Category Archives: strange and wonderful ideas about life

September 26, 2016 · 3:45 pm

K.I.S.S.

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When learning to write, you have to learn the rules.  And then you start writing, and you learn that you have to break all the rules to do it well.  But what do I know?  You have to be pretty desperate to get your writing advice from a Mickey.  After all, it’s not like Mickey was a writing teacher for over thirty years… oh, wait a minute… yes, he was.

Okay, so I decided to write today about the K.I.S.S. rule of writing.  That’s right, Keep It Simple, Stupid.  Other writing teachers tell me it should be, Keep It Simple, Sweetie, because you can’t say “stupid” to a kid.  Okay, that’s mostly true.  But I use “stupid” when I use the rule myself.  I’m talking to Mickey after all.

So, I better stop “bird-walking” in the middle of this essay, because “bird-walking”, drifting off topic for no purpose, is the opposite of keeping it simple.

I try to write posts of no more than 500 words.  I write an introduction that says something stupid or inane that speaks to the theme I want to talk about.  Then I pile in a few sentences that talk more about the theme and do a good job of irritating the reader to the point that they can’t wait to get to the conclusion.  Finally I finish up with a really pithy and wonderful bit of wisdom to tie a knot in the bow of my essay.  I save that bit for the end as a sort of revenge for all the readers who don’t read all the way to the end, even on a short post like this one.  Of course, I could be wrong about how wonderful and pithy it is.  What does “pithy” even mean?  It can be like the soup in the bottom of the chili pot, thicker and spicier than what came before… or possibly overcooked with burned beans.

That was another bit of “bird-walking”, wasn’t it?  See, you have to break the rules to make it work better.

So, in order to keep it simple, I guess I need to end here for today.  Simple can be the same thing as short, but more often you are trying to achieve “simple and elegant” and pack a lot of meaning and resonance into a few lines.  And I, of course, am totally incapable of doing that with my purple paisley prose.  And there’s the knot in that bow.

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September 25, 2016 · 4:44 pm

Kerpopple That Dinglebunny!

I have always loved using weird, wild, and goofy words to describe things when I am trying to be funny.  But recently I was saddened to learn that a word I have liked using in the past, “dingleberry”, is actually a poo-poo word.  I am very much on the Red Skelton side of the question of using bad words.   I mean, I don’t find direct use of obscene language and harsh Anglo-Saxon swear words to be very funny.  Shock humor and gross-out humor do not appeal to me the way more whimsical word-play does.

Betelgeuse is a funny word because it is the name of an actual red-giant Star in the Milky Way Galaxy, while at the same time sounding like juice made from beetles.  And, of course, there is the little matter of a hilarious Tim Burton movie about a gross-out ghost with an evil agenda.  The parts of a word can make or break the comic gravity of the word.  As much as I previously liked “dingleberry” as a goofy insult word, the “dingle” part is giving me pause.  I have discovered that a “dingle” is not only the v-cleft in a valley between two mountains, it is also derived from “dung”.   A “dingleberry” describes a dangling “berry” of poop like the ones sometimes found on the fur of my dog’s behind.  Yetch!  I can’t even use a label like that on a detestable buffoon like Donald Trump.  It bothers me that it suggests the color brown rather than the proper orange.  Trump requires a word that translates to something more like “flaming orange Kool-aid man”.

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So, I guess I need to focus on other weird, wild, and goofy words as I continue to try to be funny.  The dinglebunnies of my comic fantasies need to be “kerpoppled”… the act of “poppling”, to move in a tumbling, irregular manner, as in boiling water.  Do away with poo-poo humor, Mickey, old lad!  You need some new goofy words.

 

 

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September 22, 2016 · 3:19 pm

Front Porch Life

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How do you make sense out of a crazy world where if you are black and your car breaks down on the highway, the police might shoot you dead, but, at the same time, if you are orange and you cheat people out of millions of dollars with a fake university and a bogus charity, they might make you president?

Well, I remember how sitting on the front porch and just talking could solve all the problems the world had.  Of course music didn’t hurt.  The front porch of the house was once the family’s contact point with the outside world.  It was the place where you stop for a moment and think about things before you go out to face the world.  It was where on Sunday afternoons in the 1960’s I sat and listened to Harmon Killebrew and the Minnesota Twins play baseball on the radio with my Great Grandpa Raymond.  And practically every dad was the kind of dad Andy Taylor was to Opie, because they talked to you for a minute on the porch.

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So, what is the best advice I can give you with my limited wisdom?  Turn off the TV, the computer, and the I-phone… for a while.  And come to the front porch.  Take the wicker chair by the door.  Put your feet up.  Sit a spell.  And lets talk a while.

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September 21, 2016 · 3:34 pm

Cheating at Reading

Three years ago I read 100 books during the school year.  I was a reading teacher.  I had piles of classroom books at all reading levels.  I wanted to record the feat on Goodreads, but I hadn’t figured out how to record things properly on the Goodreads website.  I have no record of those books to look back on.

So this year, 2016, I determined that I would read at least thirty books and record that reading on Goodreads.   Unfortunately I reached the beginning of September 17 books behind schedule.

So, I decided to cheat.  I gathered up a bunch of popcorn books… easy reads, books I set aside after reading half or more of the books, and books about drawing.

I also have a few books by comedians that are easy to buzz through because of the unique way that people like George Carlin and Lewis Black think… unfortunately rather close to the demented way I think.

I also read cartoon books and comic books quickly.

So, I have been cheating right along, finishing at least a book a day.  I am now at only 3 books behind schedule.  It probably is not a good thing for a former reading teacher to cheat at reading.  But I am filling up my reading shelf.  I enjoy the books.  And the way Donald Trump manages his businesses and does charity work, I don’t feel the least bit guilty.

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September 18, 2016 · 4:48 pm

Planting Some Onions

I told you recently that I believe that opinions are like onions.  Consuming them is good for you.  It cleans out the system.  It turns little imperfections and poisons into gas and leads you to expel them.  Yes, I mean opinions from my stupid old head come out of my mouth in the same way that digested onions form into gas and come out the other end.  And keeping them inside (and safe from being argued or made fun of) can poison you and make you insane.  So, I need to plant some onions… err, I mean opinions… and you should feel free to sample the stuff in this onion garden and fart back in my general direction if you feel the need.

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It would be good if you don’t throw bricks.

  • Donald Trump is going to be our next President.  I am not saying I want that to happen.  I didn’t want Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush to be President either.  But bad things happen with the inevitability of thunderstorms and flu season.  Fox News has been spreading poisonous onion gas for twenty years as a propaganda service to the corporate masters, and they will continue to provide us only with business-friendly leaders who will wring every last penny’s worth of value out of our increasingly valueless souls.
  • Human civilization is doomed.  We have failed to deal with human-induced climate change for too long, and now the air is turning into methane and carbon dioxide (that’s right, fart gas!) and only the people wealthy enough to create totally sealed environments will survive.  We have the innate capacity to solve problems and overcome disaster, but we won’t because President Trump doesn’t want it to be that way.  And he says that climate change is a hoax anyway.  I think he has held onion gas inside long enough to pickle all his brain cells.
  • The Roswell incident was real and there are aliens living on planet Earth.  They will not save us from ourselves, however.  President Trump won’t allow that.  After all, they are immigrants.

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  • Doctor Who is the best thing that the British ever gave us.  It combines science fiction, fantasy, a goofy sense of humor, and serious charm into a show that can make us think about things in a new way, and make us see things from a different point of view.  Donald Trump won’t allow him to save us either, even though Great Britain is our very tremendous ally.   Foreigners keep us from winning economically.
  • Eating onions is better for you than eating cheese.  Onions get the gas out.  Cheese makes you constipated.  The French call cheese “fromage”, but that doesn’t make it any better.  Cheese by any other name still can stink like limburger.
    “Once it reaches three months, the cheese produces its notorious smell because of the bacterium used to ferment Limburger cheese and many other smear-ripened cheeses. This is Brevibacterium linens, the same one found on human skin that is partially responsible for body odor and particularly foot odor.”

    Limburger – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  • So I have just now planted some real stinkers in the onion garden.  In a just and reasonable world, the debate would now begin.  Refute, if you will, dear reader, for that is the very reason that opinions exist, to start a debate.  You cannot clear the air of fart gas without at least waving your hand at it.

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September 12, 2016 · 3:18 pm

Opinions Are Like Onions

The REAL Sarah

“Why does something always smell bad when I am talking?”

Opinions are like Onions.

All you have to do is subtract 3.141592 and they are exactly the same.

The people that like the way they taste like theirs a lot.

They want you to try them.

And if you don’t like the taste, then you just don’t know what’s good for you.

Onions are good for you.  They make you fart and they clear out the bad gasses made up of methane and other toxic waste from your colon and digestive tract.

Opinions are good for you too.  They make you fart out of the mouth, clearing bad gasses made up of stupidity and toxic ideas out of your little old brain.  You should not be holding that stuff in.  It is poisonous and it could potentially explode.  Not something you want to happen in either the colon or the brain.  Only stupid people hang on to them in the face of contradictory evidence.  (It makes me nervous that I don’t see people exploding more often, because I hold the opinion that there really are a lot of stupid people out there.  I, too, am probably in danger of exploding at some point.)

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And see, that’s the important point here.  Opinions are only as valuable as fart gas.  For the all-important progress of ideas to really happen, opinions have to be tested.  And I don’t mean opinions like whether or not you like the taste of onions.  I am talking about opinions that lead to policy.  Politics are crammed full of opinions.  (I got that right, didn’t I?  I didn’t say “onions” when I actually meant “opinions”, right?)

Hillary Clinton is apologizing now for the opinion-based fart-gas of saying that “half of Donald Trump’s supporters are deplorable people”.  The facts are that the KKK has voiced support for Trump, as have a number of immigrant-hating racists like Ann Coulter who will tell you in detail about all her onions concerning Mexicans and brown people.  People at Trump’s rallies have physically assaulted black people and protesters of any variety.  And to “deplore” someone is to speak out against their ideas or actions.  So the critical word that is not a fact, but rather an onion, must be “half”.  This is the word where Hillary went wrong.  I am sure that “half” is an under-estimation.

And Mr. Trump, as a connoisseur of truly stinky onions has said that Clinton and Obama are literally the founders of ISIS.  And in his onion, Vladimir Putin is a stronger leader than President (of this country) Obama.  One wonders why no one has really sliced and diced these particular onions.  One imagines that if Hillary were the chef serving these onions, no one would be willing to have them in the dining room, let alone eat them.  Onions need be tested for flavor and rightness long before they are served.

So, to close up this onion-smelling essay before it makes me fart again, let me just say, we need to not get stuck in the onion patch and mistakenly convince ourselves we are smelling roses.  Roses shouldn’t make you cry.

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September 8, 2016 · 6:25 pm

Translating Texican

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I came to Texas from Iowa.  I was well-versed in how to speak Iowegian.  (I was, don’t-ya-know, and spoke it fluently, you-betcha.)

Then I arrived, fresh-faced and ready to change the world as a twenty-five-year-old teacher, and began working in a mostly Hispanic middle school in deep South Texas.  Dang!  Whut language do they speak?  (Yes, I know… Spanish.  But my students straight from Mexico couldn’t understand the local lingo either. South Texas Spanish and Castilian Spanish from Mexico are not the same language.)  I couldn’t talk to the white kids either.   It is possible to communicate with Texicans, but it took me years to learn the language.  It takes more than mere usage of “ya’ll” and “howdy”.

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You can probably see what I mean when you look at these fake quotes based on the things real Texicans actually once said to me.  Of course, I can be accused of being a racist by interpreting things this way.  Texicans are concerned that you understand that they are not racists.  They merely rebel against being “politically correct”.  Apparently the political-correctness police give them all sorts of unfair harassment about speaking their minds the way they always have.  I should note, however, that I had to use a quote from Bubba rather than Dave Winchuk.  Dave is so anti-political-correctness concerned that he regularly said to me things with so much racial heat in them that they would even melt the faces off white people.  Face-melting is bad.  If you don’t believe me, re-watch the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

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And to speak Texican, you must actually learn a thing or two about guns.  Yes, Texas is an open-carry State.  Apparently second amendment rights are the most important rights in the constitution.  My two sons grew up in Texas, and the oldest is a Marine.  Guns are important to them.  I have those same arguments with former students, too.  I have learned to say the right things so that they will tolerate my unholy  pacifist ideas about how the world might be safer if everybody didn’t have five guns in the waistbands of their underpants.  So gun-stuff ends up as a part of the Texican language I have learned to speak.

The point of it all is, language is a fascinating thing that grows and changes and warps and regresses.  I love it.  I try to master it.  And the mistakes I make usually sound purty funny.

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September 3, 2016 · 3:34 pm

There Are No Stranger Things Than Kids

I am planning to re-watch all eight hours of Netflix’s Stranger Things.  I can’t help it.  I really seriously love that show.  And the reason is the kids in the series.  Yes, it was set in the 80’s, a decade I long to return to, but I wasn’t a kid myself in the 80’s.  That was my first decade as a teacher.  The thing is… I taught each and every one of the kids in that series.  I admit, they had different names and lived in different bodies, but they were the same faces, the same personalities.

And it is not so much the characters the kids inhabit in the show, though they were obviously cast as themselves.  It is the real-life screwiness that Jimmy Fallon brings out with the silly string that I recognize.

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Finn Wolfhard’s character, Michael, is basically me.  The dreamer determined to make the fantastic become true.  And when they played Dungeons and Dragons in the basement, he was the Dungeon Master.  That was me.  The teller of the stories, the maker of the meaning.  He’s the one that creates the Demogorgon adventure that eerily comes to life.  He is also the one that finds and befriends the mysterious Eleven.  He is the driving that leads them all to the inevitable conclusion of the adventure.

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And while I never met anyone quite like the mysterious Eleven, Millie Bobby Brown is definitely no stranger to me.  She is bubbly, outgoing, and utterly charming.  She can channel Nikki Minaj.  I must’ve taught at least five different versions of Millie in three different schools when I was a teacher.

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She makes the weird and otherworldly character of Eleven become believable through the sheer force of a natural talent for empathy and understanding.  She is a highly intelligent girl with a knack for making things work.

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I have also taught about four different incarnations of the Dustin character’s actor, Gaten Matarazzo.  The goofy but courageous kid with a broad sense of humor and a focus on food is a very common type of junior high kid.  And while he isn’t usually a leader in the classroom, he’s the one you turn to when you need help getting the group to choose the right path.

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I swear to you, I know all these kids, even though I have never met them.  You see, when you are a teacher for long enough, everyone in the world comes in through your door.  You have to get to know them and learn to at least like them if not love them.  You do the thing for long enough, and you learn that there are a limited number of different faces and personalities that God distributes over time and circumstance to many different people.  It is possible to get to know nearly all of them.  And there are no Stranger Things than kids.

 

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August 25, 2016 · 3:30 pm

The Dog is in the Doghouse

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My name is Jade Beyer, and I’m the loyal, lovable family dog (at least, I hope I still am).  I am writing today’s post because Dad is mad at me.  And I should point out that it takes a lot of effort for me write Dad’s post for him.  I can’t really type with my paws because I hit lots of letters all at once when I do that.  I found a way, however, to roll up my tongue and punch a single letter at a time.  And the dog slobber  only makes the computer spark and fritz a little bit more than usual.  So he should really appreciate me for going to all that effort.

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You see, yesterday, after lunch was over, I got up on the table to look for left-over people food.   Eating enough people food turns you into a people, as I’m sure you already knew.  Really, it’s true!  Otherwise, how could a family dog like me learn to read and write so good?  Anyway, while looking for people food, I found a clear plastic thing in the shape of Henry’s teeth next to his empty plate.  It smelled like Henry.  And I love Henry.  So, I chewed on the thing that smelled just like Henry because I love him.  How was I supposed to know that a new retainer costs $350?  People pay ridiculous amounts of money for stuff that Henry just puts in his own mouth anyway.  It doesn’t justify my family re-telling that awful story about when Uncle Maligaya was a boy in the Philippines and he let his friends talk him into cooking and eating the family dog.  I really don’t like that story.

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A portrait of me as the people I’m meant to be

And this morning, Dad got back from driving the Princess to her new school all grumpy because of traffic and stupid Texas drivers who don’t know how to signal for a lane change but definitely know how to cut you off in the drop-off lane.  I offered to drive for him.  But he’s still mad at me.  And he reminded me that the last time I drove the car, I accidentally ran over three cats.  (I told him the reason for that is because I have no thumbs and can’t hold the steering wheel properly.  But that might not be entirely true.  Mr. Tinkles is evil and deserved to die.)  So, we settled on me writing his post for today so he could have time to call the orthodontist and make an appointment to get a new retainer made.  And if it doesn’t turn out to be any good as a piece of literature, well, it’s because I am dog, and apparently not a very good  dog.  (I’m really not clear on what “I’m going to make dog burgers out of that @#$%&! dog!” actually means.)

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August 24, 2016 · 3:48 pm

The Many People That Are Me

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Yes, I am a wizard.  That is a complicated thing to say.  It is complicated because a wizard has to be a wise man, and wisdom has to begin with the idea that you know practically nothing about anything… but you can find out.  So one version of me has to be my wizard D&D character, the wizard Eli Tragedy.  This is because I know practically nothing about anything… but I am willing to not be stupid and look stuff up before I tell you anything and pretend it is a wise thing to say.

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I have been thinking about who I am because I want to re-do my About the Author page.   And that leads to the difficulty of explaining who Mickey actually is.  You see, I am actually lots of different people in my head.  Mickey is the cartoonist, the humorist, the clown.  He is not the every-day me.  He is the goofy and foofy and lovey-to-drawie part of me.  And yes, I know some of those are not real words.  Mickey is like that.  He speaks Mickian Goof Speak.  I have no control over that part of him.  I am not certain where this Mickey-part of my soul originated, but it may be the result of too much TV when I was a kid.

And of course there is the Teacher-Me, Reluctant Rabbit, the person who stood in front of groups of twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-olds for three decades and tap-danced, told stories, stood on my head, and begged them to internalize at least a lesson or two of what I tried to teach them.

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Teacher

And the wizard part of me was just barely wise enough to realize that a teacher can open doors, but you can’t shove a kid through.  They have to take the critical learning step themselves.  They have to want to learn something.  But even though they actually do the learning themselves, they will come back to me in later years saying, “Oh, thank you, you taught me so much!” when really all I did was be a guide on the side and stayed out of their way.

And, of course, there is the Cowboy Me.  I live in Texas.  I was a Belmond Bronco in high school, but I became a Cotulla Cowboy for 24 years of my teaching career.  I ended up as a Naaman Forest Ranger.  I have worn the hat a lot in my life, being as much of a straight shooter as the Shakiest Gun In The West can be, always trying to shoot the six-guns out of the bad guy’s hands rather than shoot people.

So how do I explain a thing like that?  Probably the way I just did it (ironically).  I should use Paffoonies I have created over time and waffle about stupid stuff that might make people laugh when they realize how self-contradictory it is.  And I should say it like I mean it… because I probably do.

 

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