Category Archives: Paffooney

February 22, 2021 · 7:55 pm

Into the Spring

The weather, amazingly, is more than fifty degrees Fahrenheit better than it was a week ago today in Texas.

The sun is now out.

“Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day...?”

‘Of course not. It is not Sonnet 18 out there.

It… “art NOT more lovely and more temperate.”

And William Shakespeare is just a pen name.

But I saw a pair of Robins in the park while walking the dog.

And I don’t mean Robin Williams and Robin Hood.

I mean the red-breasted birds that herald the arrival of Spring.

Though it is not Spring. And I have trouble sitting here and writing this due to painful hemorrhoids.

Still, it seems like something new is starting.

It has now been an entire year since the start of the pandemic. 501,000+ people have died.

It is definitely time for something new, something better, to begin.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, birds, commentary, healing, humor, Paffooney

February 21, 2021 · 7:52 pm

Truth in Advertising… the Mickey Version

Here’s the thing… Mickey is to the art of advertising as Cassandra in the Iliad is to prophecy.

Cassandra, you may remember from the last time you read the Iliad in the original Greek, was gifted with true prophecy. What she foresaw was destined to come true. Unfortunately, she was cursed to never be believed by any she told the prophecy to.

Similarly, Mickey can tell a good story, full of imaginative storylines and compelling plots and themes. But anytime he launches an ad, here, on Twitter, Facebook, or elsewhere, it will not be seen, or, if seen, not responded to.

Case in point; I worked at reformatting, illustrating, and improving the following e-book. I set it up for a free-book promotion this weekend. It is still free from now until midnight on the 23rd of February.

As of this posting, I have only given away four copies of the novel. And I am more than halfway through the third day of a five-day promotion. So, I am on pace to have the worst promotion in the past year.

Of course, I know that this has been a terrible weather week for Texas, and most of the nation. Reading a book about aliens is probably not the foremost thing on people’s minds. I can usually count on Twitter nudists to give my free books a boost even when there are no nudist characters or nudist ideas in the novel. But Friday is the day when Twitter nudists usually say, “Howdy!” to each other on Twitter, and I gave away none on Friday and only one on Saturday. This book has some nudism going on at one point on the apocalyptic hell-scape planet in the story, but that is mostly a matter of naked aliens and plants. So, I can’t give copies of this book away to anybody, not even to fellow nudists.

Catch a Falling Star is the book that Stardusters and Space Lizards is a sequel to.

It is the story of the Telleron invasion of the Earth, landing in a small town in Iowa, invading in invisibility cloaking devices, and failing to even be noticed by most people in town.

The e-book is $3.99 on Amazon, so it is not as good a value as the free one.

This book is about fleeing aliens arriving by accident at a dying planet. It is a planet experiencing biosphere collapse just as Earth will probably do in the near future. And the alien characters, most of them tadpoles (Telleron children) take active steps to try to save the new planet so they, too, might have a place to live.

Anyway, buy the book. It’s free today. All you have to do is click.

But since Mickey the advertiser is like Cassandra, I have to say the opposite. Don’t buy this book. It is awful. You will not love it. You will not think all your friends need to read it too.

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Filed under aliens, humor, novel, Paffooney, publishing

February 20, 2021 · 6:17 pm

When Cartoon Characters Take Selfies

I often wonder if there is only one picture of me in this self-portrait.

This is definitely a self-portrait, the character in the novel as well as this cartoon.

This is me in a mirror… at least, filtered through my own self-concept.

Grumpy, square-headed German-American me.

Pirate me when I cannot talk like a real human being and need a wooden-headed puppet to interpret for me.

The character Superchicken (on the left) is a self portrait of me at twelve (in the novel). Sherry Cobble (on the right) is NOT me.

Milt Morgan is also a me character. But this picture is based on a school photo of me at ten.

Me as a Charlie Brown/Peanuts character. This was created on an APP, and then photo-shopped by me.

,,,

…

;;;

The self-portrait I use on the backs of paperback novels.

The science-y version of me from the novel ***The Bicycle Wheel Genius.***

This post is probably evidence that cartoonists should probably not portray themselves.

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Filed under autobiography, cartoons, humor, illustrations, Paffooney, self portrait

February 13, 2021 · 8:59 pm

Where Portraits Come From

I painted this picture in the 1980’s because this boy was a very attractive little Asian-American child and I wanted to paint a picture of him.

But it became something else when I added the soldier’s helmet with the bullet hole in it.

It was the closest thing I ever did to something politically controversial. I was accused of making an anti-war picture… in Texas where you don’t disrespect a soldier. And the Viet Nam Conflict was still very much on people’s minds in the 80’s.

This is a Dickensian illustration. Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. The boy was actually the son of a school secretary and grandson of a math teacher. Bob was modeled after a stand-up comic that I had a magazine picture of.

This reptilian fellow appeared in my dreams when I was twelve. He didn’t actually pose for me. I used a National Geographic picture to help me get the head right.

Grade-school me was the model for this one. I made it from an old school picture.

This is actually a portrait of Manuel. He was a seventh grader in 1984. Seventh Grade Language Arts, A-minus student and excellent oral reader.

This sweet child was actually a green-eyed brunette and holding a tub of autumn leaves in the original photograph.

There’s a lot of portraits in this picture. They are all from photographs, except for three imaginary faces. Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan were both in a black-and-white photo from The Kid. And the skeleton was made of plastic.

This is Black Timothy, dressed all in red. This is pretty close to what he actually looks like. Of course, he’s imaginary.

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Filed under artwork, Paffooney

Tagged as Saturday Art Day

February 11, 2021 · 8:00 pm

The Be-Bop Beat of Mickey’s Brain

Truthfully, when I look back at the string of posts in the picket fence of this daily blog, I fail to see the overall map of it in any semblance of pattern or order. Honestly, I did not set out to be purposefully wacky.

I did, however, set out to be purposefully surreal. I mean it, I consciously put bizarrely dissimilar things together in an attempt to find parallels and connections in unlike things because, not only is it funny and surprising, but is a comic act that serves to keep the mind nimble and never numb. I do think quite a lot. And I try to see connections between things where others wouldn’t. For instance, the Coppertone girl with her bare butt and Bullwinkle with his unicycle are both being threatened in a way that is both comic, and taking advantage of their inherent image of innocence. Neither will lose anything by it. The girl stands to brown her pale white behind in the sun, while Bullwinkle will probably land on his head and it will make a decent cushion to preserve him because of it’s empty and rubbery qualities.

gilligan — Pie makes everything better. MMMM! Pie!

I must also admit to a bit of the old telling of stretchers, the misrepresentation of the truth, the loquacious layer-onner of lies. Not Trumpian lies that land on you like elephants dropped like bombs out of B-52’s. Instead, fictions that entertain and elucidate. It is the most likely reason I keep saying connecting words and phrases like “truthfully” and “honestly” and “I mean it”. Those are words that liars love.

Yes fiction writers like me tell little white lies.

I have now published my novel Recipes for Gingerbread Children. It is a novel based on real people I have known and loved and listened to. It is about an old German woman, a survivor of WWII concentration camps, who loves to tell stories to children and bake gingerbread cookies, especially gingerbread men. It features a pair of teenage nudist girls who believe in going completely naked whenever you are indoors, even if you are in someone else’s house. It features Nazis, both in flashback and ghostly forms. It also features fairies from the Hidden Kingdom of Tellosia, a fairy kingdom filled with little three-inch tall magical people living under our very noses. And it has a werewolf in it, though admittedly a very young one. It is a comedy with its requisite sad parts, and it is definitely an example of surrealism. It is also full of lies… err, I mean fiction.

But the real purpose of this supposedly be-bop brain fart in blog-post form is not so much to explain my blog (because how do you explain a blog that goes from Flashbacks and Foobah to telling about Madman Trump to Another novel part… #37 to Centaurs to a book and movie review, to this eccentric and eclectic thing, which probably exists more to make alliteration jokes than anything else in the most musical beat I can bang out?) but to prove that I do often think about thinking and how things fit together and what it all means… and how to write a run-on sentence that adds to the effect rather than simply annoys. And, yeah, I’m doing that. And it feels like a good thing to do.

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Filed under blog posting, commentary, foolishness, humor, imagination, metaphor, Paffooney, self portrait, strange and wonderful ideas about life, surrealism

Tagged as goofiness, humor, justification for blogging, Metacognition

February 9, 2021 · 3:02 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 127

Canto 127 – The Black Spider Theatre

Rocket had swiftly grown to trust Phoenix in ways that were hard to explain. The two pyrokinetics had spent so much time transferring pyro-tricks back and forth with the aid of telepathy by Junior, Sara, or Hassan that he felt like he knew what the inside of Phoenix’s mind fully felt like.

He was surprised when they both ducked through a small, obscure doorway and found themselves in the dark wing of a mostly-dark stage.

Fangwoman was standing at the very front of the stage, wearing the Avenger helmet, holding both arms up and speaking loudly to about four hundred Black Spider ninjas in full ninja cloth armor. Not only were there the ninjas in the audience gallery, but they were surrounded by a couple of thousand lit candles.

“Come, my minions! Now is the time to strike! The Palace of a Thousand Years is in chaos!” She shouted into the candle-lit auditorium. Strike in the name of Shen Ming!”

“Why would we fight in the name of Shen Ming?” asked one confused minion.

“Because Shen Ming has earned our anger! He betrayed us and locked us away!”

“No, he hasn’t,” said a female ninja in peach-colored armor. “If anyone has betrayed us, it would have to be Jinjiro, or Bres, or even Phoenix.”

“He betrayed us by locking us in a hole for a hundred years!”

“No, he didn’t. You must be talking as the weird helmet. The helmet was locked up in the Palace.”

“Oh, why am I arguing!” Fangwoman launched three iron ninja stars faster than anyone could react. The three ninjas who had spoken fell dead with the throwing stars partially protruding from their foreheads.

“We have to stop them before they get to the Palace,” Rocket whispered.

“Don’t worry, Rocket, where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Do you see all the candles in here?”

“Yes, but I see all the ninjas too. We’re way too outnumbered.”

“Just follow my lead.”

Phoenix gestured at the far wall. All seven hundred and fifty-three candles on that wall suddenly shot flames upward as if they were flame-throwers.

Phoenix gathered all the flame and heat into one tight column of fire, and then brought it down on the heads of around a hundred of Fangwoman’s minions.

Some died screaming. Others managed to pat out the fires on their clothing. Still others seemed to be wearing flame-proof armor.

Rocket gestured at a near wall to accomplish the same effect It appeared at first that he had set about a hundred and twenty ninjas on fire. The effect was very similar to what Phoenix had achieved. However, more than twice as many put the flames out, and three times as many proved to be fire-proof.

“Well, this should prove difficult,” said Rocket through gritted teeth.’

“Oh, yes! Difficult, but glorious fun!” laughed Phoenix. It was going to be a long, hot night, Rocket thought as he began to grow his fire-form around himself.

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

Tagged as AeroQuest 4

February 7, 2021 · 10:07 pm

Chasing What is Real

In 2012 I completed and published Catch a Falling Star. That novel is about aliens who speak English because they have been watching television broadcasts and absolutely adore I Love Lucy reruns. They invade Earth via one small town in Iowa where they make the fatal mistake of being charmed by humhans. The juvenile specimen they kidnap, Dorin Dobbs, leads a tadpole mutiny aboard the Tellerons’ space ship. The tadpole they accidentally leave behind on Earth is adopted and becomes beloThe ved by a childless farm couple. And Commander Biznap falls deeply in love with a septuagenarian Sunday School teacher who aids him and he rewards with a return to her youthful twenties. The invasion gets defeated. Someone disintegrates himself, and the Tellerons leave have learned to be better people as they flee to Mars in defeat.

Of course, this novel, written while I was still teaching for the Garland School District, is ultimately the origin of my manic love of researching conspiracy theories. After publishing the novel, I had a dream about the book. I dreamed that aliens had read the book and began chasing me, wanting to know how I knew what I knew about them. I tried to tell them that I made it all up, but they didn’t believe me.

So, after I had written and published the book, I took up researching alien contact and flying saucer encounters Wow! I began to see what some really, obviously insane people believe is true as well as some very intelligent and credible people hesitantly reporting some insanely disturbing things. I do not believe any of the stories told by David Icke, the lecturer who sells books and lectures on the existence of shape-shifting lizard-people who masquerade as important government figures and celebrities. He is very easily recognizable as a grifter and con man. Of course, his grifts are all legal. If lying were completely illegal, fiction writers would be out of business, and nobody would fall in love or be able to sell real estate.

But one cannot quickly dismiss the work of journalist and physicist Stanton Friedman so easily. He had an interview experience with Major Jesse Marcel who was the intelligence officer on the New Mexico base in 1947 who told what may be the real story behind the Roswell Incident . This was a credible source telling a story as a whistle-blower years after the actual experience which was very different than the government’s version of events in spite of the fact that Marcel and other witnesses had been threatened to keep the secret.

The real trick to this fascinating search for reality in the bizarre world of alien contact, MUFON researchers, and underground alien facilities is to accept that complete knowledge of reality is unattainable.

You know that something real is being covered up based on the elaborate cover-up efforts that the authorities have gone through. Weather balloons? Really? Even Project Mogul balloons for spying on Russian atomic-bomb efforts? Well, maybe. But there are so many things that subjected to cover-up, misinformation campaigns, threatening witnesses, Men in Black, and deathbed confessions. It is real that lying is going on on both sides. And there are a lot of concerning facts brought out by people who have nothing to gain by their revelations and an awful lot to lose.

So, you have to detect lies and juggle the lies of liars to get anywhere near to reality. And I have applied the process to more than one conspiracy theory.

Here are some things that I have concluded (at least until more information surfaces.)

In the 1940’s and 50’s the U.S. government knocked down a handful of flying saucers and UFOs using high-intensity radar waves developed for World War II. Bob Lazar is probably telling the truth. Linda Moulton Howe is probably telling the truth. Travis Walton is probably also telling the truth, but is less believable than the other two. David Icke and Alex Jones are liars. The Ancient Aliens program from History Channel and now on Netflix is not solid science, but have some very interesting details to add to the mysteries. The government definitely knows about aliens, either because they made contact with other worlds in the Eisenhower Administration, or because they are producing the information themselves to cover up something far more concerning.

The important thing in this topic is not the reality of aliens visiting Earth. The important thing is how the reality of the topic is pursued. Are you going to be crazy or pursue a sensible information-gathering process where the results are tested and retested? ls it about my thinking processes. or am I deceiving myself? These questions are the reasons I do what I do/

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Filed under autobiography, conspiracy theory, Paffooney

February 6, 2021 · 7:32 pm

Why Mickey is Surreal

Literary realism attempts to represent familiar things as they are.

Surrealism definition: Surrealism is a type of literature in which the author attempts to display irrational or dreamlike qualities in his or her writing. Surrealism refers to writing that goes beyond the realistic into a creative, imaginative realm that often has dreamlike qualities.

Two definitions of styles of writing that are common in today’s literary realm.

Realism is a tradition that began in the middle of the 18th Century. It includes authors like Balzac, Alexander Pushkin, Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis, and Charles Dickens. They tend to focus on the details that shine a light on the grungy, dreary realities of the Industrial Revolution, the American Experiment in Democracy, and wars like the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and wars against Napoleon, Hitler, and Communist Russia.

Surrealism, especially as it grew legs and began galloping in the 20th Century is really a reaction to the realities that Realism ground into our souls. Science Fiction imagines the problems and the possibilities presented by applying science and industry into our future. Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and Aldous Huxley are all surrealists because they apply the power of their imaginations to dealing with the limits reality hangs around the neck of the race horse we call life on Earth.

Fantasy writers like JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Neil Gaiman, and JK Rowlings apply apples of imagination hung from a string in front of the race horse to motivate him onward. The race horse of life on Earth is a dreamlike metaphor, somewhat like a dog who smokes a pipe and solves crimes, and is the kind of literary device that defines surrealism the way that Mickey sees it.

But enough about what surrealism is. It is just realism with a “sur” pasted on the front. So, let me just show you some.

These are ***Snow Babies*** from the book of the same name. If you see one during a blizzard, it might mean you will freeze to death.

This is a sample of an illustration for a friend’s children’s book idea that never got made. Accidentally travelling by bubble-gum-chewing goldfish.

This picture shows that, in order to do surrealism, you must make the dreamlike seem very realistic.

In ***When the Captain Came Calling***, the Captain is invisible and Valerie Clarke gets turned into a squirrel by Voodoo.

Mickey is not the only surrealist who thinks of Toys coming to Life.

So, now that you have seen the pictorial evidence that Mickey thinks surreal thoughts, you should be willing to admit… He probably really is a Surrealist. Or, possibly, he surreally is a surrealist.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, imagination, insight, Paffooney

Tagged as Saturday Art Day

February 4, 2021 · 8:09 pm

Interview with a Booger-Man

Eli Tragedy, the old Wizard of the Lower Caverns, returned from Dunsanytowne with his apprentice, Bob, carrying their weekly groceries in Bob’s bag of holding.

“Do you think Mickey finished washing the curtains while we were gone?” Bob innocently asked.

Poor Bob. He was not particularly smart. Sometimes he forgot to wear pants.

But the grumbling old wizard, half-elf, half-human, and half -fermented gingleyberry juice, had to admit, at least to himself, that Poor Bob was far more likeable than that smelly, uppity, idiotic were-rat that was his second apprentice. That lazy, stupid half-rodent was no end of trouble. Maybe Eli needed to give Mickey one of his three halves to try and complete the boy. But not the half-fermented half.

“So, when’s the next full moon, Bob? When does that rat-thing turn back into a real boy so I can smack his behind with the rod of discipline and have him actually feel it?”

“Master, Mickey’s curse specifies that he can only be a real boy for a week on the next blue moon… and that’s not for a long time in the future.”

“Real shame, that is.”

Of course, when they went inside the wizard’s sandstone tower. Mickey was trying to use Eli’s magic hat to clean the flying-monkey poop off of the curtains, and was casting the scrubbing spell backwards, thus increasing the foul dirt that wouldn’t even be there if he hadn’t had the flying-monkey party without getting permission from Eli first.

“Mickey! Stop that! You are supposed to say, ‘Removere simia faecibus exturbandis opitulatur’ not ‘Addere simia faecibus exturbandis opitulatur!”

“Oops!” said Mickey.

“Oh, no! Not you!” said the mysteriously grim stranger sitting at the kitchen table.

The stranger didn’t so much stand up with his ax from his chair at the table as UNCOIL with his ax from the chair at the table.

“Mickey, who is this stranger you didn’t have permission to invite into our tower?”

“He says he is the Booger-Man, Master.”

“That’s Boogeyman, rat-boy.”

Mickey shrugged. “I thought Booger-Man sounded more correct.”

“Ah, so you are here to rob a poor old man’s sandstone hovel?”

“No! Not now that I know it’s YOUR tower!” the Boogerman said vehemently. “You don’t recognize me?”

“No. Should I?”

“It’s me, Pollox the Highwayman. Although, you had probably better call me Paw-Lucks now.”

“Ah, yes! You tried to steal from me on the road to the Cillyburg Cathedral.”

“Yes, and all you had was this magic ax You told me it would make me into an entirely new man.”

“The Wildman’s Ax of Magical Tax Avoidance and Soldier Slaying. I remember it well. It seems to have worked quite like it was supposed to.”

“Every time I fought I soldier, he slew me. And when I returned to life I had a new patch of shaggy white fur, or a new fang, or a bad case of mange.”

“And nobody ever asked you to pay taxes again, did they?”

“I won’t rob you this time, wizard. Just take back the ax and make me human again.”

“Can’t do it. I believe in paying my taxes. But, you can have Mickey. The boy can carry the ax for you.”

The Booger-man took one look at the young were-rat, turned even more pale than the white he already was, and ran out of the tower roaring in fear.

“Addere simia…”

“Stop it, Mickey! That’s the wrong one again!”

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Filed under characters, Dungeons and Dragons, humor, irony, Paffooney, satire, short story, writing humor

February 4, 2021 · 4:16 pm

Mickey Being Mickey

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A new day dawns. It leaves me wondering. Who am I today? Who will I be tomorrow?

The opportunity to have any sort of control over who and what I am is coming to a close. I don’t really know how much longer I have before pain and illness dissolve me into nothingness. But death is not the end of existence. I may be forgotten totally by the day after next Thursday, but my existence will still have become a permanent fact. Yes, I am one of those dopey-derfy-think-too-much types known as an existentialist.

I am feeling ill again. Any time that happens may be the last time. But that doesn’t worry me.

The important thing is that the dance continues. It doesn’t matter who the dancers are, or who supplies the music.

We can be clowns if we choose to be.

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We can safely be fools if we really can’t help it.

An awful lot of awful things go into who and what we are. Those things make us full of awe. They make us awesome. Aw, shucks. What an awful thing to say.