Category Archives: humor

Surprisingly Easy Fixes

I briefly thought this last Sunday that my writing life was over. I found my computer was dead after I had spent time doing household chores like washing the dishes. I couldn’t turn it on. And I found the battery wasn’t properly connected to the wall socket for recharging, a thing that had apparently been true for far too long. It was the third time that my faulty memory and my excruciatingly bad luck had conspired to completely drain the computer battery. That is, of course, about the worst thing you can do to damage a modern lithium battery, drain it completely. And I had done it THREE TIMES!!!

I briefly imagined my new Chromebook computer would become a stage for paper dolls the way my first laptop did.

So, naturally, I cussed myself as a stupid loser and decided to buy myself another laptop instead of paying the 300+ dollars it would cost to replace the electrical system of my Chromebook at Best Buy. My wife and daughter were in San Antonio visiting my sister-in-law and mother-in-law for the weekend. So, they were not around to talk me out of my evil plan. I bought a Windows 10 compatible HP Laptop at Walmart for about a hundred dollars more than I thought the repair of the other computer would cost me. And I was amazed as I got it home and started retrieving my essential apps and documents. It is much more compatible with my documents and writing habits than the Chromebook. I didn’t have to waste a lot of time learning new procedures and linking things up in a different way. I could even do Google Chrome on the new computer where the Chromebook doesn’t allow easy access to the Microsoft Edge I had gotten used to before the Chromebook. I was actually feeling quite pleased with myself.

This is either an old picture, or San Antonio’s weather is out of whack again.

On Monday, the same day I brilliantly replaced the Chromebook, my daughter came home from San Antonio. She heard the story of my tragedy and following triumph, and she immediately demanded to see the Chromebook. I had been keeping it on the charger since its death, and we still seemingly couldn’t turn it on.

“Wait a minute, how long did you wait after pressing the “on” button before you pressed it again?” she asked.

I hadn’t been timing it. But I had tried everything when it died.

“Try it again. But press it only once.”

I pressed the “on” button, not holding it down, just like she had advised me. A quick click followed by a long wait.

“See? The battery is truly dead.”

“Wait a moment more.”

As soon as she said that, the screen was suddenly prompting me for my password. I typed in, “bullwinklemooseismyheroandrolemodel989” (Not actually my password) and the computer was back from the dead!

“Amazing! I spent all that money just because I wasn’t turning it on correctly!”

“Well, you did have to fully reload the battery. And the Chromebook I had at school used to do almost the same thing sometimes when it didn’t feel like working properly. But now you have two laptops. One for watching Netflix and one for writing stuff.”

Genius! Pure genius. I now have two new computers, and my wife can’t even get mad at me for how it happened. Once in a great while, it pays to be forgetful and excruciatingly unlucky.

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Filed under autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, photo paffoonies

Stories with Gingerbread

Yes, this post is a shameless promotion. But this is a good book that not enough people are reading to truly appreciate that fact. When I was a boy in the 1960’s, there really was an old German lady who lived in a small tar-papered house, all ginger-brown in color, which we all called the Gingerbread House. She really did love to give out sweets and cookies and popcorn balls to the kids in our town. And she really did love to talk to people and tell them little stories.

Grandma Gretel Stein

Her name, in real life, was Marie Jacobson. She was, in fact, a survivor of the holocaust. She had a tattoo on her right forearm that I saw only one time. Our parents told us what the tattoo meant. But there were no details ever added to the story. Mrs. Jacobson doted on the local children. She regularly gave me chocolate bars just because I held the door for her after church. But she was apparently unwilling to ever talk about World War II and Germany. We were told never to press for answers. There was, however, a rumor that she lost her family in one of the camps. And I have always been the kind that fills in the details with fiction when the truth is out of reach.

Ignore the dates above. The Free-Book Promotion runs from June 24th to June 28.

I based the character of Grandma Gretel on Mrs. Jacobson. But the facts about her secret life are, of course, from my imagination, not from the truth about Mrs. Jacobson’s real life.

Marie Jacobson cooked gingerbread cookies. I know because I ate some. But she didn’t talk to fairies or use magic spells in cooking. I know because the fairies from the Hidden Kingdom in Rowan disavowed ever talking to any slow one but me. She wasn’t Jewish, since she went to our Methodist Church. She wasn’t a nudist, either. But neither were my twin cousins who the Cobble Sisters, the nude girls in the story, are fifty percent based on. A lot of details about the kids in my book come from the lives of my students in Texas. The blond nudist twins were in my class in the early eighties. And they were only part-time nudists who talked about it more than lived it.

Miss Sherry Cobble, a happy nudist.

But the story itself is not about nudists, or Nazis, or gingerbread children coming to life through magic. The story is about how telling stories can help us to allay our fears. Telling stories can help us cope with and make meaning out of the most terrible things that have happened to us in life. And it is also a way to connect with the hearts of other people and help them to see us for who we really are. And that was the whole reason for writing this book.

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Filed under autobiography, fairies, gingerbread, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Re-bubbling the Old Enthusiasm

It is getting harder and harder to climb the new day’s hill to get to the summit where I can reasonably get a good look at the road ahead. At almost-64, I can see the road ahead is far shorter and much darker than the highway stretching out behind me. It is not so much a matter of how much time I have spent on the road as it is a matter of the wear and tear the mileage has caused.

This weekend I had another depressing free-book promotion where, in five days, I only moved five books, one purchase, and four free books. I have made $0.45 as an author for the month of June.

I was recently given another bit of good advice from a successful author. He said that I shouldn’t be in such a rush to publish. He suggested taking more time with my writing. Hold on to it longer. Polish it and love it more. And now that I have reached sixteen books published on my author’s page, I have basically beaten the grim reaper in the question of whether or not he was ever going to silence me and my author’s voice. I can afford to live with the next one longer.

But the last one, A Field Guide to Fauns, practically wrote itself. It went fast from inspiration to publication simply because the writer in me was on fire and full of love and life and laughter that had to boil over into hot print exactly as quickly as it did. The additional writing time afforded me by the pandemic and quarantine didn’t hurt either. Once in print, my nudist friends loved it.

This next one has the potential to boil and brew and pop out of me in the same accelerated way as that last one did. Of course, it has been percolating inside my brain basically since the Summer of 1974. So, this is no rushed job. The Wizard in his Keep is a story of a man who tries to take the children of the sister of his childhood best friend to a place of safety when their parents are killed in a car wreck. But the only safe place he has to offer is in the world of his imagination. A world he has bizarrely made real. And that best friend comes searching for the children. And so does a predator who seeks to do them all grievous harm.

In many ways, it is a story already written.

So, I am rekindling the flame that keeps the story-pot boiling. And more of it is already cooking. And I am recovering from the cool winds of disappointment, as well as the dark storm clouds of the nearing future.

This is now actually a two-year-old post. Both of the books mentioned here are published and available from Amazon. As far as holding on to the books longer, there is no problem with that on Amazon. Editing, improving, and re-publishing a book is actually easier than publishing it the first time. Nothing about this old post has been made untrue by the passage of time. I am still probably the best author of books like these whose published books almost never get read.

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The Education of PoppenSparkle… Canto 10

Canto 10 – In the Home of the Leaf Witch

The Mouse King seemed extremely happy that Poppy’s spell brought him new Sylphs, Butterfly Children, and Elves.  He led all the new folks to the feast hall that had apparently been closed up for a while before their arrival.

“Please,  make yourselves at home.  You are welcome here, as long as your allegiance shifts from the Unseely Court to our people!” the Mouse said enthusiastically.

“You are not going to feed these imposters when they could be put to better use attacking the enemy on the battlefield?” growled Lord Lancelot.

“Nonsense.  These Fey Children are our brothers now.  We need them to fill in for all the families we have lost recently.  We must make them feel welcome.”

A beautiful young-looking Sylph girl wearing only leaves and a simple loincloth came into the room leading a chain of Sylph children, each carrying bowls of freshly made food.

“Zam has welcome feast for all new guys!” said the girl.

“Who is Zam?” PoppenSparkle asked Tod.

“She is.  Zam is the Mouse King’s wife.  She’s a very unusual Sylph, better known as the Leaf Witch.”

Poppy suddenly realized how many of the spell scrolls she’d been given to read since her liberation from the Necromancer had the Leaf Witch’s name on them.

“She has magical skills like yours,” said Flute to Poppy.  “I discovered her when we needed to slay the dragon, Darvon Redsoul.”  He smiled,  beaming with pride at his own accomplishment.

“How do we know we can trust these people?” Lancelot said loudly to everyone.

“What do you mean?” asked the Mouse King.

“Less than an hour ago, all these people were Gobbuluns!  Or am I mistaken about what I saw?”

“You are not mistaken.  PoppenSparkle, my newest apprentice, has developed a rare spell that polymorphs members of the Unseely Court into full-blooded members of the Fey Children.” Prince Flute indicated Poppy where she sat next to him, and all eyes turned to focus uncomfortably on her.

Lancelot focused angry, red eyes on her.  “So, how exactly did you do that, Miss Butterfly Witch?”

“Well, I… uh…”

“I kin tells ya that!” exclaimed young Schtinker.

“Oh?  And how does she do it, then?”

“She makes ‘em smarter!  They changes cuz they is no longer dumb enough to be Gobbuluns.”

“And what does it mean, then, that you sound so dumb?”  Lancelot glared so fiercely that Schtinker hid behind Glittershine’s wings.”

“That’s it!  That has to be how they do it!” shouted a young Elf from across the hall.

“And what do you mean by that, Gobbulun-boy?” Lancelot shouted back.

“I was a Gobbulun just a short while ago because Lord Toxiss had me as a prisoner of war, and he changed me from an Elf into a Cyclopes. He did it with a spray of smelly goo that made me get dumber and dumber until I believed I was a Cyclopes.  The Butterfly Witch changed me back by making me smarter again with her magical mist.”

“Of course!  As simple as that!” said Flute, slapping his bare knee with the eureka moment.

“What do you mean?” asked Lancelot.

“It’s the fundamental magical formula that we have been researching all this time.  The key is knowledge… intelligence!  Our very existence is based on the beliefs of Slow Ones that there is magic in the world, simply not yet understood by their science.  And believing in something can make it so.  So, by increasing intelligence and understanding, you build a foundation to hold up that belief.  The more you know, the more strongly you believe!”

“So, how does that help us at present?  We are surrounded by the enemy, stupid, malevolent, violent Gobbuluns, outnumbering us by hundreds to one.  You want to teach them all basic grammar or something?”  Lancelot was wildly gesturing in all directions as he spoke angry words.

Zam the Leaf Witch suddenly climbed up on the table so she could look down on Lancelot with a goofy grin on her child-like face.  She ignited a purple, magical flame in her right hand.

“You is not getting it, Lancy.  Is not smartness from the head we is talking about.  It is from the heart.  Knowledge and Love combined is what be magical.  Miss Poppy-Sparky is right to change Gobbuluns to Fey Children.  Even they is knowing it be more right that way.  You needs to try a dose.”

Whatever the purple fire in the witch’s hand was, she launched it directly at Lancelot’s chest.  But when it struck the area where his heart should be, it burst and dissipated.

Lancelot looked dumbstruck.  And then, obviously, that was immediately converted to shame.  He turned and left the feast hall with his head hanging low.

“Lord Lancy have been doing the fighting thing for too many, many years.  He be kinda down-hearted. We forgives him.  He will get better.”

The feast settled down into conversations and the enjoyment of Fairy dishes like mushroom tips, bean sprouts, dandelion butter, and mint leaves.  The relieved residents of Cornucopia welcomed the new replacement Fairies that had once been Gobbuluns.

“She’s a treasure, that one,” said Flute, pointing at Zam.  “No one gets the better of her in her own feast hall.  Not even Lord Lancelot.”

“What was that spell she put on Lancelot?” Tod asked.

“A heart spell of some kind,” answered Glittershine.  “But didn’t you notice?  It didn’t reach his heart.”

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Moving to Mars

Apparently the plan is, “Let’s use up everything on the Planet Earth to make ourselves excessively rich and possibly even happy, because the more you have, the more you are likely to be able to buy happiness. And if it destroys the Earth and all life on it, we will just move to Mars.”

That, of course, is a laughable solution to a problem that really isn’t funny. If we have the scientific knowledge and technology to transform Mars into a new home, why don’t we simply use that knowledge to fix what’s wrong with the planet we already live on?

Of course, I know the answer. Because it will cut into Koch Industries’ profit margins and provide less money and power to the shareholders that will survive Earth-death to live on the new Mars.

Cute rat, huh? Cute enough to merit space on the spacecraft to Mars?

Profit margins for shareholders are the whole reason for life on Earth. We can’t have the life and deaths of millions of the mere peasants and working poor to interfere with Ivanka Trump and Jared having chocolate cake with dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Right? Vermin don’t have rights.

I recently started a whole new life in a whole new world myself. I finished paying off my Chapter 13 Bankruptcy caused by medical debts and Bancko Merricka’s lawsuit. It gave me enough money to put in savings, and afford not only to pay off the incredibly high fees for Medicare Part B, but also to see an eye doctor and a glaucoma specialist. With treatment for my glaucoma, I see things more clearly, and with more vivid color than I have seen it all in a decade. And, although both of my parents passed away during the pandemic (but from health issues other than Covid,) I have inherited a third of the family farm along with my two sisters, actual wealth to leave to my own heirs. It would be nice to live in and enjoy the new world for a little while.

Of course, there is the problem that people like me aren’t really allowed to have wealth and keep it. Wealth is intended to get scooped up to benefit only the elite class of shareholders for whom the system is really designed to benefit. It has always been a tilted playing field.

I have paid off massive debts twice now where more than 75 % of the debt was created by compound interest. Bancko Merricka is full of pirates and cutthroats who are paid to make the money off the backs of those who really do the work and funnel it to the investors and shareholders who get to make lots of money because they already have money. I have sworn off credit cards from predatory banks, but life gets more expensive by the day, and there are limits to how much you can save on a teacher’s pension. Passive income is another thing tipped toward the people who own everything whether they worked for it or not.

The January 6th hearing is bringing out more and more of the criminal behavior of President Pumpkinhead and his MAGA Minions. These people who control whether or not we can mitigate climate change or protect ourselves from predatory banks are obviously never going to accept the good guys overcoming them and restoring democracy. Instead, we appear to be headed for the bad guys getting away with heinous crimes and instituting a minority ruling class by cheating, making us as bad as the German or Italian fascists of the 1930s and 40s. The Pumpkinhead will probably be President again in 2025. And we would be better off on Mars.

But the Mars solution won’t work for you and me. The vermin won’t be welcome like they were back when Noah built the Ark. Elon’s Ark will be for the rich and powerful only.

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Art Unseen in a While

WordPress has put in a new feature for finding old photos from Posts Past.

This allows me to pull from past years much more easily than the scroll-down feature I have been using. Thus, art from 2017.

This is from the Star Wars Role-playing game that we stopped playing in 2008.
the Murphy family (well, three of them anyway)
The disintegrator pistol from Catch a Falling Star
“The Wise Thaumaturge Visits Cymril”
Eventual cover art for Magical Miss Morgan
I painted this miniature lead wizard, as well as made the castle from cardboard and paper.
I also painted the buildings in the background, acrylic on plaster.
“Their Most Feared Offensive Player Could Beat Them By Herself”
All of these works of art are done by me, whether they are drawn, painted, or photographed.

This has been a look back at pictures posted in 2017, starting in December, and going back in time to January. There is at least one picture from every month.

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Happy For No Good Reason

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The New Name Game

Have you ever noticed that some celebrities with weird names are recognizable no matter how badly you mess up or mangle their names?

For example, take a name like Justin Timberlake.

If you call him Timber Just-in-the-lake, everyone still knows who you mean.

Yes, I’m talking about Laker Timberjust, that singer who used to be famous when he sang with that group Out O’ Sink. You know, that guy named Joozin Mimbolake who caused Joanie Jackelson’s wardrobe malfunction in the Superbowl. Muffin Limbersnake… you know, that guy.

Well, there’s this other actor named Ving Rhames.

Actor Ving Rhames (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images)

Okay, that’s too scary to contemplate. Well, there’s always Kenderbick Bumbersnatch! He’s always good for a name-mangling good joke.

Very astute literary allusion delivered with Sherlockian poise, Benickle Bumberbatch!

I can think of a number of name mangles that make me laugh. Bumbershoot Bandersnatch, or Bimbleroot Snoodersnatch, or Smogthedragon Paddlebatch. What mangled names can you think of for the Mangled Name Game? You can put your bubbling genius-type answers to that question in the comments. For these guys, or any other mangle-able celebrity names you can think of.

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Filed under humor, satire, word games, wordplay

Don’t Do What I Say…

If you tell a middle-school child not to do something, do you know what the only thing they are thinking about doing is? Yes, you know it. The thing you told them not to do is the only thing they desire to do. Republicans in general, old white guys with lots of money, and everybody who follows their lead will be exactly the same. If you want to see middle-school kids try coming to school naked, tell them the dress code specifically requires them to wear clothes. And it won’t be the pretty ones, the smart ones, or the poor ones who try to become in-school nudists. It will be the fat, ugly, wealthy ones. In fact, it is the reason private schools for the rich concentrate on telling them what they must wear, like ascots, diamond cufflinks, and polo shirts in school colors. And they never have a rule that states, “You must wear clothes.”

So, let’s see if we can really confuse the disobedient and contrary masses of the world by telling them not to do what we really want them to do. But don’t tell them we want them to do what we are telling them not to do. Make them figure it out for themselves. It’s the only way to get them to do what you want. Make them think it’s not what you want and forbid it.

(Is the king wearing his new clothes? Not if you can see them, peasant!)

Let’s start with the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSaniflush. Do not vote him out of office. Only support those ideas that benefit his political career no matter how badly they will hurt the people of Florida. Happily pay the extra tax burden he has laid on Florida residents because he rescinded the special deal Disney has as a major employer and corporate entity in the Orlando area. The Disney corporation is guilty of a terrible thing, not wishing to demean any of its LGBTQ employees by following his “Don’t Say Gay” law, and don’t deserve to have the special deal where they have the right to maintain their own roads and county services in the Disney World region of Florida. Those Floridians need to assert their rights by paying for those same maintenance and service issues with their own tax burden. That will show those Mickey-on-Pluto-going-at-it perverts.

Get what I really mean? Listen very carefully. Some of those words are dog-whistles and bell-ringers, and Floridians are too stupid to figure out what we really want them to do. They will never prove us wrong. Am I right?

This honorable gentleman, current Emperor of Texas, Greg “Gunslinger” Abbott, also should never be voted out of office. After all, he is the anointed successor to the former Emperor of Texas, Rick “I’m Smarter With My Glasses On” Perry. You don’t become Emperor of Texas by being voted in, but, rather, by preventing certain people from possibly voting against you.

You see, what Emperor Abbott wants to protect us from is something called Critical Race Theory. This is an evil cloud of educational ideas intended to make innocent white children, specifically rich innocent white children, feel guilty and ashamed by knowing about things like civil rights abuses, inequality, slavery, racially-motivated lynchings, the South losing the Civil War, and Jim Crow laws not being about birds. This will be achieved by accusing and firing teachers and principals, especially teachers and principals of color, for promoting CRT through books like the ones about Ruby Bridges.

Here are the kinds of books CRT police want to ban;

For the good of white children in America, regardless of how children of color will feel about it, you should not buy these books to read them and risk liking the story of how young Ruby passed the test as a kindergartner in 1959 that allowed her to integrate William Franz Elementary as a first-grader, the only black child in her first-grade class in the previously all-white school, escorted to and from school every day by four U.S. Marshals and her mother, running a gauntlet of foul-mouthed racist protesters that threatened her, and attended an empty classroom where white children had been removed by their white parents in order to break the color barrier in Southern schools as a sort of heroine for the ages at seven years old. No, you should only buy these books to use as evidence against teachers or to burn them in a public display of CRT contempt.

So, here are the things you should not be doing. (And remember, you are not supposed to do what I say in this article.)

  1. Do not develop tolerance for people and cultures that are different than your own. We are not stronger when we are diverse. That is a lie the bad guys tell.
  2. Conservative and Republican are words that mean, “the good guys.”
  3. Democrats, liberals, progressives, fascists, communists, socialists, and terrorists are all the same thing. They are all “bad guys” and all the same.
  4. It is more important to hate the “bad guys” than it is even to love the “good guys.” After all you never know when a “good guy” will develop a conscience and become a RINO, socialist, or some other kind of “bad guy.”
  5. “Bad guys” never have ideas worth listening to. What you don’t learn about can’t hurt you. So just ignore them… or better yet, hurt them.
  6. Loving one another without conditions only works for perfect people like Republican Jesus. Don’t try it. Hating everyone works better.

So, these are the things I am saying when I say, “Don’t Do What I Say.” So, now you should go out and NOT do them.

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Filed under angry rant, commentary, Disney, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, politics

The Dancing Poultry Conspiracy Theory

You’ve heard of the sinister 9-11 tale of the dancing Israelis?  Some conspiracy theories are very concerning.  You have to be concerned about whether the conspiracy theory is true and aliens from Zeta Reticuli really have been cloning Elvis, or whether the conspiracy theorist is a nut-bag like Alex Jones who simply needs to be locked up to protect him from himself.

 

But no conspiracy theory worries me more at the moment than one about the existence of German ninjas who advance the neo-Nazi agenda by the use of the secret martial art of der Ententanz.  That’s right, they do violence to opponents (and possibly themselves) by aggressively doing the Chicken Dance. 

You really have to watch the video above to truly appreciate the perfidy of Ententanz Fu.  Notice how it starts with the pinching-fingers castanet attack, useful for grabbing the opponent’s nose or other sensitive protruding appendage.  It is followed by the flapping elbows move that can stun the enemy by its sheer ridiculous flappiness.  And then the bouncing butt attack, which can potentially paralyze the adversary by bouncing them around the room.  All of this is followed by the dancing in a circle maneuver which renders the viewer unconscious with insane levels of laughter.  Yes, the aggressive use of the chicken dance can literally make you laugh yourself to death.

c360_2017-02-17-10-38-01-138

Now, if you truly believe I am not totally serious about the dangers of ninjas doing the chicken dance in order to assassinate ordinary tax-paying citizens, I should warn you…

I mean, most people think of Ententanz Fu as merely another way German-themed tourist traps like the ones in Fredricksburg, Texas make relentless fun and ridicule targets out of clueless white people during Oktoberfest, but in reality…  Yes, it is that, but it can be so much more.  Take it from somebody who narrowly escaped from a chicken-dance-induced coma fairly recently, it is possible not only to die laughing from this dancing-poultry scourge, or be embarrassed to death, but you can also accidentally tie yourself up into a German pretzel… at which point, chickens will dip you in mustard and eat you.

So be warned.  This is a danger not even Alex Jones on InfoWars has warned you about.  (Though, if you give him enough time alone with hammers to hit himself in the head with, he may come to the same conclusions soon enough.)

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Filed under birds, conspiracy theory, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, sharing from YouTube