting.

Now, I am not saying that Democrats are perfect and Republicans are evil… am I?  I don’t believe that when I am rational and not dreaming up nightmares… do I?  But loving one another is what I think the default position should always be for Christians.  So why are the nominally Christian conservatives so much more keen on the righteous wrath of God stuff and punishing those they hate?  Shouldn’t it be the opposite of that?  And my severely Republican friends are always suspicious of just how Christian the godless communist heathens in the Democratic party really are.  If the Democrats are so totally wrong, shouldn’t the facts line up against them?

But it all boils down to facts versus feelings, doesn’t it.  Republicans have reason to be angry, especially the poor ones, because of the raw economic deal they have been given.  Their righteous indignation deserves redress.  But is that best served by punishing Democrats in the more liberal party that more generally favors less income inequality?  What about the capitalist billionaires who drive the Republican agenda?  Are they really saints and deserving of everything they have taken for themselves?

I am smart, but not smart enough to have ultimate answers to the biggest questions.  I have Republican friends who agree whole-heartedly  with that last sentence, especially words five, six, and seven.  But I know the DNC made me feel good while watching, and the RNC made me ill.  I definitely choose love over hatred and politics.

 

 

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July 18, 2016 · 4:23 pm

Doodle-Bop!

Sometimes the only thing you really want out of life is just to get by. You get tired of always having to climb the danged highest mountain.  You get tired of trying to swim the danged deepest sea.

16750_102844509741181_100000468961606_71393_6278100_nSometimes all you want to do is doodle-bop!…  To draw in pen and ink and post your derfiest doofenwacky doodles so you can just make your way through another danged day.

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You aim a lot for different, and undeniably original… because no one thinks like you… certainly no one who is real and has a real brain.  You are gifted with an “other-ness”, a sing-songy simpering something that makes you want to doodle and do what no man has done before.  (Does that sentence exist anywhere else in all of literature?  Even if there is some alternate dimension with infinite monkeys typing on infinite typewriters?  What’s a typewriter, you say?  Danged millennials!)

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I really can’t help it, you know.  I was a middle school teacher for 24 years.  That sort of thing has mental health consequences.  And if you wring the sponges in your stupid old brain hard enough and long enough… doodle-bop! comes out.

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Turtle boy’s magic iron of irony!!!

And you have to wonder why some of the stuff that is in your stupid old head is even in there.  Why is it that sometimes the words “Argyle socks are filled with rocks” are drifting through the vast empty spaces in the logic centers of your brain?  There has to be a reason for everything, doesn’t there?

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I do believe I have made myself chuckle at least a dozen chuck-tacular times in the chuck-a-tational crafting of this cheddar-cheesy post.  But it only really counts if I can make you girlishly giggle or guy-like guffaw with my word-munching and cartoony paffoonies.

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The terror-filled cartoon car chase that is life as usual.

You may have noticed that everything is black and white, even though it doesn’t have to be.  Good versus evil, hot versus cold, everything can be divided up simplistically… but the really profound part of simplicity is vibrating reverberations of complexity that lie just underneath.  Words have meaning, even though they are just a bunch of crooked squiggles marked on a page.  (Yes, I know… “or typed on a computer screen”.  Danged millennials!)

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And so, this is my doodle-bop!  Probably not the doodliest or the boppiest doodle-bop! I could have bopped… but there it is.  I have made it through another sorta creative post without losing my mind…  Honest!  I did not lose it.  It is merely temporarily misplaced for a moment.  It will be back in its proper place tomorrow… probably.

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July 11, 2016 · 3:49 pm

The Need for Magical Teddy Bears

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I woke this morning in excessive amounts of arthritis pain.  My left elbow has not been working well for a month.  My lower back is always painful after a restless night’s sleep.  Neither of my knees is willing to do the basic job required of knees in the early morning when you first wake up.  So I had to work joints back and forth to loosen them up despite the pain.  I had to stretch parts where muscles were knotted up in protest to stretching.  And it took me a half hour of painful work to get on my feet.

I have been psychologically in pain of late as well.  Being a school teacher who dedicated his life to getting young people to work together and grow up and mature, I have been deeply distressed by both the police shootings of innocent black men and the massacre of policemen here in Dallas.  My publishing goals have also hit a brick wall with recent rejections and cancelling of contracts.  I need to curl up in a corner and lick my wounds.

When I was a child I relied on stuffed animals to make me feel better when I was sick and in pain.  I had a toy tiger that was my constant companion.  I had a couple of teddy bears, one a panda, the other Smokey the Bear.  And there was a terrycloth pink elephant that I shared with my sisters.  Like many children, I talked to the stuffed animals.  Like a strange few other children, the stuffed animals would answer back.  I think that plays a large part in explaining why I am a writer of fiction stories.  I medicate my mind not with drugs, but by talking things out with imaginary people.

At this moment in time, when I am on the verge of being overwhelmed, it is a good thing that my hoarding disorder has caused me to collect stuffed toys.  I have more than one magical teddy bear to turn to.  Everything will be all right in the end.

 

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July 4, 2016 · 4:30 pm

The Need for Easy Pants

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I have never been an advocate of hard-to-wear pants.  Pants are suppose to be an aid to civilization, allowing a man to hide away the sensitive and sorta ugly bits that make him more like the animals, and in certain situations, unable to access the rational data-base in his little bean-like head.  My own need for comfortable pants is further complicated by an enlarged prostate that presses on the spine, as well as two lower vertebrae eroded by years of arthritis.  Pants have to be tight enough to hold me together, yet not so tight they cut off the blood flow and kill my lower half.  It would be danged inconvenient to have to walk around without any legs, or any butt, or any naughty bits.  If I wore Urkel pants, I might even lose my heart and my stomach, things I’m almost certain I would miss.  And I wouldn’t be able to do the Urkel dance, either.

Of course, there are times when the whole issue of easy pants can become a real concern.  I am trying to make my way through the labyrinth of problems of the retired on a budget.  So I tend to favor cheap pants.  I buy most of my pants from Goodwill Inc.   They are mostly used pants… or previously loved pants… or previously worn-out pants.  The pants I am wearing at the moment have developed holes in the region of the crotch… not a good place for unwanted air-conditioning.  And the pants I bought to replace them have buttons in place of a zipper in the fly.  I didn’t realize the potential for spontaneous bathroom dancing that the combination of buttons and arthritic fingers could cause.  My best pair of blue jeans are the kind of denim known UN-affectionately as “high-water pants”.  This, of course, leads to inconveniently aerated ankles.

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The final verdict is in about easy-pants issues.  To avoid all pants-related issues you have to give up wearing pants.  And I do still have issues with becoming a nudist as well.  So the struggle to obtain and wear easy pants is a never-ending battle that we simply cannot afford to give up on.

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July 2, 2016 · 4:28 pm

Penguin Proverbs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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July 1, 2016 · 3:03 pm

Polyticks

political insanity

People are people, no matter how wrong…

And it isn’t a good thing to argue too long.

My friend is a “Can” from the Republic of Cans,

Who says all the poor people are just bad hu-mans.

And he really believes it, even though he’s not dumb,

‘Cuz he thinks climbing ladders using one of his thumbs,

Is how all people manage to be worthy and good,

And lazy bad people choose to fail like soft wood.

And though he’s not seen that old ladder of mine,

Or the ladders of people with one rung in nine,

He’s thoroughly convinced that all ladders are fair,

And it’s all their own fault if they fall through the air.

Yes, people are people, no matter how wrong…

And it isn’t a good thing to argue so long.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee member Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asserts an objection to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a Democratic sponsor of the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline bill, as the committee met to advance the controversial project, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Sanders, who sits with the Democrats, wanted an amendment to put Congress on the record about their beliefs on climates change and whether they agree with the international scientific community that climate change is real or not. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

I have a good friend who’ll do Demos of Crats,

And screech about equity like an army of cats.

He thinks we should pay for all college and school,

And use our tax money as a leveling tool.

He thinks we can make the rich pay for our dreams

And make life all breakfast of sugars and creams.

And maybe he can and maybe he can’t…

Make sense of the subject of his long, drawn-out rant,

But they’ll never pay it and he will get Berned,

Because they never part with what they think they have earned.

But, people are people, no matter how wrong…

And it isn’t a good thing to argue so long.

In conclusion I think the thinks that I think

Are carefully measured and really don’t stink,

But don’t take good thinking to toss in dump,

Or sooner or later… it’s President Trump!

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June 21, 2016 · 4:31 pm

Portraits in Pen and Ink

Simple, clean lines and basic, well-defined shapes go together in black and white.  They are in the basic nature of being a cartoonist.  You translate what you see into line drawings where a few simple lines become a complex and meaningful image.

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My one-legged Batman is an exercise in  foreshortening and trying to burst through the two-dimensional confines of the page to grab the viewer.  I learned this trick from comic book artist Jim Lee.

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His sidekick is rendered as a static portrait where the computer monitor in front of him lights up Robin’s intense and thoughtful face.

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She was an excellent teacher and former nun… she was a mentor to me, taught me a lot about life and love and great beauty.  How do you adequately portray the wisdom and the patience in those highly magnified eyes?  I drew from memory only.  She never considered herself beautiful.  But she was.  And it hurts not to be able to capture it correctly.

Not every portrait is literal.  Sometimes you exaggerate facial characteristics and behavioral quirks are emphasized to create humor in the portrait.

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When I was first married I did a double portrait of us as a knight and his lady fair.  I know, I know… it is so sickeningly sweet that it punches me right in the diabetes.  But, hey, it doesn’t really look like me anyway.   It is more of a portrait of Porky Pig in glasses and hair.

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There is an art to pen and ink that cuts right to the heart of who you are and who you want to be.  Simple lines in black and white… there is no more incisive tool for putting my goofy old mind down on paper.

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June 10, 2016 · 4:46 pm

Mapping the Road Ahead

I have been doing this insane post-every-day thing for a solid year and a half since the start of this month.  That isn’t a sane thing to do if you are committed, like I am, to not posting pictures of the food you eat and blathering on about nothing.

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Braum’s chili… mmm… food of the gods!

Hmm?  Oh, no… that picture is an accident.  I didn’t put that there.  It’s not even a good picture.  Look at all that garbage in the background.  How did this picture get here?

But planning a daily blog can be difficult.  You keep having to make a map of the road you are planning to travel before you get there to see the lay of the land.  It gets tricky.  Almost as tricky as following the oxymoronic joke I tried to use as a title for this post.

Things happen all the time that make for good posts.  Yesterday was the result of my trip to the DMV.  If government offices don’t want to be the butt of satire, they shouldn’t make writers sit and stew in the heat for three hours and then not give them what they were waiting for.  But they apparently do want to be the butt of satire… or there wouldn’t be so much butt-ness to be found there.

I am a former teacher, having taught for 31 years.  I could’ve done this point about the recent education news in Texas.  Larissa Martinez , the Valedictorian of McKinney Boyd High School, used her graduation speech to come out of the closet as an undocumented immigrant.  It is an important issue.  This is a girl who will be nothing but an asset to this country.  She fled Mexico to escape an abusive father.  Her mother brought her to this country where she enrolled in school and quickly adapted to a new language and a new culture to achieve a 4.95 GPA in a well-funded Texas high school.  Her family immediately applied for citizenship in 2010.  As she gave her speech, her application had still not been processed.  I could write a number of posts about the immigration laws in this country being the real criminals.  Well, except laws aren’t actually people.  Okay, maybe I am not the best person to take up this vital issue.  But other people are reporting about this.  You can read more at this link;  Click Here!

So, maybe, I should just write more posts about Donald Trump becoming the next president of the U.S.  There is great opportunity  for humor there.  I am looking forward to Lonesome George W. Bush levels of comedy gold.

What then will I write about for today?  I am torn between a post for the fantasy book I just read and the movie Zootopia we saw last weekend.  But, somehow I have already reached my word-length goal for today.

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The milkshakes we had at Steak n” Shake after watching the movie Zootopia.

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