No tomorrow is guaranteed.
Even today is not a sure thing.
Every new dawn is a gift.
It might be the last day on Earth for me.
It might be the start of a new adventure.
We shall see what we shall see.
And all we can do is…
… Let it be.
Category Archives: Paffooney
Cartoonish Behavior
What is the use of Kartoon Kops? I mean, why do we possibly need cartoon policemen with rubber whack-bats, squirting ink guns, and face pies? Why, to control cartoon misbehavior, of course.
If I work on the roof of the house because the shingles are weather-damaged, and then I walk off the end of the roof, and I just stand there in the air because I know better than to look down, I am breaking the law of gravity. I deserve a strawberry pie to the face for that crime. (Not blueberry pie, though. I’m allergic to blueberries.)
If I run in place and my legs go faster and faster until they look like blurred leg-colored circles, and then I take off, faster than a speeding bullet, leaving only poofy clouds behind, I am breaking the law of acceleration and inertia. I deserve a blast of black ink in my face for that.
And if I put an extremely hot towel on my face, and Bugs Bunny is my barber, my face will come off in the towel and leave the space on the front of my head blank. I will be breaking the law of… of… well, keeping my face on in public. Rubber whack-bat bruises are in my future for that.
“But, Mickey!” you say to me, “The real world doesn’t work that way!”
“Well, duh! Didn’t I tell you this was about cartoons from the start?”
Children of the Land
Children are a resource that we, as a people, cannot live on without.
If we stop having children, nurturing children, raising children, providing children discipline and education, entertaining children, guiding children, and, most of all, loving children, in eighty or so years, human beings will be extinct in this universe.
How many universes are there with humanity being extinct in them? It is impossible to answer. But if there is more than one universe, there is more than one.
When I was a child myself, family farms were still the rule in Iowa. Couples would try for lots of kids to help with the farm work. Chores! I fed animals. I went with my grandfather to the feed store, the hardware store, and the hatchery. I drove a tractor. I walked bean fields and pulled weeds. I mucked out a hog house once (and believe me, once is enough for a lifetime.) I have slopped hogs. I shingled a house and a garage. I painted the family house (in town, not Grandpa’s farmhouse.) As a child, I helped my uncles who were farmers, and worked for other farmers in the area. I was just as important as fertilizer to the maintenance of the world I lived in. (I did not say I was important to USE AS fertilizer. They would’ve had to kill me to use me that way. But my work was a part of what made the land yield plenty.)
I was left, as a child, with the distinct impression that we were meant to live in the land as a part of the land. Nature was our friend. We didn’t cut down all the trees and pave over everything like the city folks did. The kid who never went skinny dipping was rare indeed.
There once were people who knew they lived with the land, and they were good stewards of the land. They knew if the land was not living well and healthy, then neither would they live well and healthy.
But I am not arguing that we should go back to the world of the 1960s. The work I did in the land back then is now mostly mechanized and done by machines, computers, automation, and factorization. But we can teach our precious children the values of old to use in new ways. If we don’t, well… I hope the AI Terminator Robots of the future will have a happy life without us.
Filed under artwork, farm boy, farming, humor, kids, Liberal ideas, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wisdom
The Wolf in My Dreams
Rosemary Hood was a bright, blond seventh grader who entered my seventh-grade Gifted English class in September of 1998. She introduced herself to me before the first bell of her first day.
“I am definitely on your class list because my Mom says I belong in gifted classes.”
“Your name is Rosemary, right?”
“Definitely. Rosemary Bell Hood, related to the Civil War general John Bell Hood.”
“Um, I don’t see your name on my list.”
“Well, I’m supposed to be there, so check with the attendance secretary. And I will be making A’s all year because I’m a werewolf and I could eat you during the full moon if you make me mad at you.”
I laughed, thinking that she had a bizarre sense of humor. I let her enter my class and issued her copies of the books we were reading. Later I called the office to ask about her enrollment.
“Well, Mr. Beyer,” said the secretary nervously, “the principal is out right now with an animal bite that got infected. But I can assure you that we must change her schedule and put her in your gifted class. The principal would really like you to give her A’s too.”
So, I had a good chuckle about that. I never gave students A’s. Grades had to be earned. And one of the first rules of being a good teacher is, “Ignore what the principal says you should do in every situation.”
But I did give her A’s because she was a very bright and creative student (also very blond, but that has nothing to do with being a good student). She had a good work ethic and a marvelous sense of humor.
She developed a crush on Jose Tannenbaum who sat in the seat across from her in the next row. He was a football player, as well as an A student. And by October she was telling him daily, “You need to take to me to the Harvest Festival Dance because I am a werewolf, and if you don’t, I will eat you at the next full moon.”
All the members of the class got a good chuckle out of it. And it was assumed that he would. of course, take her to the dance because she was the prettiest blond girl in class and he obviously kinda liked her. But the week of the dance we did find out, to our surprise, that he asked Natasha Garcia to the dance instead.
I didn’t think anything more about it until, the day after the next full moon, Jose didn’t show up for class. I called the attendance secretary and asked about it.
“Jose is missing, Mr. Beyer,” the attendance secretary said. “The Sherrif’s office has search parties out looking for him.” That concerned me because he had a writing project due that day, and I thought he might’ve skipped school because he somehow failed to finish it. When I saw Rosemary in class, though, I asked her if, by any chance, she knew why Jose wasn’t in class.
“Of course I do,” she said simply. “I ate him last night.”
“Oh. Bones and all?”
“Bone marrow is the best-tasting part.”
So, that turned out to be one rough school year. Silver bullets are extremely expensive for a teacher’s salary. And I did lose a part of my left ear before the year ended. But it also taught me valuable lessons about being a teacher. Truthfully, you can’t be a good teacher if you can’t accept and teach anyone who comes through your door, no matter what kind of unique qualities they bring with them into your classroom.
Filed under education, horror writing, humor, Paffooney
Mickey’s Secret Identities
Yes, there is very definitely a possibility that there is more than one me.
If you look carefully at the colored pencil drawing above, you will see that it is titled “The Wizard of Edo” and signed by someone called Leah Cim Reyeb. A sinister sounding Asian name, you think? I told college friends that my research uncovered the fact that he was an Etruscan artist who started his art career more than two thousand years ago in a cave in France. But, of course, if you are clever enough to read the name backward, you get, “beyeR miC haeL”. So, that stupid Etruscan cave artist is actually me.
It turns out that it is a conceit about signing my name as an artist that I stole from an old episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show and have used for well over two decades through college and my teaching career.
And of course, the cartoonist me is Mickey. Mickey also writes this blog. Mickey is the humorist identity that I use to write all my published novels and blog posts since I published the novel Catch a Falling Star.
Michael Beyer is the truest form of my secret identity. That was my teacher name. It was often simplified by students to simply “Mr. B”. I was known by that secret identity for 31 years.
Even more sinister are my various fictional identities occurring in my art and my fiction. You see one of them in this Paffooney. The name Dr. Seabreez appears in Catch a Falling Star as the Engineer who makes a steam engine train fly into space in the 1890’s with alien technology. He appears again in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius as a time-traveler.
The young writer in the novel Superchicken, Branch Macmillan, is also me. As is the English teacher Lawrance “Rance” Kellogg used in multiple novels.
So, disturbing as it may be to realize, there is more than one name and identity that signifies me. But if you are a writer of fiction, a cartoonist, an artist, or a poet, you will probably understand this idea better. And you may even have more than one you too.
Character References, Part 3
When choosing whose picture to publish of all the many made-up people that live in my head and my fiction, I often wonder, do I have an accurate sense of who is important and who is merely minor? I offer now some characters I don’t feel comfortable leaving out.
Mazie Haire
One of the Haire Sisters, rumored to be a witch, and proud to prove it to you, Mazie is a severe and highly focused individual with a knack for seeing and convincing you of the truth. So, maybe she really is a witch.
She appears in;
Snow Babies
When the Captain Came Calling
Milton John Morgan (Milt)
I can’t tell you about the witch without mentioning the wizard. Milt Morgan is the Merlin of the Norwall Pirates (an adventuring gang and 4-H softball team).
He is one of the founders of the gang and the one who got them into the most trouble in the 1970’s.
He appears in;
Superchicken
The Baby Werewolf
The Boy… Forever!
The Wizard in his Keep
Torrie Brownfield
Torrie is the hair-everywhere boy with hypertrichosis, the werewolf-hair disease. He was genetically doomed to life looking like a werewolf. He was discovered living in hiding in Norwall by the Pirates’ gang who decided they simply had to make him a member.
He is, of course, the main character of;
The Baby Werewolf
And also appears in;
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
Harker Dawes
Harker is a clown-character based on a real person living in the real town of Norwall. He buys the local hardware store and runs the business into bankruptcy. He is not only a ne’er-do-well, but he also is a truly loveable fool.
He plays a key role in;
Snow Babies
He is also in the upcoming novel;
Fools and Their Toys
Dilsey Murphy
Dilsey is Mike’s slightly older sister who seems to be in a lot of my stories. She is a tomboy and a Daddy’s girl. She is also beloved by her irascible Grampy, Cudgel Murphy. Mike Murphy both hates her and loves her, but mostly just depends on her.
She is in;
Magical Miss Morgan
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
and a large number of upcoming stories
Sean “Cudgel” Murphy
Grampy of the Murphy Clan, Cudgel is the meanest old man you’d ever want to meet. He is excellently suited to the job of teaching kids to swear. And he only drives his Austin Hereford, “The finest car made anywhere in the whole goddam world in 1954!”
He appears in;
Snow Babies
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Francois Martin
Francois, the French orphan, is the main character in my novel,
Sing Sad Songs.
He paints his face in clown paint and sings beautifully enough to save his Uncle’s business. I am halfway finished with this new novel.
So, now I feel like I have exhausted myself in character introductions and will probably eschew a “Part 4”. But with Mickey, there are no guarantees.
Filed under characters, humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
AeroQuest 5… Adagio 22
Adagio 22 – Outpost Demographics Analyzed by a Genius
I, Googol Marou, am the most qualified person in the universe to break down for you the basic facts about Tron Blastarr’s pirate-base home world. If you want a basic genius-level analysis, you naturally turn to the scientist who invented a telescope that could visually reconstruct events of the past gathered from planets viewed from my little telescope at sometimes thousands of light years of distance, thus looking thousands of light years into the past. And of course, I had twelve years of exile to work with in compiling the data from our little corner of the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.
You see, Outpost was an airless planet on the frontier of the Galtorrian Imperium. It was unique in that it had been settled entirely by disgruntled privateers from the Coreward War with the Faceless Horde in the two short years between the end of the Horde War and the beginning of the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Shan, heralding the beginning of The White Spider’s new web of interstellar civilization.
I bet you can’t read that paragraph aloud at high lip speed. At least not without breaking a tooth. I dare you to try it.
The planetary system went from a world of zero population and zero Medium-Class Earthlike worlds to twenty billion intelligent beings and over 450,000,000 space fish of various species in only five standard planetary years (gauged from the orbits of both Earth and Galtorr Prime, two very similar Goldilocks-zone worlds of the Imperium.)
It began with the surviving members of the Pinwheel Corsairs, Tron’s highly successful space force of warships. They built the initial installations for crew habitats, a starport, and shipyards. They were soon joined by many other survivors of the Horde War, looking for someplace to be after being thoroughly beaten and betrayed by both the Faceless Horde and Admiral Tang’s Imperial Space Navy.
Outpost had its own source of hydrogen fuel in the two gas-giant planets in the system, each of which had multiple moons. Then they stole an Ancient artifact made so long ago that we couldn’t even determine if the Ancients were actual people, or maybe sentient mushrooms battling to fill the universe with mold spores… but sentient mold spores, that made life everywhere. (Okay, I admit it. That is all just a conspiracy theory.) But the Crown of Stars could do something really Ancient science-y. And then Trav Dalgoda stole it.
Tron and Maggie tracked the Goof down to a new planet recently liberated and reclaimed by the Aero Brothers. And the Goofy one had, in the meantime, discovered another Ancient thingy called the Hammer of God. This thing could build whatever you could think of (as long as you were telepathic enough to tell the Hammer what you were thinking of.) The Hammer could make whole cities instantly using nanobots and sentient energy beams. And so, Tron and his people used it to build cities all over Outpost.
And so, the pirates of Outpost needed people to come live in their new cities. They found Lupin space pirates willing to live on Outpost in return for help with their rotten spaceships. They also found massive flotillas of Nebulon space whales, living spaceships that breed on gas giants and contain cities full of little blue Nebulons. Although they were unwilling to live on Outpost itself. Instead, they wanted to live with their space whales and other space fish around the gas giants with their various moons and plenty of space for the breeding of even more space fish.
And then Arkin Cloudstalker not only brought his Lady Knights with their White Sword Corsairs to Outpost but also the weird alien Lazerstone who was made of intelligent rocks. And there was a wealth of psionic crystals in the sands of Outpost that Lazerstone could turn into numerous clone copies of himself, complete with a hive mind. Millions of Lazerstones came to life on Outpost and started wearing the special armored suits invented by Tron’s boy sidekick, Hassan the Space Elf of Djinnistan.
And so, that is the crucial insight into the reasons why Outpost was the key to the war between the New Star League and Admiral Tang’s Galtorr Imperium.
Filed under aliens, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, Pirates, science fiction
A Character Reference, Part 2
Yesterday an inconvenient internet outage interrupted my fountain of character gushing. So let me splash a couple more on here.
Tim Kellogg
Tim is a school teacher’s son who is sorta, kinda, based on my own oldest son… and maybe a little bit on me. He’s clever, creative, a natural leader, and only slightly evil part of the time.
Tim is a main character in;
Catch a Falling Star
The Bicycle-Wheel Genius
Magical Miss Morgan
Grandma Gretel Stein
Gretel is a German survivor of the concentration camps who sees and talks to fairies on a regular basis. She also bakes magically delicious gingerbread cookies. And loves to tell stories to those who eat her cookies.
She is a main character in;
Recipes for Gingerbread Children
She is an important character in;
Superchicken
The Baby Werewolf
The Necromancer’s Apprentice
The Primary Cast of Recipes for Gingerbread Children (left to right) Grandma Gretel, the cookie baker, Todd Niland, handsome young farm boy and cookie-eater, Sherry Cobble, nudist and junior high cheerleader, and Sandy Wickham, cookie-eater and Todd Niland’s crush.
Farbick
He’s the alien Telleron pilot and good guy aboard Xiar’s space ship who gets shot during the failed invasion of Iowa and helps save the planet in the near future. He’s a main character in;
Catch a Falling Star
Stardusters and Space Lizards
Davalon (re-named David by the couple who adopts him)
Dav is the alien boy accidentally lost on earth in Catch a Falling Star, and leader of the young explorers in Stardusters and Space Lizards.
Edward-Andrew Campbell, the Superchicken
It is possible E-A is really me. He bears my high school nickname. He is a boy trying to cope with being the new kid in a tightly knit little Iowa farm town.
He is the main character in;
Superchicken
I fear I am still a long way from done with referring to characters in my books. But more waits for another day.
Filed under aliens, characters, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
The Sunday Sermon from an Idiot
I heard a bit of religious argument today delivered by Ben Shapiro. He argued that you can prove God exists by the design of the observable universe. Basically, the “Clocks don’t exist without a clockmaker” argument. But that wasn’t the real point he was making. He was trying to say that atheists are liberal intellectuals lying about why they don’t believe in God, so therefore they are evil and we should hate them. A complicated, judgemental, and hate-filled thing to argue, like most of the arguments I hear Ben Shapiro make. His particular digestive issues must be really painful if he’s always that angry.
But the idiot in the title is not Ben Shapiro. (I am also not saying that Ben is not an idiot. I am just saying I am not calling him that here.) The idiot of the title is Mickey. This is Mickey’s Sunday Sermon. Mickey should get all the blame for this.
Mickey is a Christian Existentialist. I think I have explained that before as a way of saying, “Mickey is an atheist who believes in God.” Really that means he is an agnostic, someone who is not able to prove that God is real, but wants to believe… if only that were logically possible.
You notice that I started this sermon with the Maxfield Parrish picture of a girl sitting on a flowerpot. And why is this picture the start of a sermon? Well, to the flowers in the flower bed, the girl with the watering can looks like God. She who makes it rain when the weather is too hot and dry. But notice too, there is no flower bed in the picture. Only a puddle behind the girl. Did God overwater the flowers? Or did the flowers decide as a matter of faith that they didn’t need water, and believed they were made of sugar crystals so hard that they actually became sugar and melted when they were watered? What a stupid thing for Mickey to think about, let alone say! That picture has nothing to do with religion!
So, why is religion important to someone like Mickey who claims to be an agnostic? Well, a very smart man told me there are three functions of religion in society. It is needed for the maintenance of behavior, belonging, and belief. Society looks to the various churches to set a standard for how you behave towards others. That’s the Shalt Nots that teach the congregation not to commit murder, theft, adultery, or swear, or do the many other things that seem bad to religious leaders and also the laws that govern the general public.
They also look to religion to provide places for people in society to gather together, to develop a sense of belonging, a community. In churches, temples, synagogues, mosques, and other sacred-type places people gather to share proper religious ideas, teach their children, listen to sermons, and gossip about their neighbors, especially neighbors who are not in the building. Shared values and working-community undertakings are fostered and nurtured in these groups.
And if not everyone sleeps through the sermons, these religious groups all share, encourage, and agree to alter their basic beliefs.
None of these functions are themselves a bad thing. One could argue they are essential to the life of a civilized nation. Religion is good for you in many ways, even if you are not a true believer. Studies have been done that show true believers have less stress and are healthier than non-church-going individuals.
So, here’s what the idiot actually thinks. Religion is good for you. It is important for society to function properly. However, religious extremism is pushing this very natural part of human life too far. It can result in the burning of old women as witches, the Westboro Baptist Church protesting military funerals, the burning of black churches in the Southern United States, and some of the very badness that the holy books generally forbid.
And, truthfully, you don’t have to believe to benefit from the existence of religions. You simply have to hope that believers don’t believe too hard and pass judgements they’re not entitled to prosecute.
Advertising on E-Bay Ignorantly
You are probably not going to believe this, but there are certain things you simply cannot safely sell on E-Bay. My first good novel, Catch a Falling Star, took years to write. The research, interviews with survivors, fighting off remaining alien invaders left behind when the Telleron invasion failed, and clean-up of sites and inconvenient witnesses took at least from 1990 to 2012. And then, as part of my marketing-by-blogging strategy for the book, I took a box of leftover skortch pistols and listed them for sale on E-Bay. They turned out to be a very popular item. It took the first skortch ray almost a year to sell for a measly five dollars. It was bought by a woman with a very annoying husband. She apparently bought the item as a joke, thinking it would not actually work as a molecular disintegration weapon. But after she surprised her husband with it and then posted the surprising results on Facebook, I quickly sold out the rest of the 26 pistols in the box and made almost $800. I am told by concerned investigative reporters that crotchety old men, ugly wives, and particularly Dennis-the-Menace-like kids were disappearing all across the Midwest. I also learned that one skortch ray pistol came into the hands of a Republican political operative before the election in 2016. That fact may have accounted for the disappearances of large numbers of registered Democrats in both Michigan and Pennsylvania in the weeks before the election.
I wanted to inform you that I may have done something stupid on E-Bay. Therefore I am re-posting the drawing I did of Studpopper the Telleron demonstrating the firing of an example skortch pistol created by Zillokahsitter Industries on Telleri Prime with Sylvani technology. If you should see one of these in the hands of a spouse that thinks you are grumpy too much of the time, I would suggest an almost instantaneous program of self-improvement. And if you see one in the hands of someone in a red MAGA baseball cap, immediately put on your own red hat and say something inordinately stupid so they will assume you are one of them, and hope they skortch themselves by accident before they get around to skortching you.
Sorry about that. I should’ve thought this whole thing through more carefully beforehand.
Filed under aliens, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Catch a Falling Star 