Category Archives: Paffooney

July 26, 2018 · 8:58 pm

Getting Back to the Writing in my Heart

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I successfully prepared for the possible death of my beloved laptop, and that foresight managed to save a lot of the art and written work that was stored there.  What is lost to me because I ran out of time to back everything up is not beyond my ability to retrieve it.  I not only backed up files on thumb drives in triplicate, I managed to send copies of my completed manuscripts to both of my sisters as well as my oldest son.  I have been almost paranoid about preserving my creations.

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And the reason for that is not because of the onset of mental illness, or obsessive compulsive disorder, although those are probably both factors, but because the most valuable possession I have acquired in my life is the story I have to tell.

The novel I am working on now is going to be the most powerful and complex that I have yet done.  I am confident that it will also be the best I have done.  I wrote what I believe are good novels before this one. I like to think that if people bother to actually read Catch a Falling Star, Snow Babies, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, and The Baby Werewolf, they will think so too.  Editors have told me that my work is as good or better than some of the good books published by Random House and Penguin Books, and they know from having worked for those publishing houses.  And I waited to write this one because Sing Sad Songs is so good that I had to learn the skills necessary to write it before I tried to get the story down on paper.

Francois the singing boy is based on a real-life student whom I loved and taught and eventually lost tragically.  His talent changed the world for me, even if it didn’t last long enough to change the worlds of so many more people that he could’ve touched had he lived even a little longer.  And I am the only person who can possibly tell this important story.

I made myself cry for ten minutes by writing that last paragraph.  But don’t be sad for me.  Remember, I am a humorist.  I take the tragedies I have known and try to weave it into stuff that makes you laugh twice as much as it makes you cry.  You know, that stuff we loosely refer to as comedy.  And that’s what this story is about, laughing at everything in life except for those few things that make you have to cry.  Writing is about expressing feelings and describing how conflict is navigated in order to find the love or the love lost on the other side of conflict that is what the world is really about.

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I know this all sounds like hyperbole… bragging even.  I probably will never pull off the actual creation of the monster, certainly not without consequences, torches and pitchforks, and such…  But it is the reason for all the labor, the back-up plans and paranoia, and the notion that I just might’ve reached the level of skill necessary to bring it all to life.

And I am writing again.  Not even the death of a computer has been able to stop me.

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July 21, 2018 · 9:13 pm

D&D Saturdays

In honor of all the years I spent playing dungeon master on Saturday afternoons, I am posting pictures to keep the posting of D&D stuff on Saturdays as a tradition.  I really am a bit too achy and ill to post any old orc and ogre stories today.

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July 20, 2018 · 7:08 pm

Unicorn Doodle… um, Doodlecorn?

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I like to doodle and draw as I watch TV.  This I did while watching the Iowa State Championship Games for high school girls’ softball.  I  guess I had unicorns on the brain.

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July 17, 2018 · 3:58 pm

Aeroquest… Canto 31

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Canto 31 – Gaijin

      In Japanese the name Gaijin means “foreigner” or “gringo”.  It denotes a barbarian who is too close to nature to truly ever understand the ways of the celestial culture of the dragons.  It was an appropriate name for the planet.  All who came there, even the dolphins and whales, were foreigners and off-worlders.  The true culture was a secret deeply embedded in the planet itself.

Dr. Naylund Smith was an immortal.  He had lived on 17th Century Earth and been among the first explorers to leave the planet in space craft stolen from the invading Tellerons.  He had met the original Sylvani, and loved them as a people.  He used his vast knowledge and medical skill to help them evolve into the people they were now.  He and his young daughter, Sara, were standing outside the Celestial City of Kiro as the spacecraft Megadeath touched down on the plains outside the Dragon Wall.  They watched the sleek war machine settle gracefully to the soil where no starship had been for nearly 800 years.  It was with a mixture of emotions that he watched it.  He knew that the ship carried what his daughter needed most.  He also knew that it would bring an end to the peace and unspoiled beauty of the world of Gaijin.

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“Daddy, are they bad men?” asked eight-year-old Sara.  Her blond hair fell golden and beautiful over one eye.  Her little-girl body was nearly lost in the graceful white silk kimono she wore.

“No, Sweet One.  They are good.”

“Why are you so sad, then?”

“Because they bring the White Spider back to us.  Things will change here.  The Gaijin I love will be no more.”

“The White Spider from the stories?  That should be exciting, shouldn’t it?”

“Perhaps.”

The little girl put her soft hand into the gnarled old turkey claw that was Naylund’s hand.  He was comforted by the gesture.

The starship touched down in sight of the Dragon Gate.  The town was surrounded by an ornately carved wall that was shaped like a dragon’s body.  The only entrance was through the Dragon Gate, the open mouth of an ornately carved Celestial Dragon.  The city was secured behind the energy barrier created by the Sylvani Technology in the wall itself.  Naylund would have to escort whoever was inside the space ship through the Dragon Gate, because he did not wish them to run afoul of either the Gate Guards or the ancient energies of the wall itself.  Only those with proper chi, like himself, could pass through unchallenged.

He walked out to meet them.

The first down the starship’s exit ramp was obviously an Earther by heritage.  His skin was pink like Naylund and Sarah’s skin, not yellow or orange like the Gaijinese.  The boy that followed the man in the fedora hat, though, was a Nebulon, blue-skinned and yellow-haired.  The boy looked Naylund directly in the eye, and revealed himself as a telepath by doing so.  Naylund was not a Psion himself, but had come to know them because Sarah was a telepath, born of a Psion mother who died mysteriously during the birth.

“So,” said Naylund, extending a hand in a gesture of welcome, “welcome to the planet, Gaijin, Honored White Spider.”

“Why do you call me that?” asked the sharp-eyed man in the fedora hat.  “I am Ged Aero.  I am here because a Psion told me to come.  I don’t know you.  Why do you call me by that name that I’ve been hearing so much lately?”

“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Ged Aero, but by stepping out of that starship, you have fulfilled an 800-year-old prophecy.  The people here will hail you as a god reborn.  You are like Jesus Christ to them.  You are here to teach them, and lead them out of their millennium of isolation.”

“Perhaps you are mistaken.  What if I am not the White Spider you seek?”

Naylund laughed.  “Shan’s Prophecy tells how you would speak those very words when you arrived here.  The people would not follow a White Spider that never doubted himself and acted without reserve.  Those are the qualities of a Black Spider.  We have too many of them all ready.”

Ged looked the old man in the eye.  Naylund could see something there he had never seen before.  This man was a different sort of Psion.  He was a changer, one who could change himself, and by doing so, change the worlds around him.

“Exactly who are you, old man?” asked Ged.

“I am Naylund-sensei.  Naylund Charles Smith, Doctor, Adventurer, and Scholar.  I am from Earth, but from long, long ago.  Ged-kun, I will help you in your new role as leader of this planet.   I pray that you will learn to love it as I do.”

“Naylund-sensei?” said the little blue boy, “who is this lovely girl?”

Naylund looked at the bright-eyed boy.  He was a handsome child with the beautiful powder-blue skin of a superior race of beings.  Naylund felt attraction to him immediately, though he had no idea yet why.

“This is my daughter, Sara Smith.  I pray that you both will learn to love her too, just as I do.”

 

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July 10, 2018 · 3:28 pm

Aeroquest… Adagio 7

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Adagio 7 – The Planet of the White Spider

      The planet Gaijin would prove to be the closest thing to home for Ged Aero since he and his brother left the planet Questor.  It was a singularly beautiful world.  A water world orbiting the star known as the Old Yellow Man.  It had sixteen continents all roughly the size of India on old Earth.  The ample oceans of the world teamed with sea life.  Like many places where the Ancients left their imprint, there was a substantial population of Cetaceans; dolphins, porpoises, and whales that were genetically identical to those of Earth.  The most common form, the Emerald Dolphins, had a language and a sort of non-tool-using culture based on the sharing of stories, songs, religion, and poetry.  They interacted with the native humanoids very little.  It is a shame that the dolphins didn’t care to be the dominant life form on the planet.  Their way of life was far less disease-like and virulent than the that of the eventual dominators.

The Gaijinese were themselves an artificially melded race.  They once had been purely a race called the Sylvani, inhabitants of the star lanes since before the memory of any living race.  They had been willowy humanoids with long, silky white hair and lemon yellow skin.  They were very intelligent and relatively long-lived, reaching ages of 500 Earth years and up.   Such racial goodness is supposed to be a star marked on the celestial score-card of existence. They had, however, run afoul of another pre-Earther space-faring race called the Tellerons.  The Tellerons of the planet Telleri were green-skinned amphibian humanoids, hairless, and possessing a single shark-like fin sprouting from the apex of their skulls.  They would do their best to undo Sylvani goodness.  The Tellerons had conquered and enslaved the gentle Sylvani before they met the first Earthers in space.  It is probable that most of the Telleron technology that Earthers stole in turn in order to become a space-faring race was originally created by the noble Sylvani.  The Tellerons, however, used the technology to colonize and conquer rather than study other worlds.  It seemed only fair in the long run that they would be displaced from their dominance of the Orion Spur by the combination of the primate Earthers and the reptilian Galtorrians who were both worse and more violently ruthless.

When humans conquered the star lanes held by the Telleron Star Empire, the suddenly freed Sylvani disappeared from known space.  On the idyllic world of Gaijin, Japanese Earthers and Sylvani met and fell in love with each other’s complex and poetic cultures developed separately.  The dually settled world of Gaijin eventually evolved into one culture made of equal parts of both.  Because the two races were entirely compatible, the people themselves changed from two races into only one.  They became very Japanese-ritual-oriented and very yellow in color.

So it was when Ged Aero dropped out of interstellar space into the unspoiled star system of the Old Yellow Man, he found a complex and peaceful world that had long awaited his coming to reach outward for greatness.

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July 9, 2018 · 3:26 pm

A Boy Named Tim

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Timothy Allen Kellogg is a fictional character who has lived in my fictional world since 1976 when he first appeared in an illustration I created at my desk in my college dorm room.

Tim is a main character in Catch a Falling Star, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, and Magical Miss Morgan.  He will likely be written into a few more as well.

One could make a good case that he has become the fictional avatar of my eldest son.  He is the son of an English Teacher who has always been a me-character.  Lawrence “Rance” Kellogg is a character created during my college days as a crucial part of my own fictionalized life story.  But if Tim is my son in fictional form, you have to realize also that the character existed nineteen years before my son was a reality.  So there is some kind of magical evolution going on here.

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I must also acknowledge that Tim, being a major character, also voices many of the things that have always been issues in my mind.  He has to deal with the loss that comes when a best friend moves away.  He has to deal with the revelation that there really are transgender people and he actually knows one.  He has to deal with having an over-large imagination and being smarter than almost everyone else he knows.

But I can absolutely, and with a clear conscience, declare that Tim is NOT a me-character.  He has a girlfriend whom he has a never-ending unspoken crush on.  I never had that when I was a boy (at least I would never admit it to you if I did).   So, there is reason for me to try to seriously understand this fictional character, who he is, where he comes from, and the ideas he represents.  I am not the only writer I know who creates characters that he or she comes to treat as real people.  I hold imaginary conversations with Tim constantly, trying to learn more about him, how he feels about things, and the judgments he makes about the essential truths of life.

So now I have to end this essay, not because I am really finished talking about Tim, but because he tells me I have told you too much already, and he doesn’t want me talking about him any more today.

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July 6, 2018 · 3:54 pm

In Defense of Corny Jokes

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It will probably be clear that I am writing this post because I am currently reading 1941 daily strips from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.

But I am definitely going to talk about corny jokes, not cheesy jokes, because I grew up in Iowa, not Wisconsin.

And, yes, that is example number one.

There is a certain way of telling a joke or tall tale that is unique to the farmyard.   And it does not contain chicken poop, but rather, corn.

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Of course, as you can see by this corn-colored definition of what corny means according to Collins Online Dictionary, the word is supposed to be an insult to corniness in jokery.  That doesn’t sit well with the people of Iowa, where the tall corn grows.  We are also obvious, sentimental, and not at all original.  And we are proud of it.  Corny360_2017-06-19-17-17-44-339

To tell a corny joke right, you have to set a simple scene, and make it clear what happened, and give the audience a simple cue for when to laugh.

For instance, there was the time that Cudgel Murphy had a cat problem with his car, the 1954 Austin Hereford that he has driven since dinosaurs walked the earth.  It seems there was this time in 1988 when he kept having engine trouble.  The engine would sputter and cough and die, and when Cudgel opened it, he would find a half-eaten dead pigeon or other random bird carcass gumming up the works.  He couldn’t for the life of him figure out how dead birds were getting into his car engine.  But his grandson Danny happened to see the neighbor’s big tabby tomcat carrying a pigeon he had killed under the front of Grampy’s car, apparently enjoying a fowl meal in the dark with a nice warm engine to lay the food on.  Sure enough, when they checked the engine later, there was the half-eaten dead bird laying across one end of the fan belt.

So Cudgel set up a vigil, assigning times for himself, Danny, and his younger grandson Mike to watch for signs of that damned cat taking another bird under the hood of the Austin. With only two day’s worth of watching under their belts, Mike came running into the Murphy kitchen with the news.

“Grampy!  I seen that damned cat taking a dead bird under your car!  He’s in there right now!”

So Cudgel rushed out, turned the engine on, and stomped on the gas.

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There were some worrisome thumps and bangs under the hood, and then the cat shot out from under the front of the car spewing howls and cat curses all the way up the nearest tree.

Cudgel laughed hard and finally caught his breath to say, “How about that, Mike?  I’ll bet James Bond doesn’t have a car that can shoot angry cats out the front!”

Now, before you chastise me for enjoying cruelty to cats, I hope you will remember that Cudgel Murphy is a fictional character, and I am merely illustrating the idea behind corny jokes.  And, besides, that cat really had it coming to him.

 

 

 

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July 5, 2018 · 3:10 pm

Clown Business

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This is a 4-minute free-hand doodle in pen and ink on white drawing paper. I drew it fast. I actually put less planning and thought into creating it than the clown president has put into tariffs and trade wars.

I confess to rarely doing things without a plan and considerable preparation. It is as much a teacher thing as it is an artist thing.  But it is not really a clown thing.  Clown things tend to be spontaneous, unrehearsed, improvised, and free-flowing.

I think, though, that my doodle, though done fast and directly from the idea machine to paper, shows how my constant preparing and work on careful planning leads to certain features of talent and skill showing through.

I believe I have revealed before that as a writer and an artist I am a formalist.  I believe in the rules and proper forms.  I know the proper forms and the rules very well.  And therefore, I feel qualified to break the rules whenever necessary.

And clowns must break the rules.  You have push outside the borders.  You have to twist things at unnatural angles.  You have to turn things upside down.   You have to portray a clown with only the face and hands.

Of course you can see a definite difference in quality between clowns.  The Cheeto-head who runs our country does not exhibit practiced skill when he free-hands it and tweets his comedy on Twitter.  He creates mainly chaos.  Robin Williams, on the other hand, rapid fires incredible lines off the top of his head.  But he can do that because he has practiced brewing gallons of funny foam up in his insane brain and grabbing off the amazing lines that fizz out of his brain and tosses them out to create comedy.

Chaos is easy to create.  Comedy, especially thoughtful comedy, is hard.

So, I will continue to do clown stuff.  And I will continue to doodle.  But I will also continue to plan and practice, because clown stuff is seriously important, and has to be done correctly.

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July 3, 2018 · 2:13 pm

Aeroquest… Canto 30

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Canto 27 – Worlds of the White Spider

      It is said that life in space exists on a spider’s web of invisible star lanes.  A photon drive can propel a starship only through certain well-defined mathematical probability arrays to a new location in geometrically-and-gravitically-folded space.  They work basically by popping in and out of reality, though you can only precisely describe the physics of it in mathematical terms.  So, of course, there are those who claim that if space is filled with spider webs, then God himself must be the Great Spider who spins it all.

The Megadeath roared into orbit around the bright blue planet that filled the life zone of a star listed on the charts as The Old Yellow Man.  It had been identified as a habitable system before, but no one had dared to come this far beyond the Imperial Borders to colonize before.  At least, no one these spacers knew about.

“This is a spectacular world,” said Vince Niell.

“Yeah, man,” said Nikki Sixx.  “Like a toatally gnarly hammertime world!”

“Wha…?” answered Cold Death.

Ged chuckled at the verbal density of his crew.  You have to be happy with the pick of the litter if the dog pound only has mutts.

“What do your sensors pick up, Cold?” Tkriashav asked Cold Death.

“Wha…?” the white-skinned bone man responded.

“Your instrument panel, you thick…” grumbled Ged.

“Oh,” Death said.  “Signal from the third moon of the big gas planet, man.  Like, ancient dudes put a scout base there.  Dead zone, dude.  No life.”

“Other signs of civilization?” asked Tkriashav.

“Stellar observatory in the third orbit.  Also dead zone.  One moon around this planet.  None around the planet in the first orbit.  Also dead zones, dude.”

“What about the planet below us?” asked Ged, beginning to grow impatient with the brain-dead zombie stoner at the sensor panel.  “Are there people or signs of civilization on this planet?”

“Whoa… Like two billion people.  Not human, man.  Humanoid, but definitely not human.”  Cold death shook his green Mohawk hair-do like a horse shakes flies off its mane.  He was definitely not human either.

“Vince?  Do you think you can land safely?” asked Ged.

“Yeah, boss man.  I can put her down on a dime.  I’ve never had such a sweet girl under my control before.  Yeah, baby!”

Ged ground a frustrated fist into his temple.  He knew there was something important about this mission because of Tkriashav’s damnable clairvoyance, but he felt he needed to know what.  Was it something for his own good?  Or something for the greater good that would mean sacrificing his own life?  He wanted to be able to make those choices himself.

“Cold Death?  I’m gonna hate myself for having to ask this, but do you find any signs of a starport down there?”

“Wha…?”

“A landing field!  A flat patch!  A place to put down where we don’t go CRASH!  BOOM! And blow up!”

“Oh, yeah, man.  Major city with walls, flat all around, dude.  Gnarly!”

“You see it, Vince?” asked Ged.

“I’m swoopin’, Daddy-o!”

“Ugh!  What does that mean?”

Ged looked at Xavier Tkriashav.  Tkriashav merely shrugged.

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June 30, 2018 · 3:10 pm

Singing Rock and Soul

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Yes, this is a picture of a rock.  But it is no ordinary rock.  Okay, that’s not precisely true.  It is a gray metamorphic rock roughly square in shape with numerous flecks of white and a white strip along the top.  As rocks go, it probably couldn’t be more ordinary, more rocky in its soul.  But, as with all things in this life, the importance and true meaning lies in the context.  This is a pocket rock.  It spent a quarter of a century riding around in my pants pocket.  I have held it in my hand millions of times.

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The Rowan Community Center, seen in this picture I used for the cover of Magical Miss Morgan, is the last part of the old Rowan school still standing.

In 1980, my Great Grandma Hinckley died.  That was also the year my folks had to move to Texas because of the transfer my Dad’s seedcorn company gave him to its cotton seed division.  It was one year before I got my teaching degree.  And it was the year they tore down the building where I went to school for grades 1 through 6.  That summer, as I walked around the demolition site, I found the homely gray rock that was nearly as square as I was, and because I was already feeling homesick before I actually left home, I picked it up  and stuck it in my pocket.  It was a little square piece of home.

That rock went with me to college.  It went with me to both Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida.  It has been to Washington D.C.  It has been in the depths of caves in Kentucky and Missouri and Texas.  It has been high in the sky in my pocket in an airplane.  It has been to beaches on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the U.S.  It has visited both Mexico and Canada.  It his been to Las Vegas.  And it even rode in the subways of New York City.

And possibly the most interesting part of this pocket rock’s career happened in Texas schools.  It was with me in my pocket constantly from 1980 to 2004.  I finally took it out of my pocket and placed it in an old cigar box that once belonged to my grandfather and I have kept keepsakes in since I was a kid.

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And I have thought a lot about this ordinary rock that isn’t really ordinary on closer inspection.  At one point or another I thought about using it as a skipping stone at both the Atlantic and the Pacific.  In 2004 when I was considering the pocket watch broken by it and the car key accidentally bent against it, it almost wound up in Lake Superior.  I put in my cigar box and it has remained exiled there since.  Will I have it buried with me, in my pocket?  No, probably not.  My wife plans to have me cremated.  Hopefully, though, not until I am already dead.  This rock has pretty much been a symbol of my soul, travelling with me, teaching with me, jingling the pocket change when I walk…  And it will continue to exist when the thinking and writing parts of Mickey are gone.

But even rocks are not immortal.  Sometime in the future something will happen to it.  It will end up someplace unexpected or changed by grinding, melting, or chemical reaction into some other form.  But no matter what happens to it ultimately, the meaning of it, the context, the places it has been and the things that it has done will still be true, still have happened to it.  And, ultimately, it will still be just like me.

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