Category Archives: Paffooney

January 28, 2016 · 4:42 pm

Exploring the Mind of Mickey

20160127_205542

One really weird thing that teachers do is think about thinking.  I mean, how can a person actually teach someone else how to think and how to learn if they don’t themselves understand the underlying processes?  Now that I have retired from teaching and spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would try thinking about thinking one more time at least.  Hey, just because I am retired, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do some of the weird things I used to do as a teacher, right?

This time I made a map to aid me in my quest to follow the twists and turns of how Mickey thinks and how Mickey learns.  Don’t worry, though.  I didn’t actually cut Mickey’s head in half to be able to make this map.  I used the magical tool of imagination.  Some folks might call it story-telling… or bald-face lying.

Now, a brain surgeon would be concerned that my brain maps out in boxes.  He would identify it as a seriously deformed brain.  It is not supposed to be all rectangular spaces and stairs.  It probably indicates a severe medical need for corrective surgery… or possibly complete amputation.  But we are not going to concern ourselves with trying to save Mickey from himself right now.  That is far too complex a topic to tackle in a 500-word daily post.  We are just discussing the basics of operation.

You see the three little guys in the control room?  They are an indication that not only did I steal an idea from the Disney/Pixar Movie Inside Out, but I apparently have too few guys doing the job up there compared to the movie version.  (It probably makes sense though that a young girl like the one in the movie has a much more sensible configuration in her brain than someone who was a middle school teacher for 24 years.  Seriously, that job can do a bit of damage.)  The three little guys are not actually Moe, Curly, and Larry, though that wouldn’t be far from descriptive accuracy.  They are Impulsive Ignatz, currently in the driver’s seat (or else I wouldn’t be writing this), Proper Percy the Planner, and Pompositous Felixian Checkerbob, the fact-checker and perfectionist (also labeled the inner nerd… I am told not everyone has one of these).  They are the three little guys that run around in frantic circles in my head trying to deal with a constant flow of input and output, trying to make sense of everything, and routinely failing miserably.

I shouldn’t forget the other two little guys in my head, Sleepytime Tim in the Dream Center, and little Batty up in the attic.  I have no earthly idea how either of them function, or what in the heck they are supposed to do.  But there they are.  The other three run up and down stairs all day, locating magic mushrooms and random knowledge in the many file cabinets, record collections, book stacks, and odd greasy containers that are stored all around in the many nooks and crannies of Mickey’s mind.  They collect stuff through the eyes and ears, and it is also their responsibility to chuck things out through the stupidity broadcaster at various inopportune times.  It is also a good idea for them to avoid the lizard brain of the limbic system in the basement.  It is easily angered and might eat them.

So now you should be able to fully understand how Mickey thinks.  (Or not… a qualifier I was forced to put in by Checkerbob.)

4 Comments

Filed under humor, insight, mental health, Paffooney, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 27, 2016 · 4:30 pm

Time For Wasting

wonderful teaching

When I was still alive and still teaching, maximizing and managing time was an incredibly important part of the day.    You had to activate learners with an attention step, a lesson focus that grabbed them.  Usually that had to follow a warm-up, something you got them to do as soon as you had smiled at them at the doorway, offered to shake their hand, and then pulled them into the classroom to do some work for you.  fifteen minutes at the start of the class to rev up mental engines and get the gears turning… shake out the rust and the cobwebs that accumulate the instant the final bell rang in the previous class. I timed that part of class down to the second with my pocket watch… or phone in later years.  Then, once the engines started, the focus is in place, you introduce the learning objective.  Never more than ten minutes… timed to the second… you give the explanation, the road map of the day ahead, the instruction.  Then for the next ten to fifteen minutes you let them discover stuff.  In groups, with a partner, teacher to class, student to class, or (rarely) individually, they must apply what you pointed out and figure something out.  It could be complicated, but probably it was simple.  All answers are welcome and accepted… because all answers will be evaluated and you learn more from wrong answers than you do from correct guesses.  Evaluation comes in the five to ten minutes at the end when you evaluate.  “What have I learned today?”  You try your hardest to pin something new to the mental note-board hanging on the brain walls of each and every student.  Depending on how much or how few minutes you are given before the final bell kills the lesson for the day, you have to put the big pink ribbon on it.  That tightly-wound lesson cycle goes on all day, repeated as many times as you have classes.  In that time you have to be teacher, policeman, friend, devil’s advocate, entertainer, counselor, psychotherapist, chief explainer, and sometimes God.  And you time it to the second by your pocket watch.

Teacher

I miss being the rabbit holding the BIG PENCIL.  Now that I am retired, I am no longer on the clock… no longer subject to careful time management.  My pocket watch is broken and lying in a box somewhere in my library.  I live now in non-consecutive time periods of sleep and illness and writing and playing with dolls.  I have entered a second childhood now.  Not really a simple one because of diabetes and arthritis and COPD and psoriasis and all the other wonderful things that old age makes possible.  But a childhood free of school politics and mandates from the school board and from the State.  A childhood where I can once again dream and imagine and create and play.  That’s what this post is if you haven’t already figured it out.  I am playing with words and ideas.  They are my toys.  Toys like this one;

turtleboy

This, of course, is Tim, the turtleboy of irony, holding his magic flatiron that he uses for ironing out irony.  He is flattening it out now with a cartoony Paffooney and wickedly waggled words.  Ironically, I have often taught students to write just like this, making connections between words and pictures and ideas through free association and fast-writing.  Have you learned anything from today’s retired-teacher post?  If you did, it is ironic, because you were never meant to from the start.

2 Comments

Filed under humor, irony, Paffooney, teaching, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 25, 2016 · 4:47 pm

Chicken Soup Time (a twelve-line poem of recovery)

There comes a time when life really stinks,

A day when the life force grows green-brown and sinks,

Yes, I am ill and my every breath kinks,

And I cough and I burp and the end of the nose pinks,

So, I gather together under the covers,

The rotten parts of me over which the fly hovers,

And cook them in heat of the dreams of old lovers,

And fantasy dreams, whose richness discovers…

The stories that make the sum of my life,

And memories of people who’ve hurt me with strife,

And good things and great things and details all mixed,

And stew while I’m sleeping til things are all fixed.

Blue birdsxxx

2 Comments

Filed under humor, illness, Paffooney, poem

Tagged as , , ,

January 23, 2016 · 8:53 pm

Dumb Luck

Dumb Luck

Sometimes life is just a flip of the coin.  Heads for the good things.  Tails for the bad.  But because of the nature of random chance, even though the opportunities for good luck or bad luck are equal, tails twenty-seven times in a row can happen.  Before my book is able to be published, my publisher is on the brink of shutting down.  Their own roll of the dice has come up snake-eyes a few too many times.  I and the other authors at PDMI are trying to rally around each other and do what we can to help.  But the business is, for the moment, on hold.  Good things can happen too, though.  My novel, Magical Miss Morgan, is still in the running for the Rossetti Award from Chanticleer Book Reviews.  That might turn out to be a real good heads up and help me with my publication goals.  My blogging is going well.  For some reason I seem to be scoring 60+ views on a single day at least one day a week for the last six weeks.  I am now averaging 30 views a day instead of the old rate of 20.  My blogging is being read by more actual readers than ever before.  That’s a good thing, but also the result of dumb luck.  There is no formula for success making it happen.  I have to keep trying and trust that sometimes things will accidentally happen in my favor.  I admit to being a little tired of things that accidentally cause me harm.  Do I believe that God has a plan, and things work out the way they should?  Of course I do.  But I am not vain enough to think that I am important enough to the over-all plan to effect even a single flip of the coin of fate.

5 Comments

Filed under cartoons, humor, insight, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 22, 2016 · 4:19 pm

Top This!

fuddy duddy

“Dad?” asked the Princess, “I heard a funny word in school today.  What does Fuddy-Duddy mean?”

“Oh, that’s a good word,” I said.  “It means an old fogey… a stick-in-the-mud.”

“A what?”

“A fussy old guy who likes to have everything his way.  Like, if you accuse your father of being one… which you often do… he’s a fuddy-duddy daddy.”

“Ooh!  I get it!” said Henry, chiming in.  “And if your father is evil, then he’s a fuddy-duddy baddie daddy!”

“Yes,” I said, “and if it makes him sad to be evil, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie daddy!”

“If you are not sure he’s really your father,” said the Princess adding a one-up, “he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe daddy!”

“Yeah!” said Henry.  “And if you suspect he may have fallen into a time machine and been turned back into an infant, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby daddy!”

“Now that he’s a baby again he will surely want to watch his favorite TV show again,” I said with a tear of nostalgia in my eye, “he’ll be a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby Howdy Doody daddy!”

“What’s Howdy Doody, Daddy?” asked the Princess.

“No,” said Henry, “now you’ve spoiled it.  It just ain’t funny any more.”

“Yes it is!  He’s become a funny bunny fuddy-duddy hoo-dad doo-dad saddie baddie maybe rabies hoo-dah doo-dah…”

“Just stop,” said Henry.  “You always carry things too far.”

“Right you are!” I said.  “See this grin?  It means I win!”

“AW, Daaad!” they both said at the same time.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, Uncategorized, word games

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2016 · 4:44 pm

RumikoTakahashi

This is an art exercise, making a drawing imitating the manga style of Rumiko Takahashi, the greatest female comics artist of all time.
This is a second shameless plagiarism and imitation of Rumiko Takahashi by Mickey the Manga Wannabee.

Yesterday I used a Paffooney I had stolen to illustrate my gymnasium adventures, and in the caption I gave credit to the wonderful comic artist I shamelessly copied it from.  The second imitation Takahashi that I did yesterday is now displayed next to it above.  I am now compelled to explain about my goofy, sideways obsession with Anime and Manga, the cartoons from Japan.  I love the art style.  I have since I fell in love with Astroboy Anime as a child in Iowa.  Rumiko Takahashi is almost exactly one year younger than me.  As a cartoonist she is light years more successful than me.  She has been crafting pen and ink masterpieces of goofy story-telling longer than I have been a teacher.

lumstatue1

Her artwork is a primary reason I have been so overly-enamored of the Japanese Manga-cartoon style.  I love the big eyes, the child-like features of even adult characters, the weird poses and still-weirder comic art conventions of this culture from practically a different planet.  She has created comic series that are immensely popular in Japan, and have even put down sturdy roots in this country, especially with young adults since the 80’s.  She is the world’s number one best-selling female comics artist.

Just as we Westerners have to accept numerous ridiculous things to appreciate the stories told in American comics (for instance, brawny heroes running around in tights with their underwear on the outside of their pants, nearly naked ladies with super powers diving into battle next to men encased in armored suits, and talking animals), the Manga-minded must also practice a bizarre form of the willing suspension of disbelief.  In Ranma 1/2, the main character is a boy marshal artist who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water.  Much of the romantic comedy of that work revolves around boys and old men finding themselves in the bath house next to naked young girls.  For some reason that sort of naked surprise causes the boys to spout fountain-like nosebleeds.  In Inu-Yasha the whole thing is about fighting demons with swords.  Inu-Yasha himself is part demon.  Apparently part-demon is a good thing to be.  Japanese villains are spectacularly susceptible to fits of crying rage and tantrums.  And everybody looks more like American white people than orientals.  Oh, and there are talking animals.

Rumiko is a master of pen and ink.  Here is a sample of of her black and white work.

And she does color well too.

6976529_orig

The little people are a special style of Manga character called a Chibi, and all regular Manga characters can turn into one at any moment.

b10674ff244da5bae98e0296cd7e09b41437155319_full

0

And, of course, to read actual Manga you have to master reading backwards.  Americans read left to right.  The Japanese read right to left.  You have to open a Japanese book in a manner that seems both backwards and upside down.

chapter1large

This illustration shows how American publishers flip Japanese comics to make them more accessible to American audiences.

So now, by uncovering the fact that I am addicted to and seriously affected by Japanese cartoons, you have one more bit of evidence to present to a jury in case you decide Mickey needs to be locked up and medicated for a while.  Japanese comics are a world of great beauty, but also a world unto themselves.  It is an acquired taste that has to be considered carefully.  And of all the many marvelous Manga makers, Rumiko Takahashi is the one I love the best.

Rumiko_Takahashi_18050

1 Comment

Filed under anime, artwork, cartoons, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 19, 2016 · 3:39 pm

Exercise For Life

20160118_164219

This is an art exercise, making a drawing imitating the manga style of Rumiko Takahashi, the greatest female comics artist of all time.

Yes, I need to exercise.  I have six incurable diseases and I am a cancer survivor since 1983.  But exercise may soon kill me deader than the proverbial door nail.  Does that make sense?  Can you be any more dead than a thing that was never alive?  I think you can.  It comes when death is achieved through extreme pain and suffering.

If you hadn’t figured it out already, my family joined a gym on a trial-membership basis.  But, of course, we can’t afford a personal trainer, so the only way was to get me in and exercising without consulting the professionals about my health challenges.  Diabetes and arthritis and COPD?  They would instantly be worrying about sudden death on the gym floor and the lovely attendant lawsuits that would probably go with that.  And my wife probably will try to sue them when the exercise machines kill me.  She is a smart woman when it comes to making money out of the cracks in the system.

The gym has personal trainers and professionals to deal with problems like mine, and they were around and visible while I was there exercising for the first time.  Signs on all the machines admonish the user to take a break if they become light-headed or feel faint.  They are at least aware that I might be killing myself.  But while I did the twenty-five-minute trudge on the treadmill all tomato-faced and gasping for breath, no one bothered to even check on me to make sure I wasn’t idiot enough to torture myself to death on the cruel march-to-oblivion machines that are all lined up there in neat little rows facing television sets blaring Fox News Channel.  You might know that the last voice I will ever hear is Bill O’Reilly declaring what an idiot-communist-threat-to-democracy Bernie Sanders is.  What a way to die!

But my wife is determined to exercise me enough to make me healthy and more like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson than it is possible for me to be.  Or kill me.  I think she might be looking forward to that too.  She told me when we went in that we only had to stay as long as I wanted to.  But that was a lie.  The gym has a pool.  She and the Princess made a bee-line there and I didn’t see them again until closing time.  To be fair, they had a free class to attend with pool exercises led by a trainer.  But still, as I suffered and dried myself out on the walkways of death, they were splashing happily.  In a pool!  In winter!  …But it was indoors.

So, I didn’t die.  And I have done this sort of thing before enough to know how far I can push myself on arthritic knees with impaired lungs.  I didn’t really come out of there with any more aches and pains than I went in with.  And, though I really hate to admit it, the day after leaves me feeling somewhat… better.

6 Comments

Filed under humor, illness, Paffooney, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 14, 2016 · 4:34 pm

Werewolf Inspirations

Having lived through a horror story recently, I now must work more on mine.  I have a werewolf story that I have been writing since the 1970’s.  I have been calling it The Baby Werewolf for forty-two years.  And that may have to change.  It is a story of a boy with hypertrichosis (werewolf excessive hair disease, a genetic disorder) and the family that is ashamed of him and tries to hide him forever in the attic.  Of course, if you know anything about me, you probably realize I am going to clown it up one side and down the other, because writing serious stuff is not my style… at least not without a “hefty helping of our hospitality”.  I am doing serious research now, which translated from ManicMickian means, “I am watching old werewolf movies on YouTube.”

 

I know you don’t believe I can pull off a YA novel that is a comedy about murder, wolves, and lycanthropes, with naked girls thrown in for good measure.  But watch me.  I am nothing if not willing to do practically anything to be creative.

dscn5093 (640x480)

300816_395700127149962_1053002835_n

The Baby Werewolf

A Gothic Novel by Michael Beyer

 

 

 

Opus One – Of Wolves and Men

Canto One : “Homo Homini Lupus”

 

      Dad doesn’t like it when I watch horror movies.  He says they will give me nightmares.  They will keep me from getting a good night’s sleep.  And a farm kid needs his sleep because he has to get up early in the morning to check on the pigs, give them feed, and milk the cows.  We only have five cows.  Just enough to give the Niland family the milk it needs.  We can process it ourselves because we once had a lot of milk cows.  Not so much anymore.  Things are changing in the 1970’s.  But there I was that night watching The Wolfman on Grave’s End Manor the horror movie show that comes on CBS every week on Saturday… midnight.

I don’t always do exactly what Dad says.  Fathers don’t really know everything.  Well, not… everything, everything.  So, I have this story now to tell you, and it’s a… well, horror story.  It’s about werewolves.  Little ones.  And naked girls.  And me being almost fourteen already, I have to get this story told while I can still remember every little detail.  I just won’t show it to Dad.  And if they make it into a movie, I will tell him not to go.

I was all by myself that night.  The farmhouse was dark.  Mom and Dad had taken my little brother Nathaniel to Grandma’s house and they were in Rochester, Minnesota for some medical thing.  I was supposed to look after the farm and the pigs and the cows.  Our big thirty-six-inch TV was capable of doing full color, but the horror movie on Saturday nights was almost always a black and white movie anyway.  I was almost naked while watching it.  I only had on my Fruit of the Looms and an old silver crucifix on a chain around my neck.  It was something Great Aunt Hannah Foxworth had given Mom when she died.  Hey, it was a werewolf movie after all.

Lon Chaney Jr. was the star of the movie, and he looked more like old Elmer Dawes from Norwall, Iowa than your usual movie star.  But he was great in monster movies.

3 Comments

Filed under horror writing, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 13, 2016 · 4:55 pm

Parking Lot Nightmares

Sadie

Sometimes life is more like a car accident than a well-planned story.  You have to scrabble for themes and meaning as you undo your seatbelt to get out of the burning car before it explodes.  It was like that last night in the high school parking lot.

Princess

You see, the Princess had a U.I.L. academic competition last night.  In Texas we compete in nerd olympics so we can pretend that our kids actually learn things in school.  The Princess was a part of the science team, taking a test in competition with the nerds from the other district middle schools.  Well, she lost.  Personally, team-wise, and school-wise, the Long Middle School Falcons were shut out of the top three places.  Yes, that sucks, but she did get to compete, an honor already.  As much as this society pooh-poohs participation ribbons and feeling good about less-than-winning, sometimes they do represent real effort and real value.  It is the kind of gut-twist you put up with every year, with every competition.  Not everybody can win, and non-winners don’t deserve punishment.

But the excitement last night was not about that.  What was it about?  I don’t still completely know.

I went at 9:00 p.m. to pick her up from the Newman Smith High School competition site after her team was thoroughly beaten.  I hate high school parking lots.  You have to put up with other parents and their Texas driving skills.  We call it “driving friendly” in Texas.  It means pushing to the front of the line, cutting people off, bluffing your way through with the threat of violent collision.  In truth, if most of those parents in the parking lot had to take the driving test today, they not only wouldn’t have a license, they would be in jail to prevent vehicular manslaughter.  So, when I saw the multiple police cars at the high school, I merely assumed that some of the parents of UIL contestants had been “driving friendly” a little too hard.

Well, I pulled up behind the buses and got an ominous text.

“We are in lock-down.  Something happened.  Are you in the parking lot?”

“Yes.”

“My teacher says to stay in your car and keep the doors locked.  Wait until I tell you that we have been cleared.  The police are here.”

Well, that was tense.  Twenty minutes of sitting in the car not knowing what was going on… not knowing how to find out.  Finally I get another text.

“You have to pick me up back at Long.  They are taking us out to the bus at the back of the school.”

So, I drove the ten blocks to Long Middle School and waited in the parking lot there.  Far fewer parents in cars to run into, so it had its plusses.

Finally the bus arrived.  My daughter had to sign the teacher’s roll call of students before she would be released for me to take her home.  It was already 10:30.

“We’re sorry for this,” one of the teachers told me.

“The principal will probably call you tomorrow and explain what happened,” said another teacher.  Personally, I didn’t really care what happened.  She was safe, and that was what mattered.

“I don’t know what happened, Dad,” the Princess said, “but the police were looking for a man with an AK47.  At least, I think that’s what they told me.”

Ah, Texas.  The right to bear arms truly makes us rest at ease.  Except, I do not want to have the arms of a bear.

9 Comments

Filed under gun control, horror writing, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 10, 2016 · 5:51 pm

Book Magic, the Empathy Spell

Fools

I have long known that reading good books is the primary path to being a wizard.  There are many, many things you can learn from the magic contained in fiction books, but now there is also research that proves books can improve your empathetic skills.  Here is the article I found to suggest it is so;

http://blog.theliteracysite.com/fiction-readers/?utm_source=lit-twcfan&utm_medium=social-fb&utm_term=20160108&utm_content=link&utm_campaign=fiction-readers&origin=lit_twcfan_social_fb_link_fiction-readers_20160108

If you don’t feel energetic enough to actually go there and read that, let me summarize a bit.  When you read a good fiction story, you get to live for a while in another person’s skin… see the world through someone else’s eyes… and if it is intelligent, realistic, and complex enough, it rewires a bit of the part of your brain that tries to understand and make sense of perspectives that are new to you, not merely habits that you follow down muddy, well-worn paths on auto-pilot.  You get to practice understanding other people.  And the more you practice this with well-written, insightful material, the more empathetic you will become.  The article notes significantly that children reading J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series develop skill at compassion.  I can personally testify that as a middle school teacher, I saw that very thing happening as students in my nerd classes not only became more sensitive towards the gifted weirdos in their class because of Harry, but also became more understanding of the special education students, and other often-bullied minorities.  Harry Potter books are literally magic books.

Here are some other notable books and their magical powers;

2657

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is taught in numerous middle schools and high schools across the country because teachers have instinctively realized how much it does to solve problems of racial and cultural tension in the school environment.  It tackles the unfairness of racism, the effects of extreme poverty, the possible side effects of too much religion, and it illustrates everything through the voice of a very intelligent young girl.  Learning hard lessons becomes practically painless.

19063

 

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is narrated by the angel of death.  It is set in Nazi Germany in the war years.  The central character is the daughter of a man arrested and executed as a communist.  She is forced to live with German foster parents who turn out to be very loving individuals, though they are enduring difficulties of their own.  They not only love and nurture her, they take in a young Jewish man who is fleeing the Gestapo and the work camps.  In the face of the constant threat of death, the main character learns to read both books and people, to care about others, and face the deaths of those she loves without fear.  This book makes beauty out of human ugliness and war, and love out of fear and death.  Very powerful magic, in my humble opinion.

So what am I saying in this Paffoonied post of books and magic?  Only this.  There is magic power to be gained from reading fiction books, especially well-written fiction books.  Try it for yourself.  You may accidentally turn yourself into a frog… or a little girl from Maycomb, Georgia in the 1930’s… but it will turn out to be very good magic.  Go ahead, try it.  I dare you.

11 Comments

Filed under book reports, humor, magic, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,