Category Archives: Paffooney

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 humor, paffooney, poem, poetry

January 23, 2016 · 8:53 pm

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 artwork, dumb luck, humor, novel writing, paffooney, publishing, random chance

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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And she does color well too.

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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.

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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.

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.

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1 Comment

Filed under anime, artwork, cartoons, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as anime, humor, Inu Yasha, Japanese cartoons, manga, Ranma 1/2, Rumiko Takahashi

January 19, 2016 · 3:39 pm

Exercise For Life

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 arthritis, diabetes, exercise, exercising in a gym, gym membership, humor, march to death, paffooney, Rumiko Takahashi, treadmills

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.

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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 horror story, humor, Lon Chaney Jr., novel writing, Paffoonies, werewolves

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 artwork, gun control, horror, humor, Paffoonies, Texas drivers, Texas killer grandmas

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;

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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.

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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 book review, compassion, death, empathy, Harry Potter, humor, love, magic, Magic books, The Book Thief, To Kill a Mockingbird

January 8, 2016 · 7:40 pm

Squint Beastwood and his Action Heroes of the 70’s Face the Here and Now

Yesterday I happened upon Squint Beastwood sitting in a park in the North Dallas area. He had an empty lawn chair next to him, and he appeared to be deeply into a conversation with it.

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Squint (speaking as his character the Man with No Name); You see, chair, I have a gun. It’s a really, really big gun. And I know how to use it. I can shoot the eyes out of a peckerwood at 100 yards. (I was confused about whether he actually meant to say “woodpecker”, but his gun was so big I was afraid to ask.)

chair (speaking as itself); …

Squint (still as the Man with No Name); I just don’t get this whole second amendment thing. I mean, do I really have to have somebody’s permission to have a gun? I don’t think so. Lots of dudes have come up to me and said, “give me your gun, Josey Whales.” And I don’t have to even shoot them to keep my gun. I just squint my eyes real hard at them and chomp down on the toothpick in my mouth and say, “Are you sure you want to be asking me that? I can draw my gun and shoot so fast that you can’t blink before you’d be deader than a cold stone that died from stone cancer.” And they would just get this confused look on their faces and drop their own guns. Of course, then I would shoot them stone cold deader than a cold stone that died from stone cancer. You know what I mean?”

chair (still speaking as itself); …

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Squint (suddenly speaking as the rogue cop anti-hero Hurty Barry); Now they are pestering me about the rights of the perpetrator. They say things to me like, “Barry, you can’t just go around shooting somebody just because they were jaywalking or playing with a toy gun while making the mistake of being black.” But I don’t get that. There are no crimes committed around me because I just look at the perpetrator and say, “I know you are thinking about committing a crime, criminal. But you gotta ask yourself, can he really shoot me before I can dial 911 on a cell phone? You’ve been texting a lot, and have lots of practice, and probably think you can snap a picture of me and text Hurty Barry just violated my civil rights before I can shoot you in the head and make you stone cold deader than a cold stone that died of stone cancer. So, do ya feel lucky, punk?”

And then I shoot them in the head. The world is suddenly a safer place. Why would anybody assume that somebody who is thinking of committing a crime has a right to a fair trial to determine if they actually committed a crime or not? You just don’t know people the way I know people. They are all criminals, rapists, murderers… and some, I assume are good people, but I think we should just shoot them stone cold deader than a cold stone that died of stone cancer and let God sort them out on judgement day.

chair (still speaking as itself)…

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Buck Cheston, former leader of the NPA (National Pistol Association) and star of movies like Planet of the Grapes wanders up and speaks as himself instead of one of his numerous movie characters; Squint, old man, I see you have been talking to chairs again. And you are afraid that Obama and his jack-booted government thugs are going to take away your guns.

Squint (still speaking as Hurty Barry); No, Buck. Nobody takes away my guns. I am just upset that society seems to think we should talk about our problems and find peaceful solutions, instead of solving problems with violence.

Buck (still speaking as leader of the NPA… even though he is actually dead now); I agree with you that we can never solve this country’s problems as long as liberals and government types want to take away our guns. Whether it is a matter of going to war with Iran, or keeping peace on the streets of Baltimore, the solution is not to take guns out of the hands of good guys with a gun. We have to be able to shoot bad guys with a gun, and shoot to kill. They will never get my guns until they pry them from my cold dead hands.

Squint (suddenly shifting back to being the Man With No Name); But, Buck, aren’t you dead of old age already?

Buck (speaking now as a dead man who is deader than a cold stone that died of stone cancer); Yes, I am afraid that is so.

Squint (still speaking as the Man with No Name); Well, don’t worry, Buck. I’m still alive and I still have my gun, and if I can’t kill the bad guy, then he must be immortal.

Buck (still speaking as a dead man); You know, Squint, you haven’t been talking to anyone who is actually alive for this entire conversation.

Squint (finally speaking as himself); I will definitely have to kill somebody for that. Somebody needs to die.

The chair began shivering uncontrollably.

4 Comments

Filed under cartoons, gun control, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as cartoons, gun control, old men with big guns, paffooney, prejudice, satire, Squint Beastwood

January 4, 2016 · 4:16 pm

Gingerbread Town

My recent experiments with holiday gingerbread and happiness have yielded some patently artistical results. Yes, I know that isn’t a real word. But I use it anyway because I take bits and pieces and use them to make something new. You may remember the gingerbread house I made with my kids. It turned into a disaster you could eat. But I got some pictures out of it. Pictures like this;