Category Archives: Paffooney

Explaining the Words

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I used to have political arguments all the time with my father that would end only in frustration… for me.  He was happy to see his offspring boiling over ideas with smoke coming out of both ears.  Because no matter what I said, he would always take the opposite position just to oppose me.  I know this because I tested it.  I would counter an argument he had just made by rephrasing it so that it was in different words, but meant exactly the same thing he had just said to me.  Naturally he came up with opposing views immediately.  One time I even flat out stated, “I agree with you!”  Which naturally led to an immediate and complete reversal of the position on his part.  I think now that he was training me to think more deeply about things than just parroting talking points heard on television.  Either that, or he really really loved to argue.

The most important thing I learned in the endless arguments about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Two Bushes, and Bill Clinton was that you have to establish the meanings of the terms you are using.  Hence the reason for this post.

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The words that made the most difference in my discussions with my father were “liberal”, “fascist”, “conservative”, and “communist”.  When my dad used those terms, “conservative” always meant “good guys” and the other three words meant “bad guys”.  But when I listened to the policies and concerns he wanted to talk about, whenever he said the word “conservative” he was really saying “moderate”.    And because he was pretty much in the center of the political spectrum, he thought of fascists and communists as being the same thing.  If my father ever was truly wrong about anything political, it was when he followed Ronald Reagan’s affable, smiling “Morning in America” politics towards the far right and abandoned the moderate principles he held dear.  He had been deceived by Nixon, and regretted it… in fact, we all were deceived and we all regretted it.  But that did not prevent him from being deceived by later Republicans.  We both have had a long-standing admiration for President Eisenhower, Senator Bob Dole, Senator Chuck Grassley, and Senator John McCain.  They represent the moderate wing of the Republican Party.  But the GOP has marched relentlessly towards fascism and oligarchy of the rich, and we both feel that has tainted both Grassley and McCain.  My dad ended up voting for Barack Obama twice.  Obama, to him, is Eisenhower reincarnated.  The problem, we both agree, has come anytime American politics have moved away from the center.

So let me begin defining terms by ridiculing the Loony Left.c360_2016-12-26-23-19-35-929aa

Being liberal means promoting change.  Hence, the Marxist devotion to revolution and the desire to have an on-going revolution of constant change.  Unfortunately constant change is another way to define chaos.  That is the main reason that communist-socialist experiments have generally ended in violence, economic collapse, and fascist-type strong-man oppression.  The poor raggedy communist in my cartoon, standing on the left end of the spectrum is always doomed to poverty and violent death.  If you don’t believe that, just ask Leon Trotsky if it isn’t so.  Oh, wait, you can’t.  Stalin had him murdered.  Stalin ended the Russian experiment by cracking down on everything, making himself the antithesis of actual socialist ideas.  I included the ultra-liberal philosopher and hedonist Alistair Crowley on this end of the spectrum because he fought against all social norms and rules.  That sort of religion leads to sexual depravity, vice, and corruption to a degree that got Crowley labeled “the Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived” in a BBC documentary.

Sometimes being liberal is needed desperately.  Then you get the kind of liberal change agents that JFK was (and thankfully, LBJ carried out his liberal changes to an American society crippled by racism and xenophobia).  Martin Luther King Jr. was also that kind of agent of change.  Bernie Sanders is a parallel agent of change to JFK in that Barack Obama’s policies are almost a mirror image of Eisenhower’s in the 1950’s.  What the media today labels as a liberal is equivalent to moderate Republicans before Nixon.  Very similar changes are needed in social and economic areas today.  We have yet to see if Sanders can get elected in 2020 and then assassinated shortly thereafter.

You can probably tell that this article is not yet complete.  I have a lot more loony liberal pontificating to do (and please note, I said “pontificating” not “defecating”.  I am not a Trump voter.)    But I am well past the 500 word goal for today, and so, I must leave the rest of the crap to be said in a part two article.  Maybe also a part three.  Please stop me before I reach part twenty-six.

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I do so enjoy making fun of Trump and his tiny, tiny hands.  So here I am sharing another lampoon at the expense of the Great Orange Face of America.

 

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Scientifical Dog-Poop Theories

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I have been taking note of the Republican approach to science as displayed repeatedly in Congress.  I decided that this is the kind of science that can best explain the dog-poop phenomena, since it is, ultimately, about how the data feels more than measuring and quantifying and dealing with, you know, those fact thingies.

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You see, the problem comes in with the fact that my dog, Jade, is producing dog poop at record levels, and it is all becoming rather a burden.   Now the dog-poop literature, (yes it does exist, since dog lovers write about anything and everything to do with dogs), says that it is not uncommon for a healthy young dog to poop as much as 5 times a day.  But my dog seems to poop exactly one time more per day than the number of times you take her for a walk.  If we go out five times, she poops six.  If I take her out in the middle of the night for a sixth time, she poops seven.  What the heck?

My wife really hates the dog because she poops on the carpet so much.  (The dog, not my wife.  My wife is satisfactorily house-broken.)  There are places on the living room carpet she marked as a puppy five years ago where she insists on re-pooping practically every night.  No matter how often we scrub the carpet and box her ears, still, brown spots and poop lumps to greet us almost every morning.  Maybe she does it because my wife tells her how much she hates her and the dog wants to get even.  But that is the opposite of what the dog says.  She loves Mommy because Mommy gives the dog soup bones.  Somehow, it seems the dog believes she is giving us all a gift by pooping on the carpet and filling the house with her personal scent.  She poops for us because she loves us.

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Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

I drew the diagram at the start of this article to better explain my Republicanized theories of dog poop and dog love.  You will notice that, based on observations of total output, I have theorized that dogs must be almost completely hollow.  They don’t apparently store poop in their legs, but the rest of their dog bodies appear to be hollow poop-tubes that store nearly infinite amounts of poo.  Dogs also apparently have some kind of instant-poop-maker at the base of the throat so that anything they eat, dog food, my missing left socks, my son’s retainer, dead rats, whatever was growing behind the rice bag in the pantry, and whatever people food they can steal, is instantly transformed into poop.  Need to poop on the floor because dad didn’t give you any of the bacon at breakfast?  Eat a sock.  Fill up with instant poop ammo.  The poop on the floor will prove how much you love dad and why he should give you bacon more.

So, now that I have studied the poop problem, what solutions could there be?

Well, I have threatened the dog to use corks and other sorts of plugs, but that wouldn’t solve the problem so much as merely delay it.  And I dread the impending explosion in the living room that such a plan suggests to a vivid imagination like mine.  I have thought about feeding her less, but it seems she can still use the puppy beg-eye to such good effect that she could subsist entirely on people food conned out of my son and daughter.  So, I will use a Republican congressional solution.  Since their response to poverty is to give more money to rich people, and the solution to climate change is to cut pollution restrictions, then obviously I need to feed my dog MORE!  I need to cram it down her greedy little throat if necessary.  That will fix it.  Or bring about fat, exploding dogs all the sooner.

 

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Stardusters… Canto 28

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Canto Twenty-Eight – On the Gundahl Moon Base

“I am not leaving Starbright here to die alone on an alien moon, Commander.  You will have to skortch me before I agree to that!”

“I would be happy to do exactly that if I had permission to pick up a skortch ray!”  Biznap glared back at the angry, stupid, stubborn Fmoog, as Farbick was quite busily glaring at him.  Why couldn’t the blogwopping Skoog monkey accept that Biznap had generously bargained to save his neck because… after all, Farbick was the only capable spacer that Biznap really had on the whole blogwopping space ship!  (It should probably be noted that Biznap’s conscience was screaming at him in Harmony’s voice that he should never use a curse word like blogwopping out loud, but his wounded pride was also screaming back that blogwopping Harmony Castille didn’t know what blogwopping meant anyway!)

“You are giving these creatures more credit than they deserve, you know.  Nothing is really stopping you from marching in there and picking up practically any of the devices they confiscated and use them to turn them inside out in the most painful way possible.”

Okay.  You had to give Farbick credit.  He was smarter than most Tellerons would be confronted by a tough situation like this.  It was one of the reasons Biznap didn’t want to part with him too.  But he was so blogwopping stubborn because of that bloopo Fmoogian blood of his!  “And stop it, Harmony!  I am not saying blogwopping out loud!” he said out loud.

“What?”  Both Farbick and Starbright looked confused.

“Well, I mean… you know… Harmony, she’s always saying… and I can’t… well…  Oh, just shut up!  Will you?  Especially you, Harmony Castille!”

Farbick started laughing.

“What are you laughing about?”

“You love her a lot, don’t you,” said Farbick.  “I mean, you even hear her voice when she’s not around.”

Biznap was suddenly cold.  “Yes…  I mean…  I really need to live to see her again.  I guess that’s why I let them railroad me into such a terrible bargain.”

“It doesn’t have to be as terrible as you think,” said Farbick in a surprisingly calm voice.  “You have left to them a majority of our complex and high level technology.  You can tell them I am staying with Starbright because I can explain how to use some of the devices she’s not familiar with.  You can tell them they can eat me too.”

“No, Farbick.  You should come with me back to the mother ship.”

“It will be all right, Commander.  There are things I can demonstrate in that selection of technology that I will be more than happy to demonstrate directly on the two of them.  You may be able to come back here and claim this moon base for our people when I’m done.”

Starbright was obviously thrilled with Farbick’s plan.  She wrapped her arms around the Fmoog and squeezed him tightly in the same affectionate way that Biznap remembered Harmony doing to him.  It was obvious why Farbick wanted to stay.

“It’s your life to throw away as you see fit,” said Biznap.

“Don’t you think Farbick can out-think them, Commander?” Starbright asked with nervous eyes.

“Of course he can’t.  Tellerons are hopeless at things like this.  We should all be dead already.  But I do want to get the space ship away from these horrible lizard-guys, and Farbick’s plan is a lot better than no plan.  Well… fifteen per cent better, anyway.”

*****

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Stardusters… Canto 27

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Canto Twenty-Seven – In the Bio-Dome

The delicate creature was four-legged and long-necked.  It looked a lot like Bambi to Alden if Bambi had been a reptilian creature with hexagonal violet-colored scales all over it.  It had large indigo eyes that made it look fawn-like and vulnerable.

“It is called a zhar-doe,” said Sizzahl sadly.  She was standing next to Alden and Gracie with the creature in front of them.  She reached out and stroked the side of its Bambi-like head fondly.  “It is the last of its kind, and when it dies, its species will be extinct.”

“Is Zahr-Doe its name?” Gracie asked.

“It is the species.  Why would you give it a name?  When we had vast herds of them, they were a domesticated food animal.”

“Will you eat this one?” asked Alden.   He still had his hands clamped over his private parts, but he reached out with his left hand to touch the thing’s velvety-soft ear.  It was an exquisitely beautiful creature.

“Only if it is a last resort.  It is too beautiful and precious to be butchered without great need.”  Sizzahl was petting the creature tenderly.  Hard to believe it didn’t have a name already.

“Is there no way the species can be saved?” asked Gracie, stroking the creatures neck with both hands.  Alden had loved Gracie since the moment he had first met her, but now, looking at her standing in the Bio-dome’s artificial forest of dying trees and plants petting the Bambi-thing, he noticed how lovely she looked as a completely nude young girl in the middle of a browning pastoral setting.  He was attracted to her in spite of the fact that her body was now a child’s body, but it was so much more than that.  Gracie’s simple, loving concern for a gentle creature of another world… well, it was looking more directly at what he knew to be Gracie’s soul than he had ever done before.

“I have the cloning technology at my finger tips,” said Sizzahl.  “This place was my parents’ attempt to save our natural world from the predations of the greedy and ruthless creatures that dominated our society.  But, the question becomes, should we save the species by cloning it if we cannot feed it and the new creatures will only starve, suffer, and die?”

“We brought you the plants you needed, didn’t we?” Alden asked.

“You did.  I thought being on the space station would protect those plants and I could bring them here to grow new food sources.”

“Is something wrong with the plants?”  Alden shivered, not with the cold of being completely naked in an alien place, but with a sudden fear that he already knew the answer to the question.

“They are all blighted and dying.  I asked he Tellerons to verify it with the instruments, but I’m nearly certain.”  Sizzahl was actually crying.  Alden saw tears in her snake’s eyes.  It was difficult to comprehend a lizard-person crying, but the little-girl alien was so human-like as she was crying…

Gracie, bless her Iowegian heart, wrapped both her arms around Sizzahl and held her in a comforting hug.

“My goodness, girl,” Gracie said, “You are warm and soft to hug.  You are more like us than the Tellerons are.”

“My people are warm-blooded just like yours.  We are not really reptiles, you know.  We are more saurian… like your birds or your dinosaurs on planet Earth.”

“How do you know so much about Earth?” asked Alden.

“Well, I am a genius among my kind.  I have what you would call an I.Q. of about 195 in the terms of your science on Earth.  Besides, the alien visitors that used to come to our world, like the Sylvani or the Zeta Reticulans have brought specimens of your people here for study and to perform certain special tasks that aided in their off-world agendas.”

“Earth people have been to your planet before?” asked Gracie, cuddling the lizard-girl close to her warm heart.

“Oh, yes, and I imagine some of our people have been taken to your world too.  The governments of both our planets have been contacted long, long ago by space-faring races.”

“Really?”  Alden was skeptical.  Walter Cronkite and Bryant Gumbel never said anything about aliens contacting the government.  “Why haven’t we been told about this?”

“Judging by your television broadcasts, I believe your government believes the average person is too stupid and easily upset to comprehend the truth.  Our leaders were like that for many years before your leaders even were told.  There will come a crisis point one day, though, that people will have to find out.  Here it came shortly before we started to destroy ourselves with unending war for profit.”

“You are going to save your planet, aren’t you, Sizzahl?” Gracie asked, suddenly seeming alarmed.

“I don’t know.  Sometimes I think they are not worth saving.  Sometimes a people on a planet can become so self-centered and terrible that they don’t deserve to survive.  The alien visitors gave up on us a few years ago and left.”

“We are alien visitors,” said Alden, “and we aren’t giving up on you yet.”

“You are not afraid I might eat you or take advantage of you?”

“Of course not,” said Gracie.  She patted Sizzahl on the back in a way Alden knew was meant to be reassuring.

“I do want to take advantage of you, though.”

“Oh?” asked Gracie.  “How?”

“Your DNA is somewhat compatible with my own.  Not yours, Grace, because you are a simuloid now, not a real person.  I want some of Alden’s DNA to use to make a fusion race, half Galtorrian, half Earth human.”

“You mean you want me to make babies with you?” Alden gasped.

“Not the way you think.   I want to make them in a sealed jar and grow them in vats.  I will just need samples of your blood and tissues.  It doesn’t even need to hurt.”

Alden felt a bit shaken.  Could he do that?  Or was Sizzahl right to suggest her people deserved to go extinct?  And what did she mean when she suggested Gracie wasn’t real?

At that moment, Davalon and Tanith came in looking sad.  Both were naked.  Both were holding each other’s hands.

“We have bad news,” said Tanith.  “The plants we saved from the space station are all diseased according to the instruments.”

Sizzahl only nodded, then buried her scale-covered face in Gracie’s shoulder to cry more loudly.

*****

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Wordless Christmas Post

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tree time

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Stardusters… Canto 26

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Canto Twenty-Six – On the Moon Gundahl

Farbick and Starbright sat together on the bench outside the fat Galtorrian’s office in the moon base where the Tellerons were now prisoners.  Biznap was inside arguing vehemently about something.  The two lizard-men, apparently the only lizard-men on the entire moon, were arguing from a position of strength and superiority, though Farbick could plainly see that the Telleron landing party out-numbered them, seemed smarter than them, and definitely had better and more capable technology.

“Do you think Commander Biznap will secure our freedom?” Starbright asked guilelessly.  Her large green eyes were shimmering with tremulous female uncertainty.  She was attractive in ways no other female had ever seemed to Farbick before.

“He’s the best officer and negotiator we have in Xiar’s entire fleet,” Farbick answered, “so, no… probably not.  We are not very competent when it comes to things like this.”

“We are doomed?  Will they eat us?”

“Well, Biznap couldn’t bargain his way out of a paper sack,” said Farbick.  “Especially in view of the fact that we can’t really let these cannibal lizards get their claws on high tech devices like cloaking fields, invisibility cloaks, and skortch rays… certainly not star drives for space ships.  But a paper sack is made of paper, after all.  We could punch our way out.”

“What do you mean?”

“These lizard men are not very smart.  They are not very well armed, as long as they don’t acquire and learn how to use our weapons.  They seem tough on the outside, but I think we could beat them in a fight.”

Starbright looked at him skeptically.  “You think so?”

“We need to take the initiative.  I’m sure if the three of us, as Tellerons, worked together and eliminated the little warrior-guy, the fat one would surrender easily.  He doesn’t appear to be the kind who fights his own battles.”

“You are very brave and haves been through lots of difficult situations, but I’m a poor, frail female with skills I learned in the egg, but no practical experience.  I would end up causing you and brave Commander Biznap to die needlessly.  It would be a terrible thing.”

“We are not going to give up and be beaten so easily,” said Farbick.  “If I learned one thing in my time as a captive among Earther primates, it is that every individual has inner resources that they may not even know they have.  Together we are more formidable than we have ever let ourselves believe.”

“You really think so?”

Farbick looked at her lovely round face and earnest expression.  He thought about the kissing thing.  He had seen Alden and Gracie Morrell do it.  He had seen Harmony Castille and Commander Biznap do it.  It was a strange Earther thing, but if he turned his face just a little to the right, he could…

“What are you… mmmph… doing?”  She looked shocked.

“It is an Earther custom, expressing respect and admiration.”

“Oh… it is?”

“And love.”

Her eyes lit up at the Earther human concept that had seemingly been the only thing to thwart the invasion of Earth.  He could see she was intrigued.  Old reruns of I Love Lucy and Bewitched were part of every Telleron tadpole’s how-to-be-like-an-Earther training, programmed directly into their developing brains while in their amniotic egg-sacks.  Tellerons were gestated in eggs and programmed with learning programs until they were the equivalent of an Earther eight-year-old, at which point they were all saturated with the kissing thing poured directly into embryonic brains, and ready to be born.

“Like Darren and Samantha?  In Bewitched?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She leaned in and repeated the gesture.  She improved on it.  It lasted a very long time and Farbick felt that she liked it nearly as much as he did.  They could make tadpoles together… even if he did have inferior Fmoogish blood in his veins.

At that moment they were interrupted by Commander Biznap.

“Good news!  I have secured our release, Farbick!”

“What did you promise them?” asked Farbick.

“That we would strip the entire available tech out of the wing and leave it here, along with Starbright to teach them how to use it all.”

“And how do we get Starbright back?”

“Oh, uh… we don’t.  When they are finished learning how to use the technology, they will eat her.”

*****

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Starbright

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The Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge

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The Ixcanixian Cultural Ambassador from the Squeelix Sector of the Planet Ixcanix sent me an e-mail about his planet’s newest idea for a cultural exchange.  He calls it the “Ixcanixian Spleegle Gorn Vorpaloop” which translates to the “Ixcanixian Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge”.  At least, it does if I am conjugating the verb “Vorpaloop” correctly.  It is difficult because you have to drop the silent “y” before adding the “aloop” without causing it to explode.  I know it is probably a very bad idea to present it here on this planet, but he talked me into it by promising to promote my novel Catch a Falling Star on his homeworld and at least two other planets in the Bugeye Federation.

Here are the rules for the alien poetry contest;

  1. Entries can only come from planets in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius  Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.  (So, for you non-astronomers out there, we on Earth do qualify.)
  2. All poets must be less intelligent than the Mud-Eaters of Paralaxos IV as they will be employed as judges of what poetry is truly bad.  (Again, Earth qualifies as we have recently elected Trump and also allow Nigel Farage of Great Britain to continue to exist.)
  3. Entries must not be so long that the total weight of letters exceed critical mass and form black holes in the intergalactic servers when uploaded.
  4. Vogons need not apply.  Their poetry is so bad, they would automatically win, causing the death of trillions of bad poetry readers in the galaxy.
  5. Entries must not cause thermonuclear reactions with cesium.
  6. Please refrain from confusing good poetry with bad poetry.  The Vornloos of Talos XII are looking for poetry they can weaponize, and no one wants a poetry contest winner to suddenly create World Peace on Talos XII.  That would be bad for the galaxy as a whole in ways that are very difficult to explain.

A sample of interstellar bad poetry is included here to inspire the kind of poetry we seek.

Ratzen Bargle’s Bisketoon  (a love poem by Touperary Kloob, Poet Laureate of Antares VI)

Ratzen Bargle was a Doofus,

From the planet Rufus-Ploofiss,

And he had a lovely bride,

With a head not tall, but twice as wide.

She had three eyes and two were green.

She had the loveliest fleen you’ve ever seen.

And as they sat ‘neath a wayward moon,

He kissed his lovely bisketoon.

Immediately before naught was said,

She bit off his tiny three-eyed head.

And then she ate him bones and all

With sauce that really becomes the fall.

And so it is on Rufus-Ploofiss,

That  males all die with one last roof-kiss.

Because they sit under wayward moons

With their lovely, hungry bisketoons.
 

 

Should you have the unfortunate urge to participate in this senseless and probably suicidal poetry contest, you are welcome to offer four-line poems in the comment section, or email longer poems to Mickey at mbeyer51@gmail.com.  I will attempt to transmit the worst offers to the Ixcanixians as soon as I get my interstellar flooglebeeder transmitting again.  I will also post winners in a future alien poetry blog.

I have been warned that prizes range from instant execution by the Lizard Lords of Galtorr Prime to a beat up copy of Mickey’s 2012 novel Catch a Falling Star.  So, good luck with the bad poetry.

 

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Crazy Head-Bashing List-Making

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Sometimes I have to stop and think where ideas for posts come from.  Yes, and that is usually the point at which my head is empty and I am out of ideas.  I spent years teaching the writing process and I advocated many different pre-writing idea-generating strategies.  I should be able to come up with something to write about without resorting to bashing my right temple with a hand-held blunt object.  After all, those ideas come out kinda wobbly and full of strangely-colored stars.  So, let me find a broom in the upstairs broom closet in the empty hallways of my mind and sweep together all the possible ideas I have in one pile to look at, grimace, and compare.

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There is a letter with a Martian stamp on it.  Inside it proposes I hold an aliens-only poetry writing contest and put the worst possible results into a post.  That could be worth a few chuckles, and possible a gazorpingwallow or two.  At least, that’s what the letter suggests.  It is from some Ixcanixian from the spinward edge of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way.  20160508_113700

 

I have several ongoing cartoon projects.  I could be adding another page to the Hidden Kingdom graphic novel I have been working on for thirty years.  I could also do more action-figure comics to rationalize all the time I spend playing with dolls.  And I like to do novel illustrations to go along with the many bizarre and mentally warped novels I have created.

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Of course we have recently received the kind of political Christmas gift that most of us would like to track Santa down to his lair for and return back inside the reindeer butt that it came out of.  Insulting the new orangutan king is an easy source of insult-based humor that I don’t have to work too hard at or feel too guilty about.  But too much of that is like getting drunk on cough syrup.  You intended to cure the problem, but you have only managed to add new problems and a hangover headache to top it all off.blue-and-mike-in-color

I still have to fix the cracked and leaky swimming pool before next spring, so that should yield some cementing-your-feet-into-the-pool-wall stories later on.  And there are the numerous frustrations of living life with six incurable diseases to write about.  I can probably make the flaking off of all the skin on the back of my neck from psoriasis sound pretty funny if I try hard enough.  The family dog is still producing dog poop at Guiness-Book-of-World-Records rates… and, oh, yeah, I am still a long way from being done telling you about the bad jokes from more than a quarter of a century of classroom cut-ups.

You know, I think the way to deal with the problem is to simply make a list of ideas.  I can throw darts at the list if I still can’s decide.

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Holiday Mixed Nuts

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I know what this is.  This is Grandma Aldrich’s holiday nut bowl with nut-cracker and silver walnut picks.  It brings back fond memories of Thanksgiving Day and Christmas reunions that were filled with nuts.  And, yes, I mean that figuratively as well as literally.  I tend to really love nuts.

And one of the most insidious things about Facebook is the fact that it connects you to all the nuts from your checkered past, and memories like this can come back to haunt you any day or any month… not just at holiday family gatherings.

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I probably don’t have to remind you that the incredible spray-tanned intellectual-fartgas-container this country elected as its next leader is not, and will never be, my president.  I reject him in his every detail.  He is anathema to everything I stand for and believe in.  And some of my lovely Iowegian Facebook friends are responsible for for helping him win.  I have not unfriended anybody as they may have done to me.  I am still constantly amused by them and their families, even though their choice offends me.  But I do get tired of being bombarded with Brazil nuts of “He won, get over it!  We endured 8 years of your president!”  I hate Brazil nuts.  They are difficult to crack open, especially with the skinny, silver nutcracker you see in the picture above.  And after you go to all that effort, they don’t taste very good.  Brazil nuts are always the last nuts in the nut bowl because nobody actually likes them.  And besides, I don’t remember Republicans in Congress accepting defeat under Obama gracefully.  They kicked and spit and shut down the government in a hissy fit.  What do they have against the government trying to make healthcare affordable, anyway?  Still, I get those big, hard, oddly-shaped nuts in my Facebook feed constantly this time of year.

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My sister posted the meme you see above on my Facebook wall.  She says it is actually quite easy to become a complete master of doing what the meme suggests, by which she means me more so than her.  I like walnuts.  They are hard to crack, but not impossible like Brazil nuts.  And once you have split them into two haves, two separate turtle shells, you still have to pick the walnut meat out of a hard, spiky labyrinth of dastardly convoluted walls of interior shell.  But you end up with something delicious if you put in the time picking things apart.  I fondly remember singing goofy Christmas carols with my two sisters and half-dozen cousins at Grandma and Grandpa Aldrich’s farm this time of year.  Elaborate versions of “I’m dreaming of a pink-and-purple-polka-dotted Christmas…” and “Jingle bells, Batman smells…”  My sister is often critical of me and doubts my sanity, as a good sister should, but in the long run, we have some sweet memories to share, good times and incredibly goofy nonsense to look back upon.

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But, of course, everybody’s favorite nut is the peanut.  Those are the first to disappear from the nut bowl.  Holiday gatherings are mainly about eating, but the most important second-place thing is everybody’s self-generated house apes… the next generation of little Beyers and Aldrich’s and Fimblegrubbers and Pumblechooks (yes, I know I am not actually related to Fimblegrubbers or Pumblechooks, but I like funny names, and I have to live with the funny-named people who attend our family gatherings).  We all enjoy watching them play games of “infuriate your sister” or “chase Grampy’s dog till it bites you” because they are funny, adorable and cute.  Sometimes they even play with mutant toy Elmo-looking things like the one in the picture, though I didn’t draw this from a family member, and I added the mutant features to avoid questions of copyright infringement.

Anyway, holidays are notoriously full of nuts, both literal and figurative.  And we really have to learn to appreciate them all.

 

 

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Stardusters… Canto 25

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Canto Twenty-Five – Inside the Bio-dome

As Davalon, Tanith, and both of the Morrells scurried into the airlock of the Bio-dome, Brekka, Menolly, and George Jetson, already naked, were merely standing around watching them.  There was a lizard girl covered in green and yellow scales, more human-looking than any Telleron, completely naked too, and only about the size of an eight-year-old human.

“Why aren’t you running?” cried Alden Morrell.

“Take off your clothes,” said the lizard girl, “and then you don’t have to worry either.”

“What?  Why?”

Alden had gone all red in the face, a look that Davalon had come to know as embarrassment.

“The guardian machine-man reads anything artificial as signs of a scabby.”  The lizard girl seemed no more embarrassed by her nudity than were the tadpoles.  “It looks for manufactured goods like clothing or weapons to determine a target.  Naked you become part of the flora and fauna that it guards.”

Davalon and Tanith quickly stripped down and the Morrells were forced to follow suit.  When the machine-man came into the chamber, all clothing, skortch rays, monitors, computers, and tracking devices that the tadpole expedition had brought with them lay in a pile in a corner by the door.  The artificial man wandered over to the pile, examined it, picked up a few items, and then put them down again.  Davalon wondered at Alden, all red in the face, hands clamped over his genital area.  Gracie, it seemed, was far more comfortable being nude and did not display the same behaviors.

“When can we get dressed again?” asked Alden immediately after the machine-man left.

“Never,” said the lizard girl.  “I have a number of still-functioning machine-men guarding this place and all the bio-forms in it.   You are only safe as long as you remain completely natural and bear no artificial clothing or gear.”

“We have to be naked as long as we’re here?”  Poor Alden seemed distressed.

“It’s all right, Alden,” said Gracie with a huge grin.  “You haven’t looked this good naked in a number of years.  You need to let go and learn to love your new body.  I certainly think you are handsome!”

Alden grimaced uncomfortably.  Davalon agreed with Gracie.  His foster father’s child-like form was not at all unpleasant to look at.  In fact, he was beautiful to a Telleron tadpole who loved him for all the sacrifices he had made to be here with his foster son of another world.  He had given up life in Iowa.  He had given up his home and all his possessions.  He had given up his former identity as Alden Morrell, Iowa farmer.  And he had even given up his adult body to return to the body he had inhabited as a child so he could be the same age as his wife in her new simuloid body.

“You are Sizzahl?” Davalon asked the little naked lizard girl.

“Yes.  I brought you here.  Hopefully your cart is full of plants, seeds, and spores that I can use to save this world.  I might need samples of your flesh and blood as well.”

“You brought us here to eat us?” squealed Brekka.

“Of course not, stupid frog-girl.  I just mean I might have use for your froggy DNA.”

Davalon noticed how human-like she was.  Sizzahl had no hair.  She had a bony ridge on the centerline of the top of her head, and she was covered in soft-looking hexagonal scales, but otherwise she looked very human.  Her body proportions were the same as an Earther primate.  Her eyes had vertically-slitted pupils, but her face was human-shaped.  Even her pre-pubescent breasts and genitals looked more human than Telleron-like.

“Why would you need our DNA?” asked Tanith.

“Haven’t you noticed?  The biosphere of this planet is dying.  The stupid politicians, warriors, and industrialists killed it by over-using and abusing all of its natural resources.  And besides, boneheads like Senator Tedhkruhz poisoned what was left to bring his enemies down without realizing he would kill himself too.”

“How will you do that kind of restorative science without artificial devices?” asked George Jetson.

“There is plenty of tech built into this place that we can use without ever having to carry any of it with us and reveal ourselves to the machine-men.”

“How does that protect us from the scabbies?” Davalon asked.

“The scabbies are like the creatures in your Earther zombie movies.  They carry whatever they were wearing or carrying in life.  They don’t have enough brains left to get naked and put down their weapons.  The few that wander in here naked are fairly easy for me to kill by myself.  I assume that will be even easier now that you are all here to help me.”

“Who said we were willing to help you?” asked George Jetson.

“Will you not help me?” asked Sizzahl.  Her eyes, though snake-like, seemed almost to beg.  All tadpole eyes turned toward Davalon.

“I don’t see any reason not to,” Davalon said.

*****

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