Category Archives: humor
Hidden Kingdom (Chapter 1 Complete)
Filed under comic strips, fairies, Hidden Kingdom, humor, Paffooney
Blogging Advice
The only advice I am actually qualified to give here is… don’t take any blogging advice from me as worth more than diddly-squoot.
That being said, my blog views are gradually going up year after year. I am followed by readers all over the world, and some of them actually read my blog regularly, rather than just looking at the pictures and occasionally hitting the like button.
I have not yet, however, learned to throw the moose. I started this blog in order to promote my published writing. I now have seven published books available on Amazon. I made $2.60 in royalties during 2018 so far. So, as a marketing ploy, it has been a total failure.
But as a tool in my writing life, here are some things I definitely count as benefits;
Writing a blog post every day makes the ideas flow more easily and does away with any threat of writer’s block.
Writing every day is practice and it makes me a better writer.
I have learned how to engage with an actual audience.
I am able to try out various writing ideas without worrying about success or failure.
So, all of these things add value and keep me at this blogging thing which didn’t exist in my early life when I was planning for becoming a writer when I left teaching.
If you are tempted to make the huge mistake of following my advice and emulating me, I would warn you, I do not make a living as a writer, and I never will. I am a writer in the same way I am a diabetic. I can’t help it. I wouldn’t change it even if it were possible. I have a body of work that I intend to continue to build on until I am no more. The creation of it is a necessity of my existence. And I certainly don’t regret a single syllable, though what happens to it when I am gone is not important to me in any way that matters. I hope my children will keep it as a legacy, but I only do it because it shapes the story of my life.
And so, I continue to throw meese (or mooses… or moosi… or whatever the hell the funniest plural of “moose” is) and continue not to knock down any pins.
Filed under blog posting, humor, Paffooney, Uncategorized, writing, writing teacher
Another New Novel Cover
My morning was used up making a cover for The Baby Werewolf out of old works of art and art-editing programs. I will soon start the final edit and formatting of the book, and I hope to publish it in December. It is a related story to the one I just published, Recipes for Gingerbread Children. The two books share some of the same characters, events, and even dialogue. The two stories, however, have a very different focus and thematic approach to what happened. It is a gothic novel with humorous overtones. The Baby Werewolf himself is not really a werewolf. He is a boy with hypertrichosis, the werewolf-hair genetic disorder that gave Jo-Jo the Dog-faced Boy his carnival freak all-over fur. The story is a first-person narrative told by three different characters who all were in Recipes. Torrie Brownfield, the Baby Werewolf himself, is one of the three narrators. I can’t wait to see how this two-novel story arc comes together, and if anybody at all will actually read it.
Filed under art editing, artwork, humor, Paffooney
Aeroquest… Canto 41
Canto 41 – The Pyramid of Evil
Dr. Hooey proved to be as wild and eccentric a character as Trav Dalgoda. He wore outlandish clothing and said remarkably stupid things without a moment’s hesitation. He was not pretty to look at with a big nose and uncombed hair. He was consistently frazzled and at his wit’s end. Still, he was probably the highest-level problem-solver that Tron had ever met.
Outside the pyramid that no one had been able to detect two miles outside the borders of Oasis City, Hooey was hunkered down next to Tron and Hassan as the wind blew fierce, stinging sand all around the base of the pyramid.
“I don’t know how you found this thing, Hooey!” said Tron, having to yell over the roar of the storm. “It seems like this sandstorm never ends. It’s been here since my people arrived within scanner range of the planet.”
“I think it’s more or less permanent. All I had to do to find it is scan for a focus of artificial radiant energy large enough to create a concealed feature of the planet, like this one.”
The King of Killers came back to his leader, running with his head bent down into the wind. He had a breath mask on to keep the sand out of his lungs, and brought three more for Tron, Hooey, and Hassan.
“The doorway seems to be over there,” he yelled, pointing with the breath mask on his chin while he handed out the remaining masks to the others.
“Okay, King. Lead the way!” ordered Tron.
Tron had his laser pistols attached to the powerpack on his back. The King had an ACR hanging from the leather strap over his back, while Hassan had a net-pistol that had a one-shot net trap loaded. Hooey carried a thing that looked like a small plastic water gun that he called his really big gun.
The four men ran to the pyramid door, hands up to protect their faces from the cruel white sand. King brought them to a dark alcove in the base of the pyramid.
“This is where we go in!” hollered King. “I don’t know what’s in there. My sensors read nothing at all, not even the stone that it should be reading!”
Worried, the group inched forward into the darkness. Tron took over the lead and allowed King to drop back and cover the rear. Hooey hovered over Tron’s right shoulder, while Hassan limped along on his new leg to Tron’s left, trying to get used to the unfamiliar device.
“I do hope there are no mummies in here. I hate battling the living dead!” said Hooey firmly.
“How could a man of science be stupid enough to think that mummies could ever come to life?” asked Tron, rolling his eyes, the artificial one looking more disgusted than the natural one.
“Pretty easily!” remarked Hooey. “Look there!”
In the long Gallery ahead, hard to see in the dim light, four shapes lurched toward them. They were skull-faced and bandaged. Mummies come to life!
“No. I’m not sitting still for this crud!” growled King. “I have a wife to get back to.” The infamous King of Killers rushed to the front and tried to prove that he deserved his ruthless nickname. He went fully automatic with his ACR and sprayed bullets all over the approaching undead creatures. Bone splintered and wiring sparked. Two of the creatures fell completely to pieces. A third one lost its head, but still kept stumbling forward.
“There’s something fishy about these mummies,” grumbled Tron. “They walk too much like movie monsters to be real. And what’s with all the electrical sparking?”
The two wounded mummies kept coming towards King even though men who were punctured that much by armor-piercing shells should have died and fallen still. King tried feverishly to load another clip of ammo, but before he could, a mummy grabbed his shoulder. Electricity shot out of the bandaged hand and King went unconscious, his hair smoking profusely.
“Hooey!” shouted Tron, about to demand that the Time Knight do something.
Dr. Hooey stood and pointed his little plastic water pistol. He sprayed the two remaining mummies and completely shorted out their control circuits. They fell in smoking piles of bones.
Tron rushed forward to help his fallen man. King Killer would live, but he’d had a nasty shock.
“What were those things, Hooey? Tell me straight, or I might have to shoot you.”
Hassan picked up a severed hand wrapped in rotted bandages and took a close look. “Rot warriors,” said the Space Elf. “They are Mechanoids made from completely dead men.” He handed the boney hand to Tron.
The bones were inlaid with glittering microcircuitry that you could only really see up close. A nearby skull yielded up a wrecked computer processor. The main control pod was found in the chest cavity.
“The perfect soldiers,” said Tron. “They’re too dumb to question orders.”
“Yes,” said Hooey, “and designed to put a real scare into any locals who might come in here.”
“What do you suppose they are protecting?” asked Hassan.
“Oh, I already know,” said Hooey. “They are protecting a Galtorrian agent of Count Nefaria called the Lizard Lady. She’s here in this complex somewhere.”
“You already know what’s supposed to happen here, don’t you?” said Tron. “That’s how you knew to bring the water pistol.”
“Well… In a sense, that’s true.”
“All right, King is already hurt. Spill it, Doctor. What will happen next?”
“Patience, Tron, my boy, only time can really tell.”
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, science fiction, Uncategorized
Closing In On It
I am reaching the point that I am almost ready to self-publish another novel. I am only 30 pages away from having Recipes for Gingerbread Children fully edited and formatted.
Do you know that feeling of dread you get when you go back to a completed manuscript that you have left in the cooler for a bit? You don’t? Is it because you have never done that? Or because you have never dreaded it? I was terrified that, as good and wonderful as I thought the story was when I wrote it, the impression was a false one based on self-delusion and narcissism. I dreamed in my nightmare about re-reading it and realizing it was total garbage and a total re-write would be necessary.
Well, I was worried about nothing. On rereading it, I discovered that the things I was sure I had messed up on were executed well. The story was precisely the way it was supposed to be after mulling it over and plotting for more than twenty years. The structure I built it on still seems to work beautifully, and the key themes are still present for the reader to interpret as he or she sees fit.
There is nudity, violence, and horror in this book, but not done in a way that leaves the wrong message in a young reader’s mind. In fact, it answers questions about life that, as a former school teacher, I strongly believe are on young people’s minds. It has characters who are nudists and want others to become nudists too. It has stories about Nazis and concentration camps. It also has fairy tales that are almost as gruesome as those of the Brothers Grimm.
The main character and focus of the story is an old German woman who is a Holocaust survivor, a story-teller, and a baker of gingerbread. The character is based on an old woman who lived in our little town when I was a boy. But though the character is inspired by a real person, the real Old German Lady was not a nudist, nor, as far as I know, a storyteller. So, most of what you learn about Gretel Stein in this story is really about a story-teller who is me. I promise, however, that I did not wear a dress at any point while researching for this book.
It will be a story about fairies fighting to have a place in the modern world though they have shrunken in importance to the size of mice and insects. It is about finding the courage within yourself necessary to survive a terrible thing like the Holocaust. It is about self-sacrifice. It is about love. It is also about baking cookies and telling stories. There’s a werewolf in it. There are also two twin sisters in it who are nudists and spend a lot of the story naked. It is about standing up for yourself and becoming the hero of your own story.
And the most exciting thing for me is, soon this book will be available from Amazon.
Filed under fairies, humor, novel writing, Paffooney
Resolving Unsolvables
This week saw two difficult problems arise that took a whole lot of problem-solving, panic, and unbelievable luck to solve. I had considerable evidence that my laptop computer was fatally infected with a trojan virus in spite of the subscription I had to Norton anti-virus software. And on top of that, I had to renew my driver’s license since yesterday was my birthday. And not an ordinary renew-by-computer sort of thing, but a dreaded trip to the horrid hated DMV.
The DMV was a thorny problem because Texas is a Red State and fully committed to keeping certain people with the wrong color skin, the wrong sort of last name, or the wrong size of bank account from acquiring picture IDs for the purposes of the foul crime of voting for Democrats. So, specifically, of the long list of things you were supposed to bring to get a license renewed, the birth certificate was a problem for me. I have a birth certificate, but because of a courthouse fire in Iowa in the 1970’s, it was only a photocopy of a handwritten replacement document. They had warned me when I called and asked that this would never do. I had to have an authenticated copy issued by the records department of the State of Iowa. So, I spent 50 dollars on an expedited official document by express mail, still likely to arrive after the expiration date of my license.
Of course, once I lucked out and received the document only three business days after I requested it, I discovered that the DMV had been moved from the location I had relied on for almost ten years. And when I did find the DMV office and waited in the cold in the early morning for the doors to open, I discovered that the DMV I had found didn’t actually issue driver’s licenses. Bummer. I had to try again the next day ten miles further away in Lewisville.
I fully expected to be turned away again that day for some unforeseen and petty reason. Instead, I found the opposite to be true. They saw an old white guy walking with a cane and thought, “Oh, Republican voter!” I was moved to the front of the line. The Indian lady ahead of me was not given a license because she did not have both a birth certificate and a valid passport. But I got my license with only the expiring license to prove my identity. They didn’t even need to see the birth certificate.
The computer virus was just as frustrating. The only option was to try to find the right software to remove the bug by using the infected computer to purchase one online. Since Norton had been overwhelmed, I went with McAfee and, fortunately, got a year’s subscription for 60% off the regular price. I downloaded it, spent three agonizing days on a full scan, then got a result of zero problems found and fixed. So, as further programs began crashing, I called their tech support and got a guy with a heavy Indian accent to remotely fix the problems for me. In three hours of time, he miraculously restored my computer and even removed some other unwanted programs slowing my computer which I had been unable to remove myself. It turned out that the problem may have been caused by another anti-virus program whom I accidentally downloaded with another program package, but then I refused to pay for the upgrade when it reported that it had found five seriously infected files on my computer. You can’t be too careful when downloading things from the internet, though being careful and vigilant is almost impossible when there are so many horrible things out there that you never suspected people might be capable of.
Anyway, I survived both ordeals and still managed to finish a novel manuscript and got closer to publishing another one.
Filed under angry rant, humor, Paffooney
What Are You Reading, Mickey?
Well, I have a thing for collecting old books. This one is 100 years old. It is a modern edition, though, re-published in 2003.
Here’s my Goodreads review;
| This book is an ancient treasure in many ways, being now more than 100 years old. The illustrations by John O’Neill, too, have a very antique charm. The book is a little short on plot. Dorothy wanders off from the Kansas farm, meets the hobo Shaggy Man, and Button Bright, one of the stupidest little boys in literature. They meet old friends along the way; Jack Pumpkinhead, H.M. Wogglebug T.E., the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, Tik Tok the mechanical man, Billina the Talking Yellow Chicken, and the living Sawhorse. And they all end the story at Princess Ozma”s birthday party where Santa Claus is the favorite guest. This is a potboiler novel for Baum, obviously written only because the readers all begged for it, and it has a lot in it to be enjoyed by true fans of Oz, but not much in the way of suspense or excitement. It can easily be summed up in the words of Button Bright, “I don’t know,” which he says in answer to every question. |
I find the illustrations more compelling than the story itself, but I have to admit that the story itself is incredibly visual.
I love this book, even though I don’t respect it much as a storyteller myself. But it is the fourth Oz book I have read since childhood. And it isn’t because of the story. Frank L. Baum is a genius at creating loveable and memorable characters. And these illustrations are wonderful. The Shaggy Man with the head of a donkey? Absolutely fabulous! You can’t beat that. (Well, you can. But whether he’s a donkey or a man, it’s still a crime. )
Filed under book reports, book review, humor, Uncategorized
Aeroquest… Scherzo 4
Scherzo 4 – Rolling a Twenty
“So, Trav Dalgoda does it again. Your total roll of the dice with your skill of plus eight added to it is an impossible success of twenty. You fly the burning spaceship into a curly-patterned rendezvous with the Leaping Shadowcat.”
“That’s a load of bull-puckie, Mr. M!” said Arturo. “He always rolls a perfect twelve on two six-sided dice!”
“You agreed that he could use his jack-of-all-trades skill to do this.”
“But it’s a plus eight! That is just too unfair for a skill you can use to do almost anything.”
“You let me spend all my adventure points on that one skill,” Eddie said.
“He’s right you know. And besides, if he were to fail that role, then the two ships could crash, killing your two characters as well as his.”
“And mine too!” said Amanda. “Trav rescued Madonna from the slaver pirates of Mingo remember.”
“Yes,” said the game master, “and her little blue son too.”
“Aw, that little bugger is just an NPC that you put into the story. I really don’t care if he dies.”
“Eeuw, cold-hearted woman!” said Eddie.
At that moment, Dr.Hooey opened the front door of the young teacher’s apartment.
“Oh, hello. My time machine must’ve had another brain fart and brought me to the wrong time and relative dimension.”
“Wait a minute,” said Eddie, “Who the hell are you?”
“Yes, exactly, but maybe hell is a bit too strong. My name is Dr. Hooey. I am looking for a place to leave a baby from the distant future.”
“A baby?” Amanda gasped.
“Oh, yes. And who are you, young lady?”
“I’m Amanda Lilliput and this is my boyfriend Arturo Castrovalva.”
“Would you like to raise a baby from the future?”
“Um… no, thank you.”
“May I ask what you people are actually doing?”
“It’s a science fiction role-playing game. These former students of mine are all playing space-faring characters in a space adventure set in the distant future,” said the goofy-looking teacher.
“Oh, my. That is somewhat worrisome. Are you sure you don’t want a space baby from the future?”
“Oh, I do!” said Eddie.
“No, he really doesn’t,” said the teacher. “Thank you anyway.”
So Dr. Hooey left and closed the door behind him.
“That was weird,” said Arturo.
“Mr. M, I need to make a new character for the game,” said Eddie. “He will be a time traveler, and I will call him Dr. Hooey.”
”
‘
Filed under aliens, goofiness, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
Catch a Falling Star 
Dump the Trumpy Grump
The current President of the United States initially seemed to me to be a gift from the gods of comedy. I figured it would be easy to make humorous blog posts about a clown who wears orange face paint, wears super-long red ties, and is more cartoonish behavior-wise than Yogi Bear.
But the Grumpy Trump leadership style is more depressing than even that of Rodeo Clown in Chief, George W. Bush, though Trump has managed to be accused of fewer war crimes by international tribunals. He is so relentlessly inhuman in his every deed that you can’t use exaggeration humor against him. The reality is too far over the top for that. And you can’t rely on insult humor, because he does it so much more often himself than any comedian can, and he really MEANS it. He doesn’t tell or comprehend jokes unless it makes a good excuse to claim he was only joking.
One of the things he does that bothers me the most is the use of criminals in his cabinet and departments that do all the dirty work.
Sleepy McBoing-Boing, the HUD secretary seems to be in his job to screw things up for poor people who were barely hanging on and turn them into homeless people while he commits crimes to put an expensive dining table in the HUD office for his personal use. “Let ’em eat cake,” right, Ben?
Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, heads of the EPA and Department of the Interior are so busy spending Federal budget monies on personal uses that their departments are falling apart, and so the air we breath and the water we drink are now more at risk than they were under Obama, where it was a very real crisis having very real effects.
I think I am through posting criticisms about Trump. Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Seth Meyers do so much better at skewering the pumpkinhead than I ever could, so look to them for actual political humor of the thoughtful kind.
The only thing I want from Trump now… Now that his tax cut has cost me extra money and his healthcare meddling has made the price of insulin out of my reach… Is for the whole thing to end. He won’t resign. You can’t expect Ebola Fever or brain tumors will go away on their own. But it is so obvious that he has committed impeachable crimes that, for the good of us all, the Congress needs to get rid of him. The Dark Lord with White Hair, Mike Pence, though deeply evil, would be better.
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Filed under angry rant, cartoons, commentary, humor, lying, Paffooney, politics
Tagged as politics