Category Archives: Paffooney
Why I Wear a Tinfoil Hat
You know by now if you have read what I’ve written, or been around me when people make the mistake of letting me talk about what I want to talk about, that I am a kook. Yes, I believe things that you have been told that only crazy people believe. Why would you want to read any more of that nonsense now? Because it is true and it will impact our future.
I came into a wealth of secret knowledge when I wrote and published my first good novel, Catch a Falling Star. Of course, like most of the things you research on the internet, ninety-nine per cent of everything is big, black rubber hoo-haw lies. I researched a lot of things that I have always been fascinated by, but specifically I investigated UFO phenomenon. I already followed author Stanton Friedman and knew who Bob Lazar was before starting my research, but I wanted to dig deeper and find the truth. My novel, after all, is about close encounters of the third, fourth, and fifth kinds… including an invisible invasion of Earth from outer space. I wanted to portray such events as alien contact and alien abduction as realistically as possible. But then I found stuff like the Disclosure Project headed by Doctor Steven Greer. Did you know he has been collecting eye-witness and whistle-blower information in written and video form since the 1990’s and presenting it to members of congress? There is an immense database of information about contact with UFO’s and the government’s response to it that can be cross-referenced and even corroborates itself. There comes a point at which eye-witness testimony, even loony-sounding testimony, has to be accepted when there is a preponderance of evidence.
The thing that makes the case most strongly for me is the provable amount of cover-up and misdirection that the government has applied to this body of knowledge. They are still doing it. NASA footage and photographic records are open to the public and available online. Lots of people have examined the wealth of evidence very closely and have found things that the government apparently overlooked. There are also an even more impressive number of identified re-touched and faked photos of the Moon and Mars and especially the Earth from space. Things have been removed so that we the people will not see. Some nut-cases even believe we never actually went to the moon. Some of the moon footage and photos are provably fake. (But you can also spot the landing sites of the Apollo missions on the surface of the moon with some of the very good telescopes available now… The proof of our moon landings is there. The stuff was redacted and faked for different reasons… a different cover-up.)
So, why does this matter? Maybe we are better off being protected from this secret knowledge. We are too fragile to take it. There will be riots in the street and the economy will crash. We are safer being ignorant of all of this.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…no!
It’s time we were given the straight poop (because everybody hates crooked poop… at least they should.) Our world is dying from pollution and global warming, yet the alien technology can provide clean, free energy. Rich people are exploiting the poor and the middle class and so much suffering occurs that doesn’t have to happen if we embrace the potential for taking our place in a galactic community that apparently already exists and that we are excluded from solely on the basis of how dangerous our own ignorance makes us.
Bringing the Hammer Down… Making Humor out of Everyday Stuff
No, I am not going to write about violent ways to acquire a trophy wife. Dewey’s courtship methods do not work in a world fairly far removed from the Middle Ages, and Dewey the Goon is a cartoon villain anyway. This post is going to simply be another in a long list of posts where I bend ideas like pretzels in order to justify the spurious claim that this is a humor blog, and therefore, I can truthfully claim to know how to write something funny.
It can be argued that somebody like me can’t possibly be a writer of good humor simply because I am too gosh-dang smart. (And those of my friends who use this particular criticism on me, tend to actually use country-bumpkinisms like “gosh-dang” way more often than is considered merely foolish.) I admit to using multi-syllable complex words to sound funny because they sound like boobly-doobly-doo gibberish to listeners who have no idea what a word like “bumpkinisms” actually means. And I might add, the listeners don’t usually go to an Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged) simply to be able to laugh at a big word.
I recognize that being an intellectual and having a head full of proven-but-useless facts is actually a disability. You can’t talk to anybody and be fully understood. Talking to somebody who can’t make logical connections between ideas is like walking over a wooden bridge built by an idiot who doesn’t know how nails work… and there are sharks in the water under the bridge. People will pigeonhole you as a “nerd” and treat you like your intelligence makes you radioactive.
So, the logical conclusion is… to be funny you have to act dumber than you actually are.
This man is trying to write humor using chemistry. Beware! He is likely to blow you up if you hang out with him!
Humor can be volatile. Sometimes it insults people. Sometimes it shocks you with things you should be outraged by, but you see the irony and laugh instead. (Preferably without needing someone to throw a steam iron at your head in order to make you see the irony.)
It is probably inappropriate to suggest that kids should go to school naked. Even parents would make other parents uncomfortable by suggesting such a thing. But as a former teacher, I can tell you that most middle school and high school kids are naked in school almost all of the time. Of course, not literally. They are metaphorically naked. Not capable of keeping anything personal a secret. Most of them would never want people to see them literally naked. But they go to great lengths to show you their emotionally naked selves. You can’t keep them from doing it.
And seeing kids emotionally naked is mostly an uncomfortably icky thing for mature adults to contemplate. But teachers have to deal with it. That’s why so few good teachers let themselves become mature adults.
By this point, if you are still reading, you are probably saying to yourself. “Mickey, you are just recycling the same old pictures and lame jokes.”
You got me. That’s what the stand-up comics all do. They tell the same set of jokes over and over, only changing the city they are telling them in.
So, now you know the truth. Writing humor is hard. And most of us who practice it are only pretending that we know what we are doing. You have to be smart, but pretend you are dumb. You have to shock and offend your audience, but only to the point of making them laugh, and never reaching the point where they all grab torches and pitchforks.
So, there it is. Today’s humor post. I said a bunch of things I should not have said. So, rotten tomatoes in the comments are expected. And, please, no pitchforks. I do not know how getting a pitchfork into an internet comment is possible, but I do know that there are Trolls out there with some real skills.
Filed under comedians, football, humor, Paffooney, writing humor
It’s Not Easy Being Green
It’s not easy being green…. the color of so many ordinary things…
Especially as you grow older.
Because green is the color of growth and youth and life. But those things seem beyond the grasp of your outstretched fingers on your spotty and wrinkled old hand.
I am definitely no longer green like Littlebit, the Oceanian ship’s boy from the seas of Talislanta and the pirate ship, Black Dragon.
And, yes, an Iowa boy living as far away from an ocean as you can get in the United States, in all directions, you are bound to dream of pirate ships and the high seas, especially when you’re twelve and your favorite book is Treasure Island.
But now that you are old, green is more often your color because you don’t feel well… again… every day….
But there is still bright green in dreams.
You can still go there and be a child again in memories and your imagination.
It’s just that now the green is written down in sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and cantos.
And talking to your kids about movies, art and artists, stories and writers of stories…
Did you know the favorite color of all three of my children is green?
I have known it since they were small and I could sing to them songs by Kermit the Frog, like “Rainbow Connections” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
And with paint, you make green by combining the blue of sadness with the yellow of sunshine and happiness.
And it’s not easy being green…
But it’s beautiful…
And it’s what I want to be.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, coloring, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, poetry
He Rose on a Golden Wing… Canto 9
Chopin – Nocturne in E Flat Major (Op. 9 No. 2)
Dilsey Murphy made her way back to Val’s usual seat on the bus the first thing in the morning. Usually Valerie rode to school of a morning with Ricky in his hand-me-down Ford Fiesta, but he had football practice after school on Mondays through Thursdays. So, Val was available to sit with Dilsey on a cold Tuesday morning in October.
“Hello, Dils. Something the matter?”
“It’s Blueberry. She’s sick this morning. Not going to school like usual.”
“How’s Mike taking it? Worried?”
Mike Murphy was Dilsey’s younger brother. Blueberry Bates was his eighth-grade lady love. They were always together like salt and pepper shakers on a restaurant table.
“He’s devastated. The Bates sisters took Blue to the emergency room last night. She’s in the hospital now.”
“Oh, that’s terrible! We’ll have to go visit her as soon as possible.”
“She’s not conscious. Maybe a coma…”
Dilsey sat down next to Valerie and the first thing Val did was put an arm around her and pull her in close. Dilsey laid her head on Val’s shoulder. Tears followed.
It’s funny how things work in real life. Not so long ago it was Val in tears, laying her head on Mary Philips’ shoulder. Then Mary had been the actual leader of the Norwall Pirates, the infamous liars’ club. But when Mary was going away to college, she didn’t turn to any of the boys to lead the club. She asked Valerie to do it. And then Val shouldered the responsibility until she finally handed the leadership of the infamous werewolf chasers and undead wizard whackers off to her cousin, the Terrible Timothy.
“Is it enough just to hold you like this? Or is there something you wanna talk about?”
“Holding me helps. Did I tell you I kissed him?”
“On your date?”
“Yeah. After the movie.”
“That’s sweet. But don’t let him take advantage of you.”
“I know… he’s a boy. And he tells a lot of lies.”
“Big ones… black in color… with hair on them… and sometimes spider legs.”
Through the tears, Dilsey chuckled at “spider legs.”
“But he has a good heart.”
“He does. You know he was pretty awful to Blueberry about the whole transgender thing, though.”
“Yeah. Blue has never really been a boy. But it was hard for him to accept that when he found out she was born with a penis.”
“Empathy for others was never something he was good at.”
“The Bates sisters convinced him though. They showed him the x-rays that showed that Blue also had malformed ovaries. She was only a boy on the outside part.”
“I didn’t know that. I always thought she just needed to be a girl that badly.”
“Do you think it’s easier to be a boy than it is to be a girl?” Dilsey looked up at Val and the tears were gone.
“I suppose it is to be your brother Danny. He always sees the funny side of everything and life is mostly one big joke to him.”
“Yeah, but my brother Mike is the opposite. He takes things way too seriously. He fights with Mom more than any of the rest of us. And he really loves Blue, even though he tells me how much he struggles to understand her most of time. Mom couldn’t force him to go to school today because Blue is in the hospital.”
“Mike is a gallant young man. You’re right. It must be harder to be him than it is to be either of us.”
“I wouldn’t want to be Tim either. It has to be hard to be that smart and that imaginative all the time.”
“I suppose you’re right. More than half of all the weird things the Pirates have done over the years happened because of what was going on in Tim’s evil brain.”
“His brain’s not evil, Val. He has a good brain.”
“Sure he does. And it’s a fine thing for you to admire him for it. I just say things like that ‘cause… you know… cousins.”
“Sure. It’s just like me saying brothers.”
“You know, Dils, it’s a good thing to be able to talk like this. Me and two former Pirates have started meeting down at the skinny-dipping pond. It might be good to have another girl there.”
“Really? Who are the other two?”
“Ricky Porter and Billy Martin.”
“Oh, uh… I don’t really know them.”
“Well, if you come along with me next time, you’ll get to know them better. It could be good for all of us. Some of us have problems with depression and it helps to be able to talk about anything and everything with people who will at least try to understand.”
“Yeah. That might be good.”
“I will get in touch with you for the next time.”
“Yeah, um… okay.”
The two girls sat together in silence for the last couple of miles to Belle City High School. It felt good to hold somebody like Dilsey. She was warm and soft and good to be near. And when they left the bus together, Valerie felt like now she was the wise older girl, while Dilsey had taken Val’s former place as the apprentice. She would be happy to pass on all the things she learned from Mary when she was younger. In fact, it felt like a real important responsibility.
Filed under battling depression, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Writer’s Block
I have always contended that I don’t have writer’s block. But some days, especially if I am not feeling well, I have writer’s lethargy. I can be slow to come up with the next thing. Writing can become bogged down and I am easily distracted or lose focus and have to return to what I was trying to do previously.
There is evidence that I have often had that kind of problem frequently on this blog. One thing I do to overcome writer’s lethargy is suddenly start thinking about how you can overcome writer’s block. What are the strategies that help me overcome it?
I often resort to “kickstart statements.” These are surprising or deep-left-field items that give the old brain a shot of adrenaline. The picture of the girl with the message blackboard is that kind of kickstarter. I never could have used that thing in any kind of social-media post when I was still employed as a teacher. It has the potential to generate parent complaints and administrative thoughts about evaluations and contract cancellations. But there really are kids who have thoughts like that in your classroom, and I know because not only was I a kid like that myself, I used it as an optional journal topic for writing practice, and, boy! do they ever catch fire when they can write about something like that and they know only the teacher is ever going to read it. It is the way I learned how many of my students had ever been to a nude beach in Corpus Christi or Lake Travis (Hippy Hollow.)
I can also look around the room, or scroll through my media library on WordPress and find an image or an item that generates ideas, responses, and even stories. I scrolled through to find this image of the Gummi Bear, who was a brief internet sensation on YouTube a few years ago coming from German CGI cartoons that illustrated earworm music with dancing green gummy bears. There’s a lot a goofy writer like me can run away with inspired by a nonsense thing like that.
It is also possible to generate new ideas by deconstructing a metaphor in as humorous and convoluted a way as possible. This word-food thing is the result of writer’s lethargy of a while back.
Of course, there is always the ranting factor. This, I think, is a go-to method used by stand-up comedians. They will pick something that is deeply bugging them, like the rats that inhabit my attic and walls during a winter that hasn’t yet completely gone. And they start listing all the ways they can make funny stories about the time the rat appeared on the bathroom floor tiles while my daughter was on the toilet, or the time the dog killed a rat that was in the trap already, but not dead enough not to bite back with the dog’s nose conveniently within the reach of rat teeth. And then they can rant onward about how disgusting rats are. And how can anyone look at a rat face and think they are cute? You look at that evil, beady-eyed face and you don’t think Mickey Mouse, you think plague, disease, the Black Death, and how much the Bank of America lawyer who sued you looks just like that.
So, you can see that generating ideas is easy. And you can write something interesting even on days when you can’t think of anything … quickly. When you have, not writer’s block, but writer’s lethargy.
Filed under angry rant, autobiography, comedians, humor, insight, inspiration, Paffooney, writing, writing humor, writing teacher
Pictures to Think About
The 400th Straight Day of Consecutive Posts
Mickey has actually done this once before. An entire years’ worth of consecutive days of posting on WordPress, plus 35 more days, now for the second time. A lot of writing. A lot of blathering about this and that. A lot of fishing for ideas… and catching an occasional shark… and an occasional angelfish. And drawing stuff.
What exactly is all this nonsense for?
Well, several important things.
My blog is definitely a place for self-reflection, a space for thinking about who I am, what I am doing, and… most importantly, why. After all, I am now on Medicare, and probably in the last handful of years of my life. I am in poor health. I paid off five years worth of Chapter 13 bankruptcy. It is good to be out of debt. But that is temporary if I accidentally survive a heart attack or stroke.
I have to come to terms with where I am in life. Every new day is precious, a gift I am not taking lightly.
I have a blog also simply for the practice of being a writer and writing every day. You can’t get better at a skill you don’t practice. And as I am now retired from the vocation I was born to do, I don’t use my writing skill to teach children in middle school or high school English classes anymore. I can, however, write stories about all the things children taught me over the years, and end up with some books that will, hopefully, provide future reading teachers something to use in junior high and high school to teach reading skills.
And because I also have an interest in philosophy, I am fully accepting of the idea that life has no meaning unless we give it meaning ourselves. As a Christian Existentialist, I endeavor to create what I believe is the true meaning of my existence. And I am constantly reevaluating that meaning on a daily basis in this blog, and also in my stupid head.
Of course, now that I am retired and no longer risking getting fired for expressing myself online as someone who likes nudity and doesn’t find naked people morally offensive, I can write about being a nudist. Even when I am not joking about believing nudism is a good thing.
And when I am joking, as a writer fond of writing humor, I don’t have to worry about offending anybody or alienating anybody. Countless conservatives, prudes, Trump-lovers, and evil bank executives have already blocked me, unfollowed me, shunned me in public, and sued me into bankruptcy (evil bankers did that last one.) So, I am free to exercise my right of free speech and my offbeat sense of humor. In this blog, I mean. If you do it on street corners, they throw things at you. And bankers might sue you.
And so, I have achieved 400-straight days of posting in this blog. For the second time. And that is a good thing. And if you don’t agree with that statement, feel free to unfollow me, block me, shun me…. but please don’t sue me. And, bankers, I already paid you off. So, don’t do it again.
Filed under announcement, autobiography, humor, Liberal ideas, Paffooney
Sudden Inspiration
I have been searching for a way to continue my Tuesday novel-writing posts with a novel different from my main work in progress. It sort-of solved the problem with a sudden realization that since fairies bewitched my novel-writing process in the making of The Necromancer’s Apprentice, I might as well pick up a thread from that novel.
PoppenSparkle is the character rescued from the dungeon in the previous book. She had absolutely no chance to shine in that book. Released from captivity by evil fairies, she is the sister of Derfentwinkle, a butterfly child, and gifted with wizard ability.
Every student wizard has to be assigned to a master wizard to learn the truth about magic. And Poppy was assigned to a real sour potato of a master.
It will be a story about a teacher and a student, and how they work out a way to get everything that each one needs from the other. It will give me a chance to do more world-building on the Fairy Kingdom of Tellosia. And more chances to create some teacher-comedy in a setting where I can create a lot of crazy stuff and draw more cartoons.
I may not get started for another couple of weeks yet, but the idea is growing by the hour.
Filed under announcement, fairies, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney
Nutzy Nuts
Things are not what they seem. Life throws curve balls across the plate ninety percent of the time. Fastballs are rare. And fastballs you can hit are even rarer. But if Life is pitching, who is the batter? Does it change the metaphor and who you are rooting for if the batter is Death?
If you think this means that I am planning on dying because of the Coronavirus pandemic, well, you would be right. Of course, I am always planning for death with every dark thing that bounces down the hopscotch squares of the immediate future. That’s what it means to be a pessimist. No matter what bad thing we are talking about, it will not take ME by surprise. And if I think everything is going to kill me, sooner or later I have to be right… though, hopefully, much later.
I keep seeing things that aren’t there. Childlike faces keep looking at me from the top of the stairs, but when I focus my attention there, they disappear. And I know there are no children in the house anymore since my youngest is now legally an adult. And the chimpanzee that peeked at me from behind the couch in the family room was definitely not there. I swear, it looked exactly like Roddy McDowell from the Planet of the Apes movies, whom I know for a fact to be deceased. So, obviously, it has to be Roddy McDowell’s monkey-ghost. I believe I may have mentioned before that there is a ghost dog in our house. I often catch glimpses of its tail rounding the corner ahead of me when my own dog is definitely behind me. And I am sure I shared the facts before that Parkinson’s sufferers often see partial visions of people and faces (and apparently dogs) that aren’t really there, and that my father suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. So, obviously it is my father and not me that is seeing these things… He’s just using my eyeballs to do it with.
But… and this is absolutely true even if it starts with a butt… the best way to deal with scary possibilities is to laugh at them. Jokes, satire, mockery, and ludicrous hilarity expressed in big words are the proper things to use against the fearful things you cannot change. So, this essay is nothing but a can of mixed nutz. Nutzy nuts. And fortunately, peanut allergies are one incurable and possibly fatal disease I don’t have. One of the few.
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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, satire, wordplay