I think I know what you’re thinking. He’s just going to retell a bunch of Eddy Murphy, Richard Pryor, and Flip Wilson jokes from the 1970’s which his fuzzy old-coot memory will get wrong in slightly amusing ways. Or he’s got dementia now and has turned totally racist. Or both.
Well, maybe. I am old after all.
But, no. I am writing about that kind of humor where you laugh when someone in the story dies a horrible death in an unusually humorous way. Or most dead-baby jokes. Or the part of “The Producers” where “Springtime with Hitler” turns out to be a Broadway hit musical even though the two con men in charge were gambling on it being a failure.
Bad things can be funny, you know.
At least if you have a brain-damaged sense of humor like mine.
Kurt Vonnegut was a master of very dark black humor. In his novel, Cat’s Cradle, (Spoiler alert!) the world ends at the end of the novel because the mad scientist commits suicide by swallowing his invention, Ice Nine, freezing solid in a way that couldn’t be melted at room temperature or above, and then falling into the ocean, thus permanently freezing the entire planet Earth. Golly, what a laugh fest!
Black humor is, of course, highly dependent on dramatic irony and the fact that people smart enough to read and enjoy Vonnegut, usually are smart enough to realize if you read too much ironic humor you are not in danger of actually rusting from the brain outward.
I, of course, am a black humor aficionado of sorts. I thoroughly enjoyed all the torture, death, and deadly mistakes of Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder. Of course, I had a ridiculously hard time gaining access to the show which originally aired on the BBC and didn’t appear on American TV channels until our household gave up television to save money due to ever-rising cable costs.
Fortunately, during the yearlong imprisonment of the Covid pandemic, I discovered the entire series available on Hulu which is cheap enough to stream on my laptop. Only in excess of 500,000 people had to die for me to get the chance to binge on all the historical reiterations of this amazingly dark show full of humorous English demise and occasional accidental murder.
So, that is what black humor is to me. As defined by Professor Wilson at Iowa State when I was assigned to read a novel by Saul Bellow and ended up reading three, Henderson the Rain King, Herzog, and The Adventures of Augie March. Of course, I am not sure which novel was the assignment. They were all deadly hilarious. And I am, after all, old enough to probably be demented and a closet racist. Is Saul Bellow Jewish? I ask because I am also forgetful.
The hardest dream-to-reality connection to make is my duck nightmare. I know I bummed the world out yesterday with unfunny dream deliberations. But in this post I explore the lighter side of nightmares. It all began when I was about four years old and we went to the Deer Park Zoo in Mason City, Iowa.
Truthfully, when you look at it from the proper point of view, at four you are small and all animals look like monsters. The three ostriches they had in a chicken-wire pen were at least several hundred feet tall. The deer were huge with giant Bambi-eyes. I was little and still very much in a touchy-feely stage of life. And the goose-pen had a large hole in the front, just large enough for a goose head and neck to fit through at high speed. That is exactly what happened when one wide-eyed nerd-child wandered close enough to give a gander a premium chance at a beak-first goosing. Whether my pants had to be changed immediately afterwards is something I have yet to work up the courage to ask my parents about. No rush. They are only in their eighties now.
Anyway, I was left with a recurring nightmare, always involving a duck or very similar waterfowl with big, massive, white dentures. Yes, you heard right, a duck with teeth. It’s all right for you to laugh now, but I woke up in cold sweat every single time I had that nightmare. Right from the moment when I realize that the evil little duck-mind has fixed its wishes on taking a nice, big bite, to the split second where the toothy duck-head zips towards me, I am gripped with total existential terror. And it wakes me up.
So what does this doozy of a dream mean? Do dreams have to have a meaning? All two-hundred-plus times? (I lost count, so sue me.) I do believe, however that it must be some kind of anxiety dream. And the last occurrence was now four years ago, so the possibility of duck-dream remission is very real to me.
If my last post chilled your innards, then hopefully this one lit them up with laughing gas.
This closing Paffooney from yesterday is entitled “The Leap of Faith”. I’m not sure why that is important to know, but it is.
Mai Ling had swiftly learning the ninja skills that Ged Aero-sensei taught the students in his dojo. Unlike the majority of the White Spider Mutant Ninja Space Babies, Mai was completely in tune with the skills of movement, attack, and defense she was learning at the dojo because her psionic mutant power was telekinesis, the ability to remotely move things with the mind.
Her mental ability complemented her ninja attack skills in that she could alter the course of projectiles in flight. If she threw a ten-pointed shuriken at someone, it would not miss.
The picture in her inner eye, the secret of psionic control, was always the flower-like shuriken rotating through the air at the target, even if it needed to make a ninety degree turn to hit the precise spot she aimed at.
Shu Kwai, Ged-sensei’s lead student, had worked with her hundreds of times, helping her to see the power to control movement of objects as part of a wondrous dance. He was also a telekinetic and could also do the dance. It was a dance that could protect others from harm, or if the need arose, destroy them.
At twelve years old, Mai was already developing into a shapely young lady.
“You can’t be ashamed of your body when you are doing the dance,” reminded Shu. “We wear hardly any clothes not because we are immodest, but because we do not wish to impede the dance in any way.”
Mai frowned at him. Shu could be such a prig at times. He stood there wearing only a white loincloth, while he himself had made the rule that no one should go un-armored on a potentially hostile planet. Except for the ninja underwear, his light orange-yellow body was functionally nude.
Boys could get away with that, especially scrawny teenage boys with practically nothing to show off anyway.
Shu and Mai were both natives to the planet Gaijin where Master Aero’s dojo was located. That meant that they were descended half from the Japanese humans of Earth, and half from the nearly-human Sylvani of deep space. Mai herself had bare feet, bare legs, and a bare midriff. She was not about to leave breasts exposed, or even her arms. She wore a computerized ring-sleeve on her left arm, which helped give gauss-magnetic acceleration to objects she threw. And the magnetic arm bands on her right arm gave her a magnetic shield she could shape and manipulate with telekinesis.
“I am not going out into this living jungle without any clothes on,” she stated firmly to Shu. “You don’t know if these strange aliens will attack. Besides, I fight better with clothes on. I’m not a pervert like you.”
At fourteen, Shu was definitely vulnerable to insults like “pervert.” He cast his eyes downward to scan the ground and blushed furiously. It was entirely possible, Mai thought, that Shu had a secret crush on her. With the red flower in her hair, she was definitely beautiful, at least, in her own eyes, and possibly those of Phoenix whom she now considered her boyfriend.
“Okay, we all better obey orders while we are on this weird planet. I was just talking about on the practice grounds.” Shu sniffed imperiously for added emphasis. That was okay. Mai accepted the fact that he outranked her.
“It’s just you being a hypocrite like usual,” sniffed Hassan Parker, the boy who had been forbidden from going naked. Shu didn’t even offer a comeback.
Cornucopia was probably the strangest planet Mai had ever visited. A vegetable starship had simply appeared in Gaijin space and announced themselves in need of help. Little Gyro the Nebulon inventor and one of Ged Aero-sensei’s favorite students had discovered that all the intelligent creatures were plants and had a special scent language unlike anything in the known galaxy.
The first alien they had been able to communicate with was a strange, onion-like creature that Gyro’s computer translator named, “Luigi the Onion-Guy.” Why the plant-man had an Italian first name was a complete mystery, but there was a clue in the fact that Gyro’s computer also dubbed the language of the Cornucopians “Stink-Talk.” Nebulons were known for weird senses of humor. And Gyro with his unusual Psionic power had programmed the thing as he rearranged its molecules with his little blue brain.
Shu Kwai helped Mai Ling put on shielding-armor and kinetic shock absorbers.
“Are you sure we can’t take any weapons?” Mai asked.
Luigi the Onion-Guy had pleaded with Ged-sensei not to kill any plants, not even the seemingly evil “Throckpods.”
“Master Aero doesn’t want us to anger or even frighten any of the regular flower-people of this planet.”
“Flower people? They look like walking thistles and weeds to me.”
“Still, Ged Aero-sensei only wants us to locate a Throckpod and convince him to come back with us so our group can study it.”
“So, it’s a spy mission.”
“Intelligence gathering.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s different.”
The jungle was different than any other jungle Mai had ever been in. Instead of trees and vines and shrubs, it was made up of salt pillars, living crystals, weedy plants, and mold. Mai’s ring sleeve indicated that large parts of it were toxic and deadly. The two young ninjas proceeded cautiously.
Each time they encountered a carrot-guy or a potato-guy or a corn-stalk-guy, they were told to take a different trail through the toxic jungle. Fortunately, Mai’s ring sleeve was programmed not only to interpret the plant people’s Stink-Talk, but could make a map of their progress as well. Otherwise, Mai and Shu would be hopelessly lost
Finally, a radish-guy with a puffy red and purple face pointed to a large stand of weeds.
“In that spot you will pinpoint a Throckpod.” The ring sleeve translated the smells and spoke the message aloud in a voice that sounded like Mickey Mouse. Darn that Gyro!
Shu looked at Mai and nodded. They walked over to the stand of weeds.
“One of you is a Throckpod?” asked Shu. The translator device made the word “Throckpod” smell suspiciously skunk-like.
“Who is asking?” said one of the flower-headed weeds. With nearly humanoid eyes. “You appear to be skoog monkeys.”
Skoog monkey was an insult on most planets, at least, when used to describe a humanoid. They were vicious little primates from the planet Misko Skoogalia. Human beings were much more like the little poop-throwers than any human was comfortable admitting.
“We are students of Ged Aero-sensei, the White Spider,” said Shu. “We think you may have heard of him, because other Cornucopians came to our world to seek him out.”
“We have heard of your head monkey, yes. But we do not recognize his authority.”
“All we want is for a Throckpod to come and meet with him. We wish to learn more about your planet. And about your people.”
Everything went silent and smell free. Mai wondered if they knew that the translator device in her ring sleeve would pick up and translate any smells they used to talk about the situation. Maybe, however, they used telepathy or something. Mai wished Sarah the telepath was with her at that moment.
One exceptionally large weed came over to Mai and bent down over her head. Mai realized that it was examining her red flower with little seed-like eyes.
“You have killed a seedling!” said the possible Throckpod. “You must be killed in return.”
Mai’s heart leaped. Shu was obviously surprised too. They had no weapons, but both of them could pick up and throw rocks, pebbles, and crystal shards with only a thought. Mai could propel one like a bullet with her ring sleeve.
The rest of the weeds gathered around them too.
“It’s a flower from my own world,” said Mai, lamely. How could she make these plant people understand that, not only was the flower not intelligent like them, it was an artificial hair decoration and made from silk?
“A flower is a flower,” said the Throckpod, “and a monkey is a monkey.”
“Pick up a score of pebbles and rocks, Mai,” said Shu. “It’s time we gave them the old lawnmower treatment!”
“Lawnmower?” asked the Throckpod.
“A machine for cutting grass,” said Shu. “It cuts plants down close to the roots.”
If a weed could turn pale, then these Throckpods were suddenly gray. They knew about human technology apparently, and were completely unsure of what Mai and Shu were capable of. It was at that very moment that Mai had a bright idea.
“Why do you assume the flower is dead?” asked Mai, looking into the human-like eyes of the weed standing over her.
“Because it doesn’t move.”
Mai smiled. She used her telekinetic ability to make the petals of the silk flower move. In fact, she made the delicate little thing do a spinning dance just above her brow. “This flower is alive and it is my good friend and companion.”
“Have it say so,” the Throckpod replied menacingly.
“It is a tiny flower,” said Mai, thinking quickly, “and tiny flowers on my planet have not learned to speak. Can you not see that it is alive?”
“Accept her word, brother,” said one of the other weeds. “We don’t want to risk this lawnmowing thing.”
The plant-man relented. “Very well. I will go with you to see this master monkey of yours. You will remember that Throckpods are the natural rulers of this planet, and we are to be treated as king-things.”
“King-things?” asked Mai.
“Royalty,” suggested Shu.
“Oh,” said Mai. It was Gyro’s crazy translator program again.
So, finally, Mai’s Cornucopea spy mission was ending as she trudged back to the White Spider Mutant Ninja Space Baby camp. She had found and mastered a walking weed known as a Throckpod, and she left with the melancholy realization that it would be nice to have a talking flower to put in her hair, but that wish could never come true.
When you get to be old and burdened with deteriorating health like I am, you appreciate the renewal of spring with a new intensity. This year has been like that. Cold weather and dehydrating cold were worse this winter than I can remember… especially since I feel it in the marrow of my bones now more than ever before. But the inevitable rebirth did eventually come. The apple tree my wife planted in the hope that Texas heat would not destroy it is putting out more blossoms than ever before.
The first flowers to put out their winter-weary heads this year were relatively stupid daffodils. They came out in February only a day before an ice storm came along to slay them for their daffy dunderheadedness. I didn’t take their demise very well. I suffered a lot this winter and was looking for the sun with desperation.
But then, in March, dandelions poked out their bright, dandy heads and decided to stay.
And, though we have had plenty of wet weather and rain, the flowers apparently all had a big meeting and decided the time had come to make their yearly assault and wrench the world out of the hands of Jack Frost and his icy minions.
Wisteria began climbing the back corner of the house. They like to spread their purple majesty out over the area by the cracked and derelict swimming pool. It is moist and shaded out there, somewhat protected from our cruel Texas sun.
My wife’s bed of roses, both red and yellow marched out into the open air and began to dance gently in the wind like grand ladies decked out in their Easter best , showing off their color and their sass for all the world to see.
I am coming back now too… less seriously depressed. I completed a doll collection last week. The educational problems my children were facing are now seemingly straightening out. It is a time of rebirth… happiness… and flowers. My smile has returned.
Today I went for a walk with my daughter. Both of us are walking to improve our health. But it was a bright and sunny spring day. And in many unexpected places… there were flowers.
Yes, flowers are blooming now in Texas.
And it occurs to me, I was walking in a metaphor. That’s what life is. A finite brief journey from beginning to end. And round every turn… There are flowers along the way. Bright spots of color and gentle, lovely scents… things that make the walk worth taking.
And so, I went for a walk with my daughter today. A walk amongst the flowers.
The picture is called “One Day the Old Mad Gods Will Be Made Whole Again.”
It comes from a time in my life, in the early 80’s when I was fascinated with Medieval art and their conception of Armageddon and the end of everything.
They believed that everything, even the end of the world, was somehow cyclical. Like Odin, Thor, and Ragnarok, the end of everything merely wiped away what was and started again with something new.
It will not be too long before I am putting such notions to the test with my own life. Signs of the onset of Parkinson’s Disease plague me, and make me worry about losing control of my body and probably something worse, control of my mind.
I may be finding out soon if there is an afterlife. Of course, as a Christian Existentialist, I don’t need one. I am satisfied with my life the way it is, and I don’t anticipate messing it up significantly before it is complete.
But there is definitely evil in this world. The fossil fuel industries decided back in the 1970’s that they would do anything to preserve short-term profits, even sacrificing the long-term existence of life on Earth to continue to exploit the resources they gripped tightly in their evil, green hands.
We only have about twelve years left to reverse the destruction of the entire ecosphere on Earth. And it will require massive technological problem-solving by the very best of us, and probably an impossibly difficult reeducation of stupid people and Republicans. That means we are more likely to become extinct than survive as a species. Probably good to know so that we can be prepared for it.
Hopefully the evil people burn with us.
But because we have existed in this reality, our existence is now permanent. If we reach the point of no longer being here, we still existed, and for whatever reason or purpose, the fact of our existence will still be real.
I can’t prove it, but I firmly believe there is life out there. We are not alone in this universe. The odds are astronomically against us being all there is. And, truth-be-told, they are more like us than they are different from us. When and if you meet them, be kind and welcoming. They may still kill and eat you, but the same can be said about all of us. And we are better off dying ignorant and happy than we are when we curl up in a ball of misery and refuse to participate in anything… ever, Who knows? Our interstellar pen pals may be the salvation of us in the end.
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.
I have always had very vivid dreams. This picture was inspired by one. I dreamed of being a seventh-grader going to school in lizard-person school on a dinosaur planet. And throughout the dream my classmates were threatening to eat me. Oh, and the clothes they are wearing in the picture were the school uniforms.
Of course, naked-in-school dreams are a common one. This picture is more of a naked-on-Main-Street dream.
The title of this post is a Shakespearian Hamlet phrase. The picture above is a detail from a dream about Shakespeare’s The Tempest dream.
That particular nightmare had Caliban in it.
Fairy tale dreams are much nicer. In this Sleeping Beauty dream, the monsters are tiny.
I also admit to having animated-cartoon-type dreams. The turtle-boy in front is from the actual dream. The rest of it is made up to fill in the background of the picture.
This dream was obviously inspired by a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I have both good dreams and nightmares. And all of it provides fodder to fuel pictures and stories, but not always in that order.
Speaking from empirical scientific proof supported by data and experiment… I would have to say NO.
I mean, seriously, the Roswell saucers crashed because of a little electromagnetic interference. And if you think about this planet… Donald Trump? Are you kidding me?
These are Tellerons, not intelligent alien lifeforms.
So there is simply no evidence that intelligent life exists anywhere in this universe.
“You are evidence of that,” you say, “since you apparently believe the government has been covering up the existence of aliens since 1947.”
And you would be right. I am not claiming to be intelligent. I am not monkey-headed stupid either. And the government has been covering up the existence of visitors from other worlds since they took possession of the crashed space ship, or possibly two spaceships, from Roswell, New Mexico. The stupid part is that their efforts to cover it up and change the story are proof that it is true. Nobody goes to that much effort over that many years just for a bit of a goof-play.
The reason the aliens were there looking around at an army air base is fairly obvious. What did the army air corps do in 1945 in Japan after all? The little gray guys were just worried about what their stupid neighbors were up to. Sooner or later, you know, stupid neighbors will mess all over your own back yard. So they came to investigate and stupidly got caught in a lightning storm, or possibly an Earther monkey-people weapon system. We are obviously dangerous enough for that.
So speaking of empirical evidence, you have a chain of stupidity causing event after event, and all of it subverted by dishonest attempts to keep people from knowing the truth. Humans from this planet were stupid enough to use a couple of nuclear weapons to murder other humans. This is documented stupidity.
If you believe the military and U.S. government, then you believe that they were using Project Mogul balloons to monitor Russian nuclear weapons development and crashed one of their super-secret balloons. Then the government officials misidentified their own balloon and okay-ed a newspaper report that the army had recovered a flying saucer. Immediately after being chewed out by a general, they then published a retraction newspaper story claiming the debris was a weather balloon, substituting pictures of crap from a real weather balloon that looked nothing at all like a flying saucer, and removing the top secret balloon crap so the Russians couldn’t learn that they were using balloons in the New Mexico desert. More documented stupidity.
And if you don’t believe the military and U.S. government, then you are probably considering the eyewitness testimony of people who were there and saw things and heard things and were then threatened by military goons to be quiet or be disappeared into the New Mexico desert. Now, eyewitness testimony is not considered absolute proof because witnesses can be unreliable and even tell lies. But hundreds of people? Who corroborate numerous rumors and details? Even people like intelligence officer Major Jesse Marcel who would later reveal stunning details to UFO investigators? And you can’t guarantee silence from witnesses, even with threats, especially over time. But the fact that the government tried? Yep, documented stupidity.
So, is there intelligent life in this universe? There is definitely life. But intelligent life? The evidence says “NO!” And remember, we elected Donald Trump to be our leader.
Catch a Falling Star 