Category Archives: irony

November 12, 2016 · 5:44 pm

Healing From A Fatal Wound

14b096b694c57929afd308fa2d189768-1

The Trumpkins and Trolls won the battle and are now busy eating their prisoners… along with the puppies and kittens for desert.  And as far as I can see, the war is over.  We had a chance with the Paris Climate Accords to repair the damage to the life of this planet, even though it was a very eleventh-hour plan to avert the end of life on Earth.  The Trolls and Trumpkins are peeing on that fence too, shorting it out and preventing it from saving us from being eaten by the heat-wolves of corporate polluters.

11691-will-rogers

I myself wasn’t expecting to live through another decade in any case, but now, I fear the lives of my children and grandchildren will be cut short as well.  You can’t poop where you eat on a regular basis and expect not to get sick and die.  I predicted that the Cubs would win the World Series because they stole key talent from the Cardinals and had a young, rising club to add them to.  I got that one right.  I predicted that Trump would win the presidency because I know a lot of the Trump-voter kind of former middle-class white people who are seriously in financial and existential pain, and I knew who they were going to blame it on.  If I am right about this last thing too, then we are all doomed.  3f96a6e4e030fa8fa38c97da9d206240

“Jeez, Mickey!  You don’t call that humor, do you?”

Well, I guess I do, because humor comes from being able to laugh at the darkness and make fun of the dumpy-lumpy lumbering bears of bad fortune that are about to eat you.  We are going to have a laugh or two before the end at the expense of Trumpkins and Trolls because they make world-shaking decisions based on faith in false facts.  The irony and stupidity of it all is a very laughable absurdity that will build BS mountains taller than Everest.  And those mountains will collapse upon them, burying them in poop.  Never mind that we will also be buried.  They brought it on themselves by the choices they made.  Seeing them get their comeuppance has to be worth a laugh or two.

I have pretty much let Will Rogers speak to this current election result through the memes I have chosen to accompany this gloomy-doomy essay.  I think it is significant that wisdom from a hundred years ago still applies so completely to the politics of today.  With democracy and elections we get what we deserve… not what we want.  We need to change to face the future, if we even get to have one.  But the past clearly shows that we haven’t learned our lessons very well.  I guess there’s nothing left to do but laugh about it… and try to love each other a little better before the bitter end.

dcafe2a804b5997800d18fef6f6be6a7

Thanks for sharing, Cousin Will.

3 Comments

Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Liberal ideas, politics, self pity

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 16, 2016 · 4:13 pm

The Irony of Regular Blogging

20150203_132536

This is an old artwork I have never shared before.

There are many things that I have noticed about being a blogger that are the opposite of what you might expect.  Let me list a few…

  • Listing stuff makes a daily post easier.
  • I have posted something on WordPress as a blogger ever day for twenty two and a half months.  I will soon hit two years without missing a day.
  • Writing every day makes the ideas flow more easily rather than running out of ideas.  The well refills faster than I can drink its waters.
  • My most popular post is Be Naked More , which gets views practically every day, but including artistic nudes randomly in a post does not increase its views and popularity even when I put “naked” and “nude” in the tags.

20150204_085809

  • Reproducing artwork on a blog is difficult when you draw things too big for your little scanner/printer.  No matter how good the camera and how bright the lighting, white becomes gray and the sparkle and luster of good colored pencil color is lost.
  • Good writing becomes more about writing less.  But it also has to be more carefully crafted.  The more I brew prose in my black cauldron of a blog, the more it seems to boil down to poetry.
  • Readers don’t seem to object to metaphors and purple paisley prose as much as editors and book reviewers do.
  • I like writing purple paisley prose (over-complicated grammatical structures with alliteration, metaphor, and asides that interrupt the flow like this one… taken to the extreme for humorous effect).
  • Art pieces can be manipulated and re-used or re-combined to make something new out of something old.  Computers make art-editing infinitely easier.
  • Most people don’t actually read your blog all the way through.  Some just like it for the pictures.  If you actually read this far, you can let me know with a smiley face in the comments.
  • There are many, many good writers on WordPress… as I am sure there are on other blog sites as well.  I despair of being able to find and read them all.  If you are reading this bullet point, you are probably one of the ones I have found and read and liked.  Blogging becomes a mirror that shows you your own self more naked than naked… not just what is under your clothes, but what you look like to yourself in your own head.  And the more you walk around WordPress naked like that, the more you want to show it all off.  (How’s that for an idea that will pull in the readers from the lonely parts of Siberia?)

20 Comments

Filed under blog posting, foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, insight, irony, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

September 17, 2016 · 7:09 pm

The Pinterest Problem

I suddenly find myself back on Pinterest for the first time since the Spring of 2014.  It is not that I have been forgiven by the powers behind Pinterest, rather that I have created a new email account which apparently wipes the slate clean of accusation and animosity.  But I have to explain what the problem is between me and Pinterest.

First, here are the good things;

20160917_130754

  • Pinterest is a way to make use of my insane hoarding-disorder urge to collect internet images of all kinds.
  • Pinterest is another place to promote my artwork and I can link covers of my books back to Amazon or I-Universe where crazy people might just be goofy enough to buy one.
  • I am hoping that in three months I will have another book to put on Pinterest.  Page Publishing was goofy enough to offer to publish Magical Miss Morgan, as long as I pay my way.
  • Pinterest allows me to organize my collections into “boards” which are actually free-flowing collages made up of the pictures I have collected.
  • 20160917_110844
  • 20160917_110950.jpg
  • 20160917_111019
  • 20160917_111038
  • The Down-Side;
  • I was blocked from Pinterest back in 2014 for being a pornographer.  They had a lot of sexual content running rampant in their social media site in 2014, which, being a site created for women to share favorite recipes, they didn’t really know how to handle.
  • I am not shy about liking nudes and boobs in artwork.  I was not aware that some of the nude photography I was liking and even sometimes sharing had been added to Pinterest from porn sites.  My bad!
  • After being warned, I stopped liking and re-pinning nudes.  I even tried to remove what boobage I had on my boards.  (They were popular boards, and some of the bad stuff was among the most popular and re-pinned.)
  • I got kicked off for copying an artful nude off my list of recommended pins to my computer instead of any of the Pinterest boards.  I think it was a Waterhouse oil from the 1800’s, but I don’t know for sure what the problem item actually was.  Pinterest for a while was extremely sensitive to depictions of female breasts.

20160917_111127

But getting kicked off of Pinterest was a good thing for me.  Though embarrassing… at least a little bit… it did help me cure the problem I was having with Pinterest filling all my hours that should have been used for writing.  It also helped me self-censor a bit more effectively.  The last thing I want to do on social media is give offense.  I do not wish to promote my brand in any way similar to how Donald Trump does it on Twitter.  And it allows me to bring my artwork, with the appropriate link to WordPress to old ladies collecting recipes and Disney cartoons everywhere.  I am happy to back on Pinterest.  (And please don’t tell the Pinterest administrators how I did it.  I promise to behave.)

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, collage, collecting, feeling sorry for myself, humor, irony, Paffooney, self pity

Tagged as , , ,

September 8, 2016 · 6:25 pm

Translating Texican

20160722_154518

I came to Texas from Iowa.  I was well-versed in how to speak Iowegian.  (I was, don’t-ya-know, and spoke it fluently, you-betcha.)

Then I arrived, fresh-faced and ready to change the world as a twenty-five-year-old teacher, and began working in a mostly Hispanic middle school in deep South Texas.  Dang!  Whut language do they speak?  (Yes, I know… Spanish.  But my students straight from Mexico couldn’t understand the local lingo either. South Texas Spanish and Castilian Spanish from Mexico are not the same language.)  I couldn’t talk to the white kids either.   It is possible to communicate with Texicans, but it took me years to learn the language.  It takes more than mere usage of “ya’ll” and “howdy”.

untitled

You can probably see what I mean when you look at these fake quotes based on the things real Texicans actually once said to me.  Of course, I can be accused of being a racist by interpreting things this way.  Texicans are concerned that you understand that they are not racists.  They merely rebel against being “politically correct”.  Apparently the political-correctness police give them all sorts of unfair harassment about speaking their minds the way they always have.  I should note, however, that I had to use a quote from Bubba rather than Dave Winchuk.  Dave is so anti-political-correctness concerned that he regularly said to me things with so much racial heat in them that they would even melt the faces off white people.  Face-melting is bad.  If you don’t believe me, re-watch the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

redneck-friends

And to speak Texican, you must actually learn a thing or two about guns.  Yes, Texas is an open-carry State.  Apparently second amendment rights are the most important rights in the constitution.  My two sons grew up in Texas, and the oldest is a Marine.  Guns are important to them.  I have those same arguments with former students, too.  I have learned to say the right things so that they will tolerate my unholy  pacifist ideas about how the world might be safer if everybody didn’t have five guns in the waistbands of their underpants.  So gun-stuff ends up as a part of the Texican language I have learned to speak.

The point of it all is, language is a fascinating thing that grows and changes and warps and regresses.  I love it.  I try to master it.  And the mistakes I make usually sound purty funny.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, education, gun control, humor, irony, kids, Paffooney, red States, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Texas

Tagged as , , , , ,

August 17, 2016 · 4:07 pm

Tippy-Tappy-Tapdance Toes

wallpaper-1443020107

I have wanted to be a writer since about fourth grade.  I have, in fact, been writing stories and making up lies since that time.  So, truthfully… (and as a liar, I use that word with extreme irony) I have actually been a writer since fourth grade.  A writer writes.  And the longer I fantasize about making money as a writer, the longer I submit myself to the never-ending oxymoronic hell of the writer’s life.  I live for the poetry.  But you can’t eat poetry.  Poetry does not help you live.

 

As a writer and cartoonist (a word that means a doodling daydreamer of doofy dreams) I go by the name Mickey.  But, of course, I am NOT Mickey Mouse.  My name is Michael.  And the nickname was inspired by Mickey “Himself” McGuire, the rapscallion hero-child that starred in Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Trolley and inspired Joseph Yule Jr. to rename himself Mickey Rooney for the movies.  Yes, I think that means that my name is not actually Mickey, and neither is anyone else’s.

Mickey-Rooney

Mickey Rooney as Mickey “Himself” McGuire

So, you are probably wondering what this essay is actually about.  Or maybe, more accurately, “Why the Hell is Mickey writing this meaningless @#$%&**! today?”  Well, I am facing reality today.  I am a published author.  But as an Indie author, that means I have to work really, really hard at marketing just to break even, and I am not actually ever going to make back the money I have put into being a published author.  Joseph was able to take his tap-dance on to Hollywood and become one of the biggest names in entertainment.  I will take my talent for meaningless nonsense and making up lies and end up going gentle into that good night.

I am on a quest to get another novel published, but not have to pay for the printing myself.   I have been a finalist in two writing competitions, and failed to win both, but have at least the validation that my stories are as good as some of my writing peers who are successful and get their stuff published.  I am going through the doldrums of constant rejection.  And health-wise, I am running out of time as well as out of money.  But do I despair?  Of course not.  Mickey is too stupid to do that.

 

 

1 Comment

Filed under autobiography, battling depression, humor, irony, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as , , ,

August 12, 2016 · 4:27 pm

Common Sense

Wally22

I have lived a lifetime with the words, “Well, you are smart, alright, but you don’t have common sense like me.”  When they meet me for the first time, other people always know that I am some sort of absent-minded-professor type who solves calculus  problems in his head but forgets to wear pants to school.  (Sorry, Darrin, for using you as an example of what they assume all geniuses are like.)  They always know that their two-plus-two-always-equals-four common sense makes them superior to me.  They don’t have to feel intimidated by my smartness because common sense is a universal equalizer.

Common-Sense yield

Bullies have loudly assured me of the truth of this right to my face.  Classroom wise-guys and know-it-alls (like the radioactive humanoid yam with a comb-over currently running for president) remind me that anybody can accurately remember sources for points brought up in an argument.  And since anybody can do it, if they just take the time to look stuff up, or actually learn it, then it isn’t such a big deal.  The guy who can pull the right answer out of the air, the answer that everybody else likes, is the one to listen to.  When that guy is a billionaire, then he can always hire someone like me to look stuff up for him.

The REAL Sarah

Notorious common sense advocate Sarah Palin has been campaigning in defense of common sense tea party candidates like Tim Heulskamp because she fears that absent-minded-professor types are going to undo his good work of blocking a path to citizenship for hardworking immigrants who have been here for many years and stand to be deported because their paperwork has expired while Heulscamp automatically votes “NO” on any and all immigration reform.  And it is common sense to not raise taxes on the millionaires and billionaires who create jobs even though it seems like a majority of those jobs are created overseas because, after all, workers who don’t demand high pay, or any pay at all, are better for profits.  And poor Timmy lost his seat in the House, even after the miracle that is the State of Kansas trickle-down economics experiment.  He lost it to a rival in the GOP primary.  A rival that will work with “ugh!” Democratic absent-minded professors to actually pass legislation that even Republican voters seem to want… despite common sense.  How can you work with people who tolerate smart people with no pants on?

common-sense-1024x682

So, what have I really learned from this rumination about common sense?  Nothing, of course, because I am merely smart.  I have no common sense.  At least, not in the sense that it is always used as a club against me.

But if I were pressed to come up with something, I might be persuaded to say, “Common sense is an oxymoron.  It is certainly not common any more.  And most of the people invoking it, don’t make very much sense.”  Let me just sit here for a while and think about that with no pants on.

 

4 Comments

Filed under angry rant, clowns, humor, insight, irony, Paffooney, pessimism, philosophy, politics, red States, satire, self pity

Tagged as , , , ,

July 28, 2016 · 12:48 am

Love and Hate and Politics

2008-dnc-hero1

I cringed through a few of the speeches in the Republican National Convention.  Speech after speech talked about how bad Hillary Clinton is, how terrible ISIS is, how Obama has betrayed us and failed us, and other warm fuzzy stuff like that.  They make me sick to my stomach with fear.

2016_Republican_National_Convention_Logo

Was there anything to like about the RNC in Cleveland?  Well, their logo was nice.

I could complain about the plagiarism thing, the Ted Cruz booing thing (although that actually made me smile), or Donald’s deep, dark speech of the coming apocalypse.  But I would rather do like the Democrats seem to be doing this week.  I would rather talk about the good things they can and will do if only we are smart enough to give them the chance.

160512155008-bernie-sanders-atlantic-city-large-1697935165510_853cf01213_b_slideshow

They contrasted their policies in favor of ending discrimination based on race, gender, and orientation with the anti-crime and anti-terrorism howls of the Republicans. Instead of talking about how satisfying it would be to throw the other side’s candidate in jail for imagined crimes, they told us about Hillary’s record of standing up for women, children, and the handicapped.  They gave us specifics about what she has done and who she has helped and what she has learned from Bernie Sanders.  Sanders graciously made her the unanimous choice by throwing all of his delegates behind her.  There was peace and harmony (beyond a few former Bernie supporters who were so mad about the DNC email leak that they may vote Trump out of spite).  Cory Booker’s speech suggested that instead of talking about what we are afraid of, we should be talking about working together in a spirit of love and friendship in order to do great things.  Trump, of course, had an angry tweet in response to that, suggesting he knew things about Booker that could shame him.  Booker replied that he loved Donald Trump and felt honored that the orange one considered him worthy of an angry tweeting.

Now, I am not saying that Democrats are perfect and Republicans are evil… am I?  I don’t believe that when I am rational and not dreaming up nightmares… do I?  But loving one another is what I think the default position should always be for Christians.  So why are the nominally Christian conservatives so much more keen on the righteous wrath of God stuff and punishing those they hate?  Shouldn’t it be the opposite of that?  And my severely Republican friends are always suspicious of just how Christian the godless communist heathens in the Democratic party really are.  If the Democrats are so totally wrong, shouldn’t the facts line up against them?

But it all boils down to facts versus feelings, doesn’t it.  Republicans have reason to be angry, especially the poor ones, because of the raw economic deal they have been given.  Their righteous indignation deserves redress.  But is that best served by punishing Democrats in the more liberal party that more generally favors less income inequality?  What about the capitalist billionaires who drive the Republican agenda?  Are they really saints and deserving of everything they have taken for themselves?

I am smart, but not smart enough to have ultimate answers to the biggest questions.  I have Republican friends who agree whole-heartedly  with that last sentence, especially words five, six, and seven.  But I know the DNC made me feel good while watching, and the RNC made me ill.  I definitely choose love over hatred and politics.

 

 

7 Comments

Filed under clowns, goofy thoughts, humor, insight, irony, politics, the road ahead

Tagged as , ,

July 19, 2016 · 10:53 am

Stardusters… Canto Four

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Four – In the Classroom on Level Six

“Okay,” said Harmony Castille in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, “The most important lesson is this; Jesus says we must love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  He says this law supersedes all others.  If we obey such a law, we will never break any other reasonable law either.”

“Are you saying that Earther monkey people have only one law?” asked Xiar with bulging, surprised eyes.

“I’m saying that if you can break a law without also breaking God’s first law, then it wasn’t a sensible law in the first place.”

“So, how do you obey this first law?” asked Farbick, the Fmoogish Lead Science Officer.

“That’s simple too,” said the beautiful young blond woman who had once been a wrinkled old Sunday school teacher.  “We call it the Golden Rule.  It says that we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”

“How do you do an unto?” asked Studpopper, the communications junior officer of very limited intelligence.

“It means…” said Harmony, being used to the stupidity and hard-headedness of children, “If I don’t want you to hit me, then I don’t hit you first.  If I don’t want you to call me names and hurt my feelings, then I don’t call you a brainless stupid-head first,”

“Thank you for not calling me a brainless stupid-head,” said brainless stupid-head Studpopper stupidly… but politely.

“You are welcome,” said Harmony.

“But what if someone hits you first?” asked Farbick.

Harmony appreciated the fact that Farbick was quite clever and insightful for a Telleron.  “Well,” she replied, “we are trying to teach them what is right by example.  If someone hits me in the cheek, I would turn the other cheek.”

“Wouldn’t they just hit you again?” asked Farbick,

“Do you mean a face-cheek?  Or a behind sort of cheek?” asked Studpopper the stupid-head.

Harmony ignored the emerald-faced buffoon and answered Farbick instead.  “Sometimes they will hit you again, but you must persist in your belief, and continue to only show them patience and love.  Against the love of God, no cruel servant of chaos can stand.”

“They hit you on the butt twice?” asked Studpopper.

“They hit you on the part of your anatomy where you brain is located,” said Harmony acidly.

“Oh, you do mean the butt cheek!”

“Yes, of course I do,” the Sunday school teacher said sarcastically.

“Wait a minute,” said Xiar.  “I haven’t examined Studpopper that closely, but my brain is in my head.”

“”I like your first law,” said Farbick.  “I’m not sure it is practical and would really work, but it is more reasonable and moral than any of the laws of the Tellerons that I am aware of.”

“Yeah,” said Xiar, “Galtorrians will hit first and then eat your cheek.  Your idea of love conquering all will only turn you into gourmet monkey burgers.”

“We will see.  My God is all powerful.”

“Charlie the Crocodile God says to eat or be eaten,” said Studpopper with a stupid grin on his froggy face.

“Charlie?” asked Harmony.

“His name is actually Chaka-Boogen-Baall,” said Biznap who had been watching the whole lesson with some amusement.  “When we learned Galactic English from your old television shows, we found it easier to call him Charlie.  He’s really more of a mythic monster representing fear of death.  Not the same as this guy you call God.”

Harmony smiled at her Telleron lover.  He didn’t believe as easily as she would like, but at least he was supportive.

“Are you sure that these lessons will help us deal with the Galtorrians?” asked Xiar.  “I’m not sure I see the benefits.”

“Do you consider them people?” Harmony asked.

“I suppose we do,” said Farbick, “People with big teeth and scaly bodies.”

“Then they are subjects of the true God and live by his rules.”

“The rules of physics and biology,” said Farbick.  “I grant you that those rules are universal.”

“The rules of God’s love are no less universal,” insisted Harmony.

“I hope you are right,” said Farbick.  “It sounds like a universe we should all want to live in.”

*****

DSCN4410

Harmony Castille the Sunday School Teacher and her husband Commander Biznap

1 Comment

Filed under aliens, humor, irony, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, satire, science fiction

Tagged as , , , ,

July 18, 2016 · 4:23 pm

Doodle-Bop!

Sometimes the only thing you really want out of life is just to get by. You get tired of always having to climb the danged highest mountain.  You get tired of trying to swim the danged deepest sea.

16750_102844509741181_100000468961606_71393_6278100_nSometimes all you want to do is doodle-bop!…  To draw in pen and ink and post your derfiest doofenwacky doodles so you can just make your way through another danged day.

Cody 1

You aim a lot for different, and undeniably original… because no one thinks like you… certainly no one who is real and has a real brain.  You are gifted with an “other-ness”, a sing-songy simpering something that makes you want to doodle and do what no man has done before.  (Does that sentence exist anywhere else in all of literature?  Even if there is some alternate dimension with infinite monkeys typing on infinite typewriters?  What’s a typewriter, you say?  Danged millennials!)

20160127_205542

I really can’t help it, you know.  I was a middle school teacher for 24 years.  That sort of thing has mental health consequences.  And if you wring the sponges in your stupid old brain hard enough and long enough… doodle-bop! comes out.

20151028_092135

Turtle boy’s magic iron of irony!!!

And you have to wonder why some of the stuff that is in your stupid old head is even in there.  Why is it that sometimes the words “Argyle socks are filled with rocks” are drifting through the vast empty spaces in the logic centers of your brain?  There has to be a reason for everything, doesn’t there?

toon1

I do believe I have made myself chuckle at least a dozen chuck-tacular times in the chuck-a-tational crafting of this cheddar-cheesy post.  But it only really counts if I can make you girlishly giggle or guy-like guffaw with my word-munching and cartoony paffoonies.

Wild Ride

The terror-filled cartoon car chase that is life as usual.

You may have noticed that everything is black and white, even though it doesn’t have to be.  Good versus evil, hot versus cold, everything can be divided up simplistically… but the really profound part of simplicity is vibrating reverberations of complexity that lie just underneath.  Words have meaning, even though they are just a bunch of crooked squiggles marked on a page.  (Yes, I know… “or typed on a computer screen”.  Danged millennials!)

4th Dimension

And so, this is my doodle-bop!  Probably not the doodliest or the boppiest doodle-bop! I could have bopped… but there it is.  I have made it through another sorta creative post without losing my mind…  Honest!  I did not lose it.  It is merely temporarily misplaced for a moment.  It will be back in its proper place tomorrow… probably.

Leave a comment

Filed under blog posting, cartoony Paffooney, goofy thoughts, humor, imagination, irony, mental health, metaphor, Paffooney cartoony, pen and ink, pen and ink paffoonies, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wordplay

Tagged as , , , ,

July 14, 2016 · 8:46 pm

Idea Fertilizer

manure expo_n

Picture borrowed from the North American Manure Expo’s Facebook page

This morning as I was going to QT for my daily dose of wake-up juice with caffeine in it, Jody Dean and the Morning Team on KLUV radio station were making fun of the North American Manure Expo taking place in London, Ohio this week.  Jody Dean, the radio talk-show host, was suggesting that the Expo would’ve been a natural thing to host in Fort Worth because, well, Texas and cow poop just naturally go together.  But it occurs to me, that this is fortuitously a part of Ohio this month because the GOP convention is taking place shortly in Cleveland, and the bull dookie won’t have to be shipped as far for that.  Besides, having grown up as an Iowan, I have a farm-boy awareness of the intrinsic need for poo-poo conventions where the latest distribution technology is on display.  After all, cow poo is fertilizer… it makes stuff grow.

Yesterday I was unable to write the post I had planned about the tragic police shooting in Dallas.  There was a lot to write about.  It was a terrible thing that affected me deeply and did considerable damage to the fight for human rights in this country and preserving the respect and dignity we owe to the men in blue who too often give their lives to keep us safe.  It also gave our Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick a chance to actually put both feet in his mouth at the same time, and for Dallas resident and former rodeo clown turned president George W. Bush to do a goofy smiley-faced dance during the playing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic while the memorial to the fallen Dallas policemen was in the middle of a rather somber occasion.  Poop makes stuff grow, and that post would’ve been epic.

20160714_102240

A project I was working on yesterday while sulking.

You see, yesterday I didn’t have the usual amount of time for writing because I had to install an air conditioner for my hot wife.  It was difficult to install because the bedroom I installed it in has no regular windows.  Only a window/door onto the patio.  And I had to do the installing because my wife wanted to take a sledge hammer to the bedroom wall and knock out enough bricks to make a vent hole for the air conditioner.  I did not want my determined little wife taking up the hammer herself, so I carefully mapped out a plan and bought supplies to cut a hole in the drywall and then jury-rig a makeshift air duct to a pre-existing hole in the brickwork.  I got the hole cut in the drywall and then ran into a snag when I exposed a support beam in the way of my plan.  Well, this led to a discussion of the details executed rather loudly and I believe I was compared to a donkey at least three times.  We then reached a compromise (by which I mean what husbands usually mean when they use the word “compromise” which is that we did things the way my wife wanted them done.  Or, rather, my wife picked up the hammer and crowbar, and I retreated to my room to sulk like a proper adult.  The air conditioner is now humming.  It is blowing half of the exhaust out through the space left by the two bricks she knocked out rather neatly, and the other half up through the wall into the attic.  Oh, well, it works and she is happy with it.  Hopefully no building inspectors read this post.

20160712_bbbb1025

Another piece of alien art done while sulking.

The point is, cow poop happens.  And cow poop is fertilizer.  It makes things grow.  Including ideas for posts on my blog.  I was able to illustrate the Telleron alien kids from two of my novels while I was busy sulking and feeling sorry for myself.  In fact, the novel Catch a Falling Star probably only exists because of Iowa and cow poop.  Yes, life in farmville is resoundingly boring and uneventful, so my fertile imagination couldn’t help but make up an alien invasion of a small Iowan farming community.  And my imagination was probably fertile due to so much exposure to cow poop on my grandfather’s and my two uncles’ farms.  So now you know.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, autobiography, blog posting, farm boy, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Iowa, irony, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,