Category Archives: humor

Why I Wear a Tinfoil Hat

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You know by now if you have read what I’ve written, or been around me when people make the mistake of letting me talk about what I want to talk about, that I am a kook.  Yes, I believe things that you have been told that only crazy people believe.  Why would you want to read any more of that nonsense now?  Because it is true and it will impact our future.

I came into a wealth of secret knowledge when I wrote and published my first good novel, Catch a Falling Star.  Of course, like most of the things you research on the internet, ninety-nine per cent of everything is big, black rubber hoo-haw lies.  I researched a lot of things that I have always been fascinated by, but specifically I investigated UFO phenomenon.  I already followed author Stanton Friedman and knew who Bob Lazar was before starting my research, but I wanted to dig deeper and find the truth.  My novel, after all, is about close encounters of the third, fourth, and fifth kinds… including an invisible invasion of Earth from outer space.  I wanted to portray such events as alien contact and alien abduction as realistically as possible.  But then I found stuff like the Disclosure Project headed by Doctor Steven Greer.  Did you know he has been collecting eye-witness and whistle-blower information in written and video form since the 1990’s and presenting it to members of congress?  There is an immense database of information about contact with UFO’s and the government’s response to it that can be cross-referenced and even corroborates itself.  There comes a point at which eye-witness testimony, even loony-sounding testimony, has to be accepted when there is a preponderance of evidence.

The thing that makes the case most strongly for me is the provable amount of cover-up and misdirection that the government has applied to this body of knowledge.  They are still doing it.  NASA footage and photographic records are open to the public and available online.  Lots of people have examined the wealth of evidence very closely and have found things that the government apparently overlooked.  There are also an even more impressive number of identified re-touched and faked photos of the Moon and Mars and especially the Earth from space.  Things have been removed so that we the people will not see.  Some nut-cases even believe we never actually went to the moon.  Some of the moon footage and photos are provably fake.  (But you can also spot the landing sites of the Apollo missions on the surface of the moon with some of the very good telescopes available now… The proof of our moon landings is there.  The stuff was redacted and faked for different reasons… a different cover-up.)

So, why does this matter?  Maybe we are better off being protected from this secret knowledge.  We are too fragile to take it.  There will be riots in the street and the economy will crash.  We are safer being ignorant of all of this.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…no!

It’s time we were given the straight poop (because everybody hates crooked poop… at least they should.)  Our world is dying from pollution and global warming, yet the alien technology can provide clean, free energy.  Rich people are exploiting the poor and the middle class and so much suffering occurs that doesn’t have to happen if we embrace the potential for taking our place in a galactic community that apparently already exists and that we are excluded from solely on the basis of how dangerous our own ignorance makes us.

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Filed under aliens, humor, Paffooney

Bringing the Hammer Down… Making Humor out of Everyday Stuff

No, I am not going to write about violent ways to acquire a trophy wife. Dewey’s courtship methods do not work in a world fairly far removed from the Middle Ages, and Dewey the Goon is a cartoon villain anyway. This post is going to simply be another in a long list of posts where I bend ideas like pretzels in order to justify the spurious claim that this is a humor blog, and therefore, I can truthfully claim to know how to write something funny.

Angry Mallard Eyes are a random non sequitur and need context to be funny.

It can be argued that somebody like me can’t possibly be a writer of good humor simply because I am too gosh-dang smart. (And those of my friends who use this particular criticism on me, tend to actually use country-bumpkinisms like “gosh-dang” way more often than is considered merely foolish.) I admit to using multi-syllable complex words to sound funny because they sound like boobly-doobly-doo gibberish to listeners who have no idea what a word like “bumpkinisms” actually means. And I might add, the listeners don’t usually go to an Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged) simply to be able to laugh at a big word.

I recognize that being an intellectual and having a head full of proven-but-useless facts is actually a disability. You can’t talk to anybody and be fully understood. Talking to somebody who can’t make logical connections between ideas is like walking over a wooden bridge built by an idiot who doesn’t know how nails work… and there are sharks in the water under the bridge. People will pigeonhole you as a “nerd” and treat you like your intelligence makes you radioactive.

So, the logical conclusion is… to be funny you have to act dumber than you actually are.

This man is trying to write humor using chemistry. Beware! He is likely to blow you up if you hang out with him!

Humor can be volatile. Sometimes it insults people. Sometimes it shocks you with things you should be outraged by, but you see the irony and laugh instead. (Preferably without needing someone to throw a steam iron at your head in order to make you see the irony.)

It is probably inappropriate to suggest that kids should go to school naked. Even parents would make other parents uncomfortable by suggesting such a thing. But as a former teacher, I can tell you that most middle school and high school kids are naked in school almost all of the time. Of course, not literally. They are metaphorically naked. Not capable of keeping anything personal a secret. Most of them would never want people to see them literally naked. But they go to great lengths to show you their emotionally naked selves. You can’t keep them from doing it.

And seeing kids emotionally naked is mostly an uncomfortably icky thing for mature adults to contemplate. But teachers have to deal with it. That’s why so few good teachers let themselves become mature adults.

By this point, if you are still reading, you are probably saying to yourself. “Mickey, you are just recycling the same old pictures and lame jokes.”

You got me. That’s what the stand-up comics all do. They tell the same set of jokes over and over, only changing the city they are telling them in.

So, now you know the truth. Writing humor is hard. And most of us who practice it are only pretending that we know what we are doing. You have to be smart, but pretend you are dumb. You have to shock and offend your audience, but only to the point of making them laugh, and never reaching the point where they all grab torches and pitchforks.

So, there it is. Today’s humor post. I said a bunch of things I should not have said. So, rotten tomatoes in the comments are expected. And, please, no pitchforks. I do not know how getting a pitchfork into an internet comment is possible, but I do know that there are Trolls out there with some real skills.

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Filed under comedians, football, humor, Paffooney, writing humor

Being Iowegian

I was born in the 1950’s in Mason City, Iowa… the town that produced Meredith Wilson, the creator of the Broadway Musical, The Music Man.  Yes, River City in The Music Man is Mason City.  So I was born into a unique Midwestern farm-town heritage where swindlers came to town and saved the day with music and an eleventh-hour change of heart.  I was born into the land of Chmielewski Fun Time on the black-and-white TV, Lawrence Welk champagne accordion music, and the Beer-Barrel Polka, courtesy of loads and loads of German ancestry.  I am that unique crossbreed of Scandahoovian and sqare-headed Deutschmann  known by the only slightly racist term of Iowegian.

Corn Country!

943363_457313854350548_485543538_n388135_298275616878726_103835066322783_936339_2005428082_nLand of Long Winter and the ice-storm breezin’ down the plains.

And if you ask an Iowegian if he loves Iowa, he will answer, “You bet!”

And if you ask a northern Iowegian the same thing, he will say “You betcha!”

Iowans talk funny, don’t you know…

There are still corner stores and farm supply stores, though they have gone to brand names now, like Casey’s, BP, and Tractor Supply Co.  You can still find HyVee and Safeway grocery stores.  There are still a precious few family farms that haven’t been swallowed whole by big corporations and agri-businesses.  If you go to the county fairs, you will still find kids showing the cattle or pigs that they raised for 4-H projects, and if you go into the barns after the auction, they are still producing tearful kids hugging and kissing that calf that won a red ribbon and now has to be sold… and they will never see poor Barney or Moo-berry again…

1399024_220039334824422_480122723_o 1450109_688917614523503_5237770938249269421_n 10418988_688917684523496_8272199480536313576_n 10350345_10152788940611349_2865049925004654610_n 10563018_688909541190977_6371844517698833981_n DSCN7127It is the land of the lonely gravel road… the back-street cattle pen… the Saturday night tornado (nearly every Saturday in Spring)…  The VFW and the Lion’s Club Fish Fry at Lake Cornelia….And it is a place where most everything reeks of the past and old ghosts and times long gone, soon to never be remembered because there’s no longer anybody around who is old enough to tell the stories that grandparents and aunts and uncles used to tell.  I not only miss it desperately, but I feel deeply saddened by the loss.  Would I like to go home again?

“You betcha!!!”

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Filed under humor, nostalgia, photo paffoonies

The Final Day of March

I went for a walk in the park today, trying to get the three miles of walking in for the day to help strengthen my heart and blow the filth out of every valve and carburetor in the engine that makes my life run. But it was a gray and dreary day, threatening rain and being downright spitty.

I counted at least four male cardinals sitting high in the tops of mostly leafless trees. Each was surveying his own jealously-guarded territory and singing his little red heart out with the trills of his mating song. No female cardinal was out in the wet and the cold to answer any of them. It appears they were all sitting home in their bird houses sipping hot cocoa by the fireplace. And probably laughing at the stupid males.

March is supposed to be the tail end of Winter and the first bars played in the Song of Spring. It has been more like a skunk’s tail followed by the squawk of a dyspeptic crow.

The trees who lose their leaves are supposed to have buds by now. Even leaves. But that seems to be delayed for cold rain and the frustration of love songs by redbirds going unanswered.

And it reflects the end of the Covid Pandemic like a mirror. There are still masks on faces at Walmart. There are maskless faces as well. Inflation makes spring strawberries expensive. Gas prices made Spring Break travel limited. Donald Trump is still not in prison. And the best descriptive word for the feelings in the moment is, “Meh…”

Things should be looking up. Robins should be returning from their extended vacations in Cancun. The people in Texas should be smiling more. Especially the rich white people. The world is pretty good for them. But apparently we have a bit of hail, a lot of rain, and some killer tornadoes to get through before the season sets itself aright.

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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, pessimism

It’s Not Easy Being Green

It’s not easy being green…. the color of so many ordinary things…

Especially as you grow older.

Because green is the color of growth and youth and life. But those things seem beyond the grasp of your outstretched fingers on your spotty and wrinkled old hand.

I am definitely no longer green like Littlebit, the Oceanian ship’s boy from the seas of Talislanta and the pirate ship, Black Dragon.

And, yes, an Iowa boy living as far away from an ocean as you can get in the United States, in all directions, you are bound to dream of pirate ships and the high seas, especially when you’re twelve and your favorite book is Treasure Island.

But now that you are old, green is more often your color because you don’t feel well… again… every day….

B

But there is still bright green in dreams.

You can still go there and be a child again in memories and your imagination.

It’s just that now the green is written down in sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and cantos.

And talking to your kids about movies, art and artists, stories and writers of stories…

Did you know the favorite color of all three of my children is green?

I have known it since they were small and I could sing to them songs by Kermit the Frog, like “Rainbow Connections” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

And with paint, you make green by combining the blue of sadness with the yellow of sunshine and happiness.

And it’s not easy being green…

But it’s beautiful…

And it’s what I want to be.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, coloring, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, poetry

Nutzy Nuts

Things are not what they seem. Life throws curve balls across the plate ninety percent of the time. Fastballs are rare. And fastballs you can hit are even rarer. But if Life is pitching, who is the batter? Does it change the metaphor and who you are rooting for if the batter is Death?

If you think this means that I am planning on dying because of the Coronavirus pandemic, well, you would be right. Of course, I am always planning for death with every dark thing that bounces down the hopscotch squares of the immediate future. That’s what it means to be a pessimist. No matter what bad thing we are talking about, it will not take ME by surprise. And if I think everything is going to kill me, sooner or later I have to be right… though, hopefully, much later.

I keep seeing things that aren’t there. Childlike faces keep looking at me from the top of the stairs, but when I focus my attention there, they disappear. And I know there are no children in the house anymore since my youngest is now legally an adult. And the chimpanzee that peeked at me from behind the couch in the family room was definitely not there. I swear, it looked exactly like Roddy McDowell from the Planet of the Apes movies, whom I know for a fact to be deceased. So, obviously, it has to be Roddy McDowell’s monkey-ghost. I believe I may have mentioned before that there is a ghost dog in our house. I often catch glimpses of its tail rounding the corner ahead of me when my own dog is definitely behind me. And I am sure I shared the facts before that Parkinson’s sufferers often see partial visions of people and faces (and apparently dogs) that aren’t really there, and that my father suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. So, obviously it is my father and not me that is seeing these things… He’s just using my eyeballs to do it with.

But… and this is absolutely true even if it starts with a butt… the best way to deal with scary possibilities is to laugh at them. Jokes, satire, mockery, and ludicrous hilarity expressed in big words are the proper things to use against the fearful things you cannot change. So, this essay is nothing but a can of mixed nutz. Nutzy nuts. And fortunately, peanut allergies are one incurable and possibly fatal disease I don’t have. One of the few.

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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, satire, wordplay

He Rose on a Golden Wing… Canto 9

Chopin – Nocturne in E Flat Major (Op. 9 No. 2)

Dilsey Murphy made her way back to Val’s usual seat on the bus the first thing in the morning.  Usually Valerie rode to school of a morning with Ricky in his hand-me-down Ford Fiesta, but he had football practice after school on Mondays through Thursdays.  So, Val was available to sit with Dilsey on a cold Tuesday morning in October.

“Hello, Dils.  Something the matter?”

“It’s Blueberry.  She’s sick this morning.  Not going to school like usual.”

“How’s Mike taking it?  Worried?”

Mike Murphy was Dilsey’s younger brother.  Blueberry Bates was his eighth-grade lady love.  They were always together like salt and pepper shakers on a restaurant table.

“He’s devastated.  The Bates sisters took Blue to the emergency room last night.  She’s in the hospital now.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!  We’ll have to go visit her as soon as possible.”

“She’s not conscious.  Maybe a coma…”

Dilsey sat down next to Valerie and the first thing Val did was put an arm around her and pull her in close.  Dilsey laid her head on Val’s shoulder.  Tears followed.

It’s funny how things work in real life.  Not so long ago it was Val in tears, laying her head on Mary Philips’ shoulder.  Then Mary had been the actual leader of the Norwall Pirates, the infamous liars’ club.  But when Mary was going away to college, she didn’t turn to any of the boys to lead the club.  She asked Valerie to do it.  And then Val shouldered the responsibility until she finally handed the leadership of the infamous werewolf chasers and undead wizard whackers off to her cousin, the Terrible Timothy.

“Is it enough just to hold you like this?  Or is there something you wanna talk about?”

“Holding me helps.  Did I tell you I kissed him?”

“On your date?”

“Yeah.  After the movie.”

“That’s sweet.  But don’t let him take advantage of you.”

“I know… he’s a boy.  And he tells a lot of lies.”

“Big ones… black in color… with hair on them… and sometimes spider legs.”

Through the tears, Dilsey chuckled at “spider legs.” 

“But he has a good heart.”

“He does.  You know he was pretty awful to Blueberry about the whole transgender thing, though.”

“Yeah.  Blue has never really been a boy.  But it was hard for him to accept that when he found out she was born with a penis.”

“Empathy for others was never something he was good at.”

“The Bates sisters convinced him though.  They showed him the x-rays that showed that Blue also had malformed ovaries.  She was only a boy on the outside part.”

“I didn’t know that.  I always thought she just needed to be a girl that badly.”

“Do you think it’s easier to be a boy than it is to be a girl?”  Dilsey looked up at Val and the tears were gone.

“I suppose it is to be your brother Danny.  He always sees the funny side of everything and life is mostly one big joke to him.”

“Yeah, but my brother Mike is the opposite.  He takes things way too seriously.  He fights with Mom more than any of the rest of us.  And he really loves Blue, even though he tells me how much he struggles to understand her most of time.  Mom couldn’t force him to go to school today because Blue is in the hospital.”

“Mike is a gallant young man.  You’re right.  It must be harder to be him than it is to be either of us.”

“I wouldn’t want to be Tim either.  It has to be hard to be that smart and that imaginative all the time.”

“I suppose you’re right.  More than half of all the weird things the Pirates have done over the years happened because of what was going on in Tim’s evil brain.”

“His brain’s not evil, Val.  He has a good brain.”

“Sure he does.  And it’s a fine thing for you to admire him for it.  I just say things like that ‘cause… you know… cousins.”

“Sure.  It’s just like me saying brothers.”

“You know, Dils, it’s a good thing to be able to talk like this.  Me and two former Pirates have started meeting down at the skinny-dipping pond.  It might be good to have another girl there.”

“Really?  Who are the other two?”

“Ricky Porter and Billy Martin.”

“Oh, uh… I don’t really know them.”

“Well, if you come along with me next time, you’ll get to know them better.  It could be good for all of us.  Some of us have problems with depression and it helps to be able to talk about anything and everything with people who will at least try to understand.”

“Yeah.  That might be good.”

“I will get in touch with you for the next time.”

“Yeah, um… okay.”

The two girls sat together in silence for the last couple of miles to Belle City High School.  It felt good to hold somebody like Dilsey.  She was warm and soft and good to be near.  And when they left the bus together, Valerie felt like now she was the wise older girl, while Dilsey had taken Val’s former place as the apprentice.  She would be happy to pass on all the things she learned from Mary when she was younger.  In fact, it felt like a real important responsibility.

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Filed under battling depression, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Writer’s Block

I have always contended that I don’t have writer’s block. But some days, especially if I am not feeling well, I have writer’s lethargy. I can be slow to come up with the next thing. Writing can become bogged down and I am easily distracted or lose focus and have to return to what I was trying to do previously.

There is evidence that I have often had that kind of problem frequently on this blog. One thing I do to overcome writer’s lethargy is suddenly start thinking about how you can overcome writer’s block. What are the strategies that help me overcome it?

I often resort to “kickstart statements.” These are surprising or deep-left-field items that give the old brain a shot of adrenaline. The picture of the girl with the message blackboard is that kind of kickstarter. I never could have used that thing in any kind of social-media post when I was still employed as a teacher. It has the potential to generate parent complaints and administrative thoughts about evaluations and contract cancellations. But there really are kids who have thoughts like that in your classroom, and I know because not only was I a kid like that myself, I used it as an optional journal topic for writing practice, and, boy! do they ever catch fire when they can write about something like that and they know only the teacher is ever going to read it. It is the way I learned how many of my students had ever been to a nude beach in Corpus Christi or Lake Travis (Hippy Hollow.)

I can also look around the room, or scroll through my media library on WordPress and find an image or an item that generates ideas, responses, and even stories. I scrolled through to find this image of the Gummi Bear, who was a brief internet sensation on YouTube a few years ago coming from German CGI cartoons that illustrated earworm music with dancing green gummy bears. There’s a lot a goofy writer like me can run away with inspired by a nonsense thing like that.

It is also possible to generate new ideas by deconstructing a metaphor in as humorous and convoluted a way as possible. This word-food thing is the result of writer’s lethargy of a while back.

Of course, there is always the ranting factor. This, I think, is a go-to method used by stand-up comedians. They will pick something that is deeply bugging them, like the rats that inhabit my attic and walls during a winter that hasn’t yet completely gone. And they start listing all the ways they can make funny stories about the time the rat appeared on the bathroom floor tiles while my daughter was on the toilet, or the time the dog killed a rat that was in the trap already, but not dead enough not to bite back with the dog’s nose conveniently within the reach of rat teeth. And then they can rant onward about how disgusting rats are. And how can anyone look at a rat face and think they are cute? You look at that evil, beady-eyed face and you don’t think Mickey Mouse, you think plague, disease, the Black Death, and how much the Bank of America lawyer who sued you looks just like that.

So, you can see that generating ideas is easy. And you can write something interesting even on days when you can’t think of anything … quickly. When you have, not writer’s block, but writer’s lethargy.

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Filed under angry rant, autobiography, comedians, humor, insight, inspiration, Paffooney, writing, writing humor, writing teacher

Happy Birthday, Carl Barks

Carl Barks was born on March 27th, 1901. So, today is his 121st birthday. If you have no idea who I’m even talking about, then you were never a kid and a comic book fan in the 1960s. Carl Barks is both Uncle Scrooge’s father and Donald Duck’s stepfather.

Carl is a personal art hero of mine. I grew to adulthood on the adventures of his plucky ducks doing duck adventures in Duckburg. I have written about my devotion to Carl in this blog before. In fact, here is the link; https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2014/09/27/carl-barks-master-of-the-duck-comic/

That’s essentially true. A large part of my character as a junior high school English teacher was based on what I learned about mentoring from Scrooge McDuck and about teaching important facts from Gyro Gearloose.

Carl was not immune to criticism. Cartoonists get blow-back, a fact of life. But he overcame it with a wry sense of humor and interesting views of how you pursue goals in life. He had a firm sense of fair-play and justice. You could get actual morals to the stories in a Carl Barks’ duck cartoon.

The characters were not perfect. They all had glaring flaws, the heroes right along with the villains. Of course, the villains never learned to change their ways, while the heroes often learned to improve themselves by working on the weaknesses, and it wasn’t all about becoming a gazillionaire (a term I think Barks may have invented).

I even learned a good deal about adventure story-telling from Carl Barks’ comic books about Duck people doing ducky stuff that was really about people doing people-y stuff in the real world. Yes, people in the world around me are very Carl Barks’ ducky.

So, happy birthday, Carl. 121 years young. And he’s only been gone from our world since August of 2000. He still talks to me and teaches me through his Duck comics.

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Filed under artists I admire, autobiography, comic book heroes, goofy thoughts, humor

Aquarium, Terrarium, Planetarium

Angelfish are like the kings of the aquarium. They swim about in slow, stately fashion.

As a teenager I was very much into raising tropical fish in an aquarium. Having fish to watch and fuss around with is a healthy, mind-calming hobby that literally helps you learn about environmental issues. Keeping an aquarium is all about keeping fundamental forces of biology in relative balance.

The lovely pearl gourami is a fascinating finny friend that fills the tank with beauty and color.

Some fish are there just for beauty. The angelfish and gouramis I have pictured already are mainly that. Though you could also say that kissing fish, the pink kissing gouramis, also provide comic relief.

Kissing gouramis actually perform the kissing ritual in the tank, and I really don’t know why, but I suspect it is about courting and sex.

Goldfish are the pigs of the fresh-water tank. They are slow and rather stupid, and they eat massive quantities of fish food, so they also poop excessively.

Keeping an aquarium is a balancing act.

Albino Angelfish
Neon Tetra

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a fancy Veiltail Guppy

If you put the wrong fish together, problems ensue. Fully grown angelfish will eat expensive guppies and neon tetras. Goldfish waste so much fish food and make so much fish poop that the tank has to be cleaned nearly every day to prevent it becoming a befouled cesspool of toxic filth and bacteria. Unless…

Cory Catfish

You employ bottom-feeders like the corydorus catfish or the red-tailed black shark (actually a loach, not a shark) to feed on the waste and be the janitor-fish.

A carefully balanced tank is a living work of art that grows and changes and progresses…

Red-Tailed Black Shark

…Until something goes wrong. Every fish tank I ever put together eventually had a crisis that made the whole ecology crash. All the fish would die and the tank would smell bad. This would usually happen when I wasn’t there to tend it as needed, when I was away at college or on vacation. Water has to be refreshed. The water can never be allowed to cool lower than seventy degrees, even in winter. The air pump can’t break down and stop aerating the aquarium. The filter has to be clean and unclogged. And disease has to be treated.

In a way, our entire planet earth is like that too. Of course, if it was all sealed under glass, it would be a terrarium, not an aquarium. But we can identify the same sorts of threats to the ecosystem of the terrarium we live in as would be found in a tropical fish tank. Donald Trump and his Republican fat-cats are the goldfish. Global warming threatens the air and water in the tank. An asteroid could break the glass and spill the contents out. So many things could crash our carefully balanced fish tank. And there is an even greater environment out there beyond the edges of our little solar system. Does the title make sense now in a way it didn’t before? No? Oh, well, I tried.

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Filed under autobiography, commentary, humor