Category Archives: photo paffoonies

January 11, 2016 · 4:02 pm

Morning Has Broken

Today is off to a miserable start.  I heard on the radio that David Bowie has died.  Ziggy Stardust… the Goblin King… The Man Who Fell to Earth… the Thin White Duke…is gone.  And even though since high school in the 1970’s I have never been quite sure how I felt about his music, I wept.  The man was a musical maker of lyrical poetry.  He could make you feel really really terrible… but he always made you feel.  And he made me depressed as he led me through the Labyrinth… but he also made me soar… on the wings of a barn owl.  It was about facing the darkness and finding your way.   Finding the way out.  Singing the Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, but not actually singing it… making peace on Earth instead.  Sometimes things are just so weirdly beautiful it hurts.

I dropped my daughter off at her middle school, and then Jody Dean & the Morning Team played this on the radio.

I wept again.  Darkness is my old friend…  I have lived with and through depression after depression.  My own… my wife’s… my children’s…  And it is a miracle I have lived this long without succumbing to the Darkness.  It took Robin Williams.  It took Ernest Hemingway.  But somehow, the Goblin King always goaded me onward, to find the answer at the end of the Labyrinth.  “You… you have no power over me.”  And then I am okay once again.

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I captured the dawn once again this morning.  Once again I failed to truly ensnare the subtle reds and pinks and purples that were actually there.  But there it is, anyhow.  The morning has broken.  The blackbird has spoken.  The morning is new.

My heart is still sore this morning.  The dog didn’t help when she spilled the trash to get at the napkins with bacon grease on them.  We may have a dog-skin rug as a doormat later today.  But David Bowie left so many words and ideas behind to comfort me.  Is he one of those “neon gods we made”?  Of course he is.  But as the owl flutters off in the closing credits, we can take comfort in the knowledge that no one is ever really gone.  And we can always anticipate some… Serious Moonlight.

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January 7, 2016 · 3:47 pm

New Toys in 2016

Being a doll collector with an advanced case of hoarding disorder, I am always finding new stuff to buy.    And my mother made the mistake of giving me a gift card for Christmas.    Well, after-Christmas sales are started.  Toys that were mauled by Christmas shoppers are set out for clearance prices in slightly damaged boxes.  The opportunities are endless.

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I had thought my MLP collection was complete when I bought Fluttershy (on the left).  But I found Lemon Zest (the pink horse-girl with lemon-yellow eyes) for less than ten dollars.  Walmart is apparently trying to clear the shelves of the scourge of My Little Pony dolls that has infested them for about four years now.

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Kristoff from Frozen and Deerla from the Netflix thing called Happily Ever-After High School were both clearance items for slightly more than five dollars.

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Kristoff completes a Frozen set.  I can die happy now.

But maybe not just yet…

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I also found a twelve-inch PVC figure of Finn from the new Star Wars movie.  Is that the beginning of a new collection?  I guess I can’t die just yet.  And I am still happy.

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January 6, 2016 · 4:22 pm

New Dawns for 2016

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You may recall that one of my obsessive-compulsive collection-addictions is pictures of the dawn sky over eastern Carrollton and Dallas.  So far I have only taken two.  Through Sunday I was still sleeping late with no children to drop off at school.  Just so the numbers match, here is number two;

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So, why not three, you say?  Today is Wednesday after all?  Well, I can’t take a picture of the sunrise when it is overcast and threatening cold rain.  We may have our share of clouds on the horizon this year, with El Nino raging to the West and the jet stream dipping down to Mexico to deliver freezing Arctic blasts thanks to climate change.  Does that mean I expect bad things to be coming my way?  Of course I do.  I am old.  I have six incurable diseases, and I have survived cancer once already.  I am closer now to the day I will die than I have ever been in my life.  And now Donald Trump has the technical possibility of being elected President of the United States.  Who says Jehovah God and the Greek goddess of History don’t have bizarre senses of humor?

But despite the ill omens and the badness I anticipate, life is still good and will not be repressed.  I intend to live for all I am worth.  Have I not earned it, being a public school teacher for 31 years?  Have I not earned it by raising three wonderful kids, one of whom serves this country as a US Marine?  Have I not earned it by picking up dog poop in the park four times a day, and sometimes more off the carpet in the house for the last four years?  I believe in savoring what we have been granted, and using the gifts and abilities given to me by God.  That is why I am still blogging every day for the fourteenth month in a row.  And, miracle of miracles, I am not talking to the wind with no one really listening any more.  When I was blogging on Xanga from 2005 to 2007, I only had one or two followers that even read my stuff… and they didn’t tune in every day.  Some of you have started doing more than just looking at the pictures.  I have evidence in the comments that some of you read my posts all the way to the end.  I thought I was the only blogger that did that.  And I had 276 views last week.  349 the week before.  9651 people viewed my blog in 2015.   I have 87 views in just the three days of this week so far.  I can no longer claim to be the best-written blog that nobody ever reads.  I have to compete now with the other writers who write good stuff.  Ooh… I am doomed.  But I intend to enjoy it.  I have at least one novel in the works to be published.  I have another one already published that should be available at least on Amazon until well after I have curled up my toes and went for a final bye-bye.  Bad things are sure to happen.  But for now, the sun is still coming up every morning in my little world.

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January 5, 2016 · 3:35 pm

Grumpy Old Mike

My middle child, my son Henry, recently found an online source that said being grumpy is not as bad for your health as people think it is.  Bless his little black heart… everything on the internet is true, right?  But if it is true, it could be of benefit to me.  Mickey is not the only other me.  There is also grumpy old Mike.

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I recently wrote a poem about being grumpy.  A grumpy poet?  That could be a thing, right?  Here is what that poem looked like;

Grumpy (a poem about Grumpy life)

Dang it, you old grumpy man!

You annoy me as only a grumpy man can.

You grouse and growl and sometimes howl,

And pace the house like a cat on the prowl.

You worry me, weary me, and generally nasty be,

And of course you are… yes, you are… naturally me.

So why do you worry me, weary me, moan and make bother,

Now that you’re old, and you sound like your father?

Because you are cranky now, creaky with age,

And know you now, soon, the book’s turning its page.

And, though you complain, you do love your life,

And, loathe you will leave it, and your sweet-smiling wife.

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Yes, I come by grumpiness naturally.  It is a function of constant, nagging pain from arthritis and constant struggles with low blood sugar from diabetes.  And things go so wonderfully well all the time…

Like yesterday.  It was the first day after winter break, and so, since I hadn’t heard otherwise, I thought the kids had school.  And they go to two different schools at two different times.  So, I got up and cooked bacon for breakfast.  Wife and daughter both ate happily and only complained a little bit that the bacon was too burnt and the hash browns apparently got freezer burn in the freezer.  Then wife reminded me to check to be sure Henry actually had school before I took him.  She got in her car and took off for the school where she teaches.  Then, daughter and I got into the car and I dropped her off at her middle school.  Mere minutes later she called me on her new cell phone and told me that it was a teacher work day and no school for her after all.  So, I picked her up again.  So, grumbling and rumbling only a little bit, because why didn’t wifey tell me it was a work day only?  And then I checked on Henry’s school website.  Their last day of vacation was listed as Friday, January 1st.  That meant they did have school, right?  So I drove him all the way there in Lewisville.  There was only one other student there.  And the door was locked.  Then a principal told Henry that it wasn’t a class day.  Why couldn’t they have posted it on their screwy @#$%! website.  So, I went home again with the boy, and consoled myself that at least we did not have to do the afternoon pick-me-up-from-school tango with DFW area traffic.

This morning my wife got a good laugh at my expense.  After complaining about the slightly burnt sausages I made, I was told in no uncertain terms that I should be humble about making mistakes and not get mad when people laugh at my follies.  That was not fire coming out of my ears.  Honest, it was not.  I put on a happy grin.  But I was told it was a sarcastic smile at best, and I should stop it.  So I stopped it.  I probably won’t smile again today.  I bought a chocolate doughnut from QT, and I wrote about grumpiness as I ate it.  It helped.  I tried to find my son’s article about the health benefits of grumpiness, but, failing that, I found this article;

http://goodlifezen.com/17-sure-fire-ways-to-overcome-grumpiness/

So grumpy old Mike needs to go away now, and leave me alone.  Better days are coming.  And today the kids really are in school.

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December 26, 2015 · 4:31 pm

Roses at Christmas Time

When bad things happen, we can usually make something good out of them.  I have always believed this.  It is Midwestern pragmatism in action.  Hail destroyed the crops?  Martial your resources for the next growing season, or change from a farmer to something else more profitable.  There is always a way forward, even if you have to learn to be tougher and tighten the belt, or next year’s food supply depends on the farmer in the next county.  Global warming is threatening to cook us in our own juices?  Well, this year our confused roses in the yard are blooming like it was Springtime.  The part of the wheel at the bottom, crushed against the pavement, rises to the top again as we move forward on the bicycle of human life.

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All of these roses have bloomed during the Christmas holiday this year when temperatures sank no lower than the 50’s and got as high as 77 degrees.  It recalls a recent year when dorky daffodils poked their yellow heads out of the ground in January only to be murdered by snowstorm a week later.  Will these roses be subjected to the same fate?  Robert Herrick says, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”  We will pragmatically enjoy them while they are here, no matter what happens.  I have been writing a science fiction novel about environmental and political Armageddon.  It is set on another planet, but that planet stands in for Earth in my book.  But the point is that the universe goes on even if we are dumb enough to destroy ourselves by pillaging the natural world.  Yet, I don’t believe that will happen.  I see movement towards renewable energy, and political change for the better is in the wind.  In the end, I think humanity will dig down deep for that magical force we all possess.  We will be able to change for the better when we are forced to.  I don’t expect to live to see it.  I don’t figure I have another whole decade left to live, and the course we are on won’t be decided before 2050… probably.  But, all speculation aside, I am here now to enjoy roses blooming at Christmastime… and to share that rare feeling with you.

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December 25, 2015 · 5:00 pm

Fiascoes in Gingerbread

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I believe I did warn you that I had serious Gingerbread House plans.  I had high hopes and spent more money on it than I should have.  Such is life in Mickey World.  But I had a plan, and not even disaster was going to stop me.  And it didn’t.

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I didn’t intentionally choose a time when Mom was away, but maybe that was at least subconsciously a factor.  You see, as sober Jehovah’s Witnesses we are not allowed to celebrate Christmas.  And no one says gingerbread is specifically Christmassy.  So we broke out the necessary supplies and started down paths of frosting and sugar plums.

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I warned them that the main objective was to write a blog post.  The Princess broke out a fake smile for the occasion, but Henry decided to duck out of pictures to the best of his ability.  Hands are okay, I guess.

We proceeded with great care according to my evil plan.  And everything seemed to be going well.  Of course, da Momma had to show up to say, “What’s this?  You’re celebrating Christmas?”

“No, Mom,” we all lied.

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It was really starting to look like a success.  But Mom started eating building supplies.  And the whole thing was constructed according to directions, so the weight of the heavily frosted and decorated roof was supported only on the strength of quick-drying frosting that didn’t really dry fast enough.  The dream began to slowly slide apart.

Furious finger supports became absolutely necessary.  We battled to keep it from slipping apart into sugary oblivion.  But what could we ultimately do?  One final picture before the inevitable maybe?

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And then… the end.

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Ah… Phoobah!

But, I think in looking back on it, even though clean-up would prove nearly fatal for old diabetic me… it was a success.  We got away with a bit of Christmas.  My family (except for Dorin who is away this holiday overseas with the Marine Corps) got to spend some quality time together.  We got to make something we were proud of, if only momentarily.  And we had enormous amounts of fun and laughter.  The best things in life are like that.  They are only with us for a moment.  But the memory is a treasure to keep for a lifetime.

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December 23, 2015 · 9:04 pm

Humbuggery

Technically I am not supposed to be celebrating Christmas.  Jehovah’s Witnesses have institutionalized “Bah, Humbug” and made it a religious offense to celebrate Christmas or any other birthdays.  And I have not yet been disfellowshipped from the JW religion.  That is, however, a mere oversight on their part.  They have not read this blog enough to be offended with my worldly views.  I have suggested here that I am a Christian existentialist… something that any JW who understands what that philosophical term means would call an atheist.

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Fozzie tells really bad jokes, which isn’t necessarily irredeemable, but Alf not only tells bad jokes, he also eats cats. How can they be saved by religion?

I definitely understand why atheists avoid proactive religions like the Witnesses.  For one thing, JW’s believe in the redeem-ability of the human race.  Open the door, listen to the proselytizer’s mini-sermon, read the infallible Bible verse, and paradise in an everlasting life on Earth is yours for the taking.  So, get out there and knock on some doors with a Bible in your book bag!  These redeemable Texans whose doors they knock upon being the same ones that have the police arrest Muslim clock-making teens for showing their project to a teacher, and throw hungry school children’s lunches in the trash in front of their friends if they owe $1.70 over the limit for their reduced lunches.  These redeemable Texans are also the ones who sent Ted Cruz to the US Senate and may help elect him president.  Despicable is too good a word for that type of human being… unless Sylvester the cat is the one saying it with extra sloppy spray coming out of the sides of his mouth.

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I confess that I have been working on a comedic science-fiction novel about a planet-wide civilization destroying itself for greed and despicableness.   I even put Ted Cruz in that story as lizard-man alien (which I am not sure if it is an insult or a complement to Cruz).  I also idolize Mark Twain, and often wonder if he isn’t right about the “damned human race”, and how Noah should’ve let them drown.  So I should be embracing humbuggery for so many reasons…

Senator Tedhkruzh

Senator Tedhkruzh, the lizard-man from the doomed planet Galtorr Prime.

But today I re-connected on Facebook with a former student from not so long ago.  Ronan Pablomia was an ESL student from the streets of Manila in the Philippines.  As a teacher, I normally love students, even the stinky ones, and I tried for three years to get through to this kid.   He was repeatedly in fights in school with other students.  He was disruptive in the classroom, saying intentionally horrible and insane things during class.  He was probably an un-diagnosed bipolar person, but he was definitely diagnosed as having a learning disability and a rage disorder.  He was hostile and made life so miserable for his classmates that they begged both the principal and me to expel his sorry behind from our high school.

Today he had the remarkable good sense to tell me on Facebook that I was the best teacher ever.  He said he finally acknowledged his fighting problem and got help (after getting out of jail).  He has a job now and is helping to support his parents.  He apologized for how stupid he acted in class, and I ended up reminding him that the best students are the ones that learned the most.  He was not the smartest kid ever, but he was bright, and if he has learned to control his bipolar temper, he definitely qualifies as one of kids who came the farthest down the learning path, and probably learned the most after all.

So Ronan gave me an excellent and unexpected Christmas gift.  He added one more hint that my career as a teacher was not in vain, and three years worth of patience and suffering did not go for nothing, even though he never graduated high school.  Maybe the aggressive and carnivorous primates that populate this planet are not all that irredeemable after all.  So have a happy Christmas.  Frohe Weinachten.  Feliz Navidad.  And God bless us, every one.

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December 17, 2015 · 3:40 pm

Plans in Gingerbread

After yesterday’s Grinchy post about politics, I needed to follow up with something more Christmassy and generous (though technically, as a Jehovah’s Witness not yet disfellowshipped for being an atheist, I am not supposed to celebrate Christmas).  Now that I have alienated all my conservative friends and family, as well as my religious friends, I will create an art project that expresses the good feeling life gives me even as I approach its end.

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I bought a Gingerbread House Kit along with some chocolate frosting and sugar decorations.  I intend to build it and decorate it in my own fashion, being creative and detailed.  I have kids that have already promised to eat it.  But first it will be a subject for photo Paffoonies that I will make with flair and the greatest of care and everything else that I might dare.

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December 15, 2015 · 5:07 pm

Playing With Dolls Again

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Yes, having hoarding disorder can be a pain.  I channel it into collecting, especially things like 12-inch action figures and Barbie Dolls.  But it becomes such a mania that even the rules don’t contain it.  These mint-in-box dolls with mutant big heads and bean bodies are part of a wacky collection that has caught hold of me with about the same ferocity as the flu.  They are Monster High dolls to go along with the TV cartoons and direct-to-video movies used primarily to sell these ultra-weird toys to little girls.  Supposedly each of the girls in the series is the daughter of a movie monster.  Operetta above is the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera.  Isi Dawndancer claims to be the daughter of a deer-spirit… a Native-American-style monster thingy.  I suppose there is a benign rationalization behind these things other than trying to get little girls to identify with and emulate monsters.  Believe me, from my years as a teacher, no little girl really needs encouragement to embrace the monster within.  And that sort of thing has negative consequences.

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Yes, the picture immediately above is of my Monster High collection as it stood a year ago.   I have now added to it.  And am admitting as reasonably as I can that it is probably evidence of looming insanity.  Let me show you the new acquisitions from the current collecting year;

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Besides Operetta and Isi, I have added the daughter of the Loch Ness Monster, the daughter of the rat king, and, apparently, the daughter of the man-eating plant from the movie Little Shop of Horrors.  What is even worse, there are more dolls out there and available to this collection.  I have followed the rules and limited my spending, but I wasted birthday and Christmas money from my mother on this stuff… and probably will do so again.  I suppose it is because I don’t spend my toy-money on more manly things like guns and political donations to Donald Trump.  But I have to satisfy my lurking doubts with the notion that the most impressive collections of things like this in museums are probably put together by fools like me with raging hoarding disorder.

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December 10, 2015 · 5:05 pm

Mickey is Magical

I have decided that since I have a tendency to write science fiction and fantasy, with a special emphasis on the fantasy part, I should actually be able to do magic.  It doesn’t take a lot of self-examination to see that it is so.

Teacher Magic

wonderful teaching

As a teacher I know several powerful magic spells.  I have the power to put teenagers into a deep and restful sleep.  All I have to do is start a lesson focus and heads drop to desks and snore-music fills the part of the room that my blah-blah doesn’t.  I also have a powerful ability to make teenagers hate things.  All I have to do is testify with my best honest-to-goodness face that something is good for them, and they will thoroughly hate it.  Protein at breakfast is good for you?  Gotta hate that.  Independent reading of books is good for you?  I have just made the entire school library radioactive by saying it.  Think what good a teacher could do if the principal would only let them say, “Illegal drugs are good for you!” or, “You should join a street gang, it would be good for you!” or even, “Racial prejudice is a good thing for our white society!”  (I know I would never actually feel good about saying those things, and I could never make the proper honest-to-goodness face, but that last thing was actually tried by a teacher I once worked with… he said it because he believed it… and even the white kids were instantly up in arms and got that teacher fired.  Come to think of it, that was the only lesson he ever taught that I actually approved of.)  An even more powerful teacher magic is to forbid things.  Anything forbidden by a teacher or a teacher’s rules is the only thing they want to do.  I was able to get kids to read more by forbidding them to read library books during lessons.  I found it strengthened the urge to occasionally catch them doing it and lecture them about how they will end up unable to flip burgers at McDonald’s because they will let interesting and complicated stuff get in the way of mindlessly doing repetitive tasks.

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Traffic Magic

I have an amazing magical power over stoplights.  I can unfailingly turn them bright red just by approaching them, no matter what color they were five and a half seconds before.  If I am in a hurry, I have the power to make that red light last for more than the three minutes that is supposed to be the maximum for the cycle.

I can also make old people (of course I mean other old people) drive slower in the fast lane by driving behind them.  I can make young guys in Bubba trucks zoom in front of me and nearly kill me simply by having a few inches of space between my front bumper and the rear end of the car I’m following.  I don’t know how they fit those big old Chevys and Ford Broncos and Dodge Rams in those little spaces which are less than half as long as their vehicles, and do it while using one hand to give me the finger out their window.  I suppose they have fold-able bones like a rat so they can squeeze through tight places.

Laughing Magic

20150105_161714 I suppose the magical power I am proudest of is my ability to magically make people laugh at me.  (Yes, they always say they are laughing with me, not at me… but we all know how humor really works.  We laugh because we are really happy that it didn’t happen to us!)  I am able to put on the clown nose and people automatically laugh almost as hard as they laugh at me without the clown nose.  I am able to say things in weird words that stimulate your brain to shout silently in your head, “That jest ain’t right!”, and you automatically think, “Funny!”  So, with all this magical power, I have concluded… I am a wizard!

space cowboy23

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