Category Archives: memes

December 21, 2016 · 4:27 pm

I Do Not Love Thee, Mr. Trump

Okay, I gave the monster a chance to prove that he wasn’t as bad as I thought he would be.  But he has proven to be worse than I thought.  We always think that if we had lived in 1930’s  Germany, we would’ve stood up to Herr Schickelgruber.  (Fun fact; Alois Hitler, Adolf’s father, was born out of wedlock to Maria Schickelgruber and later took the name Hitler from the man who married his mother.  So legally, the Fuhrer was actually Adolf Schickelgruber… a fact that humorists of the day used against him to get themselves exterminated.)  Well, now is the time to test that resolve.  There are eerie similarities between that old Fascist dictator and the incoming one. (Another fun fact; Trump’s family name was Drumpf in the old country.  His grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf came to this country at the age of 16 and English-ified his name to Fred Trump.  This is a fact I learned from comedian John Oliver.  Proof at Snopes.com  You should remember the name John Oliver.  He is both informative and funny, and when Donald Drumpf changes the libel laws to include the death penalty, Oliver will be one of the first to go.)

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I started this blog to promote my humorous science fiction novel, Catch a Falling Star, and to write humor in the gentle, toothless way I always admired in Red Skelton, George Goebel, and Jack Benny.  Self-effacing slapstick and subtle funny is funnier than insult and bite funny that is all the rage now… at least in my opinion.  But there are also things that happen that galvanize history itself, and you have to respond appropriately.  You have to take a stand.

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My entire life has been dedicated to educating kids.  I sacrificed my youth and health… and part of my sanity to it.  And now, this re-heated Twinkie with delusions of grandeur and epically bad hair has put an enemy of public education in the cabinet as the Secretary of Education.

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In fact, he has chosen cabinet officials specifically for the purpose of deconstructing their departments.

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“What?  The EPA controls nukes?  I couldn’t even remember this danged department!

His transition team represents a total contempt for the democratic duties of government to protect and empower the people who voted him in.

So, I have resolved that I will never recognize this man as my President.  I am part of the resistance that stands against him.  I will not address him as anything but Mr. Trump.  He didn’t earn the title fairly under that cloud of Russian hacking, collaboration over oil between Trump and Putin and Exxon who now runs the State Department.  He didn’t earn that title fairly when the Director of the FBI wrote a letter announcing more emails to Congress right before the election, and then later revealed there was nothing important in them.  He didn’t earn that title fairly when he failed to denounce white supremacists who supported him and after the election win were emboldened to commit hate crimes while shouting his name.  He will be the worst president in history, though I think he will be an heir to the throne of world’s most pernicious dictator that Herr Schickelgruber could be proud of.

I Do Not Love Thee, Mr. Trump!

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November 24, 2016 · 4:46 pm

Lie la Lie

I suppose it is ironic that on Thanksgiving Day I am posting about lies.  After all, I really am thankful for the lies in some very specific ways.  Paul Simon’s song is the reason for the odd title and underscores the feeling I am trying to explain;

Yes, I am grateful that most of what the orange-faced man has said on the campaign trail has turned out to be lies.  I thank the Lord that the great ball of cantaloupe-colored mouth-flatulence has indicated he might not actually pull out of the Paris Accords on climate change.  That little item being a lie may save our entire planet and all life on Earth.  I thank the Lord that the orangutan president has had second thoughts about prosecuting Hillary Clinton for crimes she didn’t actually commit.

king-louie

I thank the Lord that the goal of repealing Obamacare is just a lie.  My diabetes is grateful too.  King Donald, seen in the photo above pitching snake oil and bananas to an innocent member of the American public, has strongly indicated he will keep all the good parts of Obamacare… and will basically just change the name to Trumpacare.  Of course, he will be preserving high premiums and profits for the insurance industry as well.

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I have a strong suspicion the wall is just a lie as well.  In fact, the nature of President Cinnamon Hitler is such that if he is trying to keep alien secrets about Area 51 with the same talent for keeping secrets he displayed on the bus video and in his formation of a cabinet in his administrative transition, we may soon know the complete truth about Roswell.

But I’m sure you realize by now that all this is in the manner of lies and jests.  In reality I am Paul Simon’s boxer;

Yes, I am beaten down by life.  I have been lied to.  I have been tricked.  And if I only could, I would give that monkey such a punch!  But we are all the boxer, all scarred.  And we all together vastly outnumber the monkey’s minions.  I may not live to see it, but it will always be a possibility, for as long as the fighter still remains.  And I am thankful for that.

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September 12, 2016 · 3:18 pm

Opinions Are Like Onions

The REAL Sarah

“Why does something always smell bad when I am talking?”

Opinions are like Onions.

All you have to do is subtract 3.141592 and they are exactly the same.

The people that like the way they taste like theirs a lot.

They want you to try them.

And if you don’t like the taste, then you just don’t know what’s good for you.

Onions are good for you.  They make you fart and they clear out the bad gasses made up of methane and other toxic waste from your colon and digestive tract.

Opinions are good for you too.  They make you fart out of the mouth, clearing bad gasses made up of stupidity and toxic ideas out of your little old brain.  You should not be holding that stuff in.  It is poisonous and it could potentially explode.  Not something you want to happen in either the colon or the brain.  Only stupid people hang on to them in the face of contradictory evidence.  (It makes me nervous that I don’t see people exploding more often, because I hold the opinion that there really are a lot of stupid people out there.  I, too, am probably in danger of exploding at some point.)

harker

And see, that’s the important point here.  Opinions are only as valuable as fart gas.  For the all-important progress of ideas to really happen, opinions have to be tested.  And I don’t mean opinions like whether or not you like the taste of onions.  I am talking about opinions that lead to policy.  Politics are crammed full of opinions.  (I got that right, didn’t I?  I didn’t say “onions” when I actually meant “opinions”, right?)

Hillary Clinton is apologizing now for the opinion-based fart-gas of saying that “half of Donald Trump’s supporters are deplorable people”.  The facts are that the KKK has voiced support for Trump, as have a number of immigrant-hating racists like Ann Coulter who will tell you in detail about all her onions concerning Mexicans and brown people.  People at Trump’s rallies have physically assaulted black people and protesters of any variety.  And to “deplore” someone is to speak out against their ideas or actions.  So the critical word that is not a fact, but rather an onion, must be “half”.  This is the word where Hillary went wrong.  I am sure that “half” is an under-estimation.

And Mr. Trump, as a connoisseur of truly stinky onions has said that Clinton and Obama are literally the founders of ISIS.  And in his onion, Vladimir Putin is a stronger leader than President (of this country) Obama.  One wonders why no one has really sliced and diced these particular onions.  One imagines that if Hillary were the chef serving these onions, no one would be willing to have them in the dining room, let alone eat them.  Onions need be tested for flavor and rightness long before they are served.

So, to close up this onion-smelling essay before it makes me fart again, let me just say, we need to not get stuck in the onion patch and mistakenly convince ourselves we are smelling roses.  Roses shouldn’t make you cry.

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May 30, 2016 · 4:08 pm

Appreciating Minions

Okay, I had accidentally stumbled across the un-shrink button on my computer for the last two posts, and then, somehow, my thumb accidentally found the shrink button again.  I am trying to write this post on a microscopically small screen and squinting fiercely at the teeny-tiny letters all the while.  So what do I do to avoid total mental meltdown?  I call upon my minions.  I have a picture file on my computer devoted entirely to minions.  So I ought to be able to make a decent collage out of that;

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Okay, I reached a point where I had to punch random buttons without any response and my computer finally enlarged everything again.  Ultron is obviously in the system though anti-virus software doesn’t detect him.  I guess I am going to have think about a new computer.  Meanwhile, a few more minions;

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May 24, 2016 · 3:41 pm

A Thing That I Know…

You probably guessed it just from the title.  I started this post without any idea at all what I was going to write about.  And so I had to rummage around in the back rooms of my silly old brain looking for stuff to put out there that wasn’t too moldy, but definitely had been thoroughly cooked and stored away for a while.

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So here is something I know…  If you want to make someone pay attention to you, make a joke.  You can do that by surprising people with something that they immediately recognize and realize that it is totally backwards to what they saw before.  In other words, when I say or write things that make people wrinkle their noses at me, I am not merely being weird.  I am being a humorist.

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Here is something else I know…  If you want to have an idea that is worth having, you need to look at things from a totally different angle.  If I want to know myself better, I need to reflect on how Charles Schultz would draw me.  I would be half Linus and half Charlie Brown because I am most profound when I have my blanket to comfort me, but things constantly go wrong for me and I see myself as a loser… but I have people who love me, and a dog that battles the Red Baron.

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Another thing I know… If you want to make something, you have to follow the rules, and only occasionally break them.  This post began with a simple enough rule.  It had to have simple statements of things I have learned over the course of my life, and the pictures all had to come from a randomly selected picture file on my laptop.  I save all kinds of weirdly chosen and goofy things in my art and memes files.  So how dangerous can that rule be?  Of course, I also want to put up a bit of my own artwork, and this file that I chose doesn’t seem to have any in it.  So, I have to break the rule… but only this one last time.

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Now, I know you will probably look at this and think to yourself, “What the hell is wrong with you, Mickey?”  Or maybe you will say it out loud in your most disgusted voice.  But I do know this…  If you are old and you have lived long enough to have learned a thing or two… or possibly three, you can simply start writing and the ideas will be there.  And it might turn out to be something you will be glad you wrote and shared.  This is simply a thing that I know.

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January 21, 2016 · 4:38 pm

How to Be Offended by Practically Everything

I have recently been told that I am too easily offended.  In fact, I have been repeatedly told that.  Apparently I overreact to things that should not upset me or should not be taken personally.   Apparently my humor is too flippant and insensitive.  I am told that I should not have an issue with people using the Confederate Flag on Facebook posts, even when they are insisting that their rights are being violated if they can’t fly that flag next to the U.S. Flag on Veterans’ Day… even though they are from Iowa and their ancestors fought and died for the Union.  I am told that I should not be upset that Donald Trump wants to deport almost all of my former ESL students because he thinks they are rapists and drug dealers.  He hasn’t met them.  And he even admitted that he “assumed some are good people”.  But he is going to protect us by eliminating all foreigners from our society.  No more of this “anchor baby” stuff with children being born here only so that their parents can stay.  People don’t deserve to live here if their ancestors weren’t born here.  And I shouldn’t let my foolish attachment to these interlopers, based on years worth of getting to know them so I could do my job as a teacher properly, color my response to the perceptions and pronouncements of “real Americans”.

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The Daily Edge’s photo.

I recently shared this movie poster on Facebook because I am disgusted and offended by the immigration policies of both of these “real Americans”.  I thought it was clever, and it made me chuckle, even though I am quite well aware that Jim Carrey might be livid about having his face replaced by Sarah Palin’s.  She does, after all say funnier and more nonsensical things than he does.

But I got blow-back.  An Iowegian Facebook friend, whom I remember as a sweet-natured little six-year-old that I held on my lap in the 1970’s, told me, “Just wait, you will be sorry” in the comments.  Now, you should probably know that Tommy grew up to be an illiterate jack of all trades who loves guns and hunting and is planning to vote for Donald Trump because he passionately hates the “Mexicans” that moved into Iowa to do the farm work that practically no one else is doing any more.  He is not above acting out his belief in Trump with a gun in his hands.  Will he hurt me over a Facebook post?  Probably not.  He’s not a genius, but he still remembers me fondly as the older boy that befriended him when he lived with his grandma in the house on the other side of our back yard.  I played card games and monopoly with him and his brothers, and often let him win.  But apparently, hatred of Mexicans and other “job-takers” Trumps hearts in the card game of life.

So I am left wondering if the people telling me that I am too easily offended aren’t actually the ones getting offended for the wrong reasons.

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I try to listen whenever Willy Wonka pops up on Facebook to smugly tell me how to live my life.  He is right when he says that you have to honestly consider the viewpoint of others and not be so completely convinced of the rightness and righteousness of your own point of view.

But those getting mad at me for being offended are offending me by saying and posting and doing hate-filled things that don’t treat others as people… just because their skin color and country of origin is slightly different than our own.  They post insults aimed at “welfare queens” and suggest those people deserve what they get out of life because they are lazy and take advantage of government programs.  Never mind that most of the suffering and poverty in this country is endured by the growing number of people with minimum-wage jobs.  And those people are always working hard when I see them at work.  Some of the people that offend me by suggesting we shouldn’t be generous to others are people that I know have no more wealth to draw upon than the people they are criticizing, and take some of the same assistance programs they are complaining about.  Maybe it is actually to everyone’s benefit to be offended by the kind of hurtful things and ideas that go around this country prompted by Republican Presidential candidates and Fox News.  Maybe I am not being offended enough?

We will have to wait and see.  I’m sure that sooner or later Willy Wonka will pop up on Facebook with the answer.  I do love that movie, and that is probably why his internet meme ideas always sway me.  (It is possible that this essay may not be exhibiting Mr. Spock levels of logic, but Mickey can only think like a Mickey always thinks.)

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November 22, 2015 · 8:09 pm

Just In Case You Haven’t Seen It…

My sisters and I as kids loved old movie musicals with dancing in them probably as much as any genre.  This video making the rounds on Facebook is something I have seen posted and re-posted and have personally watched at least five times already.  I have shared it twice on Facebook, and it continually gets re-shared, especially by friends my age or older.  Why does something like this go viral?  Well, Bruno Mars is a popular young Michael Jackson clone with an amazing musicality that appeals to all ages.  And the video is beautifully edited so that all the dancers from old movie musicals are actually in sync and appear to be dancing to the beat.  But the game-breaker for me is the fact that the dancers are all the old stars that used to fascinate me with their dance moves on PBS back in the 1970’s when old movie musicals got played on Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday evenings.  I recognize Fred Astair, Gene Kelly, Buddy Ebsen, Donald O’Connor, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Mickey Rooney, Groucho Marx, the Ritz Brothers, and many more from the movies I loved like Anchors Away, Singing in the Rain, New York New York, and so many others I can’t even begin to name them all.  This mash-up brings back a whole lost world for me and gives me joy.  It connects the past with the energy of the present.  It gives me something to long for, to sigh for, and to fondly recall.  I want to see all those movies again.  But it wouldn’t be the same without my sisters there.

Blue Dawn

One has to wonder if all the time we spent on entertainment during our lifetime was a lost cause or not.  I have a rich tapestry of memories of other people’s lives, gained through movies, television, and books.  But has that enhanced my life?  Or has it taken away from my life’s work?  I know work puts food on the table and makes continued life possible.  But it also has to define the value of our lives.  I have never, though, lived a moment as a teacher when something I learned from movies or a book has actually interfered with delivering instruction.  And I can name innumerable times, looking back, when being able to recall entertainment experiences led to a unique teachable moment.  Those things can actually be the most important things we teach.  And what an entertainer in any medium manages to communicate to me validates their life’s work.

This flash mob concert makes me weep for joy every time I watch it.  It makes me realize what marvelous fulfillment there is in the act of committing a work of art.  How must poor demented and deaf Beethoven be soaring in spirit to have his work take so many people by surprise like this?  It gives me chills to think about that kind of immortality even though the composer is long since dead.  He is still giving astonishing gifts to little girls who put a coin in a hat.

You don’t even have to be Beethoven-levels of famous to create moments that will live forever in the memory of the universe.  I have watched this video of street performers across the world so many times I have it memorized and can sing along.  I have shared this video so many times that I expect others to tell me, “Just stop it already!”  But they never do.  We learn the value of art by being an audience… by being consumers of art.  And it gives me hope as well for my own artistic endeavors.  Making money is not the point.  Sharing my work with others… even long after my own personal time on earth is up… is the precious thing.  I am reminded of the culmination of the long and glorious career of Charlie Chaplin.  And the movie clip that gets circulated so often now after another tragedy like the one in Paris.  I dare you to listen to this speech and not be moved… to hear it out and not learn something important.

Thank you for letting me waste your time today.  I intended to commit no further evil in the world today, than to let you share a few of the things that everybody seems to be finding beautiful and worth the effort of sharing.

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January 19, 2015 · 4:50 pm

Making Memes Again

class Miss M2

Okay, I know it is a fool’s pursuit.  You try to create epigrammatic quotes, sayings, and tidbits of wisdom to post on Facebook and then you hope people will click on “like” and “share”.   You hope it goes viral.  It is a striving after wind to paraphrase Ecclesiastes.  But I do it anyway.  After all, isn’t everything a writer does striving after wind?  The chances of reaching a larger audience and touching a great many hearts are microscopically insignificant.  I have reached a point in my writing career where I am actually, finally able to reach readers.  People really do read my blog, my Facebook pages, and occasionally, my novels.  I actually do score one or two hits on the heart of a reader once in a while.  Is it worth it?  Will I ever make any money at it?  Yes… followed by probably not.  I have managed to leave a footprint on the internet, something that was not possible during all those years of writing and drawing and then storing the work away in boxes and portfolios in the bedroom closets.  If you want to see the shape of that footprint, do a Google image search on the words “Beyer Paffooney“.  The spread of pictures and links is as impressive as that of real artists and writers (and by real I mean those who are well enough known to actually make some money at it.)  Today’s Paffooney is a teacher-meme that should be syrupy cute enough to attract a like or two.  I have no illusions about being a master of this new art-form, but I have investigated and studied it just enough to make feeble novice attempts.  And so what if no one ever notices?  I am posting my heart and wit and wisdom online in ways that will make some of it last beyond the scope of my physical life.  Therein lies at least a portion of my immortality.

Here’s a link for the “Google Beyer Paffooney” thing;

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1600&bih=732&q=beyer+paffooney&oq=beyer+paffooney&gs_l=img.3…1935.7232.0.8091.15.3.0.12.12.0.64.166.3.3.0.msedr…0…1ac.1.61.img..12.3.166.C5lIUlYGDz8#imgdii=_

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