Category Archives: Paffooney

March 7, 2017 · 11:34 am

Stardusters… Canto 37

galtorr-primex-1

Canto Thirty-Seven – On the Moonbase of Gundahl

Starbright used the material synthesizer to make a wide variety of synthetic meat dishes. Tellerons really didn’t care for that sort of protein-heavy fare, but if the synthesizer had not run out of molecules in the storage bin, the little lizard people would’ve eaten until they burst like over-filled balloons. As it was their little lizard bellies were round and stuffed to the point of hurting on the synthetic meat and Skoog gravy. The lizard children all curled up in satisfied but stomach-achy balls on the control center floor and drifted off into hibernation-like slumber.

“Now that you fed them into a stupor,” said Farbick, “I will pick up all their weapons, and we are in control of the situation at last.”

“You don’t fight fair,” growled Stabharh the violent little lizard man. “You are not supposed to win the battle by feeding my troops into a coma. There was no blood and death and drama. Where’s the glory in that?”

“I don’t think we were looking for glory,” said Starbright. “Victory for us is staying alive… and possibly finding a new place for our people to live.”

“Not here!” protested fat Bahbahr. “This moon is my sacred property, legally purchased with the blood of slaves and warriors, and owned by me and my family for all time.”

“You have family?” asked Stabharh surprised.

“Well, not any more. Senator Tedhkruhz probably ate them when he took over Predator’s Preserve and all the military bases I owned on that sub-continent.”

“What about these children?” asked Farbick. “Were you going to share this place with them?”

“No,” said the fat overlord, “we were planning to eat them, since we are running out of edible food all over the planet. These are all merely low-class slaves and chattel. I might’ve saved a female or two to fertilize eggs with… there don’t seem to be any other living nobility besides Tedhkruhz and Rekhpahree and a handful of their kin.”

“Those young soldiers still belong to my command,” growled Stabharh. “You will turn them over to me when you let us out of here.”

“What if we don’t?” asked Farbick. “We could put the two of you down on the planet with the force-field box you are trapped in. We could keep this Moonbase for ourselves, and let Harmony Castille teach these lizard-tadpoles some manners.”

Bahbahr howled incoherently at that.

“What kind of mind-control device is a Harmony Castille?” asked Stabharh. “Especially one that is strong enough to control lizard brats that I have trained as killers? It would take a very powerful force.”

“Harmony calls it Christian Bible-teaching,” said Starbright with a shrug. “I have noticed it has the power to make Tellerons feel shame and self-loathing. And it can apparently also help any species to care about one another in a self-less way. I’d say that was pretty powerful mind control.”

“Well, you better hope it works at a distance,” sneered Stabharh. “You see that monitor over on the control panel? The one with the blinking red warning lights?”

“Yes,” said Farbick, suddenly concerned. “What does it mean?”

“One of Senator Tedhkruhz’s space battle cruisers is headed here to destroy this moon for all time.”

“That can’t be good,” sighed Starbright. “How do you know that that is who it is?”

“Because only Tedhkruhz still has working space ships, and you lot stupidly allowed one of them to survive its encounter with us. He obviously figured out who we were and where we were going in spite of your lah-dee-dah invisibility cloaking field.”

Stabharh’s evil smirk was loathsome and foul to look at, Farbick thought. Even serpents on Telleri, the really big ones, weren’t as horrid to look at as this reptile was. Even if he was about to die right along with Farbick and Starbright, Farbick knew this lizard-man was going to enjoy whatever happened next.

*****

dav-2

4 Comments

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

Tagged as humor, novel, science fiction, Stardusters and Space Lizards

March 4, 2017 · 5:07 pm

Making Fun

So I made a funny picture of the Keebler elf we put in charge of the Attorney General’s Office of the United States. This is my homage to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, the elf who invented the best-selling cookie in the South, the Keebler Kluxie Cookie. But, of course, if I call the man a racist, angry Trumpkins are going to immediately tell me that I am the real racist. I admit it, though, I am prejudiced against people who hate others based on skin color, religion, or other factors that allow them to feel they are inherently better than the group that they hate. And I don’t apologize for making fun of the people I am prejudiced against. I have, after all, a good reason for making fun. I am a cartoonist at heart, if not a professional. And making fun of the things that I hate and fear makes me fear them less. I feel it is a much better response than to build more bombs and give the police more freedom to murder those I hate and fear. Laughing at the darkness is, I think, better than filling my own heart with the darkness and allowing it to snuff out my light.

For example, here is a vicious real-life Boris Badenov who really scares me. He is a very angry man who wants to punish people for being immigrants. He also hates Jewish people and is on record blaming them for the world’s troubles in a way that sounds frustratingly retro-Nazi-fascist in tone.

This is, of course, the same kind of fun-making that Jay Ward unleashed on the Russian threat that had American school children learning how to “duck and cover” in response to fears of imminent nuclear first-strikes back in the 60’s when I was a small boy. Rocky and Bullwinkle made us laugh and made it better. In this picture I have stolen you see Steve Bannon using a cane to threaten the All-American Moose. And you know that however dastardly the plan, there is every reason to believe the Moose will magically survive and we will get a good laugh at the bad guy’s expense.

And making fun of these cartoon villains (there is no member of Trump’s basket of villains who is not a human cartoon character) is not a matter of actually hating the people. I don’t personally hate any of these individuals. I make fun of them because it makes me feel better. It may also make some of you who I share these things with feel better too. I do hate many of the things they have said and done. And I feel I have a right to make fun of these things and thus make fun of the cartoon villains who said and did them.

I identify as a liberal for these reasons, and do not apologize for it, so make cartoons of me too if you feel the need.

1 Comment

Filed under cartoons, commentary, humor, Liberal ideas, Paffooney, politics, satire

March 3, 2017 · 3:13 pm

Antonín Dvořák – HUMORESQUES FOR PIANO

These eight short piano pieces represent work from Czech composer Antonin Dvorak’s “sketchbook”. He composed these in his time as director of the Conservatory in New York from 1892 to 1895. They represent a foreign-born composer’s take on being in America. It is important to note that there is a very un-serious quality to the “sketches” in this portfolio. His most famous piece from this set, the Seventh Humoresque in G Major would become the theme song of Slappy Squirrel in Steven Spielberg’s popular television cartoon show, Anamaniacs. It also became well known as the tune behind the “train toilet song” where passengers began singing aloud the directions for toilet flushing in passenger cars beginning with the phrase “Passengers will please refrain from flushing while the train is in the station…”

So what more perfect background music could there be for a look at some of the junk in my computerized version of a sketchbook? These images all come from my Work in Progress folder. I hope you will listen to the music while looking at these incomplete horrors and humoresques.

That is definitely a load of humoresques. But like other forms of it, you spread it on your garden and it will help the flowers grow.

head2-630x840

Stardusters… Canto 36

galtorr-primex-1

Canto Thirty-Six – The Bio-Dome

Alden stood a safe distance from the man-eating plant that Brekka had said was called Lester. He studied it. It was a meat-eating plant and didn’t rely totally on photo-synthesis, but it was much greener than a Venus flytrap from Earth. And the important thing that struck Alden’s farmer mind with nearly thirty years of farm-working experience was that it seemed totally untouched by the blight that was killing nearly every growing thing on Galtorr Prime.

“What’s the matter, Alden?” asked Gracie. “Does something about that plant bother you?” Gracie’s concern colored her beautiful little-girl face. Alden had never seen that face except in old black-and-white pictures in the family album. This new body she inhabited took some getting used to, but as far as Alden was concerned, she had never been more stunningly beautiful. It made being naked shamefully hard. “Did you hear my question, my love?”

“Yeah… didn’t Sizzahl say this man-eater was an alien plant? Not from here?”

“Yes, I think she did.” Gracie turned around and looked where Sizzahl seemed about to leave the flower garden following the others. “Sizzahl? Can you come over here and talk to us about Lester?”

The naked lizard girl walked back across the garden path to where Alden and Gracie stood. “What now?”

“This plant has no blight,” said Alden, pointing at the green leaves.

“Is that important? It is from a different world. It comes from a planet called Telos Three.”

“It is a green plant, and it is resistant to the disease killing the ecosphere of this planet. Couldn’t we cross-breed it or something with cuttings from the dying plants, and maybe save them?”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Sizzahl made some serious-thinking lizard faces. “I can go one better. I have a gene splicer that I also want to use to make a Galtorrian/Human fusion. We could use that to transplant resistance genes into the dying plants. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.”

“Alden thinks like a farmer. He’s battled corn borers and burdock weed and corn smut for years in Iowa.” Grace looked at Alden with obvious pride embedded in her smile.

“I have learned a few things about saving crops.”

“If I could isolate the gene for cross-species use, I might be able to defeat the bio-weapon diseases once and for all.” Sizzahl seemed to be getting excited by the idea.

“What exactly is the Galtorrian/Human fusion idea all about?” asked Gracie.

“Oh, that wasn’t about disease resistance. I wanted to make better people for our planet. I figure if we can combine aggressive Galtorrian methods with Earther peacefulness we could make a race of people that would be better than either side at present.”

“Don’t you like your own people, Sizzahl?” Gracie asked.

“I hate their evil, vengeful, selfish ways. A few corporate emperors own everything on this planet. They treat the people as things that can be used up and then disposed of. A few nasty old gators decided that they were the only big lizards who mattered, and now you can see what their fighting amongst themselves has done to this whole planet.”

“I hate to say it, but Earth humans aren’t that different,” said Alden. “We make wars and kill our own people too. We put a lot of artificial chemicals and poisons into our own environment, and we don’t even do it to try to wipe out the other side of every argument. At least… I don’t think we do it on purpose.”

“I need to try the plan anyway,” said Sizzahl. “I don’t know if your people deserve to live without being fundamentally changed, but I do know that mine are a bunch of sorry, verminiferous beasts that deserve to die a horrible death. I want to replace them rather than re-grow and save them.”

“I am so sorry your world is like this,” said Gracie. “I’m sure if more of your people were like you, they’d be a very worthy race.”

“You are wrong, but it is a happier thought than most I have had in life.”

*****

galtorr-primexvx

1 Comment

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

February 23, 2017 · 12:06 pm

Now You See Me… Now You Don’t

How does an artist know himself? Now there’s a difficult question. I spend all my time looking at the world with the eyes of imagination. I don’t even seem to be able to take photographs in the normal way other people do. Maybe I should consider this self-think through the medium of pictures I have made with captions added to them?

Mickey is not actually me. He is my “other” me, my pen name, my goofier self.

I was born in a blizzard in Mason City, Iowa in the 1950’s.

I have learned about dog poop five times a day since 2011 when we found Jade, our dog.

I was a middle school teacher for 24 of my 31 years of teaching. I love/hate 7th Graders.

When things go wrong, I tend to make a joke about it.

I like to draw students as I saw them, not as they really were.

I always see myself as the one with the BIG pencil.

If there is goofiness around here, it is all my fault.

In spite of the title, I don’t know how to disappear.

I love everything Disney.

I tend not to be very much like other people. I don’t think like they do.

16750_102844486407850_100000468961606_71386_6774729_n

In grade school, I was deeply in love with Alicia Stewart, though I never told her that, and that is not her real name.

My high school art teacher told me that when an artist draws someone, he always ends up making it look a little bit like himself. That is because, I suppose, an artist can only draw what he knows and he really only knows himself. That being said, this post should really look just like me.

Doodlefox

c360_2017-02-21-18-13-43-545

While watching Netflix yesterday afternoon, a retirement activity that becomes the majority of my social life when the diabetes demons are eating me, I started doodling a fox. It was a pencil doodle at first. And I was not drawing from life. I was drawing the fox in my head. I suspect it was the fox from Antoine de Saint Exupery’s masterwork, The Little Prince.

2972da5d3eb623582852db74ddc9327e

Yes, that fox. The wise one that knows about taming little princes, and loving them, and being reminded of them in the color of wheat fields. I began to need that fox as my doodle pen uncovered him on the blank page. There he was. Surprised to see me. Either he was leaping towards me in the picture, or falling down on me from the sky above. I don’t know which. But I realized I had to tame him by drawing him and making him as real as ever an imaginary fox could ever be. You will notice he does not look like a real fox. I did not draw him from a photograph, but from the cartoon eye in my mind where all Paffoonies come from. And this was to be a profound Paffooney… a buffoony cartoony looney Paffooney. It simply had to be, because that is precisely what I always doodle-do.

20170221_184619

And so he was a fox. He was my doodlefox. I had tamed him. And then I had to give him color. And, of course, the color had to be orange-red.

20170221_190927

And so, there is my fox. Like the Little Prince’s fox he could tell me, “What is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that we can see rightly.” And I put him in a post with lyrical and somewhat goofy words to give you a sense of what he means to me, in the same way one might explain what the thrill of the heart feels like when a butterfly’s wing brushes against the back of your hand. Yes, to share the unknowable knowledge and the unfeelable feeling of a doodlefox. A demonstration of precisely what a Paffooney is.

Stardusters… Canto 35

galtorr-primex-1

Canto Thirty-Five – In the Control Center on the Moon Gundahl

Farbick and Starbright still had the two lizard-men in their force field trap, but they were definitely also surrounded and in big trouble. Thirty-four half-sized lizard men, or, rather, lizard-boys and lizard-girls were standing around them in a huge circle, looking at them with snaky eyes and holding things that looked distinctly like guns.

“You’re surrounded now,” warned Bahbahr from his prison, “and the kids have krahzhen-lachhers with them.”

“Krahzhen-lachhers?” asked Farbick.

“What they call tommy-guns in the language of the Untouchables starring Robert Stack and Walter Winchell… you know, automatically repeating slug-throwers.”

“Wait a second!” said Stabharh, “kids? Where is your handler?”

“We had a fight over who was going to die next to provide food for the others,” said one of the lizard-girls, “so we killed and ate him.”

“That showed good initiative,” said Stabharh. “Now kill these two Tellerons and we can eat them too.”

“Wait!” said Bahbahr. “We still need them to show us how the alien tech works!”

“Why? They will just try to trick us again. They might succeed in killing us the next time.”

“You can’t have them killed yet,” argued the fat lizard-man. “We’re still stuck in the invisible box. We have to get out of here before you have them killed.”

“Um, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Stabharh.

“Are you really, really hungry, kids?” asked Farbick of the lizard-kids.

“Oh, yes!” answered four or five of the lizard-kids at once.

“You see all this technology we have here,” said Farbick slyly. “We have a machine here that can make food out of thin air.”

The little lizard people all drew closer to the pile of Telleron tech with wide, questioning eyes.

“Don’t listen to them!” barked Stabharh. “They will trick you!”

“Aren’t you going to eventually kill us and eat us too?” asked a lizard-girl. “You did that with all the adults in the station after the Senator’s attack started the food shortage.”

“We kept you alive so we would have a next generation of our people,” said Bahbahr in a pleading voice that made Farbick shudder.

“But you would eat us before you let yourself starve to death, right?”

“She has you there,” sneered Stabharh at Bahbahr.

“We can leave them where they are,” said Starbright. “The material synthesizer can make food out of random atoms. It can feed you for long periods of time.”

“Food out of nothing?” asked a lizard-boy skeptically.

“Not out of nothing,” admitted Farbick. “We will have to find carbon and proteins and other molecular materials to put into the synthesizer when the current fuel runs out.”

“But we can make food out of garbage… or recycled dead bodies,” said Starbright.

Farbick hated the fact that for too many generations in space the Tellerons had used extra tadpoles and personnel for fuel for the synthesizers aboard the mother ship. Eating children was not a good thing, and their cultures both needed to stop doing such things.

“Well, can you make us some food?” asked a lizard-girl. “We are in no hurry to free Lord Bahbahr. He is a terrible ruler and we all hate him.”

“We might like him better with what the Earthers call ketchup all over him,” added a lizard boy.

“You cannot rebel against me!” shouted Bahbahr. “I own all of you! You must obey me!”

“He’s in a cage, right?” a lizard-girl asked Starbright.

“Yes. But let Farbick and I make you some nice meat sandwiches to eat. You can give us those heavy, nasty old krahzhen-lachhers and we can decide what to do about Stabharh and Bahbahr later.”

“Okay,” said several of the lizard-kids. The gun-things were handed over and Farbick made a food he had seen on Earth with the material synthesizers.

As one lizard-boy received a synthesized hot dog with a big, toothy smile, he turned and grinned at Bahbahr. “You do have an awful lot of meat on your bones,” the lizard-child said.

*****

1 Comment

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

Tagged as humor, novel, science fiction, Stardusters and Space Lizards, Tellerons

February 18, 2017 · 4:33 am

The Dancing Poultry Conspiracy Theory

You’ve heard of the sinister 9-11 tale of the dancing Israelis? Some conspiracy theories are very concerning. You have to be concerned about whether the conspiracy theory is true and aliens from Zeta Reticuli really have been cloning Elvis, or whether the conspiracy theorist is a nut-bag like Alex Jones who simply needs to be locked up to protect him from himself.

But no conspiracy theory worries me more at the moment than one about the existence of German ninjas who advance the neo-Nazi agenda by the use of the secret martial art of der Ententanz. That’s right, they do violence to opponents (and possibly themselves) by aggressively doing the Chicken Dance.

You really have to watch the video above to truly appreciate the perfidy of Ententanz Fu. Notice how it starts with the pinching-fingers castanet attack, useful for grabbing the opponent’s nose or other sensitive protruding appendage. It is followed by the flapping elbows move that can stun the enemy by its sheer ridiculous flappiness. And then the bouncing butt attack, which can potentially paralyze the adversary by bouncing them around the room. All of this is followed by the dancing in a circle maneuver which renders the viewer unconscious with insane levels of laughter. Yes, the aggressive use of the chicken dance can literally make you laugh yourself to death.

c360_2017-02-17-10-38-01-138

Now, if you truly believe I am not totally serious about the dangers of ninjas doing the chicken dance in order to assassinate ordinary tax-paying citizens, I should warn you…

I mean, most people think of Ententanz Fu as merely another way German-themed tourist traps like the ones in Fredricksburg, Texas make relentless fun and ridicule targets out of clueless white people during Oktoberfest, but in reality… Yes, it is that, but it can be so much more. Take it from somebody who narrowly escaped from a chicken-dance-induced coma fairly recently, it is possible not only to die laughing from this dancing-poultry scourge, or be embarrassed to death, but you can also accidentally tie yourself up into a German pretzel… at which point, chickens will dip you in mustard and eat you.

So be warned. This is a danger not even Alex Jones on InfoWars has warned you about. (Though, if you give him enough time alone with hammers to hit himself in the head with, he may come to the same conclusions soon enough.)

4 Comments

Filed under birds, conspiracy theory, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, sharing from YouTube

Tagged as Alex Jones, chicken dance, conspiracy theory, Nazi chickens, Nazi chickens are really a thing... honest

February 16, 2017 · 12:33 pm

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

c360_2017-02-15-22-09-06-930

For the past two weeks I have been battling the Wicked Witch of the Diabetes. Her armies of flying blood-sugar monkeys have been snatching away my healthy hours and leaving me with pain, headaches, and depressing blues of worry. I have been combating the disease up to now with diet and exercise only. But even the miracle of a handful of peanuts filled with good diabetes-bashing niacin is apparently not magic enough to make me feel better. I probably have to go back to the doctor and get put on insulin injections. And that is probably more expense than I can afford. Health insurance loves to collect ever-higher premiums from me, but they really hate to pay for anything.

In answer to my problem I have started a new art project. Dorothy with a bit of attitude has flown in on the latest twister to start bashing heads and murdering witches. It is probably the worst kind of magical thinking to believe drawing pictures can make health problems go away. However, you don’t just let flying monkeys run wild. The pen and ink will get a colored-pencil treatment and I will show it to you here on this blog as we proceed down that yellow brick road of life. And I will get better somehow and someway, even if I have to pull that little con man out from behind the curtain and call him names until he cries. He’s going to find something in that bag of tricks to help me.

2 Comments

Filed under angry rant, battling depression, feeling sorry for myself, illness, imagination, Paffooney, pen and ink, pen and ink paffoonies

February 14, 2017 · 12:03 pm

Stardusters… Canto 34

galtorr-primex-1

Canto Thirty-Four – The Main Flower Garden

The five tadpoles and two Earther primate adults with the bodies of children were all together again, with a very concerned lizard-girl genius in the center of the circle lost in thought.

“I can’t answer for what the plant did,” Sizzahl said, shaking her head. “It should not have done what it did.”

Brekka was being held tightly between Tanith and Menolly, the slime was almost gone from her bare green skin, wiped off by a concerned George and an even more concerned Davalon.

“You mean it shouldn’t have eaten anybody?” asked Tanith.

“No. It shouldn’t have spit Brekka out.”

The tadpoles all glared, either at the plant, which was happily munching on the scabby it was eating, or at Sizzahl.

“What do you mean?” asked Gracie Morrell.

“It is an alien life form brought here by the wise ones and left behind when they returned to their home systems. It has never let anyone live before. It ate my father and the Great General Gohmurt as they fought over the fate of this very Bio-Dome. It has eaten every naked scabby that found its way in here, including the intruder tonight. I have never known it to spit anybody out.”

“How is that a problem?” asked Alden Morrell. “We have Brekka back safe and alive.”

“Well, yes… that is a very good thing. But it means we don’t know everything about what it will do next. Can it move about and eat us at will? Who will it eat, and who will it not eat? And can we learn why?”

“I can tell you that,” said Brekka.

“Really?” Sizzahl looked skeptical.

“Yes. It can speak inside my head now that its saliva has penetrated my skin.”

“What? Perhaps you are having a delusion caused by the trauma of nearly being eaten!”

“No, it’s true. He says that in the language of the people who put out the I Love Lucy television broadcasts he is named Lester. His other two blossoms are Thing One and Thing Two.”

Gracie bent over Brekka and put a concerned hand on her cheek. She looked into Brekka’s eyes. “Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“It’s true. I can prove it. Lester, make Thing Two waggle its leaves.”

The blossom that was not munching the scabby wiggled all eight of its leaves in a way that reminded Davalon of how Earth people wave at one another. Everyone but Brekka gasped a tiny bit.

“Tell me more,” insisted Sizzahl. “Why didn’t Lester eat you?”

“Well, it’s kinda because I don’t taste very good.”

Menolly and George giggled at that, then both looked embarrassed.

“I mean,” said Brekka, “Tellerons are more amphibian in nature and not as warm blooded as Galtorrians and Earth people. He could happily eat Sizzahl and the Morrells, but Tellerons have a body-chemistry that could make him very sick. And besides… he’s been wanting to be able to communicate with Sizzahl for a very long time, and I gave him a way to do that… or, maybe, gave her a way to do that… I guess Lester is both a boy and a girl plant at the same time.”

“Me?” said Sizzahl. “Why did he want to talk to me?”

Brekka looked up at the blossom that had engulfed her. “He says he’s sorry that he ate your father. When he ate your father, he absorbed all of your father’s thoughts and feelings… as well as the General’s thoughts and feelings. He says he knows that your father was one of the good guys… not evil like Gohmurt.”

Sizzahl began to cry. Davalon had not been certain before that moment, but now he knew that Galtorrians could feel love and have emotions just like Tellerons… and Earthers. She was not the self-sufficient little super-genius she always seemed to be. She was an orphan who missed her parents.

“Will he eat me or the Morrells now?” Sizzahl asked.

“He’s determined not to,” said Brekka, “but don’t get too close and cause temptation. His blossoms get very hungry waiting for the next scabby to wander in.”

“Is he willing to help us in trying to save this planet?” asked Sizzahl, the tears drying up.

“Of course he will,” said Brekka. “He likes the plans your father had to re-make this world into a better place for all sorts of people. And he hates plant-destroyers like Gohmurt. He promises to eat all the scabbies he can in order to help you make your father’s dream come true.”

Category Archives: Paffooney

Stardusters… Canto 37

Making Fun

Antonín Dvořák – HUMORESQUES FOR PIANO

Stardusters… Canto 36

Now You See Me… Now You Don’t

Doodlefox

Stardusters… Canto 35

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Stardusters… Canto 34

Catch a Falling Star FB Page

Recent Posts

Stars We’ve Caught

Catch a Falling Star

Follow Blog via Email

Categories

Meta