Category Archives: humor

July 11, 2018 · 4:38 pm

The Evolution of the Sunflower

Apparently the seed was in the soil the demolition company used to fill the hole when the pool was removed.  It grew in the corner of the flower patch where I planted zinnias, and I decided to leave it, rather than treat it as a weed like I did with the other 14 sunflower plants that grew in the plot where the pool used to be.

You don’t even notice it in the first picture because it was in the back corner of the flower patch and only green.   But it began to stand out more as the yellow petals began to appear and it grew taller even than the gardener.

There is a certain metaphorical truth here that applies to being a teacher as well as it does to being the gardener in the flower garden.  Sometimes in the classroom you have to nurture the student other teachers have identified as the weed in the garden.  And don’t get me wrong when I say this, I pulled enough sunflowers out of the bean fields as a farm boy to know how aggressively obnoxious they are in their weediness.  But sometimes the classroom weed becomes the tallest, brightest, most beautiful flower in the patch.  It shows you clearly what a little patience, a little love, and accepting a lot of risk can accomplish.

I have begun to think of the sunflower as Clarissa, the valedictorian of the flower patch.

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July 10, 2018 · 3:28 pm

Aeroquest… Adagio 7

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Adagio 7 – The Planet of the White Spider

      The planet Gaijin would prove to be the closest thing to home for Ged Aero since he and his brother left the planet Questor.  It was a singularly beautiful world.  A water world orbiting the star known as the Old Yellow Man.  It had sixteen continents all roughly the size of India on old Earth.  The ample oceans of the world teamed with sea life.  Like many places where the Ancients left their imprint, there was a substantial population of Cetaceans; dolphins, porpoises, and whales that were genetically identical to those of Earth.  The most common form, the Emerald Dolphins, had a language and a sort of non-tool-using culture based on the sharing of stories, songs, religion, and poetry.  They interacted with the native humanoids very little.  It is a shame that the dolphins didn’t care to be the dominant life form on the planet.  Their way of life was far less disease-like and virulent than the that of the eventual dominators.

The Gaijinese were themselves an artificially melded race.  They once had been purely a race called the Sylvani, inhabitants of the star lanes since before the memory of any living race.  They had been willowy humanoids with long, silky white hair and lemon yellow skin.  They were very intelligent and relatively long-lived, reaching ages of 500 Earth years and up.   Such racial goodness is supposed to be a star marked on the celestial score-card of existence. They had, however, run afoul of another pre-Earther space-faring race called the Tellerons.  The Tellerons of the planet Telleri were green-skinned amphibian humanoids, hairless, and possessing a single shark-like fin sprouting from the apex of their skulls.  They would do their best to undo Sylvani goodness.  The Tellerons had conquered and enslaved the gentle Sylvani before they met the first Earthers in space.  It is probable that most of the Telleron technology that Earthers stole in turn in order to become a space-faring race was originally created by the noble Sylvani.  The Tellerons, however, used the technology to colonize and conquer rather than study other worlds.  It seemed only fair in the long run that they would be displaced from their dominance of the Orion Spur by the combination of the primate Earthers and the reptilian Galtorrians who were both worse and more violently ruthless.

When humans conquered the star lanes held by the Telleron Star Empire, the suddenly freed Sylvani disappeared from known space.  On the idyllic world of Gaijin, Japanese Earthers and Sylvani met and fell in love with each other’s complex and poetic cultures developed separately.  The dually settled world of Gaijin eventually evolved into one culture made of equal parts of both.  Because the two races were entirely compatible, the people themselves changed from two races into only one.  They became very Japanese-ritual-oriented and very yellow in color.

So it was when Ged Aero dropped out of interstellar space into the unspoiled star system of the Old Yellow Man, he found a complex and peaceful world that had long awaited his coming to reach outward for greatness.

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July 9, 2018 · 3:26 pm

A Boy Named Tim

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Timothy Allen Kellogg is a fictional character who has lived in my fictional world since 1976 when he first appeared in an illustration I created at my desk in my college dorm room.

Tim is a main character in Catch a Falling Star, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, and Magical Miss Morgan.  He will likely be written into a few more as well.

One could make a good case that he has become the fictional avatar of my eldest son.  He is the son of an English Teacher who has always been a me-character.  Lawrence “Rance” Kellogg is a character created during my college days as a crucial part of my own fictionalized life story.  But if Tim is my son in fictional form, you have to realize also that the character existed nineteen years before my son was a reality.  So there is some kind of magical evolution going on here.

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I must also acknowledge that Tim, being a major character, also voices many of the things that have always been issues in my mind.  He has to deal with the loss that comes when a best friend moves away.  He has to deal with the revelation that there really are transgender people and he actually knows one.  He has to deal with having an over-large imagination and being smarter than almost everyone else he knows.

But I can absolutely, and with a clear conscience, declare that Tim is NOT a me-character.  He has a girlfriend whom he has a never-ending unspoken crush on.  I never had that when I was a boy (at least I would never admit it to you if I did).   So, there is reason for me to try to seriously understand this fictional character, who he is, where he comes from, and the ideas he represents.  I am not the only writer I know who creates characters that he or she comes to treat as real people.  I hold imaginary conversations with Tim constantly, trying to learn more about him, how he feels about things, and the judgments he makes about the essential truths of life.

So now I have to end this essay, not because I am really finished talking about Tim, but because he tells me I have told you too much already, and he doesn’t want me talking about him any more today.

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July 7, 2018 · 8:57 pm

Gingerbread Dragon

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Despite what it looks like, this is NOT a bowl full of dog poop.  It is actually gingerbread dough in the process of being mixed.  I had already folded in the one large egg, and already stirred it almost to readiness for the kneading process.

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You see, my daughter and I have been staying at home in Texas while my wife and son are off on a trip I couldn’t manage for health reasons.  So, since the Princess and I have some bonding time, we decided to have a gingerbread cookie contest that we ended up putting off too long last December.

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We decided to make just two cookies.  I suggested unicorns, she wanted to do a dragon.  So we each took half of the dough and started sculpting.  We didn’t make the cookies mobile once cooked.  The plan was to make them, decorate them, photograph them, and eat them.

The Dragon is the Princess’s entry and the unicorn mine in the fantasy critter cookie contest.  In the previous pictures they are in raw dough form.  In the next set of pictures they are cooked cookies.

The en-fattened cooked cookies didn’t look quite as fine as our original sculpted conceptions.  We were hoping to improve their artistic merits by decorating them.  I had frosting left over from the gingerbread house we did in December.

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The chocolate frosting, though, had congealed in a strange, barely spreadable manner.  To deal with this, had to warm it and melt it slightly to get it to spread.  The Princess chose to forego using chocolate frosting.  Like an idiot, I forged ahead with the tasty goo.

Unfortunately, the warm chocolate had a tendency to melt all the other decorative frosting.

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So, I tried my best to be artsy creative and rescue the look of my unicorn cookie.  I failed.  I turned it into a fire-tailed ugly dog with a bleeding white stick stuck in its forehead.

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The Princess was, however, much more successful.

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And fortunately, both cookies were delicious when it came time to clean up our respective messes.

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July 6, 2018 · 3:54 pm

In Defense of Corny Jokes

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It will probably be clear that I am writing this post because I am currently reading 1941 daily strips from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.

But I am definitely going to talk about corny jokes, not cheesy jokes, because I grew up in Iowa, not Wisconsin.

And, yes, that is example number one.

There is a certain way of telling a joke or tall tale that is unique to the farmyard.   And it does not contain chicken poop, but rather, corn.

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Of course, as you can see by this corn-colored definition of what corny means according to Collins Online Dictionary, the word is supposed to be an insult to corniness in jokery.  That doesn’t sit well with the people of Iowa, where the tall corn grows.  We are also obvious, sentimental, and not at all original.  And we are proud of it.  Corny360_2017-06-19-17-17-44-339

To tell a corny joke right, you have to set a simple scene, and make it clear what happened, and give the audience a simple cue for when to laugh.

For instance, there was the time that Cudgel Murphy had a cat problem with his car, the 1954 Austin Hereford that he has driven since dinosaurs walked the earth.  It seems there was this time in 1988 when he kept having engine trouble.  The engine would sputter and cough and die, and when Cudgel opened it, he would find a half-eaten dead pigeon or other random bird carcass gumming up the works.  He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how dead birds were getting into his car engine.  But his grandson Danny happened to see the neighbor’s big tabby tomcat carrying a pigeon he had killed under the front of Grampy’s car, apparently enjoying a fowl meal in the dark with a nice warm engine to lay the food on.  Sure enough, when they checked the engine later, there was the half-eaten dead bird laying across one end of the fan belt.

So Cudgel set up a vigil, assigning times for himself, Danny, and his younger grandson Mike to watch for signs of that damned cat taking another bird under the hood of the Austin. With only two day’s worth of watching under their belts, Mike came running into the Murphy kitchen with the news.

“Grampy!  I seen that damned cat taking a dead bird under your car!  He’s in there right now!”

So Cudgel rushed out, turned the engine on, and stomped on the gas.

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There were some worrisome thumps and bangs under the hood, and then the cat shot out from under the front of the car spewing howls and cat curses all the way up the nearest tree.

Cudgel laughed hard and finally caught his breath to say, “How about that, Mike?  I’ll bet James Bond doesn’t have a car that can shoot angry cats out the front!”

Now, before you chastise me for enjoying cruelty to cats, I hope you will remember that Cudgel Murphy is a fictional character, and I am merely illustrating the idea behind corny jokes.  And, besides, that cat really had it coming to him.

 

 

 

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July 5, 2018 · 3:10 pm

Clown Business

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This is a 4-minute free-hand doodle in pen and ink on white drawing paper. I drew it fast. I actually put less planning and thought into creating it than the clown president has put into tariffs and trade wars.

I confess to rarely doing things without a plan and considerable preparation. It is as much a teacher thing as it is an artist thing.  But it is not really a clown thing.  Clown things tend to be spontaneous, unrehearsed, improvised, and free-flowing.

I think, though, that my doodle, though done fast and directly from the idea machine to paper, shows how my constant preparing and work on careful planning leads to certain features of talent and skill showing through.

I believe I have revealed before that as a writer and an artist I am a formalist.  I believe in the rules and proper forms.  I know the proper forms and the rules very well.  And therefore, I feel qualified to break the rules whenever necessary.

And clowns must break the rules.  You have push outside the borders.  You have to twist things at unnatural angles.  You have to turn things upside down.   You have to portray a clown with only the face and hands.

Of course you can see a definite difference in quality between clowns.  The Cheeto-head who runs our country does not exhibit practiced skill when he free-hands it and tweets his comedy on Twitter.  He creates mainly chaos.  Robin Williams, on the other hand, rapid fires incredible lines off the top of his head.  But he can do that because he has practiced brewing gallons of funny foam up in his insane brain and grabbing off the amazing lines that fizz out of his brain and tosses them out to create comedy.

Chaos is easy to create.  Comedy, especially thoughtful comedy, is hard.

So, I will continue to do clown stuff.  And I will continue to doodle.  But I will also continue to plan and practice, because clown stuff is seriously important, and has to be done correctly.

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July 3, 2018 · 2:13 pm

Aeroquest… Canto 30

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Canto 27 – Worlds of the White Spider

      It is said that life in space exists on a spider’s web of invisible star lanes.  A photon drive can propel a starship only through certain well-defined mathematical probability arrays to a new location in geometrically-and-gravitically-folded space.  They work basically by popping in and out of reality, though you can only precisely describe the physics of it in mathematical terms.  So, of course, there are those who claim that if space is filled with spider webs, then God himself must be the Great Spider who spins it all.

The Megadeath roared into orbit around the bright blue planet that filled the life zone of a star listed on the charts as The Old Yellow Man.  It had been identified as a habitable system before, but no one had dared to come this far beyond the Imperial Borders to colonize before.  At least, no one these spacers knew about.

“This is a spectacular world,” said Vince Niell.

“Yeah, man,” said Nikki Sixx.  “Like a toatally gnarly hammertime world!”

“Wha…?” answered Cold Death.

Ged chuckled at the verbal density of his crew.  You have to be happy with the pick of the litter if the dog pound only has mutts.

“What do your sensors pick up, Cold?” Tkriashav asked Cold Death.

“Wha…?” the white-skinned bone man responded.

“Your instrument panel, you thick…” grumbled Ged.

“Oh,” Death said.  “Signal from the third moon of the big gas planet, man.  Like, ancient dudes put a scout base there.  Dead zone, dude.  No life.”

“Other signs of civilization?” asked Tkriashav.

“Stellar observatory in the third orbit.  Also dead zone.  One moon around this planet.  None around the planet in the first orbit.  Also dead zones, dude.”

“What about the planet below us?” asked Ged, beginning to grow impatient with the brain-dead zombie stoner at the sensor panel.  “Are there people or signs of civilization on this planet?”

“Whoa… Like two billion people.  Not human, man.  Humanoid, but definitely not human.”  Cold death shook his green Mohawk hair-do like a horse shakes flies off its mane.  He was definitely not human either.

“Vince?  Do you think you can land safely?” asked Ged.

“Yeah, boss man.  I can put her down on a dime.  I’ve never had such a sweet girl under my control before.  Yeah, baby!”

Ged ground a frustrated fist into his temple.  He knew there was something important about this mission because of Tkriashav’s damnable clairvoyance, but he felt he needed to know what.  Was it something for his own good?  Or something for the greater good that would mean sacrificing his own life?  He wanted to be able to make those choices himself.

“Cold Death?  I’m gonna hate myself for having to ask this, but do you find any signs of a starport down there?”

“Wha…?”

“A landing field!  A flat patch!  A place to put down where we don’t go CRASH!  BOOM! And blow up!”

“Oh, yeah, man.  Major city with walls, flat all around, dude.  Gnarly!”

“You see it, Vince?” asked Ged.

“I’m swoopin’, Daddy-o!”

“Ugh!  What does that mean?”

Ged looked at Xavier Tkriashav.  Tkriashav merely shrugged.

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June 30, 2018 · 3:10 pm

Singing Rock and Soul

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Yes, this is a picture of a rock.  But it is no ordinary rock.  Okay, that’s not precisely true.  It is a gray metamorphic rock roughly square in shape with numerous flecks of white and a white strip along the top.  As rocks go, it probably couldn’t be more ordinary, more rocky in its soul.  But, as with all things in this life, the importance and true meaning lies in the context.  This is a pocket rock.  It spent a quarter of a century riding around in my pants pocket.  I have held it in my hand millions of times.

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The Rowan Community Center, seen in this picture I used for the cover of Magical Miss Morgan, is the last part of the old Rowan school still standing.

In 1980, my Great Grandma Hinckley died.  That was also the year my folks had to move to Texas because of the transfer my Dad’s seedcorn company gave him to its cotton seed division.  It was one year before I got my teaching degree.  And it was the year they tore down the building where I went to school for grades 1 through 6.  That summer, as I walked around the demolition site, I found the homely gray rock that was nearly as square as I was, and because I was already feeling homesick before I actually left home, I picked it up  and stuck it in my pocket.  It was a little square piece of home.

That rock went with me to college.  It went with me to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida.  It has been to Washington D.C.  It has been in the depths of caves in Kentucky and Missouri and Texas.  It has been high in the sky in my pocket in an airplane.  It has been to beaches on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the U.S.  It has visited both Mexico and Canada.  It his been to Las Vegas.  And it even rode in the subways of New York City.

And possibly the most interesting part of this pocket rock’s career happened in Texas schools.  It was with me in my pocket constantly from 1980 to 2004.  I finally took it out of my pocket and placed it in an old cigar box that once belonged to my grandfather and I have kept keepsakes in since I was a kid.

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And I have thought a lot about this ordinary rock that isn’t really ordinary on closer inspection.  At one point or another I thought about using it as a skipping stone at both the Atlantic and the Pacific.  In 2004 when I was considering the pocket watch broken by it and the car key accidentally bent against it, it almost wound up in Lake Superior.  I put in my cigar box and it has remained exiled there since.  Will I have it buried with me, in my pocket?  No, probably not.  My wife plans to have me cremated.  Hopefully, though, not until I am already dead.  This rock has pretty much been a symbol of my soul, travelling with me, teaching with me, jingling the pocket change when I walk…  And it will continue to exist when the thinking and writing parts of Mickey are gone.

But even rocks are not immortal.  Sometime in the future something will happen to it.  It will end up someplace unexpected or changed by grinding, melting, or chemical reaction into some other form.  But no matter what happens to it ultimately, the meaning of it, the context, the places it has been and the things that it has done will still be true, still have happened to it.  And, ultimately, it will still be just like me.

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June 27, 2018 · 7:19 pm

O Mio Babbino Caro

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This beautiful song, an operatic aria by Puccini, is from the comic opera Gianni Schicchi.  But, more important than that is what the song actually means in context.

In the opera, Gianni Schicchi is a con man intent on swindling a family out of their inheritance and knowing all along that he will be destined to go to hell when he dies.  The family is gathered for the reading of the rich man’s will, which is, because this is a comic opera, lost for the time being.  Their main concern is for the money, which rumor has it has all been willed to the church.  But one among them is actually worthy of inheriting the money, Rinuccio the son of the rich man’s cousin.  And, as luck would have it, as it always does in comedies, Rinuccio is the one who, during the manic and desperate search for the will, actually finds it.  And assuming he comes out well in the will, he secures a promise from his mother that if he inherits money, he can marry Schicchi’s beautiful daughter Laurretta whom he truly loves.

But when he reads the will, he is devastated.  The money all goes to a monastery.  He begs Schicchi to help him convince the family that he should marry Laurretta anyway.  This Gianni Schicchi tries and finds it harder than turning water into wine.  So Schicchi is about to give up when Lauretta finally speaks up for herself through the song,

O Mio Babbino Caro (My Beloved Father)

At this point Schicchi is moved by the beautiful song and even more beautiful love his daughter has surprised him with.  He not only agrees to help, but executes a bizarre plan, hiding the rich man’s body and pretending to be him come back to life to rewrite the will.  Now the will favors Rinuccio, and over the protests of the family, he inherits the money and marries his true love, Schicchi’s daughter.  The opera ends with Schicchi singing his case to the audience, telling them in song that going to hell is worth it to aid true love.

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And this, then, is the truth of O Mio Babbino Caro.

Love, expressed through the surprise of hidden talent suddenly revealed, is the most persuasive argument there is.

Whether it is the love in the music suddenly discovered in the overwhelming voice of a little girl like Jackie Evancho or Amira Willighagen, or the late great Maria Callas who also sang the role, or even the singer of Puccini’s greatest work who is yet to perform it and make silly old men like me weep for beauty’s sake, the song is the most persuasive argument there is in favor of true love.

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That is a thing I desperately want to capture in the novel I am writing now, Sing Sad Songs.  Love expressed in music.  Love that reverses loss.  Love that heals all things.  And Love that moves all people.  The love that is masterfully sung in O Mio Babbino Caro.

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June 26, 2018 · 4:10 pm

Aeroquest… Canto 29

Aeroquest banner xCanto 29 – Games with Bread and Cheese

      Ham and his little crew were taken to one of Oasis City’s finest inns.  It was a quiet little place called The White Sands.  The name was appropriate for the dry little desert world of White Palm.  The inn had a cozy restaurant and pub attached.  Having eaten Sinbadh’s stew, the crew of the Leaping Shadowcat opted for drinks.  Ham ordered a Questorian Ale, while the Madonna found a Nebulonin Root Beer on the back of the menu, and Sinbadh ordered an infamous Pan Galactican Gargle-Blaster, not knowing what it was or how it cleaned out both your sinuses and your bowels.

“You are most welcome to anything on the menu,” said the fawning gray-plated metalloid waiter.  “I understand it is all being paid for by Count Nefaria himself.”

“It is…?”  Ham was stunned.

“Yes, by means of his new heir, Count Tron.”

“Oh.”

Tron and a man with a handlebar moustache appeared from the back hallway.  Tron nodded to Ham and came straight to the copperwood table where the three crewmen of the Leaping Shadowcat sat quaffing their various brews.  Or, in Sinbadh’s case, quaffing, choking, and sneezing them.

“May we sit?” asked Tron.

“Who’s your friend?” asked Ham as innocently as he could muster.

“This is Han Ferrari, Duke of the planet Coventry.  Duke, this is Ham Aero, the safari master and explorer I told you about.”

Duke Ferrari shook Ham’s hand firmly.  “Ah, Mr. Aero.  I’ve heard of your brother Ged.  I understand he’s something of a crusader along the Imperial Rim.”

“Yes,” said Ham suspiciously.  “What are you doing so far from home, your lordship?”

“Being rescued from kidnappers by Captain Tron, it would appear.  I am also a leader of the militant opposition in the Galtorrian Imperial Court.  Emperor Slythinus has apparently tried to do away with me by recruiting Count Nefaria to do his dirty work.”

“What are you here at my table for, Tron?” asked Ham nervously.  “I know Goofy is probably dead by now.  Will you take it out on me, too?”

“Now, Hamfast,” said Tron with a smile, “I bear you no ill will.  Trav Dalgoda is fine.  I have the Crown of Stars and the so-called Orb of Essence as well.  I even now own the planet of White Palm.  I couldn’t be happier.”

“The Galtorr Imperium won’t claim the planet for themselves now that Nefaria is dead or in prison?” asked Ham.  Purple gargle-blaster ooze was leaking out of Sinbadh’s mouth and nose.  His eyes were rolling back in his head and the Madonna was trying desperately to help him.  Ham tried to concentrate on Tron and the Duke.

“I am declaring independence from the Imperium,” said Tron with a satisfied smile.  “Arkin Cloudstalker and I will use our corsair fleets to defend this place.  Let Admiral Tang try and retake it!”

“You’d take on the whole Imperial Fleet?”

“He won’t have to,” said Duke Ferrari.  “The Imperium is tied up with both a border war with the Nebulons and another unification war with my planet and the planet Farwind.  They can’t spare enough of the fleet to defeat two corsair fleets.”

“And I’ve seen your setup at Don’t Go Here,” said Tron.  “You have a large ground-bound population depending on you and Ged for release into the stars.  I know because I’ve added to it myself on occasion.”

“So, what’s your point?”

“Don’t try to hornswoggle me, boy.  You are a nominal ruler of a high-population world beyond Imperial reach.  I know you came here to kill me and rescue Goofy Dalgoda and win back the Crown of Stars, but you are in a position to commit your new planet to an alliance with my new planet.  We can help each other.”

“You want to go into planetary government?”

“We can’t screw it up any worse than the Emperor and his cronies.  And besides, I want to throw in with Duke Ferrari here and help his interplanetary civil war.  I want to see an end to the Imperium.  You know, pirate is just another word for freedom fighter in many ports.”

“And you expect me to go along with your plans because you know where to find our planet and you have all the forces you need to take it from me and my brother?”

“I expect you to talk it over with Ged Aero and have the two of you on my side.  You both know it’s the right thing to do.  I’m not the criminal you think I am.  I know Ged sees things the way they really are.  You tell him my plan and see if he doesn’t agree.”

“Ged went further into the unknown.  I don’t know where he is or when he’ll be back.  I only know he will meet me at Don’t Go Here sometime in the future.”

Tron’s sudden anger was all the uglier because of the scar he wore through one eye.  He was about to start shouting when the Madonna diffused everything.

“We say with you, Tron.  Nebulonin, human, cave men, all one side…”

“You have a pretty accent, Sweetness,” said Tron, calming down instantly, “but what the heck do you mean?”

“She says we agree,” said Ham.  “You are right.  I know Ged would want to help you.  My planet and yours, then.  Two new worlds in a new alliance.  The only question is… what will we do next?”

Over ale and good, hot pretzels with cheese from Coventry, in front of a roaring hearth-fire, the fate of the Imperial Rim was altered once and for all time.

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