Category Archives: Paffooney

February 25, 2020 · 4:12 pm

AeroQuest 3… Canto 80

Canto 80 – Jungle Darkness and Damnthings (The Green Thread)

Running and sweating in the jungle darkness had begun to get very old.

“Climb a tree!” ordered King, pounding down the jungle path behind Hooey and Culver.  The damnthing, a huge, smelly pig-dog sort of predator, was close on their heels and all three men were beginning to tire.

A large, gnarled tree loomed straight ahead.  King leaped and caught its lower branches, swinging himself up into the lower branches like Johnny Weissmuller playing Tarzan on steroids.  Dr. Hooey imitated him to the very best of his ability, meaning he was as graceful as a hundred pounds of chopped liver being flung through the air by a baboon that had drunk three too many cups of coffee.  The good doctor managed to lodge himself on a branch just above the apex of the damnthing’s leap, though he was hanging upside down by one knee hooked over the branch.

“Help me!  I’m the expendable one!” cried Willie Culver as he missed the branches and tumbled butt first into the undergrowth.

“Dang it!” swore King Killer, “I told you that we were ALL going to make it!”  He leaped down from the branch that held him directly in front of Willie Culver.  “You do not have permission to die right now!” he swore.

            Unfortunately, directly behind King, the snorting damnthing lumbered up and came to a gum-gnashing, teeth-grinding halt so close that its spittle ran down into the back of King’s collar.

            “Oh, Gawd…” prayed Willie.  The pale expendable sidekick scrambled out from under King and used his fingernails to claw his way up the side of a foul-smelling babuti tree.  Babutis were an exotic form of alien tree that existed on several jungle planets which sprouted gorgeous orange and yellow flowers, but smelled so bad they made your eyes water like raging rivers.  The damnthing moved first to grab Willie, but the smell wrinkled its big pignose and resulted in the damnthing turning its attention to the Corsair King of Killing.

King, partly frozen in place by the vague hope that the thing’s vision was based on movement like he’d seen in an ancient Earther video about a dinosaur park, and partly winding up his interior springs for the leap of his life, slowly turned his head to stare right down the slavering gullet of the huge, nasty pig-dog thingy. 

“King, old buddy, you can’t die here either, you know,” admonished Hooey from his upside-down perch.

“I’m working on it,” said King.  His legs were taut with stored energy, ready to leap.  He vaulted forward at the same instant that the damnthing struck with its big-piggy chompers.  The beast growled.  King screamed.  Big pig teeth pierced the flesh of his shoulder.

“Aaargh!”

“Oh, no!”

“King!  My gawd!”

Just as it seemed that the damnthing would devour the King, a sudden flesh-colored flash came blazing out of the canopy on a sort of bungee vine.  It was a relatively small boy wearing nothing but some furry animal skins tied around his delicate parts.  He grabbed on to King with a grip of steel, and then the bungee pulled them both back up into the canopy, ripping King’s flesh out of the very mouth of death and dismemberment.

            The damnthing, stunned in its piggy surprise, blinked twice, and abruptly walked away into the jungle.

“What was that?” asked Willie, clinging to the bark of his smelly tree.

“That would have to be Randy the Jungle Boy,” said Hooey, without missing a beat.  “He’s not the only weird character we are about to meet in this jungle.”

“You knew what was going to happen?”

“Well, some of it.  I read about it in Googol Marou’s book, which I read in the future.  Of course, the timeline has been altered again, so I can’t predict anything with certainty.”

“Why?  What’s changed?”

“You were supposed to be the pig-dog’s lunch.  So, I guess you have to write your own destiny from here on, Willie Culver.”

Willie’s eyes grew round with sudden fearful gratitude to King Killer.  And it would only take another chapter or two for his heart to actually start beating again.

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February 23, 2020 · 7:45 pm

Sunday Thoughts at Random

Sometimes the fact that you are writing up a storm on your current work in progress works against you in that you have no writing electricity left to spark an idea for the daily blog . So, what do I write about on day like today?

I can’t talk about the previous novel anymore. It is out there now. It is complete, and a part of my over-all body of work.

It is a good one, though. It is funny, full of magic, and action, and characters that I love.

I can’t really talk about A Field Guide to Fauns. It is too new, and I haven’t had time to fully digest what I’ve done in the last four days.

That sort of work in progress is too fresh to have the analysis boiled out of it.

I can show you an illustration from the novel that is new and hasn’t been seen before.

Her name is Mandy. She is the twin of Tandy. She is not actually a demon. She just plays one in this novel.

I can illustrate this post with recent pictures used in recent posts, but that doesn’t get me a topic to write about either.

This picture of Randy is an illustration from AeroQuest 3 : Juggling Planets. That’s my novel rewrite which I am working on at the same time as I am doing the current work in progress.

So, I guess there is really nothing to write about today. And I must now end this post by saying, “I guess I am just not going to write a post today.”

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February 22, 2020 · 7:56 pm

Faun Art

I have begun work on a new novel called A Field Guide to Fauns. In it, I will make use of one of the most central metaphors in all of my art and writing. The mythological figure of the faun is usually portrayed as a young boy or youth, nude, and potentially having goat horns, goat legs, a deer’s tail, and/or pointed ears. It represents sensuality, connections to nature, and a willingness to partake in enjoyments without hiding anything.

Fauns were defined in art long before I came along. The Marble Faun was a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne that I read in college. I looked endlessly in libraries after that for pictures of Praxiteles’s masterpiece from all angles. I would eventually be inspired to make the picture above by a picture made in print by Maxfield Parrish printed in Collier’s Magazine. I have been fascinated for years by fauns. And I began drawing them repeatedly.

As a teenager, I had a faun as an imaginary friend. His name was Radasha. He made it his business to lecture me about sex and nudity, morals, religion, and what was wrong with me. At the time I was repressing the memory of being the victim of a sexual assault, a very painful and traumatic experience that I did not allow myself to remember and admit was real until I was twenty-two. Radasha turned out to be a coping method who helped me heal, and helped me realize that just because it was a homosexual assault, that did not make me a homosexual.

Fauns would come to dominate my artwork through the eighties. I drew Radasha multiple times. I would use the image to express things I feared and fought with and won victories over .

I would come to learn that there were fauns in real life to be found. The portrait above is of Fernando, a favorite student from my first two years as a teacher. He is portrayed as a faun. The cardinal on his shoulder is a symbol of courage and endurance, a bright red bird that never flies away when the winter comes.

Devon Martinez is the main character of my novel in progress. He is an artist like I am. He is fifteen at the time of the novel, and faced with living the rest of his childhood in a nudist community. He doesn’t consider himself a faun to begin with. But that changes during the course of the novel.

Here is the first illustration done for the novel. It is supposed to be a picture drawn by Devon himself.

So, as always with Saturday artwork, there is more to come.

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February 21, 2020 · 8:23 pm

I Really Kinda Like That Kid

As a retired school teacher who retired for health reasons, I have a limit to how much I can teach. As I substitute, mostly for teachers who planned on being out for in-service training or special educational meetings, I can usually only do two jobs a week. That limits the number of kids you have contact with, especially the more gifted and talented sorts of kids. But that doesn’t really matter much. As a regular classroom teacher I always focused more on making connections with kids, especially the challenging ones. My two jobs this week consisted of sixth grade Science all day on Tuesday, and seventh grade AVID classes on Thursday.

Sixth graders are the rabid squirrel monkeys of the middle-school monkey-house. They are the ones who jump around the most, scream at each other the most, and swing from the light fixtures the most. And if you think of it as being only metaphorically true, you don’t really know much about sixth graders and modern education.

But the coach I was subbing for is very good at discipline. He gave them an article on the organ systems of the human body and told them to to use the annotation marks on his close-reading poster. Now, you and I both know that coaches don’t really walk sixth graders through note-taking and reading-comprehension drills regularly. There’s a reason coaches are more likely to teach Science, History, or even Math before taking on English or Language Arts teaching assignments.

So, I did a quick-teach using the two-page article on how to circle key words, underline main idea sentences, and how to do a SWBS (Somebody-Wanted-But-So Charts) analysis to summarize the article. They, of course, did not do that before in science class, or even in English that they could remember. I basically simplified his fifty-minute busy-work assignment into a simple twenty-minute reading assignment that would take the slow readers longer. So, I had to occupy the smart, quick, and evil kids with something else while I helped the stragglers finish. I drew a cartoon rabbit, a cartoon duck, and a Disney-esque Goofy on the white board, challenging them to copy it.

I got to work one-on-one with several slow readers. Xavier, a hyper, mouthy kid who had dyslexia was tickled pink to learn he could pick out and put together key words and main ideas. He was unable to write the summary, but he annotated correctly, possibly for the first time ever. And that was a break-through for him. I subbed with him in other classes where he was one of the awfullest chandelier swingers, so that connection made a huge difference for him for at least fifty minutes of his school life. Malik the Mouth who never does anything but insult the others, and gives somebody else’s name to the sub when he gets in trouble, actually kept his bargain with me from the last time he was baby-sat by me. He stayed in his seat and kept working all period. The only time I had to make him give me his name was at the end of class so I could leave a good-job note for the coach after class ended. I actually like those sorts of kids who other subs routinely blow up at and send out of class. Xavier and Malik (possibly not their actual names) are both a hoot to teach. And they help add to my list of funny classroom anecdotes when they lose control and get in trouble with me. I always try to turn those into teachable moments.

But when the coach came in at the end of his smartest class, saw everybody was done, and saw cartoons on his board, he got mad at them. I had to take the blame for them and explain why they were not simply blowing the assignment off and playing around. Coaches don’t usually understand that classroom learning can be fun.

Thursday I was subbing for AVID classes again. These are special classes where at-risk kids are put in college-prep courses and treated like gifted kids. The program is misused as a warehouse for failing discipline-problem kids by this school district. But the Field Middle School has their act together for this program. The kids were working with college-level education students as tutors, and had to fill out self-examination forms that evaluated how they were doing in working with their tutors.

These are well-trained, smart, and seriously funny kids. Xochitl (an Aztec name pronounced ZOACHIE for a Hispanic girl that I have suprisingly encountered more than once in Texas) was a giftred complainer and procrastinator who was too lazy to lift a pencil, yet did the actual work in a few short minutes when she finally got around to it. She had time to tell the kids at her table, one of the tutors, and me about a time when she knocked the head off of a cucaracha (a cockroach who speaks Spanish) and tried to wait for an entire day for it to finally die so she could pick it up and flush it. The thing is, a cockroach only needs its head to eat with and see with. It is perfectly fine otherwise until it starves to death or gets eaten by a rat. So, when she went to pick it up with salad tongs, it was still alive and wiggly. She pantomimed how she threw the thing across the kitchen in surprise, and when it landed in the sink, she nailed it with the garbage disposal. This girl is a gifted story-teller. She had us all laughing. And her school grades were all A’s and B’s.

I admit it. I love kids like that. They are the best things about teaching. And whether they are Aaargh! Sixth Graders! or Uggh! Seventh graders! (the chimpanzees of the middle-school monkey-house) I actually love them. (But PLEASE don’t tell them that!)

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February 19, 2020 · 10:59 pm

New Pen and Ink

As my resolution to illustrate my novels grows further and further into solid, irresistible form and driving obsessional shape, I have been working on new pen and ink projects. Some are for AeroQuest. Some were for The Boy… Forever. And I will soon need to create new ones for A Field Guide to Fauns. Today’s post is just a glimpse of what I have been doing.

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February 18, 2020 · 10:36 am

AeroQuest 3… Canto 79

Canto 79 – Riding the Magic Carpet (The Blue Thread)

Arkin Cloudstalker and his six Lazerstone companions returned to their little scout ship at the downport.   One of the Lazerstones carried the angry head and torso of the bounty hunter, Ace Campfield.

“I don’t know how we are going to fit seven of us in this little two-man scout ship,” complained Arkin.  “It’s barely supplied well enough for two.”

“You forget that the Lazerstone collective are not humanoids.  We don’t eat food.  We don’t breathe atmosphere.  We don’t even sleep.  Besides, I can’t leave any of my kind on a non-resonant rock like this one.  We must all go with you to a better source of crystal.”

“You aren’t going to leave me here with no arms or legs, either, are you?” complained Campfield.  “And I make eight if you are counting me.”

“Seven and a half,” corrected Arkin.

“We could completely destroy him,” recommended the Lazerstone carrying the mechanoid

“He could prove useful yet, especially if we re-program him,” said Arkin.

“Well, the machine-man is right, then.  If he counts, he makes too many.”

As they reached the berth of their star ship, Cloudstalker was surprised to see the woman he knew as the Black Fly standing there in her full black body suit with one of the Snarcs Brothers, the one called Cinco Snarcs.

“What?  What are you doing here?  And didn’t the Snarcs idiots strand us when they disappeared from Hyde Park without warning?”

“We is not abandoning you, boss,” said big-nosed Cinco Snarcs.  “Sir Emerald Man with his greeny wishes came and snorkeled us all away to sell fish-skin socks in anudder time and place.”

“He means the Snarcs brothers had to be in another time and place for the White Duke’s purposes, so a Time Knight whisked them away.”  The black fly pulled off her black mask as she spoke, a beautiful fall of auburn hair revealing a beauty that Arkin had not thought possible.  She was a lovely lady of about his own age.

“So, you two are here to help cram us all into a little scout ship we were left with by fleeing Snarcses?”  Arkin’s voice sounded far more cross than he had intended.

“We don’t do the sardini thingy with space men, no,” assured Cinco Snarcs.

“We have a patrol corvette called the Magic Carpet,” said Black Fly.

“So, we will all fit on your Magic Carpet?”

“It can handle up to sixty troops and a crew of four.”

“Good.  We need to return to Tron’s base at Outpost as quickly as we can.”

“Ah, yes.  But only after one further stop.  We must also visit a planet called Djinnistan.”

“What will we find there, genies?”

“Djinn, Peris, and Afrits, yes.”  Something about the Black Fly’s charming smile bothered Arkin just a bit. 

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February 15, 2020 · 5:30 pm

The Art of Contemplation

I believe one of the primary reasons that art exists at all is because we are thinking creatures with a need to spend serious time in deep minding of the consequences of existence. We need to question everything. And art helps us do that by depicting the thoughts that existed first in the mind of the artist, and then must be translated through experiencing into the mind of the viewer.

Landscapes are very useful for contemplation. They present an interpretation of the real world you can mentally walk around in.
If you are walking around mentally in a work of art, you are seeing more than just a place. You are walking mentally through the mind and the perceptions of the artist. You see what he or she has seen, even if you see it differently. Even if it is a photo the artist took.
The people, places, and things your viewer-eyes encounter when mentally walking around in a work of art have to have some overall meaning. Some purpose. Some reason for being.
What do you suppose the picture above means? I can’t tell you, even though I drew it. You, the viewer, must give it meaning.

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February 14, 2020 · 5:45 pm

Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo

On Wednesday I subbed again for a science teacher at Long Middle School. They were eighth graders, the chest-thumping apes at the top of the monkey-house food chain. There was an AVID class with too many at-risk and under-disciplined kids in it. And the Long ESL classes contain too many rabid monkeys who don’t understand monkey-English well and are liberally dispersed through-out the harried eighth-grade teachers’ day. In other words, the Wednesday job caused me brain damage from which I haven’t recovered from fully at this writing.

So, today I am obsessed with finding the magic necessary to avoid having any more teacher-meltdowns and brain injuries like that 6th period debacle. (“Debakkil” is a magic word, but it is an evil magic word),

In the Disney animated classic Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother uses a magic spell called (in a song) “Bibbety Bobbity Boo”. In the course of singing the song, the old F-G turns a pumpkin into a carriage and mice into horses, the swayback horse into a driver, and the dog into a groom. I need a spell like that to remedy the monkey-house meltdown syndrome that I was victimized by.

So, here is how “Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo” will work.

The spell is cast initially on a male student, a monkey-like being swinging from the light fixtures, but obviously smarter than the other male monkey-students. You could magically turn his raggy clothing into a ball gown and embarrass him completely (which would be true to the metaphor, but would turn him into your worst nightmare)… but don’t. Instead, tell him that he is smart enough to be a leader. Put him in a position of power, making him in charge of a group, and telling him his consequences will be either a reward for good leadership, or the blame for the bad behavior of the group. Remind him that he has natural leadership skills. If he speaks to others respectfully, they will be respectful to everybody. If he shows them how to behave properly, they will use him as a positive example. He will get the credit for the good things they will do.

“Dibbletey Dobbletey Doo!”

It works. We had a poster project to do in groups of four. They were supposed to create a diagram of the mechanics of the four seasons of the year, with a sun and four representations of the earth with its axis and equator tilted properly in relation to the sun. That’s the kind of assignment that can result in the explosion of the science lab or the total cannibalization of the substitute. But I made it successfully work in four out of five classes.

Why did it go wrong in that last period? 1. Classes that are out of control for the regular teacher are impossible for even the best sub to control. 2. Too many students in one classroom are impossible to control when you have more groups than work tables. 3. Supplies run out at the end of the day, and empty pens and markers become projectiles. 4. Eighth graders all need to take mandatory naps in the afternoon (using sedative darts and a dart gun when necessary) but no school or principal is aware of that fact. 5. Cranky afternoon baboons grow longer fangs than they had in the morning.

So, Mickey must revise and rework this particular spell for the afternoons. And he must refuse the next job coming from this particular teacher.

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February 13, 2020 · 4:43 pm

The Boy… Forever (Free Book Promotion)

My most-recently-published book is now available for free from Amazon. I have tried this free-book promotion idea with other books, but this is the newest book I have available. I need to give away a bunch of books, so help yourself to one with the above link.

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February 11, 2020 · 5:14 pm

AeroQuest 3… Nocturne 6

Nocturne 6 – Highly Heated Moments (The White Thread)

Rocket Rogers and Phoenix walked together towards the community baths in the Palace of 1,000 Years.  Not far behind them walked Friashqazatla, better known to all as Freddy due to pronunciations and the intricacies of the Zaranian language.

“You do know that he’s following you and not me,” said Phoenix.  “It’s you he seems to be queer for.”

Rocket looked at his literally hot-headed friend with a sense of embarrassment.  He didn’t know what to do about Freddy’s apparent hero-worship.

“Hey, Dog-Boy.  If you’re going to follow us around like a puppy, you might as well be one.  Didn’t Ged-sensei teach you how to transform?”  Phoenix could be needlessly cruel it seemed.

Freddy looked at them with sapphire eyes.  Then he stripped off his blue jumper and his blue turban, transforming into the black wolf as he did so.

“Good boy!” said Phoenix.  He signaled to the black wolf to come to their side, possibly to pet him.  But when Freddy padded up within reach, he used his pointer finger to set the wolf’s tail on fire.

Freddy immediately changed back to his dark-skinned humanoid form, putting the fire out before being burned by making all the flammable fur go away.

“That was mean,” said Freddy, sitting on the wet floor of the bath house naked.

“Why do you have to follow us?” asked Phoenix hotly.

“Well, um… I like Rocket and want to be his friend.”

“He’s already got me for a friend.”

Then both of them looked directly at Rocket.  He blushed a bit.  “Yeah, um…  I think I may have room for more than one friend.”

“Suit yourself.”  Phoenix dropped his black kimono and proceeded nude to the bathing pool currently occupied by Taffy King and little Mai Ling.

“If you’re willing to risk it, you can bathe with us,” offered Rocket.  “But I’m not gay, if you were wondering.”

“That’s good.  Me neither.  I just want to be your friend.”

Rocket dropped everything but his cowboy hat, helped Freddy up, and together they went over to the same pool and slipped into the water.  Phoenix had already used his Psionic powers to heat the water to a level barely able to be tolerated by humanoids.

“Do you always have to make it so hot?” complained Taffy.  Rocket liked being around her when she was nude.  She was not human in the way he was, but only her saurian eyes made her noticeably different than him.

“If you don’t like it, you can always get out,” said Phoenix with an evil grin.

Rocket quietly lowered the water temperature a little, not quite enough for Phoenix to notice, but enough to protect Freddy and the girls from being broiled like cooked lobsters in a pot.

The warm water was actually soothing on sore muscles after the rigorous workout they had been doing under Ged-sensei’s direction.

“So, Taffy, what are you gonna do for a boyfriend now that Alec has found a new squeeze?” asked Phoenix with a suggestive leer.

“Alec was never my boyfriend.  Just like you will never be.  But I am still open to other options.  Boys who aren’t so mean and evil, I mean.”  Taffy smiled at Rocket.

“Well, I like that,” muttered Phoenix as he apparently made the water even hotter.

“How do you do that?” Mai Ling asked Phoenix.  “I really like hot water for baths.”

“Really?  How hot?”

“Phoenix!  Don’t you dare!”  Taffy glared at him with green lizard eyes.

“Would you like to see how hot you can stand it?” Phoenix offered, sounding a bit more sincere than usual.

“I really would,” said the little girl.  “But maybe in another pool?  And don’t cook me, please.”

Phoenix shrugged.  He and Mai Ling got out and walked to another pool.

“Remember, Phoenix.  She’s a very good shot and is useful in combat!” Rocket shouted.

“Don’t worry, Rocket.  I might be in the market for more than one friend too.”

As soon as Rocket turned back around in the pool, Taffy planted a kiss right on his lips.

“Mmmph!  Ah… what exactly was that for?”

“How would you like to be my boyfriend?” Taffy asked point blank.  Then she kissed him again.  Longer.  And he didn’t mind at all.  But when they finally came up for air, Freddy was looking at them both with an embarrassed grin on his face.

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