Category Archives: humor

September 1, 2017 · 6:00 pm

Mickey and the Mother of Invention

Cool title, right?  No? It needs a lot of further explanation?  All right, here goes.

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“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos”—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Whether you prefer the stealer of Tesla inventions or the author of Frankenstein for invention quotes, you have to admit they are both right.  Those of us who think creatively try with all our might and mind to take the wreckage life has given us and make something new.  Preferably we make something that is good for us and improves our situation.  But sometimes it turns out that it only makes matters worse and creates monsters of the mind.

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When I was ten, I was sexually assaulted by a neighbor boy who was older and stronger and decidedly crueler than me.  It split my world into pieces.  I retreated into fantasy worlds and lived in my imagination far more than the real world.  The monster in my memory was locked away in a tightly sealed forget-me box.  I repressed the memory successfully until I was twenty-two.  My creativity and inventiveness turned to fantasy art and fanciful fiction.  I worked at having a good sense of humor, being a tough athlete on the high school football field, and trying to force people to accept me as the brainiac weird kid who always knew the answers in science class and could do practically anything except successfully talk to girls.

Surprisingly my greatest invention would turn out to be me.  I reinvented myself.

I would’ve never believed when I was young that I was made to be a teacher.  I lived inside my own head.  How could I be a teacher and control a classroom and make people listen to the various shards of nonsense that I was completely full of?  But, through gradual problem-solving, I learned to be an effective public speaker.  I learned how to be an engaging presenter.  I did a few magic tricks.  I told more than a few jokes.  Some of them were even funny.  I learned how to put ideas in front of children in visual displays and organization charts.  I learned how to teach people to read.  And more than that, I learned how to teach people to learn.

I honestly don’t think I would’ve learned to do all of that if my childhood psyche hadn’t been broken and hidden away in brain boxes when I was ten.  I might still have been an artist.  But not the teacher and story-teller I ultimately became.  Without the mountain to climb, a boy can never become a mountain-climber.  Without a star to see and study, he can never be an astrophysicist.  And without a brain filled with broken brain bits, a man can never learn how to put himself back together again, let alone teach others how to do it.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men are no help with this endeavor.

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Have I now explained my terribly tilted title?  Does this help you see how I have sung the songs taught to me by the Mother of Invention?  Probably not.  I am a rather dense little goof and the work of making me into me is not yet finished.  I crashed and burned again a couple of years ago when I had to retire from teaching.  I had to invent myself again as something new.  I am certainly not done hitting the metal work with a big black hammer.  But, perhaps, you can see the tool-marks on this blog and learn something from it too.

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August 30, 2017 · 3:34 pm

Being Bankrupt

I am swiftly turning into a detestable human being.  I have admitted already on this blog that I have not only known nudists in my lifetime, but I have recently visited a nudist park and become one… for a few hours.   Today I am admitting to being a bankrupt individual.  I am taking steps to declare a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.

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As with nudism, bankruptcy is really probably not what you think it is.  It is embarrassing and stressful to be bankrupt, at least if you are not Donald Trump and able to gleefully rob workers and creditors and investors by manipulating bankruptcy laws.  But it is not immoral.  In fact, with my Chapter 13 bankruptcy, I will end up paying back everything I owe to credit card companies and especially Bank of America whose lawsuit caused this bankruptcy.  It will just be a managed pay-off with no further interest charges, managed by a court-appointed executor over the next five years.  It will drop the bottom out of my credit rating initially, but may actually bounce it back up better than it was because my debt-to-income ratio will be dramatically improved.  I will not lose my house or my car.  I simply will have no more credit cards.  That can’t be all bad, can it?

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So, filing for a bankruptcy of this type has done a good job of teaching me where I fit in modern society and how the idea that you need to pay back what you owe to those you owe it to applies more to me than it does to rich folks.  I will let you in on a big secret.  I am not now, nor have I ever been, even remotely defined as rich.  I haven’t really been poor before now, either.  But I am sinking into that swamp quickly, and the crocodiles smell blood in the water.  It is expensive to become poor.  You have to pay a lawyer to help you get rid of all your money.  You have to plead with them to allow you to continue to buy food and, with luck, necessary medication.  But as long as you continue to hemorrhage money into their money-sucking vampire fangs of profit-making, the rich ones who own everything and control everything and make all the laws will allow you to continue to live… unless it becomes more profitable for them in the short term to let you die.

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Now that I have driven over the bankruptcy cliff, I will probably try to enjoy the view and the exhilarating rush of air on the way down.  Maybe I will do it naked.  I could go back to the nudist park for the Labor Day weekend.  I would save on clothing budgets.  And when I get to the bottom of the cliff, there is a possibility that I will bounce back up.  After all, if I don’t the bankers and the lawyers won’t be able to get any more of my money.

 

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August 29, 2017 · 1:55 pm

Stardusters… Canto 62

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Canto Sixty-Two – The Morrells’ Sleeping Nest

The wall collapsed onto the soft edge of the sleeping nest and Alden leaped to pull Gracie out of harm’s way and over the far side.  It took a moment for Alden to both realize and regret that both he and Gracie were stark naked yet again, and their clothing now buried on the rubble-strewn side of the nest.  Alden was sure he was being punished now for improper thoughts and actions.  After all, Gracie, his wife was just a child in her physical form.

The ruptured surface of the space ship that had plowed through the wall now vomited forth three disoriented and unpleasant lizard-men warriors.

“Look!” said one of the lizard-men.  “Those are Earther children!  We can eat them!”

Alden surveyed the destroyed room.  There was a way out through the door by which they had entered the room hours ago.  There was also a large opening into a room beside and below the nest chamber that had been created by what was obviously a crashing space ship.

“Where did you come from?  What are you doing here?”  Alden asked.

“We need to get out of here, Alden,” said Gracie, trying to pull Alden toward the door.

“Where?  Where did you come from!” shouted Alden.

“We are Senator Tedhkruhz’s elite warriors, here to put an end to the useless machinations of scientists.”

“Yes, we have to put a stop to the stupid efforts to use science to try to change the inevitable outcome of this Great War!” another lizard-man shouted back.

“Do you want your world to end?” Alden asked.

“We don’t want it to end… but since it is ending anyway, we are going to be the ones who end it.”

“That’s a sort of victory, isn’t it?” asked another lizard-man.

“You are insane!” Alden shouted.  “You are destroying yourselves and you don’t need to.”

“You are food for us, and we are starving,” yelled the first lizard-man who now brandished a pair of sharp daggers.

“Please, Alden!  Let’s go!” cried Gracie, trying to pull him towards the door.

Alden pulled back, pulling her towards the hole in the floor.

The doorway crashed open and suddenly a furious Senator Makkhain was standing in the room.

“Senator!” cried Gracie, “Save us!”

Makkhain turned to the lizard men angrily.  “Get those two Skoog monkeys now!  If they make it out of here alive, I will kill you myself!”

Alden wasn’t sure how he had known where he and Gracie needed to be, but they were now close enough to the hole in the floor to swing down into the darkness below, a couple of naked children… or Skoog monkeys… or whatever the heck they were now.

“Kill them yourself, traitor!” Alden roared.  He pulled his beloved Gracie down through the dark hole in the floor.

*****

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August 28, 2017 · 3:04 pm

The Super-Sucky Start To School 2017

Four years ago now I started school for the last time as a teacher.  I didn’t know at the start of the year that it would be the last.  I had planned to teach until I died if possible.  But it wasn’t possible.  By March I had to make a hard decision and report to the administration that I was going to retire.  Because of deteriorating health and family difficulties with finance and schooling for the kids, I had no other workable choice.  I really doubted four years ago that I would still be alive four years later.

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Today, I dropped my daughter off to start her sophomore year in high school.  This is actually the second week for number two son, who can now drive himself to school, saving further wear and tear on my aging, disintegrating self.  Will I still be alive next year to start a fifth year of retirement?  Does it matter?  I am already victorious in ways in which I didn’t believe I would be.

And then, Hurricane Harvey decided to show up and remind us that we are all mortal and none of us have a guarantee that we will get to start another school year.  Of course, the hurricane is not directly threatening me.  It is in Houston, and I am a long way away in the Dallas area.  But it still has an effect.  I have former students and their families living in the Houston area.  One of them told me she was safe on Facebook, but she was shaken by the devastation she saw around her.  She wanted to help in rescue efforts.   I told her to please take care of herself first, that she could only help others after she was firmly okay herself.  She told me that she always loved my class and made me cry.  I know she will probably be all right, but she will take risks and act all heroic without regard for herself.  That’s just who she is.  And I have other former students in that area just like her that I haven’t heard from yet.

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And while the hurricane gives him cover, the orange-faced Bozo in chief has had a great couple of weeks encouraging racists and pardoning racist criminals and possibly even sending my number one son to Afghanistan in a surge that goes against campaign promises to not get us more involved in foreign wars.  Now he wants to take Afghan resources and enrich himself and the evil corporate slugs he works constantly to enrich.  Jabba the Trump in his full glory.  I didn’t vote for this parasite, but despite the fact that I have no voter guilt to overcome, I am definitely not happy with him.  And how much more damage does he have to do before somebody stops him?  The party in control hates him too, but they can do all the evil they want and he’ll ultimately get the blame, so their voter-suppression tactics will continue to let them hold on to power.

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But, even though I still have to remove the swimming pool or risk losing the house, and I have to finish the paperwork for becoming bankrupt, school has started one more time… in spite of the fact that everything around it really, really sucks… in the sense of a vacuum cleaner.

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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, politics, teaching, Texas

August 27, 2017 · 3:35 pm

Lazy Sunday Silliness

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Imagination is always the place I go in times of trouble.  I have a part of my silly old brain devoted to dancing the cartoon dance of the dundering doofus.  It has to be there that I flee to and hide because problems and mistakes and guilt and pessimism are constantly building un-funny tiger-traps of gloom for me to rot at the bottom of.  You combat the darkness with bright light.  You combat hatred with love.  You combat unhappiness with silly cartoonish imaginings.  Well… maybe you don’t.  But I do.

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When reading the Sunday funnies in the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons, I spent years admiring Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes for its artistry and imaginative humor, believing it was about a kid who actually had a pet talking tiger.  I didn’t get the notion that Hobbes was actually a toy tiger for the longest time.  That’s because it was basically the story of my own boyhood.  I had a stuffed tiger when I was small. He talked.  He went on adventures with me.  And he talked me into breaking stuff and getting into trouble with Mom and Dad. It was absolutely realistic to me.

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I have always lived in my imagination.  Few people see the world the way I view it.  I have at least four imaginary children to go along with the three that everybody insists are real.  There’s Radasha, the boy faun, my novel characters Tim Kellogg and Valerie Clarke, and the ghost dog that lurks around the house, especially at night.  That plus Dorin, Henry, and the Princess (the three fake names that I use in this blog for my three real children).

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Have you noticed how Watterson’s water-color backgrounds fade into white nothingness the way daydreams do?  Calvin and Hobbes were always a cartoon about turning the unreal into the real, turning ideas upside down and looking at them through the filter-glasses of Spaceman Spiff.

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Unique and wonderful solutions to life’s problems can come about that way.  I mean, I can’t actually use a bloggular raygun to vaporize city pool inspectors, but I can put ideas together in unusual ways to overcome challenges.  I almost got the pool running again by problem-solving and repairing cracks myself.

 

So, I am now facing the tasks of working out a chapter 13 bankruptcy and having a swimming pool removed.  The Princess will need to be driven to and from school each day.  I will need to help Henry find another after-school job.  And the cool thing is, my imaginary friends will all be along for the ride.  Thank you, Calvin.  Thank you, Hobbes.  You made it all possible.  So, please, keep dancing the dance of the dundering doofus.

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August 26, 2017 · 3:02 pm

D & D Action Pictures

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I finished my fantasy battle scene started over a week ago.  In many ways it was just like a D & D battle fought on the table top with miniatures, a battlefield grid, and dice.  It had to happen in steps.

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Remember this step?  The pen and ink step?  That isn’t even the first step.  But pencil drawings don’t photograph and reproduce as well as pen and ink.

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And then the colored pencil work had to proceed a section at a time.

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I basically went character by character, starting with the good guys.

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And that is the same way the combat occurs.  Shandra the Unicorn Maiden rolled an 18 for initiative on the twenty-sided dice.  So she attacked first.  She only got a 15 on the attack roll, however, so her wand of silver-fire only did five points of damage, depriving the kobold of one claw arm.  The shadow archer (not pictured because he was invisible at the time) had a 16 on initiative and an 18 on attack, so he wounded Sammy the Satyr with a two-point damage from his crossbow bolt to Sammy’s left arm, preventing the young satyr from attacking during the round.  Turkoman the Wizard was next, using his wand of fire-bolts to attack the skeleton-ghost, igniting its death shroud and making it drop its magic +2 long sword.  You can see both Greebo the Half-orc and the evil beast-thing have not yet taken their turns in the combat.  Seriously, a three-round combat seems to take forever in the D & D game.

So. there you have it.  My Dungeons and Dragons post for this week is simply an excuse to show off the newest silly drawing I did, brag a little bit, and play silly word-games even more.  I hope I didn’t stretch your patience to the breaking point yet again.

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August 24, 2017 · 2:06 pm

As If It Weren’t Enough…

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THE WISDOM OF THE LITTLE FOOL

A fool can’t really sum up all of life in a sentence.

But a fool tries.

A fool can’t really say something in immortal words.

Because a fool dies.

A fool can’t really do the job of the wise.

But never-the-less, the fool applies.

But a fool can write a really dumb poem,

And let it sit to draw some flies.

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August 22, 2017 · 1:42 pm

Stardusters… Canto 61

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Canto Sixty-One – Sizzahl’s Primary Laboratory

Sizzahl awoke suddenly as a large chunk of metal crashed down from the ceiling above.  The Bio Dome shook with the shockwaves of some massive crash above the lab.

“That will be Senator Tedhkruhz,” said Makkhain calmly.  “He has come to put an end to all of us.”

“We can’t let him destroy the control systems in this building, Uncle Makk.  They can repair the planet’s atmosphere if they keep running, but we are all doomed if they don’t.”

“Maybe you didn’t understand me earlier, my love,” said Makkhain, “we have reached the point where this world is doomed.  It is the end of everything.  The Senate decided the world should end before we ever went to war.  We have reached the end times.”

Sizzahl looked at him through horror-filled eyes.  “You are not my Uncle Makk!”

“No, I haven’t really been him for some time now.  But I have enough of his genetics and enough of his real original memories to know that I love you and regret that I must kill you now.”

“What?  Why?”

Makkhain pulled out a knife and a small slug-thrower.  He smiled as he moved sinisterly towards Sizzahl.  “Because my master, Senator Tedhkruhz, commands it.  We were supposed to conduct a simple mop-up operation here.  No one knew that General Gohmurt had failed to kill all of your family and scientific minions.”

“No!  It can’t be.”  Sizzahl’s face was dripping with oozing tears.  She had never believed that she could be made to cry before that moment, but here was her fake Uncle proving her completely wrong.

“I will make your death swift and painless, little one.  I am not without feelings for you.”

Makkhain raised the slug-thrower and fired at her as Sizzahl twisted the buckle on her belt.  The bullet stopped in mid-flight and clattered harmlessly to the floor.

“Wha… what magic is this?”

“It’s Science,” said the weeping Sizzahl.

“What sort of Science?”

“The Telleron kind…  I guess I owe Mrs. Castille for forcing me to wear this uncomfortable Telleron jump suit.  It has a force field built in.”

“A force what?”

“Those frog people are at a higher tech level than we are… even higher than the Earthers are.  And they are more generous and thoughtful than we are.  They have no stake in this planet, yet they have only tried to help me save it.”

“Come closer to me, dear,” said the false Makkhain.  “Show me this magic armor you wear.”

Sizzahl turned her face away from her uncle.  Of course, if he grabbed her with his hand he might be able to kill her with the knife.  So, she turned the dial on the belt buckle further.  She shimmered for a moment and then completely disappeared from view.

“You know, Sizzahl, I can still find you.  I have legendary tracking skills.”

“The real Makkhain did,” she said as she invisibly dashed out of the lab, “but you are definitely not him.”

*****

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August 20, 2017 · 3:44 pm

Why Do You Think That? Part 5

On a sleepy summer Sunday it is only natural to think thoughts about God.  And I have to include Jesus and Christianity in all of that meditation.  After all, as a boy I attended Sunday school on Sunday morning in the Rowan Methodist Church and then would attend the Sunday service with my mother and father, brother, and two sisters.  We would sing songs from the Methodist hymnal.

But here’s the kicker.  Over time I have studied and learned science, how the world really works, and how people really act.  I have noticed that most of the most intelligent writers, scientists, and thinkers are atheists and agnostics.  I have had to make my peace with these things;

  • There is no life after death.
  • Jesus may not have been a real person.
  • If he was real, he had very little in common with the Jesus we worship.
  • Jesus doesn’t need to be real to have value in my life.
  • There is no white-haired old man sitting on a throne in heaven.
  • There is no heaven.
  • If there is no heaven, then there certainly is no hell.
  • We are all connected… even those of us who don’t live on this planet, in this galaxy.

So I guess, that makes me an atheist who believes in the existence of God.  And because of this moronic oxymoron, my thesis now has to be; Even atheists have a need for religion.

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Saint Raphael

Yes, when it comes to religion, I am an idiot.  Just like all the rest of you are.  Mark Twain once said something like, “Religion is the firmly held belief in what you know ain’t so.”  That misquote, of course, is taken entirely on faith from a vague memory of a passage in the short story “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven”

Of course, I am not saying that I find no value in religion.  I was associated with Jehovah’s Witnesses for almost twenty years because that was the religion my wife clings to.  They are a Bible-based religion with a strict literalist interpretation of scripture who are expecting the end of the world, this “wicked system of things” at any moment now and go around knocking on doors and giving away free Bible literature with their own Truth professionally printed to save as many of the unbelievers as possible.  Don’t get me wrong.  I have never really fully accepted what they believe.  But I have freely participated.  Their belief system makes them some of the most loving, self-sacrificing people you could ever meet.  They are non-violent and believe in helping everybody no matter how far they have to bend over backwards to do it.  There are very good things in the Bible about living a moral life that are absolutely true and will make you and your children into better people.  But here’s the most important thing about living that kind of life.  If you are doing it for the promised rewards of eternal life, then you are doing it wrong.  The goodness you do in this life and the love you both give and receive is the only heaven there is.  Hardship taken on as a sacrifice to a loving God gets you nothing but the feeling that you have done the right thing.  But let me assure you, that feeling is a treasure greater than fine gold.  That mental state you create for yourself is the whole point and purpose of religion.

 

I do realize that liars are the people most likely to say, “Believe me…” before telling you something is true, but believe me, I don’t expect you to accept my cold clinical dissection of what religion is in my world view.  I want you to believe whatever you believe is true about Jesus, Jehovah, Allah, or Budda…  or nirvana or existentialism or science.  I accept you and love you for who you are.  The important thing is that we are all connected.  Most religions make us nicer to each other and make us more loving and kind, as long as we are not allowing ourselves to fall victim to the dark side that exists in every religion.  When your religion tells you to hate something, especially when it tells you to do something to punish that something you hate, especially especially if that something you hate is another person of some kind, then that’s where Eve is biting the apple, that’s where all the trouble starts.

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Don’t let atheists tell you they don’t believe in anything.  I hear Neal DeGrasse Tyson talk about being made of star stuff and teach about the connections we have with everything in the universe.  Listen to him yourself on Cosmos talking about the wonders of science and the human quest to know, and tell me if you don’t hear hymns to God in his reverent explanations.  He just knows God in a different form than you do.

So here is my humble conclusion on a sleepy summer Sunday morning when my meditations drift back to a boyhood of telling Jesus jokes in the down-time during Sunday school.  I am an atheist who believes in a loving God.  And even atheists need God in their life.

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August 20, 2017 · 2:24 am

Nudist Impacts

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clothesfreelife.com

I didn’t realize that nudists were going to have an impact on my silly blog.  But they did in a very large way (percentage-wise based on my embarrassingly minuscule successes with Catch a Falling Star).

It began when I offered my services as a blogger to a nudist website seeking blog posts about first time experiences as a nudist.  Which was a goofy thing to do considering I had no intention of being a nudist until I made that decision based on encouragement from friends who were already nudists.  If I wasn’t going to publicly take my clothes off and walk around naked, I shouldn’t have made such an agreement.  But, sometimes I deal with depression by doing things that set my adrenaline pumping.  So I agreed I would visit a local nudist park and write a blog about it.  That started my nerves vibrating and my heart beating again.

I went to Bluebonnet Nudist Park near Alvord, Texas on a day when my family went to a theme park in San Antonio without me because my ability to ride roller-coasters is a thing of the past (for a number of health reasons).   I put in some outdoor naked time with other naked people, and though it made my heart thump faster, it was actually an enjoyable thing.  I was wise enough to use a double layer of SPF 50 sunblock to keep my most personal parts from being toasted with Texas sunburn.

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A picture of me enjoying the shade at Bluebonnet Naturist Park  (I know I promised not to show you my scary bare carcass, but at least this portrait of a nudist doesn’t actually reveal any really scary bits.)

I then wrote a blog post about it here the day after, called The Naked Truth About That Idiot Mickey.  It was supposed to be cute and humorous, though slightly off-beat and risque.  Then, two weeks later when I cancelled out on a second visit, I wrote another essay called Becoming a Nudist.  Again I was trying for self-deprecating humor with a touch of tongue-in-cheek puckishness.  Then, a gentleman who goes by the name of The Militant Negro with a very eclectic and thoughtful blog decided to do as he usually does when re-blogging my blog posts, he picked the most embarrassing one he could find.  (He previously re-blogged a doll-collecting post about Beautiful Barbie Dolls.)  Somehow the bloggers of clothesfreelife.com got hold of that post, either from that initial re-blog, or from Twitter, and re-blogged it on the website I linked at at the start of this essay.  So my first nudist blog turned out not even to be for the website I had originally agreed to blog for.  (I have not heard back from that submission yet.)  But that nudist website was actually good for my blog.   Nudist-website-readers have been tuning in.  More than 50+ views every day since Becoming a Nudist was first re-blogged.  They also found such blog posts as Be Naked More and Why Do You Think That 4? All People Are Nudists Under Their Clothes and cemented them as among my most viewed posts.

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So, now I am inexplicably popular as a naked writer.  Who could ask for anything more?  It certainly serves as an unusual talking point in family discussions.

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