Category Archives: Paffooney

January 1, 2019 · 3:56 pm

Tuesday is Nutty Novel Day

I have been using the Tuesday post for this blog for a very novel thing. Yes, that’s an ironic pun made with 55% pure iron. This once-a-week exercise in fictional weirdness is basically a forge for failing novel ideas.

I began with the Stardusters manuscript for a stalled sequel to Catch a Falling Star. I worked it out with a rewritten Canto per Tuesday. And I turned the weird little climate-crisis science-fiction comedy into a passable piece of novel noodling. I was also able to use it as a test novel for the Amazon Kindle Publishing method of turning it into a book that I could hold a copy of in my two hands.

Aeroquest as a novel is now out of print.

Then I tried to rehabilitate my first and worst published novel, Aeroquest. I found I had a lot of very good individual Cantos (which I was using as a faux-poetical and somewhat snooty substitute for the word chapter). But the overall story was fractured and incoherent. What I eventually decided to do with this book is to break it up into at least three separate stories. I don’t know if I will ever republish this book, it is there to be worked on for as long as I’m still kicking.

So, what will I do with Tuesdays now?

This is now the longest stalled manuscript I have going. It has some definite problems and plot holes. I might choose to revise and edit it in this space on my blog. If I do, it will be even more of a real rewrite in front of your eyes than the first two. I initially thought these Novel Tuesdays might yield input and criticism that might prove useful. But of the few people who are actually interested enough to read this word-wrenching and rearranging, I don’t seem to get any thoughts beyond likes and hope-you-succeeds.

Anyway, I am pretty well addicted to this odd writing behavior by now, and next Tuesday yields the start of a new novel, whether you are ready or not.

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Filed under foolishness, humor, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

December 31, 2018 · 5:00 am

The Art of Being Mickey

I have published my eighth novel in the last six years. Sure, it is through mostly self-publishing of novels that no one but me has ever read. Catch a Falling Star and Snow Babies both had a professional editor, one who had worked for Harcourt and one who worked for PDMI. Magical Miss Morgan has had a proofreader who made numerous stupid-mistake errors that I had to change back to the original meticulously by hand. But all three of those novels won an award or were finalists in a young adult novel contest. I do have reason to believe I am a competent writer and better even then some who have achieved commercial success.

But what is the real reason that I am so intent on producing the maximum amount of creative work possible in this decade? Well, to be coldly objective, I am a diabetic who cannot currently afford insulin. I have been betrayed by the for-profit healthcare system that treats me as a source of unending profit. I am like a laying hen in the chicken house, giving my eggs of effort away to a farmer who means to eat my very children if time and circumstance allows. I am the victim of six incurable diseases and conditions that I got most likely as a result of exposure to toxic farm chemicals in the early 70’s. I am also a cancer survivor from a malignant melanoma in 1983, and for three years now I have not been able to get the preventative cancer tests I am supposed to be receiving every year for the rest of my life. My prostate could very well be cancerous as I write this. If that is so, it will kill me unawares, because I don’t even want to know about having a disease I can’t possibly afford to fight all over again.’

So, the basic reason I am going through the most productive and creative period of my entire life is because I have a great rage to create before I die and I could be dying as soon as tonight. All of the countless stories in my head clamoring to be written down before it is too late cry out to me desperately for my immediate attention.

I will, then, continue to write stories and draw cartoons and other Paffoonies for as long as I am still able, and possibly even afterward. I have, after all, threatened repeatedly to become a ghostwriter after I die. And, yes, I understand when you scream at my essay that that is not what a ghostwriter is. But if a woman can channel the ghost of Franz Schubert and finish his unfinished symphony…(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist))

—then I should also be able to tell my stories from beyond the grave. I have been percolating them in my head and writing and drawing them in whole or in part since 1974. I have too much time and too many daydreams wrapped up in them to let it all just evaporate into the ether. In summation, I am claiming stupidly that my novels, crack-brained and wacky as they are, are somehow destined to exist, either because of me or in spite of me. So just be happy that I write what I write, for there is an art to being Mickey, and I am the one artist and writer who is the best Mickey possible if truly there ever was a real Mickey.

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Filed under battling depression, commentary, goofy thoughts, humor, novel writing, Paffooney

December 29, 2018 · 4:09 pm

Hidden Kingdom (adding Chapter 2 through page 6)

If you want to see the complete Chapter One to catch up on the story, here’s the link; https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2018/11/24/hidden-kingdom-chapter-1-complete/

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December 28, 2018 · 4:40 pm

The Gingerbread Train

I had been promising my daughter for a while that we would build the gingerbread train. I was looking forward to it as an art project. She was impatient to eat it. So, on December 27th, I was finally feeling well enough to do the deed.

So, we prepared the work space on the kitchen table. We laid out the items that we could use for assembly. I made my daughter promise to stop eating elements of the train before we could actually put it together.

I started decorating the Christmas trees that go into the baggage car. My daughter ate several of the sugar-ball decorations.

The baggage car was assembled first. I call it the baggage car because even though it is in the tender position for a steam train if we called it that, that would mean that the engine burned Christmas trees instead of coal. My daughter snuck a few more decorations as we argued about that.

It was encouraging that the first part came together without looking too incredibly terrible.

My daughter decorated a majority of the engine and only ate a few more of the decorations while doing it. This was no small thing given how much she loves to eat gumdrops.

It ended up looking vaguely like the picture on the box. We had a great deal of fun making it. And the last time I checked, portions of it still were uneaten… something I am confident won’t be the case for much longer.

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Filed under artwork, family, homely art, Paffooney, photo paffoonies

December 27, 2018 · 7:04 pm

I Hope You Dance…

When you walk to the front of the classroom and take up the big pencil in front of a group of young teens and twelve-year-olds, there is a strong pressure to learn how to sing and dance. That, of course, is a metaphor. I was always too arthritic and clunky in my movements to literally dance. But I looked out over a sea of bored and malevolence-filled eyes, slack and sometimes drooling mouths attached to hormone-fueled and creatively evil minds. And I was being paid to put ideas in their heads. Specifically boring and difficult ideas that none of them really wanted in their own personal heads. So I felt the need to learn to dance, to teach in ways that were engaging like good dance tunes, and entertaining in ways that made them want to take action, to metaphorically get up and dance along with me.

I wanted them to enjoy learning the way I did.

But the music of the teacher is not always compatible with the dance style of the individual learner. The secret behind that is, there is absolutely no way to prompt them to dance along with you until you learn about the music already playing in their stupid little heads. (And you can’t, of course ever use the word “stupid” out loud, no matter how funny or true the word is,) You have to get to know a kid before you can teach them anything.

The discordant melodies and bizarre tunes you encounter when you talk to them is like dancing in a minefield blindfolded. Some don’t have enough to eat at home and have to survive off of the nutrition-less food they get in the school cafeteria’s free-and-reduced lunch program. Some of them have never heard a single positive thing from the adults at home, enduring only endless criticism, insults, and sometimes fists. Some of them fall in love you. Some due to hormones. Some due to the fact that you treat them like a real human being. Some because they just stupidly assume that everyone dances to the same tunes they hear in their own personal head.

Some of them automatically hate you because they know that if you hear their own secret music in their own self-loathing heads, you will never accept it. They hate you because you are a teacher and teachers always hate them. Some of them, deep down, are as loathsome as they think they are.

But, if you find the right music, you can get any of them, even all of them, to dance. It might be hard to find. It might be a nearly impossible task to learn to play that music once you find it. But it can be done.

And if you get them to dance to your music, to dance along with you, I can’t think of anything more rewarding, anything more life-fulfilling. Have you ever tried it for yourself? If you are not a teacher, how about with your own children or the children related to you? Everybody should learn to dance this dance I am talking about in metaphors. At least once in your life. It is addictive. You will want to dance more. So the next time the music starts and you get the chance… I hope you’ll dance!

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December 23, 2018 · 5:16 pm

Gingerbread Plans

The last couple of years we have started a new Christmas tradition, making a gingerbread house together. Of course, any Christmas tradition for my kids is a new one. We were Jehovah’s Witnesses up until recent years when the Brotherhood left us behind. You probably know already that it is against their religion to celebrate traditional holidays like Christmas. And I bear them no ill will for anything, but their ways are really not my ways anymore. So, since we are having our fourth Christmas mini-tradition, I prepared by finding gingerbread kits on sale at Walmart. I am not Scrooge anymore, but I still need to cut costs for poverty reasons.

Nothing says “Christmas Time is Here” like Charlie Brown and gingerbread.

I scored this one for only $5 because the Christmas rush is ending and they are trying to sell out the goodies that are growing old on the shelf. My daughter the Princess saw this and immediately declared she was looking forward to biting the head off Charlie Brown.

I responded to her somewhat-unexpectedly hostile comment against a cartoon character I love and identify with by showing her the back of the box.

The Charlie Brown figure will be the cardboard cut-out from the back of the box. The only candy figure is Snoopy. Of course, she then promised to decapitate and then cannibalize Snoopy. The girl ordinarily likes cartoons, so I don’t fully understand the double meaning behind her ravenousness.

As an added challenge to our artistical gustatory creativeness I also scored this gingerbread train, seen here pulling across the tracks at the Toonerville train station. All aboard! That won’t last long if we get it made this year. Of course it will fossilize if we try to save it for next year.

That, then, is the evil plan for Christmas that we are probably not supposed to be celebrating. But we will not roast in Hell for executing this evil plan. Jehovah’s people don’t believe in Hell.

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December 22, 2018 · 9:06 pm

Hidden Kingdom – Chapter 2 adding page 4

Here is the complete Chapter 1 at this link; https://catchafallingstarbook.net/2018/11/24/hidden-kingdom-chapter-1-complete/

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December 21, 2018 · 4:48 pm

Saddle Up the Rooster

If you are wondering why a crazy old man who writes a daily blog would re-photograph and post a picture he did thirty years ago of a naked fairy princess riding on a chicken with her bug-boy boyfriend, then the answer is simple. He is ill again. Possibly coming down with the flu or something equally horrible and potentially fatal. And thinking is hard for him. He cannot even manage to shift his feverish head into first-person point of view. So enjoy the picture and save the complaints for when he is smarter again and answering with a cool head… or possibly when he croaks and becomes a ghost writer.

The picture is modeled on reality, by the way. And that is not merely the fever talking. He made the picture of the girl from a real nudist girl riding on a horse instead of a chicken. The rooster was also real. But probably not as large as portrayed here. Of course, the bug-boy was actually the girl’s older sister, and not entirely green. Oh, and the saddle that fits over chicken wings is entirely imaginary. So, there you have the proof. Real! 100% real! …well, if you subtract 65% for vivid imaginings anyway.

I am sure that once the goofy artist and blogger is healthy again… or relatively not dead in any case… he will be totally embarrassed at having posted this Paffooney picture and the accompanying positively perforated prose. So forgive him his indisposition, and better things will come tomorrow.

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December 17, 2018 · 5:18 pm

Today’s IRS Rant (but please don’t garnish my pension)

Yes, the IRS always wants more of my money than I have already paid.

Last year at about this time, the lovely russet potato with a wig of uncooked spaghetti and a heart of black obsidian who we elected to run this country passed a tax bill that gave huge tax cuts to some people who didn’t need the money and a small amount to others in the middle class.  When I complained about the tax bill on Facebook, my Iowegian conservative friends pointed out that if I didn’t like the tax cut, I could always send the money back to the government.

But, no, I couldn’t.

You see, I didn’t get anything back from the government.  In fact, they wanted $1,300 more.  The tax bill made adjustments to withholding requirements for pensions.  And because Don Jr. wanted to get millions back last year, the russet potato made the tax bill retroactive to cover all of 2017.

So, I should’ve paid off what I owed last month when the IRS debited my account for $200.  Then, the first of this month, they debited again,  By my calculations, this time was for money I didn’t even owe.  $200 dollars is a big bite, especially when I am paying off a Chapter 13 bankruptcy and three hospital bills.  

So, today, I called the IRS customer service line, where the telephone operator put me through to what was apparently the proper office out of the 300,000 layers of the IRS to find out what went wrong.  I got put on hold for only 30 minutes (shorter than the hour and a half I waited the last time I called) and then I got cut off about 15 minutes in.  So, I tried finding out what my tax bill looked like from irs.gov.  This involves setting up an account which I failed to successfully do last time.  This time I tried to verify I really am me with, first, my credit card (which I am paying them off with) and they didn’t accept it because it is technically a debit card, and then with two of the account numbers to our mortgage loans, which didn’t take because my wife’s name is on the mortgage and mine is not.  So, I am not me, and three failures mean I can’t try again until tomorrow.  Perhaps they will identify me by my shoe size tomorrow.

The conclusion I am forced to draw is this; when you owe them money, the IRS is the most efficient and dangerous organization in existence.  But when they owe me money, they are suddenly the Three Stooges.

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December 16, 2018 · 4:55 pm

Lighting Candles in the Darkness

I recently got word that my octogenarian father is in the hospital again for the third time in the last three months.  I am fairly sure the end of my father’s long and epic life is near.  And though I have basically come to terms with not only the coming end of his life but my own life as well, human beings, real ones, were never meant to live forever.

But I do not welcome the coming sadness, never-the-less.  There will always be something in the mysteries of death and darkness that is to be feared… and avoided for as long as possible.

There are many ways to light a candle, and some require no fire.

One of the most important avoidance measures is to light a few candles.  A candle holds back the darkness for a while.  And of course, I mean that in only the most metaphorical of multiple senses.

There are many ways to light a candle.  I have lit three in this essay.  I lit them with my ink pen and my drawing skill (modest though it may be).  And drawing alone is not the sum total of the ways a candle may be lit.

Each of the novels I have written is also a candle.  They may be useless piles of pages that nobody ever reads, but they are the summation of my already long life and work as a writer.  I may not be well known, and probably am not as talented as the better-known writers, but I really do have something to tell.  And being published where someone may eventually… even accidentally read some of it, there is no telling exactly how far into the darkness my light will reach.

And the even-more-amazing fact about the reach my candlelight into the darkness has is this, my candles were only lit because my father first lit the candle that is me.  As I have passed the candle-lighting responsibility on to those who read my writing, and to my children who have many more candles of their own to light.

I love you, Dad.  Raymond L. Beyer.  My next novel is dedicated to you.  Let’s continue to hold off the darkness for as long as we can… together.

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Filed under drawing, healing, insight, inspiration, metaphor, Paffooney