As a writer, my goal is to create wisdom and new ideas and stuff that makes a reader feel happy, or sad, or angry, or even slightly insane. But thinking is hard when your head hurts and your body aches and your sixtieth birthday is just around the corner. (Yes, this Mickey is nearly 60, but can you believe that that Mickey is going to be 88 on the day after I turn 60?) Sometimes you just want to say, “Never mind that I wanted to post every single day for the past two years. Just curl up in a ball and go to sleep.” But there are ways to get something done even if your mind is full of the Sandman’s leavings and old, rotted dreams.
You can always get by with posting somebody else’s wisdom… somebody else’s thinking. You don’t have to work too hard to paste things together. After all, why else did you have to look at so many cut-and-paste essays over the years in middle school and high school?
And you can rely on the work you have already done collecting computer files full of colorful crap and stuff you like enough to steal to complete your cut-and-paste scrapbook post. You don’t have to feel like you erred and are about to have your head cut off by an angry Groo.
And you know you can get a lot of cheap likes on Facebook with some of the stuff you have available to put in this post. You have been working at the “Be funny!” thing for a long time, and have gotten almost good enough at it to be funny on the fly. And when you’ve gotten more than halfway to the goal, you can rest a bit. Take a nap. Regenerate the crazy things in your head so you can do this all again another day.
And if you can have a laugh before you are finished, even if no one else in the world gets the joke… well, at least you will feel a little bit better yourself.
During my middle-school teaching years I also bought and read copies of The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi. I would later use a selection from Roughing It as part of a thematic unit on Mark Twain where I used Will Vinton’s glorious clay-mation movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain as a way to painlessly introduce my kids to the notion that Mark Twain was funny and complex and wise.
Catch a Falling Star 
Fix Coulrophobia… Now!
I love clowns. I always have. When I was five I wanted to be a clown. Red Skelton is my personal hero and role model, the reason I became a teacher, to use my clown skills for good rather than evil. But sinister folks who think they are joking are seriously jeopardizing all of that.
In 1988 I did watch and enjoy the movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space. It was funny. And I liked Stephen King’s “It” as a horror movie. It was definitely scary. But 2016 has become the year of the creepy clown. Why would any idiot want to dress up in an expensive horror-clown mask and clown suit to wave at somebody’s security camera at two in the morning? And, Mr. Idiot, did you at least try to figure out if the homeowner was a gun owner in an open carry State? One of the recent clowns to be arrested turned out to be a teenage boy… you know, the ultimate planner and thinker-ahead-er.
I would like to propose that we prosecute a case or two of creepy clowns in the woods at night with a mandatory “How to Love a Clown” class. After all, clowns are a worthy thing. How many clowns over how many years have handed out candy to kids and brought a smile to small faces during a Fourth of July parade? How many circus clowns like the Great Emmett Kelly made us laugh with a pantomime routine? How many Shrine Circus clowns helped entertain us and raise money to fight childhood disease and cancer? Bob Keeshan who was Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody helped raise me and make me the person I am now as Captain Kangaroo. The real creepy clown crime is that they are taking the image of a clown, which is a very good thing and turning it into something bleak and horrifying. My purpose for this post is to remind you of the good things about the people under the face paint. I want you to remember a few of these.
1 Comment
Filed under angry rant, clowns, collage, commentary, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life