Category Archives: humor

September 6, 2025 · 12:02 am

“Unfortunately, you are a Writer,” He Said.

I have made up my mind to risk investing more money in getting another book published. Being an author, especially an unknown Indie author, is really just an expensive hobby. Even investing in professional editorial services and print-on-demand publishers can’t help you make any money at it, even if you are talented and good at story-telling. The best I can really hope for is to get my books in print and pray that people will discover them and like them after I die, beaten to death for a crust of bread in debtor’s prison.

So, why would anyone in their right mind want to be a writer?

It is entirely possible that I was simply born that way. I have been drawing cartoons and telling stories since I was about five years old. Maybe even before that. I don’t have many clear memories of my pre-school years. It is possible that I was lost in a library once… or dropped on my head… or in a library and having a book dropped on my head… something set it off if it wasn’t simply in my genes.

I am planning to publish Magical Miss Morgan with Page Publishing. They are a pay-to-print publisher who are slightly more affordable than I-Universe that I used to get Catch a Falling Star into print. I feel like I have to get it published before I die because it is the distillation of my entire life as a classroom teacher. Books like this are important to me. In the Bible, there are prophets and holy men who are filled with the Word of God, men like Jeremiah, that claim the Word is burning within them, and will burn its way out of them if they don’t speak it. My stories that I am working at turning into books are like that. They are consuming me from the inside out. I have to get them written and printed if I possibly can.

I have recently tried and failed to get novels like Snow Babies, Magical Miss Morgan, and Superchicken published with publishers that don’t charge for their services. I got several rejections and one contract that came to nothing because of the economic failings of the publisher. I have tried being infinitely patient. It doesn’t work.

Cool School Blue

I will try to bargain for the most affordable deal I can to get Magical Miss Morgan into print. They will apparently let me input artwork into the final cover. I understand that successful writers tend to starve for at least fifteen years before they see any success and profit. At best, I have six more years of that to go. But this, after all, is my life now. I need to write books and I need to get them published. I am, unfortunately, a Writer.

This being an old post reposted, I now have this book available on Amazon.

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Filed under humor, illustrations, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, writing, writing humor

Tagged as books, fiction, humor, Magical Miss Morgan, novel, novel writing, paffooney, publishing, writing

September 5, 2025 · 12:12 am

Translating Texican

I came to Texas from Iowa. I was well-versed in how to speak Iowegian. (I was, don’t-ya-know, and spoke it fluently, you-betcha.)

Then I arrived, fresh-faced and ready to change the world as a twenty-five-year-old teacher, and began working in a mostly Hispanic middle school in deep South Texas. Dang! Whut language do they speak? (Yes, I know… Spanish. But my students straight from Mexico couldn’t understand the local lingo either. South Texas Spanish and Castilian Spanish from Mexico are not the same language.) I couldn’t talk to the white kids either. It is possible to communicate with Texicans, but it took me years to learn the language. It takes more than mere usage of “ya’ll” and “howdy”.

You can probably see what I mean when you look at these fake quotes based on the things real Texicans actually once said to me. Of course, I can be accused of being a racist by interpreting things this way. Texicans are concerned that you understand that they are not racists. They merely rebel against being “politically correct”. Apparently the political-correctness police give them all sorts of unfair harassment about speaking their minds the way they always have. I should note, however, that I had to use a quote from Bubba rather than Dave Winchuk. Dave is so anti-political-correctness concerned that he regularly said to me things with so much racial heat in them that they would even melt the faces off white people. Face-melting is bad. If you don’t believe me, re-watch the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And to speak Texican, you must actually learn a thing or two about guns. Yes, Texas is an open-carry State. Apparently, Second Amendment rights are the most important rights in the Constitution. My two sons grew up in Texas; the oldest is a Marine, and the younger is in the Air Force. Guns are important to them. I have those same arguments with former students, too. I have learned to say the right things so that they will tolerate my unholy pacifist ideas about how the world might be safer if everybody didn’t have five guns in the waistbands of their underpants. So gun-stuff ends up as a part of the Texican language I have learned to speak.

The point of it all is, language is a fascinating thing that grows and changes and warps and regresses. I love it. I try to master it. And the mistakes I make usually sound purty funny.

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Filed under angry rant, education, gun control, humor, irony, kids, Paffooney, red States, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Texas

Tagged as education, humor, learning, paffooney, satire, talking like a Winchuk, talking to Texans, teaching, writing

September 4, 2025 · 12:01 am

Planting Some Onions

I told you recently that I believe that opinions are like onions. Consuming them is good for you. It cleans out the system. It turns little imperfections and poisons into gas and leads you to expel them. Yes, I mean opinions from my stupid old head come out of my mouth in the same way that digested onions form into gas and come out the other end. And keeping them inside (and safe from being argued or made fun of) can poison you and make you insane. So, I need to plant some onions… err, I mean opinions… and you should feel free to sample the stuff in this onion garden and fart back in my general direction if you feel the need.

It would be good if you don’t throw bricks.

Donald Trump is going to be our President until he dies. I am not saying I want that to happen. I didn’t want Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush to be President for life either. But bad things happen with the inevitability of thunderstorms and flu season. Fox News has been spreading poisonous onion gas for thirty years as a propaganda service to the corporate masters, and they will continue to provide us only with business-and-crime-friendly leaders who will wring every last penny’s worth of value out of our increasingly valueless souls.
Human civilization is doomed. We have failed to deal with human-induced climate change for too long, and now the air is turning into methane and carbon dioxide (that’s right, fart gas!), and only the people wealthy enough to create totally sealed environments will survive. We have the innate capacity to solve problems and overcome disaster, but we won’t because President Trump doesn’t want it to be that way. And he says that climate change is a hoax anyway. I think he has held onion gas inside long enough to pickle all his brain cells.
The Roswell incident was real, and there are aliens living on planet Earth. They will not save us from ourselves, however. President Trump won’t allow that. After all, they are immigrants.

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Doctor Who is the best thing that the British ever gave us. It combines science fiction, fantasy, a goofy sense of humor, and serious charm into a show that can make us think about things in a new way and make us see things from a different point of view. Donald Trump won’t allow him to save us either, even though Great Britain is our very tremendous ally. Foreigners keep us from winning economically.
Eating onions is better for you than eating cheese. Onions get the gas out. Cheese makes you constipated. The French call cheese “fromage”, but that doesn’t make it any better. Cheese by any other name still can stink like Limburger.

“Once it reaches three months, the cheese produces its notorious smell because of the bacterium used to ferment Limburger cheese and many other smear-ripened cheeses. This is Brevibacterium linens, the same one found on human skin that is partially responsible for body odor, particularly foot odor.”

Limburger – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburger
So I have now planted some real stinkers in the onion garden. In a just and reasonable world, the debate would now begin. Refute, if you will, dear reader, for that is the very reason that opinions exist, to start a debate. You cannot clear the air of fart gas without at least waving your hand at it.

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Filed under commentary, conspiracy theory, goofiness, humor, pessimism, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as Donald Trump, humor, News, onions, Opinions and mental farting, politics, stupidity, toxic opinions, Trump

September 3, 2025 · 12:16 am

Skyscapes of the Cloudy Mind

I admit it. Even though I collect pictures of sunrises to glory in the fact that I still have another day of life in this world, I rarely snap a picture of the cloudless sunrise. It is very possible that this has something to do with what ultimately gives life value and makes it worthwhile to live one more day.

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If there is no pattern, no color-changes, no contrast, no variation… then why bother? And this doesn’t only apply to living your life. It applies to taking pictures of the sky too. Solid blue or solid yellow are about as interesting as a minimalist painting. (Have you ever seen the big beige squares and red squares that fill entire walls of the Dallas Art Museum? Like a picture of a polar bear in a fierce blizzard or an extreme close-up of the side of a tomato.)

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Yes, sunshine and happiness are all well and good… but you don’t get a satisfactory skyscape without some clouds in it. In fact, rain clouds provide the most fascinating patterns and colors. What would the picture be without a little drama splashed here and there to make a center of interest or a counterpoint to the happy ending? They say that variety is the spice of life. And when they say that they probably mean cayenne pepper rather than parsley or oregano. If that’s not what they mean, then why the hell did we bring food into the discussion?

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So, I am thinking, there have to be clouds. (Notice, I said “clouds”, not “clowns”, because… according to the song, there “ought to be clowns”, not “have to be clowns”.)

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It is true that clouds can mean sadness… that the rain is coming, that your vision is obscured, that something has come between you and God’s eye. But without clouds, the sky would be plain and boring. Better to burn bright and explode in a short amount of time than to linger over a plain pale blue.

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Filed under clowns, commentary, foolishness, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as clouds, humor, metaphor, photography, sunrises, weather, writing

September 1, 2025 · 12:26 am

Mickey Plays with Pictures and Paint

Once I was finally able to scan pictures again, I did some scanning of old pictures that only got the camera treatment before on my blog.

But why stop a drawing at just the pen and ink, when there is potential for so much more?

So, I took the Microsoft generic paint program and my generic photo editor to not only this pen and ink of the Jungle Princess, but a few other pictures as well.

,,,

…

This is what she looks like after being attacked with color by my arthritic old hands. (There was a day when I could have handled intricate details more cleverly, but that was many, many days ago.

Anyway, I have added new dimensions to Leopard Girrrl with color.

Now I need to add more complications to the basic story of the picture.

…

”’

…

Here is an older pen and ink.

This is Dorin Dobbs, one of the dueling plotlines’ protagonists from the novel Catch a Falling Star.

But, of course, Dorin is a more complex character than this old black and white.

So, color needs to be added.

…

,,,

…

I had this one actually already painted in…

But in order to use it in this project, I needed to enlarge it to make it fit into the other picture.

Making this unlikely pair work together in a story is one of the challenges of doing surrealist stories. They have to be grounded in realism, but also bring jarringly different things together. Like the Jungle Princess going on an adventure with Norwall’s Lying King.

But, putting these two together is still not enough. Let’s try some other things.

The Jungle Princess together with Tomboy Dilsey Murphy is an unusual pairing.

Or what about the blue faun from Laughing Blue?

Or even Annette Funicello?

Ridiculous, I know. But don’t they look like satin sofa paintings?

And how surreal is that?

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Filed under artwork, coloring, drawing, goofiness, humor, Paffooney, surrealism

Tagged as Saturday Art Day

August 31, 2025 · 12:02 am

The World is a B-Movie

Yes, I am saying the world I live in is a low-budget commercial movie made without literary or artistic pretensions. You know, the kind where movie makers learn their craft, taking big risks with smaller consequences, and making the world of their picture reflect their heart rather than the producer’s lust for money.

Mostly what I am talking about are the movies I remember from late-night Saturday TV in black and white (regardless of whether or not the movie was made in Technicolor) and the less-risky as well as more-likely-good Saturday matinees on Channel 3. Movies made in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. They were perfect, of course, for the forbidden Midnight Movie on the show called Gravesend Manor. I had to sneak downstairs to watch it on Saturday nights with the volume turned way down low. (Not that Mom and Dad didn’t know. Well, maybe they didn’t know how many of those I watched completely naked… maybe.)

I watched this one when I was twelve, late night on an October Saturday. I had a bed-sheet with me to pull over my head at the scariest parts. Frankenstein was a crashed astronaut brought back to life by the magic of space radiation. He was uglier than sin, but still the hero of the movie, saving the Earth from invading guys in gorilla suits and scary masks (none of which looked like the movie poster.)

This one, starring James Whitmore, a really good B-Movie actor, was about giant ants coming up from the sewers and the underground to eat the city.

I would end up watching it again twenty years later when I was wearing clothes and not alone in the dark house lit only by a black-and-white TV screen.

I realized on the second viewing that it was actually a pretty good movie in spite of cheesy special effects. And I realized too that I had learned from James Whitmore’s hero character that, in times of crisis, you have to run towards the trouble rather than away from it, a thing that I used several times in my teaching career with fights and tornadoes and even rattlesnakes visiting the school campus looking to eat a seventh-grader or something (though it was a bad idea for the snake even if it had been successful.)

This one, of course, taught me that monsters liked to carry off pretty girls in bikinis. And not just on the poster, either. But it was the hero that got the girl, not the monster. This movie taught me that it sucks to be the monster. Though it also taught me that it was a good movie to take your pajamas off for and watch naked when you are thirteen.

But not all B-movies had to be watched late night on Saturdays. This movie was one of the first ones that I got to go to the movie theater to see by myself. (My sisters and little brother were still too young and got nightmares too easily to see such a movie.) It came out when I was in my teens and Mom and Dad began thinking of me as an adult once… or even possibly twice in a month.

And not all B-movies were monster movies, gangster movies, and westerns. Some, like a lot of Danny Kaye’s movies, were movies my Dad and my grandparents were more than happy to watch with me. I saw this one in both black-and-white and color. And I learned from this that it was okay to take advantage of happy accidents, like a case of mistaken identity, and using your wits, your creative singing ability, and your inexplicable good luck to win the day for everybody but the bad guys armed only with your good sense of humor.

And some of the best movies I have ever seen, judging by what I learned about movies as literature from Professor Loring Silet in his Modern Film Class at Iowa State University, are by their nature B-movies.

I am using movie posters in this blog post only from movies I have personally seen. (And I admit that not all of them are strictly “good” movies according to Professor Silet, but I like them all.)

Feel free to tell me in the comments if you have seen any of these movies yourself. I am open to all opinions, comments, and confessions.

This one is based on Shakespeare’s ***The Tempest.***

I saw this one in college. You had to be 18 at the time to even buy a ticket.

I actually think that this is one of the best movies ever made. It will always make my own personal top-ten list.

I live in a B-movie world. The production values around me are not the top-dollar ones. But the stories are entertaining. The real-life heroes still run towards the problem. And it still sucks to be the monster. But it has always been worth the price of the ticket. And during my time on Earth here, even in 2020, I plan on staying till the end of the picture. I go nowhere until I see the Best Boy’s name in the end credits. And maybe not even then.

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Filed under art criticism, heroes, humor, monsters, movie review, strange and wonderful ideas about life, TV as literature, TV review

Tagged as film, horror, movie-reviews, movies, reviews

August 29, 2025 · 12:06 am

Surreal Self-Portraits

What you see is basically me.

It is said by somebody who wasn’t basically me that any time an artist draws a picture of someone, or paints a picture of someone, or twizzles a twizzle-snoot of someone… they are basically making a picture of themselves.

So, this Paffooney that I paffooned of a purple mouse in a Don Martin-esque style, is supposed to be Mickey the cartoonist. And Mickey is supposedly, basically me.

And here I am as Muck Man, the superhero. It is me because the super power he has is his horrible, non-adorable, and unrelenting stench. The horrible smell of him renders villains and bad people unconscious or worse… sometimes straight to the hearse. And using his olfactory assaults on evil as a way to make something terrible into something with a -someness of awe, makes him indubitably, indelibly basically me.

And here is a picture of a boy who might’ve been my son if only I had been given enough good sense to fall in love with that first blond young lady who first had thoughts about making babies with me. I didn’t. I’m stupid. And now she has only girls. That makes it a picture too of basically me.

And this little not-me was me all along, and as the boy who sees colors, it’s really not wrong. Synesthetic they call it in a name that’s not long, but is resoundingly deep like the words of a song.

And you might argue this one and say that it’s true… “This one is too pretty to be a picture of you.” But you would be wrong on this basis, you see…

The monster inside me is basically me

And here I am all magic and purple, and I just blew the rhyme again, so this isn’t another danged verse. I drew this picture of Milt Morgan from an old school picture of me.

I often say the character in the stories is based on the Other Mike, the other boy I grew up with who was named Mike in my little home town.

But he thought like me, he acted a lot like me. He even looked like me, at least a little bit. So, if I am portraying him, I am depicting basically me.

And this is the naked me, as a nudist back in childhood in Rowan, Iowa, which I never was… not like this… but still am. Because I am a writer. And writers always write about their naked selves, showing the whole world what saner and more prudish people keep secret. If they were truly smart and wanted to keep their secrets to themselves, artists would never draw or paint or write about or twizzle about themselves. In fact, they would make no art at all.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as art, food, photos, Saturday Art Day, self portraits, technology, the surrealist life

August 23, 2025 · 12:17 am

Dog Writes

This is a repost of a classic bit… A post written by my dog using her tongue to lick-type. I offer this now nostalgically because she left us behind for dog heaven a year ago.

Okay, like, my name is Jade Beyer. I know I look like a dog, but my family lets me be a people sometimes. They let me eat enough people food from their table to turn into one of them. You know, like, all fat and unhealthy and some stuff. So, since Mickey is being lazy today, he said I could write his blog for him. It won’t be very long because it is taking forever to pick out the right keys with my nose. And my nose is bif… I mean big enough to hit the wrong key sometimes. So I have to edif caretully and ofren.

My family does a lot of funny stuff I can tell about. Like how they pee. They go in my extra drinking places. You know, the white things with the extra funky tasting water. Why are you not laughing about that? Don’t you get it? The house is full of carpets where they could pee and mark their territory with their scents. But they would rather just pee where I drink. I don’t get it. And why is Mickey yelling at me that I can’t write about that? I just did, didn’t I?

But besides that I can tell you about my Momma. Mickey is my Momma. Why do I say that even though Mickey is a man? Well, when I was a wee little puppy and my family found me in the street, Mickey was the first one to pick me up and hold me. He was the first one to feed me. He says I must have “imprinted” on him as baby animals sometimes do. And that’s why he’s my Momma. I love him best. Even when he is grumpy and mad at me. I chew up a lot of his stuff because it smells like him and I love him so very much.

I am writing this today because Mickey is busy shaving off his face fur. He found some old pictures of himself for yesterday’s post, and it made him wonder if he could look anything like that again. I tried to chew the old pictures so I could love them even better, but he just got mad at me and swatted me on the ears. He said I could show you the old pictures, and not eat them. So here they are before the temptation gets to me;

Wasn’t he a goofy-looking kid? I like him better with glasses. I tasted his glasses once, but not the ones in the picture, the ones he is wearing now. His face doesn’t look anything like the third grade pictures any more. I would very much like to lick that little-boy face with the same tongue I use to lick my own butt, but Mickey says he’s glad I can’t because that kid was dumb enough to let a dog lick his face. Apparently when people get older, you just can’t lick them as much. It just makes them grumpy.

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Filed under family dog, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as dogs, family, family dog, humor, life, paffooney, writing

August 22, 2025 · 12:09 am

Chances Are…

Chances are… I could wear a foolish grin, like a Johnny Mathis Moon in the sky…

I could waltz… all alone in a dark room, never seizing on the chances to fly…

But there’s a time… meant to let the summer in…

And love songs… all make me wonder… Why?

Silly, I know. But silly and surreal is how I go, how I deal with the time. A song in my head leads to rhythm and metaphor and rhyme. And it takes me from old winter and the waning of the moon… to the silly month of June… And my dancing shoes were never quite so spry.

Chances are… if you really read this, you will know I am depressed.

My life is all unfairly messed.

And I barely can get dressed…

To go tripping cross the floor, dancing awkwardly toward the door, ’cause I’m in need of so much more.

But in a poem I find it… the very reason that I rhymed it… like the crooning song that’s stuck in my old head…

I will catch it, and I’ll bind it, like a fool who hopes you’ll find it, and the treasure will be revealed before we’re dead…

Chances are… that you hear that silly tune, as it reels across the page in silent spread. And the song will slowly stop, as I dance a final hop, and the answer is brightly shining in my head.

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Filed under Depression, feeling sorry for myself, finding love, healing, humor, magic, music, Paffooney, poetry

Tagged as Chances are..., Johnny Mathis, poem, surrealism

August 21, 2025 · 12:41 am