Category Archives: Paffooney

May 4, 2021 · 4:03 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 138

Canto 138 – The Throckpod Speaks

The designated Throckpod lumbered into Ged Aero-sensei’s camp with a sort of thorny swagger that made the students of the White Spider rather uneasy.  A flower-creature like that should’ve been more humbly worried about entering an enemy’s camp than this one was.

The Throckpod that Mai Ling introduced to Ged was a daisy-headed being with disturbingly human-looking eyes.  Its petals were yellow.  The center of the blossom where the eyes peered out was green.

“So, I understand that you are the spokesman for the Throckpods,” Ged said.

“No.  I am all Throckpods.  We are all linked by our glorious leader.  We are all one.”

“I see.”

“You do have eyes, yes.  You may have noticed that I have eyes too.  Not photon-sensitive seed pods, but real eyes.  A gift from our glorious master who unites us all.”

“You serve the Grainmaster, then?”

“Our glorious master gave us our true sight and our ability to know what all Throckpods know, shared knowledge throughout the hive mind.”

“But do you serve the Grainmaster?”

“We serve all of the planet.  Through the Grainmaster we serve, yes.”

“We have come to ask you about the treatment of the other plant people.  We have come to understand that the common plant people are bullied by the Throckpods and forced to give everything they have to the Grainmaster.  We wish to discuss other, more-equitable forms of governing with the Grainmaster.”

“Listen, King Monkey, we of the Throckpod legions come specifically to destroy you.  We intend to eliminate all such inferior creatures from the ecospheres of all nearby planets.”

The vicious Throckpod detached three thorns from it’s arm-branches glistening with rather obvious poisons.

Shu, Mai Ling, and Taffy King each intercepted one of the thorns as it was thrown and buried the projectiles deeply into the Throckpod’s stem, near the walking-roots, thus shriveling up the flower-warrior’s only means of getting away.

“Now you have declared war on all of the plants of the sacred master.  We all see through my eyes.  All Throckpods now know of your treachery.  I do all I can now to slay all your little monkey-kind.  You will regret your treachery.  The Throckpods now descend upon you!”

Of course, the Throckpod by himself had very little power to make good on his threats himself.  He flung a flurry of thorns at Ged’s students and Shu, Mai Ling, and Taffy threw them all right back.

Soon the Throckpod was mostly shredded, limp and swiftly turning brown on the ground.

Luigi the Onion Guy was apparently beside himself with upset and anger.  “YoU iS no knOwing hoW bad YoU haS made thiNgs now!”

“We are doing our best,” Ged answered impatiently.  “You don’t expect me to just stand by and let these Throckpod monsters slay my students, do you?”

“He is only warning you that the Throckpods will now seek vengeance on us all and we may all be doomed,” explained the more reasonable Carrot-man.

At that moment Gyro and Billy came crashing down from the sky on a dragonfly-looking grav bike,  the two boys tumbling and losing their cowboy hats into the center of the camp.

“Are you two all right?” gasped Sara the healer.

“Nothing that you can’t fix,” said Billy, rubbing his raw, scraped knee.

“We do have a problem, though.  Thousands of Throckpods are headed this way to kill us.”  Gyro’s little blue face was completely serious for once.

“Yes, we will definitely have to deal with that problem now… somehow,” said Ged Aero-sensei.

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May 2, 2021 · 7:32 pm

The Philosopher King’s Quest

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor, one of the good ones, not like Caligula, Nero, or even Commodus, his son who was emperor after him.

But what made him good? Obviously the fact that he was beloved by the Roman people, even the senators and the very people who would’ve benefitted personally by his failure and demise.

He was a good administrator that benefitted the people with public works. He was a good military leader who maintained the Pax Romana until his death in 180 A.D.

Of course, his son, Commodus, blew that all up by being such an incompetent dictator that his own Praetorian Guard assassinated him (as portrayed in the movie Gladiator, though that movie also made him out to be his father’s murderer, of which there is no real evidence.)

But my friend Emperor Marcus was so much more than just a good ruler. He was a good man. And this is due almost entirely to the fact that he was a well-known Stoic Philosopher.

He embraced the philosophy of Greek philosopher and Roman slave Epictetus. Stoicism is the belief that you, as an individual do not control anything in the outside world to the degree you can control yourself. It is not the things, people, and events around you that matter, since you can’t control those. It is your own set of principles that you have to put in place and adhere to that affect the outcomes in life. In fact, you should view the setbacks and roadblocks to your accomplishments not as a negative thing, but as a learning opportunity. Learn all you can while you may, and at every opportunity. The Stoic welcomes hardship, because the overcoming of hardships shapes the man or woman you will become.

I found this philosophy to be the only way forward some days during the course of my teaching career. I was always more successful in meeting challenges head-on as they arose in front of me. Delaying, making excuses, or running away are all easier to do than that. But those other wimpy tactics never yield the success you can have by defeating your opposition and hardships face-to-face. Of course, you have to remember too that overcoming opposition does not have a selfish quality if you are a Stoic. In fact, you must respect all men, even your enemies. Marcus Aurelius, in response to victory in battle won by having thirsty troops offer a Christian prayer and then have their problem solved by a fortuitous rain storm, told the Senate they must no longer persecute Christians. They started to be considered good Roman citizens no matter what their religion.

Marcus Aurelius made it clear in his writings, the Meditations written in Greek, that, “In order to win the day, you must first win the morning.” To him this meant you had to be an early riser, tackling each problem of the day as it came up in the order they happened, morning to night.

So, the Philosopher King’s Quest, by this Stoic philosophy, is managed by first putting yourself right. You must examine your beliefs, test your hypotheses, and prove yourself to yourself before trying to tackle the world.

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May 1, 2021 · 7:17 pm

Pen and Ink Storytelling

Today’s Art Day post is about using pen and ink to tell at least a part of a story. Narrative can indeed occur in black and white images.
After a lifetime of studying the works of other pen and ink masters, I can copy many styles and I make as much of it a part of my own style as possible.
I know I probably draw nude figures too often. I get unfollowed by prudes and pious people on Twitter practically every day.
And nudes can attract the wrong sorts of followers too. But they usually don’t follow very long when they begin to notice my drawings never contain what they are actually looking for.
I am not a racist. I do identify with rabbit people, but I recognize that wolves are people too. And you have to appreciate diversity as a strength of humanity. Otherwise rabbit people would be persecuted too.
Some of my art contains portraits of people I have known.
And sometimes it is the illustration of characters in one of my books that help me recognize who those characters really are based on. “Hello, Sofie.”
And sometimes the story the picture tells is funny.
And sometimes it is simply silly.
Sometimes it is a story we all know already.
And sometimes the story is entirely original and new.

But however you look at it, pen and ink is fun.

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April 30, 2021 · 4:39 pm

I Sweetpotato What I Sweetpotato

If you are as goofy and cartoon-obsessed as me, you may remember that Popeye the sailor was known for the catchphrase, “I yam what I yam”. And if you do remember that, it will not surprise you that, when told a yam is another name for sweet potato, Popeye was furious. “It cannot be!” he argued. “I would not say I sweet potato what I sweet potato! That’s ridicumess!”

Well he has a point.

But I would like to talk today about the things that I sweet potato, and why I sweet potato those things.

First of all, I yam a humorist.

I yam this thing not because I am funny. You may think I yam funny because I say really goofy things for no apparent reason, and then keep on talking long enough to convince you that I did have a point to make, but my brain leans so far to the left that I am hardly right about anything.

And I make bad puns a lot.

You see, I have to use humor constantly to deal with all the hard things in life, because being too serious in the face of the world’s basic uncaring cruelty only leads to depression and taking a beating from life. In fact, I can think of any number of situations in my past where I avoided a beating only because I made a joke that made the bully laugh.

So, being a humorist is a survival tactic. Humor keeps you alive.

You see someone like me has to face all the pain and heartache and cruelty the world has to offer by using humor. The real reason is that, when faced with a bad situation, if the humor gland can’t empty itself of all the jokes it produces, it will begin to swell. The humor gland is located either in the brain or maybe in the behind (I am not medically qualified to tell you which it really is), and it can only swell to a certain point, and then it will explode. This is very bad thing for you, if you survive it, and certainly unpleasant for anybody nearby.

But the joke, properly launched at the target, will make somebody laugh, even if it is only the humorist himself. And laughter is the best medicine. Unless it kills you. You have to be careful not to die laughing. The angels will be offended, and the demons will all laugh too.

But I yam not only a humorist. I yam also a teacher.

I began to realize that I might be a teacher when, in graduate school to get a remedial master’s degree to help with the fact that plain English majors all starve to death, I discovered I had a talent for explaining things in simple terms. And then, immediately afterwards, I discovered I had an even greater talent for being ignored while the people I was explaining to made the mistakes they wouldn’t have made if only they had listened to me, before they failed spectacularly, and then realized how the solution I had explained would’ve made them succeed instead. There is apparently no better way to learn an important lesson.

Teaching is, of course, a pretty cool job. You tend to have the summers off. And you get paid for summer because they split the amount of money you earn for the year (which considering what a babysitter makes on average per child and per hour is far too little for the hours you put in) into twelve monthly pittances.

Of course you are expected to have a university degree (although no teacher college in the world can teach you what you really need to know in order to face that many little monsters… err, darlings… every day) and preferably some grad school, and a certification to teach in your chosen subject, and an additional certification if you are going to teach more than one subject (and ESL and Speech and Journalism, all of which I was expected to teach, are separate certifications) and you have to take hours of additional training every single year, and you have to get re-certified every five years, and… Well, you have to be basically smarter and much better-educated than Bill Gates… But the school janitor will probably be making more money per month than you do.

Anyway, it’s a job you just gotta love. I yam a teacher.

And really, there are a whole lotta yams in my basket yet that I could tell you about. I yam a Red Skelton fan. I yam sometimes a nudist (when I don’t have to put on clothes to keep myself from scratching all my psoriasis-plagued skin off). I yam also an artist (of the type known as a cartoonist). I yam pig-headed sometimes, and I yam Grumpy sometimes (so I go from being Porky to one of the Seven Dwarfs.) I yam a lotta things. And my sweet-potato basket is large.

But I can’t talk about all of my yams today. Too many yams are bad for my diabetes.

But here’s one last yam. I yam a storyteller. And I have a free Kindle e-book promotion this weekend. The book is the first in my series of AeroQuest books. It is a science fiction story with a humorous bent. And I mean, it is seriously bent in some places.

So, click on the link and get yourself a copy. It’s funny. And I will save the other sweet potatoes for another day.

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April 30, 2021 · 2:30 pm

The Making of a Paffooney

There is a certain amount of worry now in Mickeytown. My hands have begun to tremble. I see things that aren’t there. I have become excessively forgetful. Possibly Parkinson’s… but not diagnosed by a doctor yet.

Maybe it’s only paranoia… but that’s a Parkinson’s symptom too.

And it worries me because I need to be able to draw new Paffoonies. But it is definitely becoming harder.

Yesterday, when my computer was breaking down again, the scanner miraculously reconnected itself and began to work.

I scanned this old pen-and-ink drawing.

Do I know why I drew it, or what it is supposed to be about?

I do not.

But I can still swirl colored pencils and color within the lines, at least as well as I did when I was nine.

You may remember this one from yesterday,

Of course, forgetful me, I couldn’t remember where I had stored my best art pencils. I had to crack open the bag of old school pencils that I still have from my last hurrah as a Texas pedagogue (a word that means a teacher of children, not that other thing that the evil-minded ones among you were probably thinking.)

So, now I have a colored picture of a young-girl space traveler. What to do with it?

Like any old mad god who makes a girl come to life like this (old mad god of colored pencils, a little “g” god, not a blasphemous big “G” one,) I needed to name her and give her a story, a purpose in life.

So, I called her Cissy Moonskipper (a suitably satirical and comic sort of name playing off of Luke Skywalker.)

And I stranded her on a family-owned free-trader starship, alone in deep space. Her family is gone permanently. The ship has everything she needs to survive. She is a sole-survivor on a deserted island in deep space in an unexplored star system. And all she has is a starship owner’s manual and a copy of the novel Robinson Crusoe.

So, I added a background and now I have started a new book idea. That is essentially what a Paffooney is. Words and pictures by little ol’ me.

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April 29, 2021 · 7:30 pm

Cissy Moonskipper

She scrambled over the railing and made it hurriedly to her brother’s side. She scraped her right knee in the effort. He was lying where he fell in the middle of the arboretum. The sky portal was still open to the stars, especially Veda 257, the star whose system the ship was now a temporary part of. Bright starlight streamed in to nourish the food plants and her late mother’s flowers.

But when she reached Wosely Moonskipper, he was no longer alive. The Lupin’s slug-thrower had penetrated his energy shield and hit him in his stupid melon of a head.

“How could you do that to me, Wose? How could you leave your baby sister all alone aboard a starship going nowhere in an unexplored star system?”

Of course, the dummy didn’t answer. This was, however, the first time he had an actual good excuse for it.

She looked over at the smoking pile of debris that was all the derfbag Lupin space-werewolf left behind as Wosely had disintegrated him. Stupid Stardog pirate! He got what he deserved.

But, wait! The pirate had brought his vehicle aboard in order to try to get ahold of the Moonskipper family spacecraft.

She lamely spent a dozen extra minutes trying to get Wose to raise himself from the dead. But 53rd Century medicine didn’t work like that. Full resurrections had to be carefully planned ahead of time. Wose hadn’t planned in the early morning hours to accidentally allow a dog-headed alien pirate to come aboard and murder him. At least he had the good sense to shoot back before he went down. No telling what would’ve become of twelve-year-old Cissy if he hadn’t.

Then she went to inspect the Lupin’s remaining possessions. In the docking bay she found the little two-man space skiff, an anti-gravity pod with a sub-light engine. A wonderful thing to have if she hadn’t lost Wose. the only one who could drive the thing. That was the good thing about old Wose. At thirty-five he knew how to build, fix, or repair practically anything that could travel in space.

That was the next problem to think about. She was alone on the starship now. Since Mom died and her father went so crazy with grief that Wose had to maroon him on that jungle moon seven months ago to prevent him from flying the ship into the heart of the nearby star, they had simply wandered. Nobody remaining on board knew how to navigate other than randomly drifting from star system to star system by line of sight.

Food was no problem. The arboretum produced all the organic matter they needed to create food from the replicator. And Wose had taught her how to scoop fuel from the outer levels of the clouds in a gas-giant. But how was she going to pilot the thing? And what would she do when something broke down?

She was moping about in the bridge when she happened to open the right storage drawer in the captain’s table. There were two books inside that immediately caught her eye.

She grinned to herself. She still had to see to Wose’s funeral. But she was grateful that Mom had taught her to read. She now possessed the ship’s owner’s manual that explained enough about everything to make life on a starship possible, and a copy of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

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April 28, 2021 · 7:11 pm

Magical Thinking

People accused of doing magical thinking are basically being accused of doing something awful. Like Republicans telling us that if we cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires, working class and middle class citizens will prosper because of it. Of course, they actually know better. So, it isn’t really magical thinking. It is really evil magical thinking.

But when I am actually guilty of magical thinking, it is more along the lines of me pinning my hopes on an intuition brought about by calculations in my overcrowded imagination that are probably horribly miscalculated but that I need to turn out to be accurate and miraculously pull me out of my current difficulty. And then, because I intuit really, really hard… it turns out all right.

Magic is after all, merely what we call science and situations where something amazing is created, but we have no idea at all how and why.

Our movies nowadays are really quite chock full of magical thinking. Wish-fulfillment, fantasy, and violence-laden revenge stories are what fill the cinema with seekers of escapism and relaxation. That is magical thinking of an epic sort. Go see the Black Panther movie and “Wakanda forever” solves racism.

So, what is the point of this little essay? What am I actually thinking about the subject of magical thinking? Well, I needed a topic today to keep my every-day-in-April posting goal alive. And magically…

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April 27, 2021 · 4:20 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 137

Canto 137 – Wild Ride

Gyro was no ordinary Nebulon.    

Nebulons, known to many in the Imperium as “Space Smurfs” for reasons long forgotten, were the child-like blue people who inhabited deep space in their living starships.  Many thought the blue skin, yellow hair, and red apple cheeks showed evidence they were not just humanoids, but human space travelers mutated by the exotic radiations of the nebulae where Earthers and other humans had first discovered them. 

Gyro had the red cheeks, the blue skin, and the bright yellow hair, but he also had qualities that were extremely rare in Nebulons.  For one thing he was a Psion, a being with the right brain mutation to perform powerful brain functions that seemed like magic to the ordinary space traveler. 

His own special psionic ability was even rarer than the usual Psion.  He could not only use telepathy, but use the power of his “inner eye” to see and alter the molecular structure and overall organization in any finite piece of matter. 

In other words, he could change lead into gold with the power of his mind alone.  To Gyro it was just a matter of pushing the funny little atomic balls into new configurations in the creative imaginings of his “inner eye”.

Being a Psion inside the borders of the Galactic Galtorrian Imperium, the so-called “Thousand Worlds”, was a dangerous enterprise.  The Imperials were so afraid of psionic powers and what they believed they could do, that having psionic power brought an immediate death sentence. 

That was the reason that when Gyro and his family, and  Billy Iowa, also a Psion, had to leave the Pan Galactican Union, they had journeyed eventually to the distant world of Gaijin to find the master of Psionics, the White Spider, Ged Aero.  Ged Aero-sensei had taken in both boys, given them a home, and taught them how to master the powers of the “inner eye”.

So that was the reason that Gyro now sat on the planet Cornucopea beside a huge dead bug and pondered the possibilities of escape for himself and Billy. Ged Aero-sensei and his White Spider Mutant Space Ninjas had come as explorers to the planet, and run afoul of the living plants, specifically the Throckpods, who inhabited it. 

As Gyro and Billy had been heading back to base camp, they were attacked by a large group of the ugly sentient flowers and their pet gargantuan dragonfly. 

Billy, being a good student of Ged-sensei’s Martial Arts training, delivered a jump-kick to the chitinous face plate of the dragonfly that put a hole in it, driving his foot right into the thing’s syrupy brain tissue.  It dropped dead next to them as Throckpods moved menacingly around them in a huge circle of weed.

“We are totally cut off,” said Billy.  “And I think they mean to kill us.”

“They’re flowers!  Flowers can’t eat people… can they?” asked Gyro nervously.

“They are intelligent flowers.  How can you know what they eat and don’t eat?  Especially after Sara told us about how they tried to take all of her blood?” asked Billy in return.  His Dakota-Sioux features scrunched up into a frown.  “I am at the height of my power.  Let them come!  In a sacred manner I resist them until my very last breath!  It is a good day to die!”

Gyro’s eyes got wider.  It was a very Native American sort of thing for Billy to say, but Gyro didn’t really want to hear it.

“You give me a few minutes to think,” said Gyro, “and I will find a way out of this mess.”

Billy resolutely turned to frown at the approaching grove of ugly flowers.

Gyro looked all around, and finally settled on the dragonfly.  In some ways, the huge insect already resembled an anti-grav cycle.  It wouldn’t take very much manipulation to… 

Gyro’s imagination started turning chitin into glass-steel.  The dragonfly’s bowels were easy to shape into a small fusion-powered engine.  The blood only had to be separated to get the hydrogen necessary for fuel.  With a few pops and crackles and one big POOM, they had a working grav cycle.

As Throckpods started throwing thorns, and Billy swatted them out of the air with Wushu defensive strikes, Gyro revved the engine and pulled Billy onto the upholstered seat behind him.

“Time to bug out!” said Gyro with a huge blue grin.  The grav cycle immediately and silently lifted into the air on anti-grav repulsor lifts.  Then, with a roar, they zoomed skyward, not only out of the reach of Throckpods and thorns, but also out of reach from the devilish dragonflies that were swarming towards them from somewhere in the eastern sky.

“I guess it’s a good thing you can change stuff like that,” said Billy, holding tightly onto his Texas sombrero, “but if you had never made that stink-language translator, maybe we would’ve never got into this mess.”

“I don’t think the translator is the big problem,” said Gyro.  “These flowers seem to have an agenda that doesn’t include looking pretty and smelling nice.  I think they don’t like us as plant-eaters and potential invaders.  After all, this is their world.”

“Okay,” said Billy.  “Get us back to camp and Ged Aero-sensei, and I’m all for leaving this dirtball to the plants!”

“Yeah, um… maybe you better teach me how to fly this thing first.”

“Oh, Smurf!  You made the thing.”

“Yeah, well… Hang on to your hat, then!”

They managed to fly a haphazard corkscrew pattern on their way back to camp.  It was unbelievably dangerous and life-threatening.  But the boys made it back safely and walked away from the crash.  And Gyro had some real fun with his driving skills.

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April 24, 2021 · 6:22 pm

My Version of Fantasy Art

Most of my fantasy artwork is inspired by old comic books and illustrated children’s fantasy. Admittedly, sometimes a bit more violent.
I like to create anthropomorohic animals and fairy-type creatures.
I sometimes need more realism, though. Sejii here does not know how to hold onto a bow. And he better hope he strapped a rubber knife to his leg if he ever wants to sit down.
And a lot of my fantasies are about being a teacher.
I can do fairly realistic fantasy art. Bur calling it “surreal” is more proper.
I borrow as much from Disney as from Mythology

All of today’s artwork was uploaded to this blog before the start of 2015.

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April 21, 2021 · 6:09 pm

Dippy Duck Dreams

The hardest dream-to-reality connection to make is my duck nightmare.  I know I bummed the world out yesterday with unfunny dream deliberations.  But in this post I explore the lighter side of nightmares.  It all began when I was about four years old and we went to the Deer Park Zoo in Mason City, Iowa.

Truthfully, when you look at it from the proper point of view, at four you are small and all animals look like monsters.  The three ostriches they had in a chicken-wire pen were at least several hundred feet tall.  The deer were huge with giant Bambi-eyes.  I was little and still very much in a touchy-feely stage of life.  And the goose-pen had a large hole in the front, just large enough for a goose head and neck to fit through at high speed.  That is exactly what happened when one wide-eyed nerd-child wandered close enough to give a gander a premium chance at a beak-first goosing.  Whether my pants had to be changed immediately afterwards is something I have yet to work up the courage to ask my parents about.  No rush.  They are only in their eighties now.

Anyway, I was left with a recurring nightmare, always involving a duck or very similar waterfowl with big, massive, white dentures.  Yes, you heard right, a duck with teeth.  It’s all right for you to laugh now, but I woke up in cold sweat every single time I had that nightmare.  Right from the moment when I realize that the evil little duck-mind has fixed its wishes on taking a nice, big bite, to the split second where the toothy duck-head zips towards me, I am gripped with total existential terror.  And it wakes me up.

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So what does this doozy of a dream mean?  Do dreams have to have a meaning?  All two-hundred-plus times?  (I lost count, so sue me.)  I do believe, however that it must be some kind of anxiety dream.  And the last occurrence was now four years ago, so the possibility of duck-dream remission is very real to me.

If my last post chilled your innards, then hopefully this one lit them up with laughing gas.

Leap of FaithThis closing Paffooney from yesterday is entitled “The Leap of Faith”.  I’m not sure why that is important to know, but it is.

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