Be careful of this tiger kitty
He rules with an iron paw
And every rat and egg and bird
Can end up in his maw
He pees where he likes
And buries poo in your garden
And sings to the moon off-key every night
And never begs of you pardon
Category Archives: humor
Old and Grumpy
Suppose being grumpy was a super power, and we could, as a grumpy old brotherhood of geezers, coots, and conservative uncles, could change things just by complaining about them.
No woman would ever leave a toilet seat down again. The Dunkin’ Donuts on Frankford Road would magically reopen and never run out of donuts again. And liver spots and wrinkles would suddenly be attractive to beautiful young women whether they were linked to fortunes or not.
But what if, in order to make better use of this unexplainable super power, we start telling old coots like the fool in the picture that they have to prove they will use this super power only for good, or we will raise their taxes? Or we would forbid them from ever eating bacon again? Either of those things would definitely motivate them.
Of course, the biggest problem with geezers, old coots, and conservative uncles that no one wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving is that they don’t generally get smarter and nicer with age. It is probably not wise to give them a super power that can alter reality. Yes, they are generally quite literally mean-spirited and unqualifiably dumb. And it isn’t really a matter of whether they could ever actually have a super power like that. The real problem is that they already have it. They proved it in 2016 when they elected a gigantic orange-faced Pillsbury Doughboy with mental flatulence to lead our government. And it wasn’t the dumb part that did it. It was the literally mean part. Trump is a walking, talking old coot-complaint given to us by mean old men to tell us, “We are unhappy geezers, coots, and conservative uncles who would rather blow up the government than lift a single tax dollar (especially from a rich dude) to try and fix it”.
What we truly need to do is harness a bit of that grumpy-old-man complaining power, a truly misunderstood and misused super power, to tackle problems like making public schools better, cleaning the environment, and electing smarter leaders (not the stupid ones who actually represent the majority of us). But of course, we will first have to turn off the spigots in the brewery of prejudice and ignorance that is Fox News, and brand all the greedy and stupid people with a red letter “R” for Trumpian Republican. That way, knowing who to vote for to make things better will become easier to the point that even us geezers, old coots, and conservative uncles can do it right.
Filed under angry rant, commentary, goofy thoughts, humor, oldies, Paffooney, satire
Learning from Bad Writing
So, I just finished reading this book from my leftover pile of classroom reading books that represent my time as a public school reading teacher.
This is book six in the best-selling Charlie Bone series. I didn’t read the previous five books. I have a copy of book one somewhere, but this one is one I picked up for my reading fix last week.
Let me begin by saying, as an obvious Harry Potter imitation, it is a very inventive and enjoyable story.
I read the whole book even though I had difficulty with several things that I have come to recognize as glaring, reader-tripping problems.
Now, to be completely honest about my assessments, Jenny Nimmo, the author of the Charley Bone books, has an impressive resume. She has not only been an English teacher, but she worked for the BBC as well as an editor, director, and other creative endeavors. And her books, unlike mine, are best-seller enough to be picked up by Scholastic Books, a major publisher. She has undoubtedly made a lot more money with her books than I have with mine. And, I confess, I find the story entertaining.
But the story is guilty of writing sins that I am familiar with by having overcome them in my own writing.
Most noticeable is the lack of a sense of a focus character. It is done as a third-person omniscient narrative that goes in and out of different characters’ heads telling what they think and feel. It will go from Charlie Bone’s main-character-thoughts to his nemesis Dagbert Endless’s feelings to the thoughts of the dog that lives in the school and then veers into the bird that is actually Emma, one of Charlie’s female friends with special “gifts of magic” handed down from their common ancestor, the Red King. You end up, as a reader, trying to keep things separate in your awareness about too many characters with too many mental reveals to keep straight. And who all knows what about whom? In one scene a character seems to know already what another character said and did in a previous scene that the knowing character wasn’t present for and hasn’t been told about.
This focus problem is compounded by having too many characters with too little development in the current story. I get it that we are supposed to have met the characters in previous books in the series. But it has to have a more stand-alone quality about it to even work as a separate book. The writer has to keep in mind that readers won’t know everything about every character in previous books because they have either forgotten, or the author has only assumed they would know without being told.
And the scenes and chapters in this book are way too ranging and free-form. A scene that begins in the end of chapter two rambles across to the beginning of chapter three without really concluding and then morphs into another scene entirely when the narrative follows a single character from the conversation in one room into an encounter in the next room. There is a lack of chapter structure to rationalize why those words belong in that chapter rather than the next.
And numerous plot lines are just left hanging at the end of the book, seemingly forgotten rather than set up for the probable sequel. The book does not end with a sense that it is the final end of the saga.
So it is a book that both Hemingway and Dickens would’ve cringed to have written. Never-the-less, I did like this book. The old uncritical critic, you know. I would’ve neither finished reading it, nor written this essay about it if I didn’t find merit in the story. I learned things by reading it. Things to avoid, things to correct when I find them in my own stories, and things that make me go, “Hmmm… I’d like to try that myself.”
Filed under book reports, book review, humor, writing, writing teacher
Human Beans
People are not really vegetables… even though I have seen IQ scores as a teacher that might say otherwise. But I often use the pun of calling them Human Beans.
Of course, being a Texan means having a healthy appreciation for beans as a staple food. Cowboys used to live off of beans and beef jerky, and if Louis L’Amour is to be believed, they even made tea from mesquite beans. That makes your average cowboy made up of over 50 per cent beans. Of course the rest of him is mostly gas caused by the beans in his diet, whether it comes out as a fart or as a Texas tall tale… And yes, I admit it, I get a lot of my writing ideas from eating beans.
We must also be aware that Texas has no corner on the beans market. We all know Boston baked beans by reputation. They, like the ever-hapless Cubs, had a habit of never winning the World Series. And now, in the last two decades, it has actually been difficult for the other teams to keep them from winning it all. But we shouldn’t mix up beans with baseball metaphors. Baseball is like life. Full of long and boring parts punctuated by intense moments of hitting, scoring, committing errors, and player versus player individual drama. And concession stand food! Beans, however, can taste good in chili draped over the ballpark hot dogs which cost more than a restaurant meal at most reasonable restaurants. And I promise you, you will never hit a home run over the fence by hitting it with a bean.
And I wish to point out that this last human bean is not a racist cartoon. Beans are not part of the human race. They only have legs in cartoons and would come in last even when racing a snail. And all beans are created equal in the sight of God. Kidney beans, butter beans, navy beans, string beans… all beans are just beans, no matter what the color of their skin is, and no matter how they add flavor to a casserole. All beans are just in it to live life the best they can, and if that’s not enough… they can be planted as seeds to raise the next generation of human beans.
Filed under cartoons, foolishness, humor, metaphor, Paffooney
Things I Know For Certain
I think a lot of thoroughly thoughtful thuggish thoughts that build and build and build up an idea, and then turn around and knock it all down. Let me demonstrate by knocking down that title right off the bat. Rene DesCartes in the early 1600’s said, “Cogito Ergo Sum”, and he thereby totally disrupted the world as we knew it. Didn’t get that? Let me translate. He said, “Je pense, donc je suis.” Still didn’t help? Okay, here’s the English, “I think, therefore I am.” In other words, the one thing that I know for sure is that I am thinking this particular thought at this particular time. If I am thinking, and I know I am, I must be here and I must be real. So there is one thing I know for certain. But do I know anything else for certain? Uh-oh. How do I know anything? I have to rely on my senses. And my senses lie to me all the time. I am partially color blind, so I don’t see the world the same way you do. I don’t see things in black and white, like Great Grandma Hinckley did in her 90’s, but the colors look different to my eyes than they do to yours and I will never know what things look like to you. Forget politicians and all other people who tell lies, my own eyes lie to me constantly. So can I know anything for sure? Of course not. All I have are firm beliefs based on imperfect senses and best guesses at what is true. So what I am actually talking about is a list of potential essay ideas that I am merely asserting as true based on my imperfect goofy thinking of thoughtful thuggish thoughts.
Idea #1 that I think is certainly possibly maybe true; My brain was taught and I was raised to adulthood by the movies I saw when I was young. I want to talk about this at length in another post. The video is by a guy who was a kid in the 80’s, and he has some really awesome movies to offer as a way to delineate his rise to adulthood.
My list includes the movies of my boyhood seen in the Belmond Theater and on our old black and white Motorola TV. My list of movies that raised me includes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and The Wizard of Oz.
Idea #2; Animals are people too.
I mean, as a writer for young adults, I know for a fact that animals are relevant as characters. They have a point of view, feelings, reactions, and complex lives that people rarely pay attention to. I have to write about this some time in the future too.
Idea #3; The worst things that happen to us in our lives, are also the best things that happen. Wow! What a difficult essay topic. But I not only think it, I can prove it… at least to myself. But can I write about it? Time will tell.
Idea #4; Silly thoughts and serious thoughts are two sides of the same coin. And this will be particularly difficult to think about if thoughts are literally coins. That would mean that my head is full of metal, and I know several people who would read that sentence and shout, “I knew it all along!” Fortunately they are all too sensible to read this far in one of my blog posts.
So, at 600 words I still have lots more to say. But people with metal in their heads often talk way too much, so my concluding sentence will be simply; “I promise to shut up for now.”
The Haunted Toy Store… Canto 17
Canto 17 – The Balcony Scene
Rogelio found himself looking up at the second-floor balcony of the Zuniga Inn.
“So, you wanna climb up there?” he asked Steven.
“I have now done it countless times in more than a century of practicing this moment over and over again.”
“So, I won’t die if we fall headfirst on our stupid head?”
“You can’t actually die in this reality unless another living human kills you here.”
“And that’s what we’re gonna do to Yesenia when we get up there?” Rogelio felt a bit panicky over having no control over his own body.
“Not here. Not now. I told you I would give you the reasons for why we have to kill her. But those reasons don’t apply to this moment.”
Steven took control of Rogelio’s arms and legs. He began to shinny up one of the columns that supported the balcony on the second floor. Then like a monkey he swung his legs up over the edge of the balcony railing. It was all solid wood, but Rogelio still felt as if it could fall apart at any moment and they would plummet headfirst to the ground. But he found himself standing on both legs outside the first room on the second floor.
“What if the balcony door is locked?” Rogelio asked.
“It’s not. These balcony doors don’t even have locks.”
He reached over and slowly, silently pulled open the balcony door. Quietly, he entered the room. It was a simple, sparsely furnished room in a Spanish inn. The bed was occupied by two skeletons, a large, blue male one and a smaller pink one that looked like it could be Imelda’s mother.
“Don’t say anything with your mouth. You’ll wake them,” said Steven.
“Are they both asleep?” Rogelio asked nervously in his head only.
Then the male snored loudly enough to remove all doubt. The female moaned at the noise, but merely poked her husband and rolled over.
Steven quietly moved them out of the room and closed the door after them.
“So, I was supposed to expect you to sneak into Momma and Poppa’s room?” said Yesenia/Imelda on the next balcony.
Steven grinned sheepishly. Rogelio noticed that the moonlight made the ghost nightgown she was wearing more visible, but you could still see through it to Yesenia’s beautiful naked body underneath.
“Why don’t you try this room instead?”
The two balcony railings were separated by only about three feet of empty space. Getting up on the railing, it was easy for Steven/Rogelio to step across the gap.
“Gringo, I am surprised that you actually did this. I thought it was just talking.”
“I was talking… to a pretty girl whom I may have fallen in love with at first sight.” Steven was laying it on thick, but Rogelio also knew he was deeply in love with Imelda.
Imelda blushed using Yesenia’s face.
“Come into my room where Momma won’t hear you. If she finds out, she will make Poppa kill you.”
Steven let Imelda take him by the hand and pull him into the bedroom.
“Is what I think is about to happen really going to happen?” Rogelio asked Steven.
“It depends on what you mean by really happen?” he answered by thought alone.
“Have you ever made love to a woman?”
“Only one time in my whole life, but I have relived it more times than I can count on all the fingers in Dallas.”
“And you are going to relive it again now?”
“Yeah… so?”
“In my body? And Imelda in Yesenia’s body?”
“And you are a virgin… huh?”
Then Rogelio saw Imelda pulling them toward the bed. And he began to remember how beautiful Yesenia was in real life. He was about to become a man in the world of the ghosts and skeletons.
*****
“You will come to my quinceañera, Steven?”
“I will. And we will run away together?”
“I will go anywhere with you. I love you, Steven.”
At that moment, a loud banging at the door frightened them both.
“Imelda! LET ME IN! I will kill him!”
“It is my padre! He will kill us both! Get out now!”
Steven scrambled out of the bed and grabbed at his clothing. The ghost materials all slipped through his fingers except for his floppy cowboy hat. He was out over the balcony rail in mere moments. Completely naked… with a hat on his head.
Several splinters pierced his hands, forearms, and thighs as he shinnied down the support column. “You come back here, gringo! You will marry my daughter now, or you will die a horrible death!”
The angry shadow loomed over the street, huge and terrible. It shook a black skeletal fist at Rogelio and Steven as they ran down the street naked, not wearing even ghost clothing. Rogelio’s heart hammered hard enough for two people as they barefooted their way down the dirt street.
Filed under ghost stories, horror writing, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
The Writing Imperative
I am a writer because I write.
I write because I have to.
I have to because somebody has to control the words.
People are made of words. Their identity, their inner self, their reason for existence… all made of words. The very thoughts in their heads are… words.
If I want to control the words I am made of, then I must be the writer who writes his own story.
I don’t want anyone else to write the words that essentially become me. Do you?
Of course, authors create characters. Even autobiographers create characters. Carl Sandburg could no more make his words into Lincoln than a bird can make its tweets into a cat. Sandburg can, however, help us to understand Lincoln as Carl Sandburg understands the words that are Lincoln.
Lincoln probably did not have the words for “bikini girls” in his head when he wrote those words in the second quote. But somebody thought that the picture would help us understand the words. By all accounts, Lincoln was not a particularly happy man leading a particularly happy life. But he showed us the meaning of his words when he stood firm against the strong winds of harsh words and bad ideas in a terrible time. And he was as happy about it as he made up his mind to be.
I, too, have not lived a particularly happy life. But I was always the “teacher with a sense of humor” in the classroom, and students loved me for it. Funny people are often not happy people. But they make themselves out of funny words because laughter heals pain, and jokes are effective medicine. And so I choose to write comedy novels. Novels that are funny even though they are about hard things like freezing to death, losing loved ones, being humiliated, being molested, and fear of death. Magical purple words can bring light to any darkness. I am the words I choose to write in my own story. The words not only reveal me, they make me who I am. And it is up to me to write those words. Other people might wish to do it for me. But they really can’t. The words are for me alone to write.
And so it is imperative that I write my words in the form of my novels, my essays, and this goofy blog post. I am writing myself to life, even if no one ever reads my writing.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, wordplay, writing, writing humor
What Internet Memes Mean to Me…Me
Internet memes apply to me. It says it in the name. In fact, it says it twice. “Me+me = meme”.
This one is uncanny. I revere Mark Twain. Apparently I walk in his shoes enough that I am imitating everything he did except becoming wealthy and famous.
And maybe I am not as good of a writer as he was. Maybe. But I am heck at living an unhappy life and going bankrupt in the process.
And this is not the only meme that uncannily defines my life.
They put a stupid, orange-faced man in charge of the government because they wanted to tell Mickey, “F*** You! You are not better than me just because you are smarter than me. We are going to burn it all down to get revenge for your superiority!” And they are laughing and enjoying it now as the flames get hotter, even though their houses are on fire too. But stupid people aren’t really winning the game. There are evil people lurking in the background waiting to exploit and make money. They are winning. They hate Mickey too.
Of course, I never said anything about being better than them. Mickey is smart, but humble. I suffer from the wildfires anyway.
But if you know where to find it, there is helpful wisdom in memes. Short, pithy wisdom, but wisdom never the less.
The “Me”” of the memes can be hurtful at times, saying things out of anger or fear. But he can also be uplifting, making hearts sing and soar. There is magic and power in words… if they are the right words, delivered in the right way.
Sometimes people need be appreciated and built up rather than torn down. Some groups have been hurting more than others. Having been a teacher, I know this is particularly true. Teachers need to hear thank yous.
And I find memes to be a useful way to gain that temporary feel-good nugget of wisdom. I think it is probably a chicken nugget of wisdom. You know, bite-sized pieces of white meat protein to fortify you against the cold and the darkness. And it is important to turn away from the angry and the fearful memes. Going positive instead of negative is a bit of an antidote to the illnesses that infect social media. And I know Facebook is evil, but we are sorta stuck with it, so we might as well use it for good as it uses us and our data for evil.
So, I have shared several memes with you today because that is me…me. I do stuff like that. And you can’t tell me I am doing it wrong.
What the Heck is this Blog About?
I read a lot of other people’s blogs for a lot of reasons. As an old writing teacher and retired Grammar Nazi, I love to see where writers are on the talent spectrum. I have read everything from the philosophy of Camus and Kant to the beginning writing of ESL kids who are illiterate in two languages. I view it like a vast flower garden of varied posies where even the weeds can be considered beautiful. And like rare species of flower, I notice that many of the best blossoms out there in the blogosphere are consistent with their coloring and patterns. In other words, they have a theme.
So, do I have an over-all theme for my blog? It isn’t purely poetical like some of the poetry blogs I like to read. I really only write comically bad poetry. It has photos in it, but it isn’t anything like some of the photography blogs I follow. They actually know how to photograph stuff and make it look perfect and pretty. It is not strictly an art blog. I do a lot of drawing and cartooning and inflict it upon you in this blog. But I am not a professional artist and can’t hold a candle to some of the painters and artists I follow and sometimes even post about. I enjoy calling Trump President Pumpkinhead, but I can’t say that my blog is a political humor blog, or that I am even passable as a humorous political commentator.
One thing that I can definitely say is that I was once a teacher. I was one of those organizers and explainers who stand in front of diverse groups of kids five days a week for six shows a day and try to make them understand a little something. Something wise. Something wonderful. Something new. Look at the video above if you haven’t already watched it. Not only does it give you a sense of the power of holding the big pencil, it teaches you something you probably didn’t realize before with so much more than mere words.
But can I say this is an education blog? No. It is far too silly and pointless to be that. If you want a real education blog, you have to look for someone like Diane Ravitch’s blog. Education is a more serious and sober topic than Mickey.
By the way, were you worried about the poor bunny in that first cartoon getting eaten by the fox and the bear? Well, maybe this point from that conversation can put your mind at ease.
Mickey is tricky and gets good mileage out of his cartoons.
You may have gotten the idea that I like Bobby McFerrin by this point in my post. It is true. Pure genius and raw creative talent fascinate me. Is that the end point of my journey to an answer about what the heck this blog is about? Perhaps. As good an answer as any. But I think the question is still open for debate. It is the journey from thought through many thoughts to theme that make it all fun. And I don’t anticipate that journey actually ending anytime soon.
Catch a Falling Star 
I Don’t Believe in Ghosts… Except for Some Ghosts
As an atheist who believes in God, paradoxes and contradictions are something I am entirely comfortable with. So, it should come as no surprise that I don’t believe in ghosts… with notable exceptions.
Cool song, right? Did you listen to it? It’s a song about ghosts. It’s a lot older than I am. And the singer here, Burl Ives, has been dead since April of 1995. Hearing it today, at random, proves that Burl Ives is a ghost I believe in.
He came back to haunt me today as I am recovering from pink-eye, reminding me of my childhood and youth when he was the snowman in Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer on TV around Christmas time.
He is also haunting me because 1995, the year he died, was the year I got married. I was married to my wife in Dallas in January. In March, we found out that we were going to have our firstborn child before the year was over. And we also found out that my grandfather was dying.
I was not able to make it from Texas to Iowa to see Grandpa Aldrich before he passed away. But he was told while he was in the hospital that we were expecting at about the same time that he got to hold my cousin’s newborn second son. Grandpa loved the music of Burl Ives. In many ways he was like Burl Ives. He even vaguely looked like Burl Ives. And we did get to attend his funeral. (My Grandpa, I mean.) And shortly after that, Burl Ives died and I saw the announcement on the news. This is one sort of ghost I believe in. He came to commune with me as I lay on my sickbed thinking about death. And on a day after finding out that my son, now in the Marines, is about to be discharged after five years and will be home next week. He is ghost of memory. A vibrant and talented spirit of the past who lives on through his work. And he brings with him the ghost of my Grandpa Aldrich, They are both no longer living, but lingering still in the echoes of memory, and still affecting life.
Then, of course, there’s the whole matter of the ghost dog. Yes, I continue to see flashes and images and shadows of a brown dog in our house, larger and browner than our own dog, that disappear as soon as you look directly at them. My oldest son has said that he has seen the very same thing, so it is not merely brain damage or impending insanity on my part, unless it is something that also runs in the family. And it has been suggested to me by an elderly neighbor that two families ago, a brown family dog lived in this house and may be buried in the yard.
I believe it is possible that life and love in a family leaves its imprint in many ways on a house, a home, an inhabited place.
I know it can easily be put down to misinterpretations of things seen in peripheral vision, or even mental misinterpretations responding to subtle suggestions. I doubt that there is actually a protoplasmic or energy form that continues after death. But if there is something there, it is benevolent rather than malevolent. Ghosts, if they exist, are a good thing, not a bad one. It doesn’t scare me to live in a place that has a soul capable of absorbing and incorporating a faithful family dog.
Basically, I am insisting that the existence of ghosts is irrelevant. I do not require the artificial reassurance of belief in a life after death to make me unafraid of facing death. I am a part of everything that exists, and I will continue to be a part of it even after my body is dissolved and my consciousness is silenced. Even if life on Earth is extinguished, the fact of my existence is not erased or invalidated. The poet says, “You are a child of the universe. No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding as it should.” -from Disiderata by Anonymous
So, I am ill and thinking about death, for it is not very far away now. And I do not fear it. As I do not fear ghosts. For I don’t believe in them… except for the ones I do.
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Filed under commentary, empathy, feeling sorry for myself, ghost stories, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, sharing from YouTube
Tagged as ghosts