Every day has its own badness.
Enough to sour the milk.
But if you put your rollerskates on,
Wool sweaters start to feel like silk.
And the rolling life goes up and down,
And you’ll probably have some spills,
But do not take the rollerskates off…
It’s worth it for the thrills.
This is a repost of a classic bit… A post written by my dog using her tongue to lick-type. I offer this now nostalgically because she left us behind for dog heaven a year ago.
Okay, like, my name is Jade Beyer. I know I look like a dog, but my family lets me be a people sometimes. They let me eat enough people food from their table to turn into one of them. You know, like, all fat and unhealthy and some stuff. So, since Mickey is being lazy today, he said I could write his blog for him. It won’t be very long because it is taking forever to pick out the right keys with my nose. And my nose is bif… I mean big enough to hit the wrong key sometimes. So I have to edif caretully and ofren.
My family does a lot of funny stuff I can tell about. Like how they pee. They go in my extra drinking places. You know, the white things with the extra funky tasting water. Why are you not laughing about that? Don’t you get it? The house is full of carpets where they could pee and mark their territory with their scents. But they would rather just pee where I drink. I don’t get it. And why is Mickey yelling at me that I can’t write about that? I just did, didn’t I?
But besides that I can tell you about my Momma. Mickey is my Momma. Why do I say that even though Mickey is a man? Well, when I was a wee little puppy and my family found me in the street, Mickey was the first one to pick me up and hold me. He was the first one to feed me. He says I must have “imprinted” on him as baby animals sometimes do. And that’s why he’s my Momma. I love him best. Even when he is grumpy and mad at me. I chew up a lot of his stuff because it smells like him and I love him so very much.
I am writing this today because Mickey is busy shaving off his face fur. He found some old pictures of himself for yesterday’s post, and it made him wonder if he could look anything like that again. I tried to chew the old pictures so I could love them even better, but he just got mad at me and swatted me on the ears. He said I could show you the old pictures, and not eat them. So here they are before the temptation gets to me;
Wasn’t he a goofy-looking kid? I like him better with glasses. I tasted his glasses once, but not the ones in the picture, the ones he is wearing now. His face doesn’t look anything like the third grade pictures any more. I would very much like to lick that little-boy face with the same tongue I use to lick my own butt, but Mickey says he’s glad I can’t because that kid was dumb enough to let a dog lick his face. Apparently when people get older, you just can’t lick them as much. It just makes them grumpy.
Filed under family dog, humor, Paffooney
Chances are… I could wear a foolish grin, like a Johnny Mathis Moon in the sky…
I could waltz… all alone in a dark room, never seizing on the chances to fly…
But there’s a time… meant to let the summer in…
And love songs… all make me wonder… Why?
Silly, I know. But silly and surreal is how I go, how I deal with the time. A song in my head leads to rhythm and metaphor and rhyme. And it takes me from old winter and the waning of the moon… to the silly month of June… And my dancing shoes were never quite so spry.
Chances are… if you really read this, you will know I am depressed.
My life is all unfairly messed.
And I barely can get dressed…
To go tripping cross the floor, dancing awkwardly toward the door, ’cause I’m in need of so much more.
But in a poem I find it… the very reason that I rhymed it… like the crooning song that’s stuck in my old head…
I will catch it, and I’ll bind it, like a fool who hopes you’ll find it, and the treasure will be revealed before we’re dead…
Chances are… that you hear that silly tune, as it reels across the page in silent spread. And the song will slowly stop, as I dance a final hop, and the answer is brightly shining in my head.
Filed under Depression, feeling sorry for myself, finding love, healing, humor, magic, music, Paffooney, poetry
I’m a Mickey, yes, indeedy…
Foopty-Hoopty-Hoodilly-Hoo!
Chicken-ninja throwing stars,
Hit their targets thrown from Mars…
Foopty-Hoodilly-Hee
And when the pandas drive their cars,
Their tire treads are candy bars!
Take that truth from me!
Foopty-Hoopty-Fiddly-Ho!
Being a Mickey is a rabbity thing…
As if it were Bugs who taught us to sing,
And unmusical music we all start to bring…
Because we use only the words that we know!
Foopty-Hoodilly-Fling-a-ding-Ding!
Filed under goofy thoughts, humor, Mickey, Paffooney, Paffooney cartoony, poetry, rabbit people
Today’s essay was inspired by Annette Funicello’s Facebook page. I was marveling at how a teen idol and Disney child star could have such a large following and leave such large footprints on social media when she is not only all grown out of her child-stardom, but is actually quite dead. I, however, who am technically still alive, work very very hard at this author-self-promotion-thingy, and I hardly make any headway at all in the ocean of the internet. So, I did what I always do when faced with the imponderables of this writing life. I drew a picture. I drew Annette naked. Well, that’s not entirely accurate either. I put clothes on her because, well, young-adult-genre authors don’t always have to think like a teenager.
You see, I am not mad at Annette. And my hormones no longer control the other things that once made me deeply regret the fact that Disney never let Annette appear in movies in a bikini, even in the movies that were not Disney movies. When you’re twelve, there are different priorities than when you are 68. Hormones don’t do all of my thinking any more… at least, that’s what I tell my wife.
And part of what I still love most about Annette is the music. The Mickey Mouse Club was always about talented kids. They could sing and dance and play the drums, and they were as easily professional quality as many of the adults… and cuter to boot. Talented children have been a significant portion of my life. As an English teacher in middle school, I taught kids that were Annette’s MMC age. I taught them how to write and how to read, and occasionally I had to find other talents to promote and help those kids become winners in the great game of life. And, it may be cruel to say it bluntly, but some kids are downright ugly. Not merely ugly in terms of what they looked like, but how they acted and how they thought and how they felt about things. Racism runs deeply through children who’ve been taught thoroughly by parents before the teacher even meets them. Sometimes you have to dig around really deeply in the black pits of their personalities to find something bright and shiny enough to put the spotlight on. But it is always worth it. ALL CHILDREN HAVE TREASURE BURIED INSIDE THEM. And it deeply hurts that too many adults in every community can’t be bothered to dig for it.
I grafted a background on my picture of Annette to stress the fact that she is not naked in my picture. She was a very public figure and a good portion of her personal treasure was that screen personality that showed through and sparkled in every role. My favorite Annette piece is the movie Babes in Toyland, which I saw for the first time at Grandma Beyer’s house in Mason City on her color TV. The songs from that movie still play in my dreams.
“In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” a very bad thing for the Native Americans it turned out, and in 1942 Hitler threatened the Jews of the world with annihilation at a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast in January of that year. 1942 and 1492. What does it mean that my house number is 2914 Arkady Street? Who is doomed to die?
Don’t you think I know how crazy that is? Numbers can’t possibly mean something like that. Can they? But all my life I have been plagued by a confluence of numerological signs and connected meanings. And I don’t think I am alone. Perhaps it is even a fairly common mental disorder. Triskaidekaphobia is an irrational fear of the number 13. And Friggatriskaidekaphobia is fear of Friday the 13th. Is this a rational fear? Maybe it was for the Knights Templar, because on Friday the 13th in 1307 Philip IV, King of France arrested virtually all the Knights, confiscating their fortunes and torturing them, then putting them to death after forcing them to confess to blasphemies. And this was not the origin of the superstition. There were 13 people present at the feast of Passover in the Upper Room on Nisan 13 (of the Hebrew calendar), the day before Jesus was executed on Good Friday. When the 13th person left the other 12, that person was Judas Iscariot. Either numbers do have consequences, or the world is just as crazy as I am.
Okay, so it’s the latter. The world is just as crazy as I am. But it is not all bad and dark omens. I was born during a blizzard in Mason City, Iowa in 1956. In 1985, the car I was driving had the mileage meter roll over to the point that the last four digits readable were 1956. That same day I made love to a woman for the first time in my life. I kept watching the odometer. In 1994 the last four digits (in a different car) rolled to 1956 on the way home from a date at the Pizza Hut in Pearsall, Texas. The woman I had dated married me the next January in 1995 and the first four digits turned to 1956 nine months later on the day my oldest son was born.
And Douglas Adams fans like me all know that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42. This magic number is revealed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy that has more than three books in it. Do I actually believe there is anything to this numerology claptrap? Are we connected to the universe by numbers and equations through science, particularly physics? Do numbers have mystical values that can be interpreted for our own benefit? No. Yes. And maybe, I just don’t know for sure yet. I believe in magic. But I also believe in science. Equations measure reality, but only through words can we define it. Did I make you laugh? Did I reveal myself to be totally bonkers? Did I make you actually think? Again… No. Yes. And maybe, I just don’t know for sure yet. Unfortunately, there were 513 words in this essay… so I added this extra sentence.
Filed under autobiography, humor, Paffooney
Mark Twain had a lot to say about lying. Like in this quote from Following the Equator ; Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar; “There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
Now, I would have to agree with the Biblical admonition against lying to get the people you dislike thrown into prison or beheaded. I am especially concerned with some of the false witness pooping out of the mouths of some presidential candidates that would like us to believe their anti-science, anti-climate change, and anti-immigration lies would make good laws for our country. If they go with Donald Trump’s idea of taking away birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants, then my three children will lose their citizenship and could be deported from the only country they have lived in. After all, after twenty years of marriage and applications and legal fees and enough frustration to make her give up on the whole idea, my wife is still not an American citizen. She is from the Philippines, and Filipinos are one of the main groups that politicians site as reason for taking automatic citizenship away from foreign-born marriage mates back in the 1980’s. And if we truly believe that climate change is a hoax and disproven by having Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe bring a snowball into the senate chamber, I believe we are all going to fry in Venus-like atmospheric conditions (Venus is 400 degrees Centigrade on the surface due to rampant greenhouse gasses like those emitted by the factories of Senator Inhofe’s primary campaign donors). Some lies have fatal consequences, (and also, apparently, got Senator Inhofe the chairmanship of the Senate Science Committee).
But not all lies are bad lies. Twain also says; “In all lies there is wheat among the chaff…”
– A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
And; “The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man’s best and surest friend is immortal.”
– “On the Decay of the Art of Lying”
So I have actually started to think that the lies not forbidden by the Bible because of their fatal consequences are actually all good things, and not bad. Yesterday in a post about talking to stupid people, I suggested that you should tell them lies about how you care about them and want the best for them, and you should lie about it so hard that you believe in the lies yourself. After all, story-tellers like me tell nothing but lies. My made-up stories are based on real events and people, and reveal real perceived truths about life, but they are basically nothing but lies. This essay is a lie. I was brought up in Iowa to be truthful and always tell the truth… and that was repeatedly reinforced by religious training from every church I ever attended. And yet, the more I tried to tell the truth, the more I realized that I could never say anything that was not a lie. Think about it, what is there in all the factual things that you know that you can actually prove is true? “I think, therefore I am,” (a quote from Rene Descartes) is the only thing anyone has ever said that I can prove by my own perceptions. Every scientific theory is constantly reviewed for lies and untruth and inaccuracy so that they can be revised for something better that is also not ultimately provably true in every detail. It is entirely possible that everything else truly is a lie, and then the whole universe, science, physics, logic, and everything is basically untrue.
So, what do I do? Anything I say is a lie. Some of the lies are hurtful, even deadly. So I have to be careful about those lies. I should fight against those lies. But the lies that make our existence in life meaningful and full of hope and mystery… I have to let those lies live, and even learn to do them artfully.
“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”
– Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain.
Yes, yes, I know it is supposed to be Ray Bradbury, not berry. But now that the master has gone, I don’t want to think of him as bury which is too grave a term. He was a master of metaphor and rhythm and image in writing. His work is much more berry-flavored, and if you really intensively read a novel like Dandelion Wine, you can very easily get drunk on the richly fermented contents of his beautiful writing.
Mental Pie
I’d like to offer you a piece of my mind,
Though not a lecture, rant, or complaint,
But rather a piece of mental pie.
Its taste will be very sweet, you will find,
As I’m constantly thinking in ink and paint,
That gives you wings and allows you to fly.
You see, I think the literary mind does not have to sink to mundane and dark and dreary thoughts and ideas to accomplish lofty goals. Often it is the special dollop of sugary metaphorical conceit that makes a Ray Bradbury or Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut to soar through the astral plane of ideas. I know that’s cartoony thinking, and somewhat loony besides, but I am often frustrated when it seems that the only “realism” modern readers and audiences accept is what is gritty and bloody and depressingly painful. Oh, I get it. Douglas nearly dies in the course of Dandelion Wine. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Billy Pilgrim all suffer as much as we laugh in order to make their points in the novels they inhabit. But the misfortune makes the moment of taking flight that much sweeter. And it is in the language. The loving description of everyday things and everyday events that become extraordinary through extra-close examination. Sometimes silliness and humor and logical reason are not enough, and we have to speak in poetry. We put in metaphors as peaches and plums. Sensory details are raspberries and strawberries. Sing-song rhythms and elegant pacing makes the batter whole and delicious. And I know this whole post makes no earthly sense. But sometimes you write for earthly reasons… and sometimes you try to reach heaven. That is what Ray Bradberry Pie is made of.
While the Republican President continues to shoot his mouth off… and sometimes shoot his own foot off… or put his foot in his mouth and shoot both off… (Dang! See what you get for being too friendly with the NRA, Republicans?) I decided to track down the mythical creature that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Jesse Watters… (no, that last one is not smart enough to know who I am going to name) constantly warn is the socialist-communist-terrorist-really-bad-guy behind everything President Obama and liberals do, Saul Alinsky.
You see, I have been battling the evil Bond villain Badfinger for days now. He has been exercising his evil on my more Republican and conservative Facebook friends for a while. They have been posting up a storm of crap about how terrible Obama is, the Biden Crime Family, and how false climate change is, and how we should not try to lift up the poor by tearing down the rich… things that sound suspiciously like talking points on Fox News where they mention Saul Alinsky a lot. (Yes, I do watch Fox News sometimes. It is always on at my favorite A&W in Lewisville. And besides, sometimes it is therapeutic to induce vomiting when you’ve had too much poison and disrespect.)
Boy, Saul Alinsky sounds like a real monster! But if Saul Alinsky really said this, and he really is a socialist, why do so many of these sound so much like fascist/capitalist ideas? The kind of control they are urging is what appears to me to be the thing that would benefit fat-cat oligarchs and rich-old-guy control freaks. So I turned to Wikipedia to learn more about this evil, very evil guy. (I know, Wikipedia is discredited because it is edited and referenced by the people who use it… but a source that is factually checked and edited daily can sometimes be more accurate than the rarely updated articles in Encyclopedia Brittanica.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
Wikipedia says that he was a Jewish-American community organizer and writer. (Red flags have to go up for Republicans for that alone.) And worse yet he was focused on improving the lives of poor people in American cities, particularly black people. He was working with black people in ghettos in New York City, Detroit, and other notable “trouble spots” in the 1950’s. How did he avoid the wrath of righteous commie hunters like Senator Joe McCarthy doing a work like that? Oh, wait a minute… It says in the article that William F. Buckley praised him as an “organizational genius”. How did he avoid prison after being endorsed by a commie like that? Um, right?
His book, Rules for Radicals, begins like this; “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”
There’s the damning evidence right there. He means to punish the wealthy and the greedy and the powerful by taking away some of their excess and giving it to the powerless who are starving and suffering from want. No communist except maybe… Jesus Christ… could have proposed anything more radical and perverse.
And look at some of the terrible methods he used. He once used what he called a “fart in” to disrupt rich folks’ sensibilities at the Rochester Philharmonic concert in Rochester, New York. He organized a group of classical-music-loving radicals to eat huge quantities of baked beans, then go to the concert and intentionally alter the atmosphere for rich patrons of the arts. That will either bring down Western Civilization as we know it, or make somebody die laughing. You can’t get much more evil than that, can you?
When asked whether he hadn’t actually considered joining the Communist Party, Alinsky responded like this; “Not at any time. I’ve never joined any organization—not even the ones I’ve organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it’s Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.”
Man, oh, man! I owe such a debt to my conservative Facebook friends for exposing this monster to me. I didn’t know what Fox News was ranting about until now. I now believe this evil Saul Alinsky may actually be worthy of respect. They may have actually reinforced my loony liberal belief that the American Government exists to better the lives of all its citizens. It has definitely opened my eyes to the dangers of…thinking like a Republican.
Truthfully, I have always expected the worst out of life. That expectation has never let me down. In fact, it has made me a much happier person. “How is that possible, you dim-witted dolt?” you ask. Well, just as Franklin said it. I am never taken unpleasantly by surprise. In 1983, when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, skin cancer, I prepared myself to die at 27. But I was pleasantly surprised. I not only survived, but it was completely eradicated by surgery. No chemotherapy. No recurrence. No more cancer worries (beyond assuming each and every mole I had removed after that point in my life was melanoma revisited). I can now celebrate 42 years of being cancer-free.
Watching politics as a humorous hobby benefits greatly from a pessimistic outlook. I just assumed that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would win the Presidency in 2016, and I prepared for that dismal dip into depressing gloom. If Rodeo Clown Bush the Sequel had been elected, or Scott Walker got the nod, the more likely scenarios, I would have been pleasantly relieved and surprised, even though I would still have been expecting the ultimate heat-death of the planet to come from those administrations. If Marco Rubio got the nod, better still. He’s kinda young for a senator and stupid, but he’s demonstrated that he does care at least a little bit about the common man, and he doesn’t really want us all to die. He’s even demonstrated the ability to learn from mistakes. And if a Democrat had won, especially Bernie Sanders, that would have been a repeat of the marvelous surprise we all got in 2008 from the election of Professor Obama, man of the people. Of course, the worst happened, and the evil Pumpkinhead won in both 2016 and 2024. I will be preparing for the world to end after this next election, but there is actually a higher percentage chance of survival and limited suffering. After all, people, even the mega-polluters in China and India, have recognized the need to try to repair the planet.
I was, honestly, as a pessimist, expecting to be dead before the new school year started in 2015. So I was pleasantly surprised to be able to start a new collection of morning-dog-walk sunrise pictures. I am prepared and at peace with the world because I always expect the worst to happen. Looking at everything from the dark side is ironically the way to find the light and hope in the new day dawning directly ahead.
Catch a Falling Star 