Category Archives: strange and wonderful ideas about life

April 22, 2016 · 3:28 pm

Doodle Day

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If you do art, then you also doodle.  Really!  No matter how hard you may try to keep it a secret, you doodle, and people all know it.  So, since the secret is out… Here are some of my doodles.  This jester-sort-of-half-white-clown was a doodle yesterday while watching TV… something I do with my hands while my mind is doing something else.

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Here’s another doodle… same day, different piece of paper, different TV show.

But not all doodles are meandering swirls and girls.  I have a whole book of home-made cartoons that start with a blank page and end up with a page that furthers whatever curious cartoon story I am trying to make.  Here are a few examples of that.

Now, I know your doodles probably look nothing like mine.  My doodles are seriously demented.  I have doodled enough that I have seriously worry about going blind.  And my doodles are influenced by a lifetime of bad arty-habits.   But they do give me practice.  They also help me think.  They relieve stress.  And they make an easy and somewhat racy post.

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April 16, 2016 · 3:23 pm

60’s Rock and Roll (Poems made of Memory)

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  1. Pete Townshend is Now Old

I heard it and didn’t believe

Who heard it, you say, and then leave?

Yes they heard it and didn’t believe

Who sang it, you say, for reprieve?

Don’t shoot me, they sang it, believe!

Who told it, the pinball retrieved?

Yes they told it, and now I am peeved

Who wrote it and must be believed?

Yes they wrote it and made me believe

A pinball wizard, his song has grown cold

And finally they sang it and now it is sold

And a generation loved and laughed and were bold

But both Pete and Roger are now really old!

TheWho

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  1. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart

They were the soul of the movement

And love did surround them

The little girls screamed and that’s how

We all found them

With a real nowhere man

Living in a nowhere land

And poor Elinor Rigby’s lost love

There were one, two, three steps

Right down Penny Lane

Blue meanies and lovers regret in the main

And light shines upon us from somewhere above

But the thing I regret beyond yesterday

Is the fact that love grew and then went away

And in the darkness a shot rang out…

And John’s voice was silent…

As tears replaced cheers and grew dark all about.

Sgtpeppergatefold

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  1. Monkees and Mayhem

I saw her face, and I’m a believer

I laughed when she laughed and never deceived her

On the last train to Clarksville in the quietest car

I watched her bright antics and loved from afar

The song they were singing was really quite frantic

And never could I be quite so pedantic

To tell the daydream believer her show was now over

And move on to leave her for a dog, name of Rover.

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April 9, 2016 · 4:17 pm

The Lovely Lennon Sisters

Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich lived on the family farm outside of town, a little more than two miles from the tiny farm town of Rowan, Iowa.  I walked it more than once.  It was faster to walk the railroad tracks between the two places.  About a mile and three quarters as the crow flies… three hours as the boy investigates the critters in the weeds, throws rocks at dragonflies, and listens to the birdsong along the way.  But the point is, my maternal grandparents lived close enough to have a profound influence on my young life.  Much of what they loved became what I love.  And every Saturday night, they loved to watch the Lawrence Welk Show.  And that show had highlights that we longed to see again and again… on a show that never really went into reruns.  We lived to see Jo Ann Castle play the old rinky-tink piano, Bobby and Cissy doing a dance routine, and most of all… the lovely Lennon Sisters.

I always wanted to be the things they wished me to be in the song “May You Always”.  I wanted to “walk in sunshine” and “live with laughter”.  They presented a world of possibilities all clean and good and wholesome.  As a young boy who hated girls, I had a secret crush on Janet Lennon who was the youngest, though a decade older than me, and on Peggy Lennon, the one with the exotic Asian eyes.  They sang to me and spoke directly to my heart.

You have to believe in something when you are young.  The world can present you with so many dark and hurtful experiences, that you simply have to have something to hang onto and keep you from being blighted and crippled by the pain.  For me, it often came in the form of a lovely and simple lyric sung by the lovely Lennon Sisters.  When you are faced with hard choices… especially in those dark moments when you think about ending it all because it is all just too much to bear, the things stored in those special pockets of your heart are the only things that can save you.  For me, one of those things will always be the music of the Lennon Sisters… especially when watched on the old black and white TV in the farmhouse where my grandparents lived, and helped to raise me, every Saturday night in the 1960’s.

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April 7, 2016 · 3:03 pm

Apple Blossoms Return to Texas

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There are certain things that keep me going when my connection to the mortal coil begins to chafe and itch.  Apple blossoms are one of those things.  The apple blossoms have bloomed in our two Texas apple trees in April of 2016.  As I was raking endless live oak leaves out of my yard, making it harder for myself to breathe and continue living because I am allergic to live oak… and most of the rest of Texas to boot, I saw that the apple blossoms had burst forth from their buds.  Between coughs and gasps for breathe, it made me smile.  I ended the raking of endless live oak leaves after only thirty minutes and one sack of leaves.  I am laboring in the face of impending doom, but I am not stupid.  I needed to live to rake another day.  Otherwise I’ll never get it done.

But apple blossoms are worth the heartache and pain and toil of life.  They are not only something to remind me why I keep going.  They are a reason for being.  So I used my phone camera to take a picture of an open blossom.  Then I photo-shopped in a picture of my novel character, Valerie Clarke, the character I created as an amalgam of my lovely daughter and the pretty little girl in my third grade class that I fell madly in love with when I was a little boy.  Like most artists, I am quite capable of slapping beautiful things and ideas together haphazardly to make something that is either a huge pile of kitschy crap, or even more beautiful.  And like most artists, I am entirely too close to the feelings and memories and realities that make up this work of art to ever know for sure which of the two things it really is.  Forgive me if I chose the opposite one that you did. I try not to offend with my Paffoonies.  I try not to be a creep or a bore or a Philistine… but those things are not always possible to avoid.  But there are apple blossoms, and sunrises, and a number of other things as well that, in the end, balance out the equations quite nicely.

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April 6, 2016 · 3:37 pm

Where Does Creativity Come From?

Ima mickey

Okay, I hooked you in with a title that sounds like I actually know something and somehow have some expertise to share beyond the usual brain-drippings of a noodling writer-type idiot.  Unfortunately I don’t.  I am a practicing creative person.  But do I know how it works? I do not.

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I suspect that it has something to do with my actual life experiences.  I am not God.  When I get a creative idea, it is made from known things.   I don’t snap my fingers and make a snerflkuppie, the first one that ever existed, and give it actual substance and reality.  Okay, metaphorically I did just make the first snerflkuppie… It is about three feet tall, has glossy purple fur and three legs.  Four puppy-like eyes, a wide mouth, and no nose… I dare you not to try and picture it in your mind’s eye.  But there isn’t one skipping about in this universe.  I can only take known things and recombine them in unique and surprising ways.  My novels are about kids doing kid stuff… you know, like time travel, being kidnapped by aliens, uncovering werewolf plots, and making magical cookie people.  Stuff that really happened.  And I am a former teacher, so I have experience knowing real kids.

Urkel

If you think kids you see depicted on television and in the movies are realistic, you have never played a video game with a real kid.  You have never had them tell you what they are really afraid of.  You have never come to the conclusion that they actually know a whole lot more about sex than you do.  And kids are not afraid to try something new for the first time (unless, of course, the thing they are going to try is what their parents want them to try for the first time).  You take liquid one and mix it with powder two, watch it fizz, and then drink it.  You don’t know if it will taste good, turn you into a muscle-bound Mr. Hyde-type monster, or blow you up like a firecracker.  But you made it yourself and you are going to try.  We generally think of kids as being creative and undisciplined.  We expect time and experience to take the unruliness, as well as the creativity, out of them.  It is the thing we refer to as, “growing up”.  But I think being creative is, to some degree, remaining a child.  I am a child because I continue to hold play-time in high regard, and do it as often as I can.  Writing words on paper, or on my laptop, is playing to me.  Drawing pictures with pen and ink and colored pencils is also playing to me.  Fortunately mixing chemicals from the cupboard like a mad scientist and testing them on my sister is no longer playing to me.  (And that, Nancy, is just a joke… I never actually did that… I think… I hope…)

The Car Chase of Life

The metaphorical car chase of life… with an old dog behind the wheel.

So, there you have it.  The ultimate answer.  Where does creativity come from?  I do not know.

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March 29, 2016 · 3:44 pm

Signs

Fools n Toys

Signs, by their very nature, are powerful.  They give you direction.  They tell you what to do… and what not to do.  They control you and control others.

Richard and Victor Martin were sitting at the table in front of the stage they had just finished constructing at the center of Martin’s Bar and Grille.  It had turned into something of a gift from heaven to have the young cousin from France living with them.  When he put the clown paint on his face and sang karaoke, people came from several counties away to hear it.  They also brought their money and their thirst with them.  The brothers had labored for two days to build the stage and make better use of the unexpected gift that came with taking in their uncle’s orphaned son.

“Have a beer, brother.  You have earned it,” said Richard to his older brother.

“Generous of you.  Especially since it is my bar and my beer to begin with.”

At that moment they both noticed the balding young man standing at the bar with his zebra hand puppet on his right arm.

“We’re not open for business yet,” Victor said.  “The bar is still closed.”

“You are going to have give the dummy here a Kewpie Cola,” said the zebra puppet.  “We can’t do anything but stand here and look at the sign until you give him one.  He does have enough money to pay for it.”

“What?  What are you talking about?” asked Victor.  He looked at the young man, Murray Dawes, standing and looking up at the antique Kewpie Cola sign that Victor had hung as a decoration over the bar.

“It says, Drink a Kewpie Cola Today!” the puppet said.  Victor did not see the young man’s mouth moving, but he had heard the boy had a gift for ventriloquism even though he was autistic and hardly ever spoke.  “Murray always does everything signs tell him to.  His mother told him signs tell us to do things for our own good.”

“So if he reads it on a sign he has to do it?” asked Richard.

“Yes,” said the zebra puppet.  “You wouldn’t believe how long we have to stand and wait in front of that stop sign on the west end of Main Street.  Every time we pass it he has to do what it says until he feels safe.”

Both men laughed.

Crooner “The fool’s mother constantly puts a sign on his bedroom door that says,  Clean your room!   So he has to do it every day before he can do anything else.  One day he decided he didn’t want to clean his room that day, and he made a sign himself.  It said, Don’t put any signs on this door!  He put it on his bedroom door.  But then he read what it said and had to take it down again.”

“That’s pretty funny,” said Richard.

“Yeah,” said Victor.  “Do you think you could do that ventriloquist thing on stage?  We’d pay you to do it for our customers.”

“You have to understand,” said the zebra puppet, “that Murray is very shy.  He won’t be very talkative on stage.  I would have to do all of the talking.”

“If you can do it and be that funny, I think it will work,” said Victor.

“You have a deal.  But every time we get on the stage, you will have to put a sign on the wall for Murray to read.”

“What would the sign have to say?  Break a leg or something?”

“Not unless you want him to fall down and hurt himself.  It should only say, Believe in yourself… and be funny!”

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March 27, 2016 · 2:53 pm

Thinking Differently

Buckminster Fuller is an intellectual hero of mine.  As he said in the video, if you bothered to watch it, “I was told I had to get a job and make money, but would you rather be making money, or making sense?”  Bucky was always a little bit to the left of center, and basically in the farthest corner of the outfield.  That’s why we depend so much on him in times like these when the ball is being hit to the warning track.  (I know the world doesn’t really work on baseball metaphors any more, but my life has always been about metaphors from 1964 with the St. Louis Cardinals playing and beating the New York Yankees.  Mantle was on their side, but Maris was playing for us.)  You have to live in the world that fits into your own mental map of reality.  And if you’ve been whacked on the side of the head one too many times… it changes the way you think.  You begin to think differently.  

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If you don’t know who Bucky is, as you probably don’t because he revolutionized the world in the 60’s and died in the 1980’s,  Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor.  He is credited with the invention of the Geodesic Dome.  But he was so much more than that.  He wanted to build things that made better sense, in a practical sort of way, than the way we actually do them.  He built geodesic homes because he felt a home should maximize space and use of materials and minimize costs and amounts of materials as well as environmental impacts.  He is the one who popularized the notion of “Spaceship Earth”.  He wrote and published more than thirty books, and gave us a variety of truly wise insights.  He promoted the concept of synergy.  He said, “Don’t fight forces, use them.”  He also pointed out, “Ninety per cent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.”  He was a man full of quotes useful for internet memes.

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So, lets consider an example from the mixed up mind of Mickey;

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Here are three dolls from the Planet of the Apes part of my doll collection. (Two different movies are represented here, the 1968 original, and the Tim Burton 2001 remake.)

The world we now live in is increasingly like the movie, The Planet of the Apes.  In that film the world the astronauts set down upon is ruled by talking apes.  The human beings in that film are relegated to the fields and forests where they are no more than speechless animals.  Much like the Republican Party and the wealthy ruling elite of this day and age, the apes control everything and, led by Dr. Zaius (seen on the far right) reject science and evidence as a way to explain things.  They rely on the rules set down by the Lawgiver in much the same way that modern day Republicans swear by the U.S. Constitution to determine the truth of all things.

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Here we see the apes capturing and enslaving Marky Mark… er… Mark Wahlberg rather than Chuck Heston from the original movie.

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In the original set of movies, Charleton Heston, playing the astronaut Taylor, discovers that through hatred and warring, the human beings of Earth have bombed themselves back into the stone age and enabled the evolved apes to take over.  How does Mr. Heston deal with that problem?  He discovers an old doomsday device and blows up the world.  Chuck Heston has always approved Second Amendment solutions to modern problems, so it is no wonder that he lays waste to everything, the good and the bad.  I think we can see that old orangutan-man, Donald Trump doing exactly the same things now as he runs for President, or Great Ape, or whatever…

In both the previous series, and the current remake, salvation from the rule of the monkey people comes in the form of a leader among the apes.  Caesar, whether he be played by Roddy MacDowell or by Andy Serkis, is able to solve the problems of apes and men by reaching out to those of the other species, assigning them value, and ultimately doing what helps everyone to survive and live together.  Diversity is power and provides a workable solution through cooperation.  The forces of hatred and fear are the things that must be overcome and threaten the existence of everyone.  Donald Trump needs to learn from the lesson of The Planet of the Apes, and be less like General Ursus.   We need Bernie Sanders to embrace the role of Caesar and show us how we can get along with our Muslim brothers… after all, they are more like us than the apes are, and Caesar builds bridges between apes and men.

So, there you have it, my attempt to build a new model based on an old movie… or on the remake… whichever you prefer.  And if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always…

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March 2, 2016 · 4:31 pm

Internet Lies About Mickey

Mickey

The truth is sometimes Mickey tells lies.  For instance, the title of this post is intended to lure you in with expectations of a juicy something that doesn’t actually exist.  There is no controversy on the internet over this particular Mickey.  He hasn’t done a very good job of keeping it secret that he tells a lot of lies.  In fact, most of the most embarrassing and terrible secret things that he had been keeping secret for going on sixty years are now published in this blog.  Talk about a life being an open book!

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Of course, being a lover of internet conspiracies and ufo’s and junk, there is always that other Mickey to talk about.  Yes, Disney has generated its share of conspiracy theories.

Everyone on the internet knows, for instance, that when Walt Disney died, he had his body frozen cryogenically  so that he could be re-animated once a cure for his lung cancer was found.  Of course, Snopes.com already did the investigation on it and brought out the fact that not only was Disney cremated with full documentation of the process, the first cryogenic freezing of a human being didn’t occur until a year after his death.  This lie about Mickey’s dad, then is easily debunked.  See, the internet lies about Mickey!

Of course, the notion that Disney was a racist and a Nazi and worked with the CIA are much harder to disprove.

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A character from the original version of Fantasia that doesn’t help Mickey’s image.

Most heads of super-wealthy corporations are by nature fascists.  The dictatorial style and oppressive oligarchic command structures of fascism organically grew out of business practices.  Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan were also Nazis.  And, of course, no one believes me when I start in on the Disney/alien connection.  After all, what’s with alien beings in Escape from Witch Mountain, Lilo and Stitch, and even Chicken Little?  I may have some more conspiracy-theory investigating to do.

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So, let me assure you that lies about Mickey are actually lies.  The thing about Mickey’s dream in the 1960’s of seeing Annette Funicello naked is a lie… er, probably.  The notion that Mickey trained himself to be a cartoonist by copying Disney characters like Carl Barks’ ducks are… err… um… lies… maybe.  Well, anyway, the point is… don’t spread lies on the internet about Mickey.  That’s my job.

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February 13, 2016 · 5:46 pm

Mother Mendocino

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I am about to lay on you a story full of humor, lies, and distortion… but I wanted to warn you first.  This is real-life story about someone near and dear to my heart.  You can laugh all you want… but please don’t think ill of Mother Mendocino.

She was a Science Teacher.  Appropriately enough she taught seventh grade Life Science.  And she taught students about life and love in ways that no other teacher was ever able to do.

I met Endira Mendocino the very first year I taught in the little South Texas town of Cotulla.  They hired me to teach eighth grade English.  And from the first time I saw her until the very last time twenty years later, she always looked exactly the same, like a plump little Wish-nik Troll Doll with frizzy hair.  The picture I drew from memory clearly looks more like Al Franken, the Senator from Minnesota than it really looks like her  To draw her accurately from a photo would be more like an insult than a portrait.  20160213_110859

Her great beauty was entirely on the inside.  And I, of course, am not the only person who was ever made privy to this wonderful secret.  She was a teacher who cared passionately about kids.  She had been a Catholic nun before she became a teacher.  And she brought the Bible teaching of the rod of discipline to her students.  But not the rod of whacking.  She was not one of those Catholic school nuns who whacked your knuckles with a wooden ruler for every perceived sin.  Rather, she used the rod of discipline as it was meant to be used by the Bible writers who wrote about it.  The rod was used to sight along straight lines for laying brick building foundations.  It was used as a line of sight for making paths straight, not for whacking feet at every misstep.  And this is how she taught students.  She modeled good behaviors for them, how to speak respectfully to your elders, how to meet anger with calm and reason, how to think through a problem and sort out solutions to find the best one.  She did as a matter of course on a daily basis things it took me years of trial and error to figure out how to do in a classroom.

Kids would do anything she ever asked of them.  And they didn’t do it out of fear. Oh, she did embarrass them frequently.  If a boy in her class became extra-wiggly and acted out at all, she would make him hold her hand for a few a minutes, and she would refer to him as her “boyfriend” when she reminded the class how you properly go about listening and learning.  But those few minutes of red-faced humiliation imprinted on the wiggler’s young psyche that problems are best confronted not with anger and punishment, but with love.

She never married.  She never had a romantic relationship that any of us ever knew about.  But she definitely had family.  We were all her family.  Her students and fellow teachers all loved her and treated her like a loving mother, hence the nickname “Mother Mendocino”.  And when her diabetes and kidney problems proved too much for the miracles of modern medicine and dialysis, she took an early retirement and quietly passed away.   The whole town mourned her.  But she is not gone.  She lives in all of us.  The lessons she taught were paid forward by all of us who knew her.  And so I offer that little bit of her here and now to you.

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February 10, 2016 · 7:50 pm

Stupid Is Lovable

Stupid Boy

One does not have to be smart in order to be lovable.   In fact, I think, based on my years as a teacher and reputed smart person, being smart is actually a handicap to being loved by others.  Some of the sweetest, most lovable students I ever met were the the special-education students who were mentally handicapped.   I worked with them at times as a substitute teacher in 2006 and 2007.  I also encountered them routinely doing hallway duty at Naaman Forest High School.  They always said hello.  They always smiled.  Though they rarely knew my name.  Some of them went out of their way to shake hands with me and ask me how my day was.  I discovered along the way that teachers who worked with them on a daily basis tended to be nicer, more welcoming and friendly than other teachers.  That simple enthusiasm and likability is obviously contagious.

I promise, doing the things that happy but somewhat stupid people do works when you have to deal with others on a daily basis.  I know because I tried it.  It took me several years to work past the foolish teacher-notion that you have be the boss and you have to be mean to get students to learn.  You start trying to iron out bad behaviors by calling them out and shouting them down, which only leads to threats that have to be carried out, students sitting in misery in the principal’s office, parents calling with concerns or trying to boss and bully you, and more trips to the store for antacids and headache pills.

sweet thing

What actually works better is meeting the students at the door with a stupid grin on my face before class ever starts.  “Good morning,” I say.  “You are looking smarter than usual today.  You must be ready to learn the most important lessons anyone ever learned.”

“Are we doing something in class today?” they always say.

“Of course we are,” I answer with my stupid grin, “wonderful things!”

When the lessons start and the class clown puts wasted sticky-notes on his eyelids and ears and tongue, I don’t get mad and tell him to straighten up or else.  I tell him, “Something is different about the way you look today.  Did you try a new hair gel or something?”  When the others break up in giggles, I tell him, “Whatever it is, it makes you look good.  You should wear it that way for every lesson you do.”

Sometimes you have to stop a serious consideration of themes in the Kurt Vonnegut short story from the Literature Book to take a serious wiggle-break.  Students need to stand up and shake apart whatever stiff dead-parts they may have grown from sitting too long in one spot.  Most of them shake their behinds.  You know, the part they use for thinking most of the time.

You do these stupid things, and the students begin to love your class.  They begin to love what they are reading.  It is a simple, stupid thing… but so very necessary.

Of course you can’t cure all the dead-brains, jerks, and snarks this way.  Some will never buy in.  But it works with most.  Kids will behave well for you if you love the stupid parts they all have in them.  They will love you because you let them be stupid without serious consequences.

Now, I know there are many… some of them principals and teacher-evaluators who will be offended by me talking about kids being stupid.  Some will mistakenly think I am insulting them.  But I am not.  I often need to make a distinction between the kind of stupid I am talking about here and the angry, hurtful kind that I prefer to call ignorance.  That kind of stupid is the kind that makes Donald Trump, a person who actually knows better, call Mexican immigrants rapists.  It is a different thing to do something stupid because you are unintentionally wrong about something, or impaired somehow (like me when my blood sugar is low), or valuing silly over accurate.  Stupidity often can’t be helped.  but when you demonize Muslims because you want to make political points with people who are angry and fearful and honestly don’t know anything about Muslims they haven’t heard from ignorant people, then ignorance means ignoring what you probably know is true anyway to do something that intentionally chooses not to make use of whatever useful intelligence you have.

So forgive me for writing a stupid essay about stupid being lovable.  I can’t help it.  I am just stupid sometimes.

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