Loving others makes you beautiful.
Category Archives: humor
What Makes a Child Beautiful?
Filed under artwork, Celebration, humor, illustrations, kids, Paffooney
Rabbit People
On days when I am still recovering from life-altering blows, I often try to find new realms, alternate realities to live in. (Retreating into a fantasy world is one of the reasons she gave for leaving.) And since, as a youth in Iowa, I raised rabbits for a 4-H project, I know rabbits better than I do human people. Rabbits are people too. So, I have been walking among the rabbit people. Seriously, bunnies are better people than most human people. They are not trying to profit off you. They are not trying to get everything they can off you. They are merely there to wiggle their whiskers, sniff for food, poop, gnaw on stuff, and make more bunnies.
I often see myself as a rabbit person. In cartoon form, I am the bunny-man teacher known to the Animal Town School System as Mr. Reluctant Rabbit.
As a teacher, I am always pulling out carrots of irony and gnawing on the ends of them in front of students. If they complain that eating food in class is supposed to be against the rules, I ask them, “Do you want a carrot of irony?”
“Oh, no, thank you sir.”
“They are good for your eyesight as well as your insight. You really ought to chew on healthier things like that.”
“Oh, no sir,” they say. “We prefer Hot Cheetos.”
And so, I taught on like that… like a rabbit, fast and frumious (a Jabberwocky sort of word), and never really bit anybody. Teaching is like that. You offer the good healthy stuff to nourish their little animal minds, and they always choose the junk food instead.
And so life goes on like that. Looking to rabbit people to ease my pain and need for good, wholesome carrots of irony.
I have recently run a free-book promotion on The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.One of the main characters in the book is Tommy Bircher’s pet rabbit Millis. During the course of the story about invading aliens, Secret Agent Robots from the CIA, and making friends when you need friends, Millis is turned into a rabbit-man by a lab accident. He teaches Tommy that you don’t have to be human to be a good, caring, self-sacrificing person. He also teaches him to eat his carrots and greens like a good boy should.
So, I will spend more time with the rabbit people and heal a little bit. That is what you do with the tragedy that life brings you. You spin it into whole cloth, making humor and poetry out of everything bad that happens… wrapping yourself up in a comforting blanket of lies (you can also call those fiction stories), and eating a little chicken soup on a cold day to heal your soul. (Oh, I forget, rabbits often gag on chicken soup. Let’s make that bean soup with carrot chunks.)
Filed under humor, irony, Paffooney, rabbit people
I Don’t Know What to Think
Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island, the actress Dawn Wells, died of Covid. Today is the seventh day of my illness with what I believe was Covid Omicron, and it seems very likely I will not die of it. Of course, I was triple-vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. And she was 82 and arguably in worse shape health-wise than me.,
Is it fair? Should it have happened this way?
When I was twelve and she was 29, I worshiped her. Of course, it was the Mary Ann in syndicated reruns I really loved. She was even younger than 29 in that context.
So, how do you balance existential equations like that?
Would I have traded my life for hers? Yes, probably. But what would it really matter? I don’t know what to think.
The Cardinals football team lost again in the first round of the playoffs. They had their best start of any year this football season, and they were being talked about as a favorite to reach the Superbowl. Then they collapsed and won significantly fewer games than they lost in the second half of the season.
Why did their winning engine go so dead at the worst possible time?
Well, I have been thinking since the St. Louis Blues finally won their first Stanley Cup that if the Arizona Cardinals ever won the Superbowl, as they came within minutes of doing in the 2009 Superbowl, I would probably die because all my sports-team wishes would’ve come true. Does that mean I owe my continued existence to the Los Angeles Rams for defeating them? I don’t know what to think.
Uh oh! Does that mean that since, “I Don’t Know What to Think,” Therefore I am not?
Doing the philosophical-thinking thing can be deadly serious.
Filed under goofy thoughts, humor, philosophy
Damn Lies, White Lies, Stretchers, and Wild Hoo-Haws
**This is a classic post from January, 2015 that is still somewhat relevant… Unless I’m lying.**
There are limits to what people will believe. No really, there are, I promise. You can believe me because I’m a fiction writer, a story-teller, and I therefore tell lies all the time. I was a teacher for thirty-one years, so I not only tell kids how wonderful they are in order to get good behavior and real learning out of them, but I have been told some of the most convoluted, inside-out, purple-in-the-face hoo-haws that are ever told anywhere in human culture throughout human history, and told them by a child with a straight face, perfectly seriously, and with little red horns holding up their crooked golden halos. We are taught to misrepresent the truth from early childhood on.
“Do you have to go potty, sweetheart?”
“No, mommy, I jest like to dance.”
“Do you love me, Mortimer? Or do you just want to get me alone in a car after the prom?”
“Oh, I love you, Alicia. Really I do!”
“So are you in favor of taxing the oil companies at a fair and balanced rate, Senator, so we have more money to spend on Education and public works?”
“Why, I most certainly do, young voter. Ignore that man with the “I Love Exxon” button trying to bash me over the head with that Tea Party campaign sign. Let me kiss that darling little baby of yours.”
This post was inspired by all the lies told in the State of the Union speech last night by President O’Bama (He’s Irish and a conservative like Bill O’Reilly, isn’t he?) Now, I am well aware of the white lies the President buttered our bread with. The economy has actually improved, but not nearly as much as was claimed. And not nearly enough for someone like me, a white male retired educator with significant health problems living in a Red State under Republican-Nazi governor/emperors who want to privatize education and spend my pension money on tax breaks for billionaires. But those lies are nothing compared to the damn lies told by the Republican response lady, Ernst from Iowa. She laid out a plan for undoing everything that’s been done to improve my life by the government since 2008. The Affordable Care Act is to be repealed. Tax breaks for “job creators” are going to be re-instituted. We are going to heal the middle class by deregulating industry and predatory banks and by giving more benefits and goodies to the rich folks who will treat us better than those horrible Democratic liberals who want to turn us all into socialists. This is coming from the Iowa Senator who won her seat by promising your average pork-eating Iowan to use her “hog-castrating skills” to motivate Democrats in congress to see things her way. Iowans (of which I once was one of) know good fertilizer when they smell it. It makes you want to shout, “Hoo-Haw!” (Yes, it’s true, I once knew an old farm hand that, when he heard a ridiculously contorted lie, would shout “Hoo-Haw!” as a sort of derisive laughter to hear such a funny truth-twister.)
Lies are our way of life. We lie about what we think. We lie about what we feel. We lie about how we view the world. We lie about whether or not we tell lies. Could we live a life without ever lying? I hate to tell you this, but if I say, “yes”, then it might not be entirely truthful of me.
I am Sick of Being Angry
I am sick of a lot of things. Right now, Covid Omicron is probably one of those things. Oh, it doesn’t seem like it is going to kill triple-vaccinated me. But it is not making my life easy right now.
It bothers me that States with idiots in charge of the government are trying to legislate school curriculum in ways that eliminate books about black culture and black experience, life experiences of gay authors and trans people, and anything else historical or factual that makes white guys feel guilty or uncomfortable about not feeling guilty. (Notice I haven’t mentioned any particularly stupid red States like Texas or Iowa or the evil kingdom of Florida, nor have I specifically insulted moron governors like Greg Abbot or Ron DeSantis. I am behaving myself just as I learned to do from FOX News.)
It also bothers me that States with rabid monkeys in charge of the government are rewriting voting laws to seriously make things more difficult for certain people to vote, and rearranging vote certification so that the Republican party does not have to put up with people winning elections when they don’t like them. Voting is easy for me because I live in a mostly white-guy voting district and I look like somebody who might vote for Republicans. But even I could get into serious trouble if I tried to give a bottle of water of to an elderly black woman waiting in line to vote. And my side probably can’t win in the upcoming election because the majority of the voters who vote for my chosen side don’t look like me, or more obviously think like me.
And I am definitely disturbed by the fact that somebody who looks like a badly fermented mango and used to be the President of the United States, obviously, and in front of the world, incited a riot at the Capitol which resulted in violence and death for some rioters, but more Capitol Policemen. He literally tried to overthrow the US government. And a year later, he still has not been arrested and imprisoned, in spite of the fact that in many other countries he would’ve been executed for his traitorous, failed attempt at a coup.
But what good does it do to be angry about these things? Evil, greedy crooks have been running the ov er-all show since at least the 1980’s, and maybe longer, since before then I thought and spoke and acted like a child. I probably wasn’t mature enough to recognize how easily evil comes to mankind. Perhaps we were always doomed to eventual extinction by the excessive evilness rampant in the human species.
If mankind is going to be inventive enough and resourceful enough to survive nuclear proliferation, human-caused climate crisis, and de-evolution into fascistic. authoritarian, criminal empires, it will be the positive, creative, and good-natured among us that will find the solutions. Not the angry men that dominate politics and television.
I have done my part already. I taught kids to read, and a few of them to write. I hope I taught the right ones how to think. And I didn’t give them reason to become hateful. And I tried to teach them lessons on higher morality.
I finished a novel yesterday. That means Aeroquest 4, and The Necromancer’s Apprentice are both only a good proofreading away from being published.
Will I have time before the end to finish another? This I do not know. But there exists enough published stories by me to secure my right to call myself an author. Still, it is a task that makes me happy and leaves more positive than negative behind me when this life is over. It is a better, more-useful thing to do than being an angry man.
I hope you will help me, when the time comes, to vote the evil out of the government… if they let us do so. But I also hope you worry far more about being happy and fulfilled rather than angry.
Filed under angry rant, artwork, autobiography, humor, irony, Paffooney
My School-Teacher Soapbox
It has been more than a semester now that I have not been a teacher. I am missing it mightily. I even miss the yelling and screaming, the name-calling and the crazy-eyed threats against life and limb. And that’s just me. I miss what the kids always did too. This was driven home to me as I tried to move my middle child from one school to another. We were hoping to get a bit of a break on his placement. He is a gifted child with a penchant for bizarre and long-lasting obsessions. He has a talent for building huge, monumental structures in Minecraft. He is very computer-nerd and history-wonk. (Yes, I know those are not pure predicate adjectives, but I am a retired English teacher and just don’t care any more.) I was hoping they could overlook his burnout/blowout eighth-grade brain meltdown from the previous year and give him the chance to be a ninth grader for at least half a year. No. Arbitrary rules must be obeyed. (That isn’t even how she said it. More like, arbitrary rules MUST be obeyed). That meant of course that he has to continue to repeat the mindless indoctrination of year number 9, (eight numbered grades plus K), (And Pre-K, come to think of it.) Make that year number 10. No high school yet, though he is more than mature enough, intelligent enough, motivated enough, and sweet-natured enough. We are not loving and forgiving people. We are strict and by-the-book people! Forgive me, Lord. I am writing my own book. (In more ways than one.)
This is what we are doing wrong in Education;
1. We are putting people in boxes. (Little people. Kids mostly. We are calling those boxes things like ADHD, Special Education, trouble-maker, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, disobedient, truant, and “in need of alternative education”… here meaning kid-prison.)
2. We are sealing those boxes with heavy-duty red tape. (Read special or remedial classes as waste-baskets for keeping the rabble and the riff-raff out of the good teachers’ hair.)
3. We are routinely handing those boxes to the box-bangers and package manglers. (The semi-incompetent teachers who have discipline problems because in teacher college nobody tells you what to do with the kid who sits in the corner and sings to himself instead of paying attention, or the girl who gets out of her seat every time the teacher turns his back to go flitting around the room like a bumble bee going flower to flower (except that it is a more hormonal attraction and goes boy to boy); or the competent teacher like me who incurs the principal’s disfavor for having classes that always make noise and are given such classes in boxes as a punishment because that kind of principal is too limited in intelligence to understand that those kinds of boxes are not really a punishment if you merely take a moment to examine the treasures they contain.)
4. We keep the boxes air-tight so that no oxygen or light gets in. (To suffocate learners under piles of worksheets and endless drill and practice is murder. We are killing the precious learners with boring stuff and teaching them to be zombies who all act alike and hate learning because their brains are rotted masses of goo.)
This is what we must do instead;
1. Open the boxes up again and thoroughly mix the contents. (The rich suburban parents will resent the heck out of having their precious honors student sitting in class next to the poor black kid from the projects, but studies show that both kinds of learners do better when they are mixed together.)
2. Notice, we don’t need two any more, because learners are already distributed to different and diverse boxes based on what they individually need and want to learn about and have talent for. Groups should be more like the Shakespeare-loving group or the talkative-socializing group or the Tinker-toy builders group or the vampire-literature-writing group and less like groups of kids all the same color or all the same culture or all the same age.
3. All the teachers need to be trained to handle all the possible… no, make that probable problems that may come up in the classroom. Every classroom needs a proven veteran teacher and an enthusiastic young apprentice teacher. Neither one should have to face the evil hordes alone. And most important of all, any teacher who doesn’t love working with kids (and doesn’t love the kids in a way that will not lead to a prison term) needs be utilized in some way other than as a classroom teacher.
4. Every classroom is a laboratory and every teacher is a creative and daring mad-scientist-type intent on trying new things and only re-doing things that really work well. Forget this nonsense about standard curriculum goals and common core curriculum. Those are only buzz words for suffocating learners and being too lazy to think on your feet in the middle of the every-day classroom battle in the on-going War on Ignorance.
Now you see… I have all the answers and I know everything. The only mystery is… why don’t more people listen to me?
RumikoTakahashi
This is an art exercise, making a drawing imitating the manga style of Rumiko Takahashi, the greatest female comics artist of all time.
This is a second shameless plagiarism and imitation of Rumiko Takahashi by Mickey the Manga Wannabee.
Yesterday I used a Paffooney I had stolen to illustrate my gymnasium adventures, and in the caption I gave credit to the wonderful comic artist I shamelessly copied it from. The second imitation Takahashi that I did yesterday is now displayed next to it above. I am now compelled to explain about my goofy, sideways obsession with Anime and Manga, the cartoons from Japan. I love the art style. I have since I fell in love with Astroboy Anime as a child in Iowa. Rumiko Takahashi is almost exactly one year younger than me. As a cartoonist she is light years more successful than me. She has been crafting pen and ink masterpieces of goofy story-telling longer than I have been a teacher.
Her artwork is a primary reason I have been so overly-enamored of the Japanese Manga-cartoon style. I love the big eyes, the child-like features of even adult characters, the weird poses and still-weirder comic art conventions of this culture from practically a different planet. She has created comic series that are immensely popular in Japan, and have even put down sturdy roots in this country, especially with young adults since the 80’s. She is the world’s number one best-selling female comics artist.
Just as we Westerners have to accept numerous ridiculous things to appreciate the stories told in American comics (for instance, brawny heroes running around in tights with their underwear on the outside of their pants, nearly naked ladies with super powers diving into battle next to men encased in armored suits, and talking animals), the Manga-minded must also practice a bizarre form of the willing suspension of disbelief. In Ranma 1/2, the main character is a boy marshal artist who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water. Much of the romantic comedy of that work revolves around boys and old men finding themselves in the bath house next to naked young girls. For some reason that sort of naked surprise causes the boys to spout fountain-like nosebleeds. In Inu-Yasha the whole thing is about fighting demons with swords. Inu-Yasha himself is part demon. Apparently part-demon is a good thing to be. Japanese villains are spectacularly susceptible to fits of crying rage and tantrums. And everybody looks more like American white people than orientals. Oh, and there are talking animals.
Rumiko is a master of pen and ink. Here is a sample of of her black and white work.
And she does color well too.
The little people are a special style of Manga character called a Chibi, and all regular Manga characters can turn into one at any moment.
And, of course, to read actual Manga you have to master reading backwards. Americans read left to right. The Japanese read right to left. You have to open a Japanese book in a manner that seems both backwards and upside down.
This illustration shows how American publishers flip Japanese comics to make them more accessible to American audiences.
So now, by uncovering the fact that I am addicted to and seriously affected by Japanese cartoons, you have one more bit of evidence to present to a jury in case you decide Mickey needs to be locked up and medicated for a while. Japanese comics are a world of great beauty, but also a world unto themselves. It is an acquired taste that has to be considered carefully. And of all the many marvelous Manga makers, Rumiko Takahashi is the one I love the best.
The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 16
Wayward Butterfly Children
Anneliese’s favorite Gingerbread Boy, Johan of Dusseldorf, found us as we were passing Tornhilda’s Towering Townhouse in the lower part of the castle.
“The Butterfly Child you had me watching is up near the wasp nest asking questions about the Wasprider Cavalry and Captain Bobkin.”
Anneliese frowned at that news.
“Why would she be doing that?” Bob asked me.
I shrugged. “Was she asking about where to find us?”
“Not unless she was intending to look into the iron spikes that the cavalry uses to make the wasp stingers more deadly to the Unseely Court in order to find you.” Johan’s peppermint candy eyes were expressionless, so I couldn’t tell if he was joking or being suspicious. I know I didn’t like the sound of that, and Dolly was my friend.
“Lead us to where you left her,” Anneliese ordered Johan. Over time, the Gingerbread Boy had developed a more Sylph-like shape to make him faster and more agile than the standard waddling cookie-shaped boy.
We found ourselves quickly climbing upward on the castle’s winding central staircase. We passed many Pixies with various animal and bug-like shapes. There were large numbers of Sylphs and Elves and Brownies and Butterfly Children also. I wondered if anybody had ever counted how many lived in this tree-castle. Bob had told me that it had an extensive underground city in the roots of the willow tree too. Could Dolly have been counting them for some reason?
I heard Dolly giggling in that girlish way she did as we reached the topmost landing of the central stair. She was hanging over the shoulder of an older Sylph grown fat and round with age. He wore a captain’s uniform that was tight on him because of his generous belly. He was laughing too, apparently at whatever the two of them had been talking about.
“Ah! Derfie! I’ve found you at last! Have you met Captain Bobkin? He’s in charge of the military defenses of Cair Tellos.” Dolly was smiling at me, but I’m not sure I was very quick to smile back.
“Well, well, I know Anneliese and young Bob quite well. I am even acquainted with Johan the Gingerbread Boy. But who is this charming Sylph who is the friend of the lovely Dollinglammer?”
“This is Derfentwinkle. She’s potentially going to be Master Eli Tragedy’s third apprentice,” said Bob, pulling me forward by the hand and placing my hand om the fat fairy captain’s gloved hand.
“Well, aren’t you sweet.” He kissed me on the cheek. His handlebar moustache was apparently waxed and felt slightly sticky on my cheek.
“We have all been looking for you, Miss Dollinglammer, since the Wizard Pippen arrested and nearly executed Miss Derfentwinkle, and Bob the Apprentice,” said Anneliese with what I took to be a guarded smile.
“Oh, my! Are you both okay? I thought surely the crows would rescue you both!” she said, seemingly surprised.
I wasn’t sure if Dolly was being straight with me, or just pretending. As far as I knew, she had never lied to me before. But Kronomarke can make a girl do horrible things whether she wanted to or not… Though I wondered what memories of evil the Magic Hat had removed from my head that made me think that in spite of not remembering.
And when Dolly mentioned Homer and Bert, I finally realized that I could no longer hear their continued presence in my mind or see what they were seeing through my eyes when I attempted to see through theirs.
I whispered in Bob’s ear, “I can’t feel my crow familiars in my mind anymore.”
Bob whispered back, “That was a special instruction that Master Eli gave to Bibby Joon. No mind can touch yours when you are wearing that cape.”
“Oh.”
I honestly didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Did they not trust me yet? Of course, I didn’t trust me either, not knowing how the necromancer had screwed up my mind before I got the cape.
“Well, Dollinglammer, now that we have found you, we need to get you back to Master Eli’s tower where you will be safe.”
“Oh, yeah… okay.” Dolly turned to go into the stairwell leading into Captain Bobkin’s command center. “It’s the other way, Miss,” said Johan politely. And so we headed down the stair taking us back to the castle.
Filed under fairies, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Top This!
“Dad?” asked the Princess, “I heard a funny word in school today. What does Fuddy-Duddy mean?”
“Oh, that’s a good word,” I said. “It means an old fogey… a stick-in-the-mud.”
“A what?”
“A fussy old guy who likes to have everything his way. Like, if you accuse your father of being one… which you often do… he’s a fuddy-duddy daddy.”
“Ooh! I get it!” said Henry, chiming in. “And if your father is evil, then he’s a fuddy-duddy baddie daddy!“
“Yes,” I said, “and if it makes him sad to be evil, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie daddy!“
“If you are not sure he’s really your father,” said the Princess adding a one-up, “he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe daddy!“
“Yeah!” said Henry. “And if you suspect he may have fallen into a time machine and been turned back into an infant, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby daddy!“
“Now that he’s a baby again he will surely want to watch his favorite TV show again,” I said with a tear of nostalgia in my eye, “he’ll be a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby Howdy Doody daddy!“
“What’s Howdy Doody, Daddy?” asked the Princess.
“No,” said Henry, “now you’ve spoiled it. It just ain’t funny any more.”
“Yes it is! He’s become a funny bunny fuddy-duddy hoo-dad doo-dad saddie baddie maybe rabies hoo-dah doo-dah…”
“Just stop,” said Henry. “You always carry things too far.”
“Right you are!” I said. “See this grin? It means I win!”
“AW, Daaad!” they both said at the same time.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, Uncategorized, word games
My Second Quarantine Adventure
I am now confined to my bedroom for another couple of weeks. Me, alone with my imagination, having to put on a mask to go down to the kitchen to make soup or go to the restroom. And it is the second time. But this timek I am the one infected. Before it was number two son who brought it home from work and got us all locked up at home.
To be honest, I haven’t gotten a test yet to determine that it is truly Omicron. If I do, I have to have somebody help me get there as we do not yet have any home tests. That would put whoever volunteers at risk. Plus, an official diagnosis creates more days missed from work for my wife who already has to teach in a germ-filled middle school with a mask on all day.
So, since I am only assuming I have Covid Omicron, I get to take care of myself in isolation. And if it is not Omicron, for which I am triple vaccinated, I have to worry that the regular flu is probably more dangerous than Covid and could potentially kill me.
I tend to get sick from regular flu even when I am vaccinated.
But while I am holed up with headaches and sore throat, I am finishing a novel, The Necromancer’s Apprentice. I have one chapter and two illustrations yet to finish.
This will be the first novel I have written set entirely in Tellosia, the kingdom of Fairies, Sylphs, Pixies, and Elves that exists just beyond the edges of the small town of Norwall, Iowa. All of the Fairy people and fairy animals are shrunk down by modern disbelief in them to a size where a six-foot person would be only three inches tall.
I hope to have it published in the next week. I, of course, now have additional time to work on it.
So, I have a choice. I can sit and suffer and watch TV, or I can get busy and write and publish.
Filed under autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, humor, illness, novel writing, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 