Today’s post is full of portraits of imaginary people. Some of these are based on real people who posed for them or I had a photo of. Others, even if they are based on characters who were once real people I knew, are entirely made up out of my head.
Category Archives: humor
Saturday Art Day in 2021
Filed under artwork, characters, humor, illustrations, Paffooney
What 2020 Has Done To Me
The year began with me recovering from a bout of flu caught while substituting at Bush Middle School. I had thought it would be the end of me. But, no. I managed to survive. It left me feeling that no mere virus could get the better of me.
Oh, foolish and overly simple me! I had no idea what was coming. I had decided to write a novel set in a residential nudist park in South Texas that I knew nudists from but had never actually visited.
I discovered that my financial situation was headed for disaster if I didn’t earn enough money from substitute teaching. I was trying to pay off my Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and I was committed to paying $2000 dollars worth of our ever-increasing property tax. I wouldn’t be able to earn the money in time to avoid late fees, which meant I needed to earn even more extra money.
I dug down deep and found myself able to substitute teach to the full extent my doctor and the Texas Teacher Retirement System would allow. I was really hitting my stride and enjoying teaching again. I met a couple of kids in classes I subbed for that connected so well, I used them as inspiration for a few things in the novel I was writing, A Field Guide to Fauns. The novel practically wrote itself.
I published it. But it was about naked people. So a majority of people who might be fooled into reading one of my books will never read this one.
I was looking forward, after teaching so much that I could pay off the tax only one month late, to making more money I might actually be able to put in savings for a few minutes. But March ended all hope of that.
The long Covid imprisonment began with one novel published and one more, my AeroQuest rewrite, being more than halfway along.
I found myself with way more time to write and do other stuff than I had anticipated. But, of course, little money to do anything but survive with.
I definitely understood Kurt Vonnegut better in very short order.
I had a chance to reread a LOT of my own writing.
I gave some of my own books a careful reread and proofreading, even updating the content on Amazon. I began collecting my best posts from my daily blog. I put it in book form, becoming not one, but two collections of autobiographical essays.
My quest to put all my teacher recollections, goofy humor and cartoons, and philosophical wacky-waxings into some kind of order, allowed me to get a real sense of the overview of my life as both a teacher and a writer.
But, not only did my number two son get a job with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department as a jailor, but he got Covid in July as well from his job.
Not only did my number one son find a serious relationship with an excellent young lady, but he was forced to stay away from us and limit contact to the point he almost became a stranger.
And not only did my father’s Parkinson’s Disease get worse, it killed him in midsummer during a surge in the pandemic that meant only my mother and two sisters could actually be at the funeral.
But, in spite of setbacks, I managed to stay Covid-free and read and write way more than is probably good for any human man.
I published or re-published six books during 2020. It is an accomplishment that reflects a fear of imminent death and loss of any further chance to make my writing real, not just foolish fantasies and dreams trapped in my stupid head.
So, what has 2020 done to me?
It has made me fearful of the future. It took away enough of my health that I will never be able to stand in front of a classroom ever again. And it took my father away.
But it has also galvanized me with the heat of the struggle to survive. It has made me more careful, and more appreciative of what life is, and especially more determined to have more of it.
Filed under autobiography, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, novel writing, writing
Short and Sweet
No, I am not talking about a midget girlfriend today.
I am talking about brevity.
Some of the best writing gets directly to the point.
You have to know how to say exactly what you want to say.
Then say it.
Like, “Tootie is a Cutie.”
And once said, the point made is…
Sheer poetry.
Filed under commentary, goofiness, humor, poetry
AeroQuest 4… Canto 121
Canto 121 : Leafy Green Problems (That are Probably Nutritious if you Eat them)
As Gyro came through the weird blossom-like airlock without his helmet, just like the others, he saw Billy and Sara helping Junior clean plant secretions off Junior’s face, neck, and hair. Ged was also cleaning secretions off his hand-rocket and plasma pistol, a rather important thing to keep clean and free of particles that might cause a thermonuclear explosion.
“Hey, guys,” Gyro said, “that thing took my helmet off and ate it or something.”
“No flowering plant is ever going to want to eat your stinky helmet,” Sara said. “It smells too much like your spahnschloop ar nembhis.”
“So, you speak Nebulonin, now?” Gyro said with a dimpled blue grin.”
“Khompuruc sah, Gyro. All I have to do to learn an alien language is grab it out of your little Smurf brain with my telepathy. Kheehannan doh Churro.”
“What? You want to force me to eat Mexican cinnamon bread?”
“That’s not what that means, Gyro, and you know it well. It goes in the other end entirely.”
Gyro giggled. “I like your weird accent, though. It makes everything you say sound like a joke.”
“That’s practically what everything is when you translate it from Nebulonin,” said Junior with a wry grin of his own.
“Speaking of translating, that whole messy process used a semi caustic plant juice to sterilize us enough to enter this plant-filled environment. Do you still have the universal translator, Gyro?” Ged Aer0-semsei said. He was finishing the careful cleaning of his deadly weapon/transportation aide.
“Oh, no! It was in my helmet, Sensei.”
“The helmets came out on the other side of the blossom. Retrieve yours and take proper care of the translation device. There are strange alien beings aboard this strange alien ship”
Gyro suddenly had an anxious little knot in his stomach. The last thing he wanted to do was let his new friends and teachers down.
He retrieved his helmet. Using his Psionic ability to measure the molecules of the translator device, he soon discovered that, not only did he not have to worry about damage, but the thing was cleaner by far than it had been before passing through the blossom airlock. And besides, he was confident of fixing everything when all he had to do was shift the molecules that the thing was made from.
The inside of the alien thing was a complex of tunnels between root structures, flowering alien plants, savory-smelling herbs, and various plant-like leaves, branches, and brush.
“If this is an alien space craft, where are the crewmen?” asked Sara. “I sense alien minds, but I see nothing that looks like alien personnel.”
“I don’t sense any mechanical minds,” said Junior.
“Billy, do you intuit anything with your clairvoyance?” Ged asked the young shaman.
“I get a strange sensation of war and impending violence. But not here. It is coming from some place far away.”
Gyro looked all about himself. Nowhere was there anything, creature or machine, that looked like anything but a plant. But… maybe that was the key.
He bent over to look at a large, squat, onion-thing. The bulbous part at the bottom had a couple of fruit-like black orbs on it that almost resembled sad, expressive eyes. And a mouth-like hole was blowing visible clouds of onion-stink at him.
“You know, we haven’t seen any crew or technology. All we’ve seen are plants. Could it be that the plants are the technology? Maybe even the crew?”
Nobody responded to Gyro’s observation. They were obviously all deeply invested in their own wonderings.
So, Gyro wondered if the people on board this plant-like starship were plants… What would they look like? And how would they communicate?
He looked at the onion-thing. It blew another cloud of eye-watering onion-stink at him.
Was that the answer? Did they talk with odors instead of words?
He looked at the translator. There were parts of the translator’s battery system that he could repurpose to be a mini-material-synthesizer… to make smells of his own. And then he adjusted the microphones to become olfactory detectors. It was easy when all you had to due was shift atoms of hydrogen, lithium, and carbon into other elements that were even more useful. Soon, he had the smell-detector working hard. He reprogrammed the translator A-I to interpret smells as language. He set the new stink-sniffing detector to translating onion smells.
“Ola, Mi AmiGos!” he heard from the speaker. The readout display said (Oopsie! Not Spanish!) Then the Galactic English translations started pouring out.
“ThanK bugbladDers! I can finally tAlk to you. I aM captain (best approximation) LuiGi the Onion-Guy!”
“Hey, guys! Come here and listen to this! I am talking to an onion, and he says he’s the captain of this ship.
“YeS! That’s nearlY, possibly right. YoU are on board the Cornucopean Ship, the… UglY Pod!
“We corNucopeans need Your HelP,” (said in really strong smells… possibly due to anxiety or excitement.)
“Wow, Gyro!” said Sara.
“Yeah, wow… I’m talking to an onion…” Gyro grinned sheepishly.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, satire, science fiction
Doing Diddly-Squoot
Yes…
It means I am doing nothing.
And I am working really hard at it.
I do have a work in progress.
I have added to it once in the last week.
I think the expression, Iowegian as it is, comes from the expression “doing squat” which means “doing nothing at all” combined with “diddling around”, the non-sexual meaning of which is “dithering or only working in an ineffective way.”
I humbly confess that I am not that great of a researcher when it comes to linguistic facts and word origins.
I am much better at making things up and creating my own portmanteau words.
But I do have a very good ear for how people actually talk. Especially when it comes to Iowegian, Texican, Spanglish, and Educational Jargon-Gibberish. Counting English and Tourist-German, I speak six languages.
I also humbly confess that I make big mistakes. I have been working hard for a week on editing published books because of how an overreaction to one small inappropriate detail nearly destroyed one of my best books and now I have to deal with the impression some readers have that I write inappropriate stuff all the time.
Yes, I definitely erred…
I also realized I assume everybody accepts nudity as easily as I do.
They definitely don’t.
But naked is funny. And that is not a point about my writing that I am willing to concede.
Doing diddly-squoot can also result in really weird stuff like this Christmas-card composite of my artwork and Vincent Price’s 1967 Christmas tree.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, foolishness, forgiveness, humor, nudes, Paffooney, pen and ink, self portrait
Merry Christmas… (maybe)
This holiday is going to be different. Different from the holiday I grew up with. Different than the celebrationless non-holiday I lived with for twenty years. And different from the new traditions we established, my kids and I, as we pulled away from my wife’s religion. The pandemic affects everything.
I was born into a family of Iowa Methodists living in North Central Iowa in a tiny farm town called Rowan.
I remember Christmas being the most magical time of year. I believed in Santa Claus. I felt like the Christmas magic that we saw in seasonal specials on TV in black and white were so real… the realest reality there could be…even if Andy Williams wasn’t the host of the program. Candy canes and Christmas trees and sitting on Santa’s lap being terrified of getting it wrong… and making him think I was asking for a talking Chatty Kathy doll even though I was a boy… FOR MY SISTER, SANTA! FOR MY SISTER… Oh, gawd, that really went wrong. And we had family gatherings where we ate pot-luck family meals with Swedish meatballs and turkey and mashed potatoes with brown gravy and casseroles of fifteen different kinds and nuts and candy…eating ourselves into a semi-stupor as we also did only three and a half weeks before at Thanksgiving.
And presents. Everybody gave presents. And Christmas Carols in Church.
But time goes on. You grow out of believing in Santa Claus. You even grow out of believing in Andy Williams. Perry Como was better. And it was getting so commercial. And Christmas shows we loved as kids seemed so simple and lame when watched again as young adults.
And then I married a Jehovah’s Witness. If you are not aware of it, Christmas originated as a pagan holiday, the Roman Saturnalia. It was a night of feasts and orgies and excess. And Jehovah’s Witnesses believe their beliefs are the only true beliefs, and celebrating Christmas is of Satan. I celebrated Christmas for the last time in 1994. I married in 1995.
For the next twenty years I did not celebrate Christmas. At least, not out loud where Brothers and Sisters in the Truth could hear. And the season became very austere and sanitized for me by the religious integrity of those around me in the faith.
But there were friends in the faith that lost their faith and left the congregation permanently. And the people around me changed. And I was beset by illnesses, mine and my family’s. And Jehovah’s Witnesses are very good at helping the sick. But, apparently only for others, not me and mine. They began turning away.
I am probably disfellowshipped now. They have turned away from me, and I am now isolated from all those who used to be friends and acquaintances. My wife is still a member of the congregation. And this is good because she desperately needs to believe. It is a good life for her and keeps her relatively well. But I know they disfellowshipped me, even though nobody told me so like they always do in such cases. My wife barely talks to me now. And this is probably because members of the congregation are supposed to shun the disfellowshipped, even if they are family.
But I bare no one ill will. That may be part of the problem. The Bible directive is to “Hate what is bad.” And blood transfusions and psychiatry are both bad things according to the Witnesses’ understanding of Bible commands.
I didn’t need any transfusions, and though I have significant stress and diabetic depression, I was never hospitalized for that. But I did kinda fake some disfellowshippable offenses so that I would be the one, and my wife would still be able to be a Witness. She needs it more than I do.
And, to be quite honest, I need to feel a little bit of Christmas now in my old age and infirmity. After all, it is a holiday all about making sacrifices in order to give gifts to others. I know that this post will make Jehovah’s Witnesses cringe. But now that they are shunning me, I guess they won’t be seeing this anyway. And I wish them a Merry Christmas in spite of it all.
AeroQuest 4… Canto 120
Canto 120 – Space-Walk
Junior Aero found the antique vacc suits somewhat clunky and uncomfortable compared to what the Aero Brothers had available on the Leaping Shadowcat. Not that he’d had one on more than once, briefly. But they had rigid sections in the thighs and upper arms that restricted fluid movements and joints that didn’t allow flexibility. And there was no intelligence at all ln the helmets or in the systems circuitry. It was like wearing the stupid Nebulon Danjer suits, one-piece protective organisms that Nebulons wore in space. But even though levels of stupidness were the same, the current space-wear had none of the fluid movements that the totally stupid Danjer-critters allowed.
Ged was the one taking the lead. He held the hand-rocket that moved them all through weightlessness in space. All four students were tethered behind him.
Billy Iowa was tethered directly behind Ged. Sarah was attached to his suit from behind him. Junior had fastened his tether cord to the metal loop on the lower back of her suit. And Gyro brought up the rear. After the boobie-spotting plan hatched in the little blue guy’s evil little brain, Junior felt it was right to put him as the rear end of the line. For a Nebulon, Gyro could be a real little rear end.
Stars filled the universe outside the airlock, nothing but perfect silence besides.
The alien “seed-pod ship” was lit by Gaijin’s yellow star and Junior noticed how flower-like it really seemed to be. Could it be just some sort of wandering interstellar organism? Junior really didn’t know. Still, it was no more deadly than anything else they had faced on Gaijin. Even stiller still, it was certainly no less deadly either.
Ged signaled the start of the journey across open, airless space with the first blast from the hand rocket. The line jerked each student forward in turn.
Sara turned and signaled that everything was okay. Junior gave the “OK” sign back.
As they neared the big blossom-looking appendage, the scanner pad that Ged was holding identified the structure as an airlock.
As Ged drew near enough, prehensile tentacles of some sort reached up to take hold of him.
“Ged Aero-sensei, do we run for it?” Billy asked over the comm system.
“Let’s allow it to perform its apparent function,” their master answered.
Junior then watched in horror as the tendrils latched onto Ged’s suit and pulled him inside. It looked for all the universe like the thing had eaten him.
“Ooh! I don’t know about this!” said Billy, alarmed as the thing slowly consumed him next.
“Does it hurt, Billy?” asked Gyro.
No sound, of course, came back in reply.
“Sara, can you pull them out again?” Junior pleaded.
Sara didn’t answer as the blossom-thing swallowed her next.
Then it was Junior’s turn.
“Shneejara sohk nahl, Junior-san,” saluted Gyro as the thing grabbed Junior by the feet. That meant in Nebulonin, of course, “It has been an honor adventuring with you, Junior-san.” Then, the moving, living tendrils were all over him. He could feel them pulling at his suit, twisting, turning, and then, horrifically, popping his helmet off. Slime covered his head and slid down into his suit. All he could see was a faint reddish glow through the tendrils’ translucent flesh. He sincerely hoped the slime was not digestive juices.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, satire, science fiction
Kitchen Table Talking
Some of the best things that go through my stupid old head come from breakfast and dinner conversations that take place around the family table during family meals. I get ideas for topics, scenes, jokes, and notions for use in my fiction writing or in my nonfiction blog by chewing the mental fat with my kids. My daughter likes to talk about artwork, how to paint, how to compose a picture, and how to put it into the form of a picture book for children that she intends to write about mushrooms growing under the kid’s bed when the kid puts off the cleaning under the bed for too long.
This morning they made the mistake of asking me about my connections to literary nudists on Twitter. I added details about the first nudists I ever met in Austin, Texas in the 1980s. I told them about visiting an old girl friend in the Clothing-optional Apartments in Austin where she often stayed with her sister and her sister’s husband who lived there. I told them about how, being a visitor, I was given the option of being there with all my clothes on. I told them about making friends with nudists there that I stayed in contact with by mail. And this was an opportunity to talk about such things without totally mortifying them like I did the last time I talked about that particular subject at a Mexican restaurant where people we didn’t know could hear.
My number two son, the jailor for Dallas County, gets the chance to tell us his stories about being in jail (being a guard of course, not an inmate.) When his mother is not present he gets to share some of the profoundly blue-colored vocabulary he is learning from work at his new institution for the incarceration of serious criminals and mentally ill people. We get to discuss guns and gun culture, as long as we are careful to never criticize my son’s newfound conservative values, deeply held and violently defended in the manner of most conservatives.
And, of course, the dog is always there to look at the table with beg-eyes, because she can smell the meat that was cooked and usually consumed before she’s allowed to get near enough to snoop and see the tabletop. She has to settle for head scratching, tummy pats, and and smacks on the ear when she tries to jump into laps where she is not actually wanted.
Table talk is critical time for connecting with family, something that is far too rare in today’s world. And we make a conscious effort to keep it going because we are awake to its basic value.
Filed under family, family dog, humor, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 
What the Lord Hath Given…
You know how that Bible lesson goes, right? What He hath given, He can also take away. And the Bible doesn’t suggest He ever owes us any explanation. God is subject to capricious whims, apparently.
This is part of the reason why I often have doubts about the fairness of most religions. How do you worship that which is cold, uncaring, and capricious? And yet, to say there is no God above… or below… is anathema to the way I was raised and the fundamental structures of my moral and inner self.
If there is no God, then why is there any life at all? Life is complex and intricately ordered. How can that be if the universe is random and mindless? Physics already says all order is headed for eventual chaos. Our chance to control the climate crisis and save the planet is now down to seven more years. If we don’t get our act together before 2027, we are doomed. What is the need for order at all? Why do you need to have a counterpoint to chaos if there is no underlying point to the whole process?
Philosophical questions like this are why what I really am is a pure and simple agnostic. I am open to all possible answers. But I have no scale to weigh any of it.
One way that the Lord is taking things away right now is through the capitalist system worshipped by wealthy and greedy men. Especially the Septuagenarian Mutant Turtle currently in charge of the Senate. He and his billionaire mutant overlords don’t want to raise the national debt to help ordinary people through the Covid crisis and the economic chaos it caused, even though they were fine with ballooning the debt in 2017 to give tax breaks to billionaires and corporations while actually raising taxes on pensioners like me.
My house is falling apart. I can raise no extra income because of the pandemic. And the bank is making noises about balloon payments and raising the specter of homelessness for the four of us.
And, of course, the biggest thing God may soon take away is my very life. I am having problems with high blood pressure, fainting spells, and numerous symptoms that could easily be interpreted as the onset of Parkinson’s, the disease that took my father’s life. Of course, going into the clinic to find out for sure could financially sink me, as well as infect me with Covid and kill me even though I previously survived my son’s experience with the disease without becoming infected.
This January and February are expected to be the worst part of t the pandemic that we have yet experienced.
But this little exercise in philosophical whining and complaining will, in the long run, do nobody any good. I don’t blame a God for my troubles because of the atheist in me. I know difficult times lay ahead for everybody, not just me. And just as Muckman, the superhero, turns his unfortunate condition of nearly-deadly body odor into his super-power for fighting evil guys, I need to turn my misfortunes into something good.
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Filed under angry rant, artwork, commentary, grumpiness, humor, illness, Paffooney
Tagged as complaints about Covid