There are many ways to fly. Airplanes, bird wings, hot air balloons, bubble-gum-blowing goldfish… well, maybe I am really talking about flying by imagination. The more my six incurable diseases and old age limit my movement, my ability to get out of bed and do things, the more I rely on reading, writing, and the movie in my head to go places I want to be.
Sometimes the wings I use to fly come from other writers. I get the flight feathers I need not only from books, but also from YouTube videos, movies, and television shows.
This magic carpet ride in video form is by the thoughtful creative thinker Will Schoder. In it he carefully explains how Mister Rogers used the persuasion techniques of Logos, Ethos, and Pathos to talk to elephants and convinced a congressman intent on cutting the budget to actually give Public Television more money for…
Here’s an old post to help repair the reputation of clowns. Curse you, Stephen King for writing It. I love clowns, and they are crucial to the novel I am finishing 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…
Earlier this week I voted in the early voting for the midterm election. I voted for Beto O’Rourke in hopes that he will cast enough sunshine on the Vampire Ted Cruz to turn the old smirking blood-sucker into dust. (You can see in the picture that Cruz smeared on a lot of sunscreen, but hopefully, he didn’t have enough time to slather it on thick enough to cover some of the worst things he is trying to cover up.)
I did, however, hear before the day was out that some people who voted straight-ticket Democratic ballots saw their results come out of the machine on the check screen as if they had voted for Cruz for senator. How absolutely evil and vampire-like is that?
I desperately need Democrats to win at least the House of Representatives. There has to be a check on Trumpism. I am a diabetic retired schoolteacher who has gone bankrupt over healthcare expenses and can’t afford to go on insulin even before the Republican overlords finish hacking at and slaying Obamacare with its provisions to protect people with pre-existing conditions. And it comes as no surprise to me that Republicans in Texas are willing to cheat to win elections. Non-white and poor voters vastly outnumber the millionaire and billionaire white people who own and operate the State. There is a need to cheat to hold on to power so the downtrodden don’t try to rise up and take back what they have a right to, and in the process possibly accidentally eat the rich people.
And Fearless Leader has adopted tactics that are alarming as well. Not only has he promised to send 15,000 troops to the border with Mexico to fight a “caravan” of asylum seekers and put them into tent-city prison camps, but he has given them permission to shoot to kill if someone throws a rock at them, after a nine-year-old immigrant girl threw a rock at a soldier. His autocratic tendencies are now in full view of the public, and the majority can see the parallels to Nazism, and 44% of Americans polled seem to like it.
Calling Republicans names and lamenting their rule is exhausting and probably pointless. I fully accept that they probably do have the power to keep winning in spite of not representing the majority of the people of this country. But I do what I have to in order to fight against toxic ideas. I voted against them. I wrote a post that insults them. And now I need to get back to the serious work of writing stuff that makes people laugh (okay, actually stuff that makes melaugh, and maybe a few other people too.)
Fifty years ago when I was ten, the world was a very different place. Many people long for the time when they were young. They see it as a better, more innocent time. Not me. Childhood was both a blessing and a nightmare for me. I was creative and artistic and full of life. And my family encouraged that. But I was also a victim of a sexual assault and believed I had to keep a terrible secret even from my parents so that the world would not reject me as something horrible. We were on the way to the moon and the future looked bright. But President Kennedy had been assassinated in 1963, and Apollo 1 would end in a fiery tragedy in 1967. I look back with longing at many, many things, but I would never want to go back to that time and place without knowing everything…
Sometimes life gets a bit tough when you are old and diabetic and grumpy all the time… and your kids are still teenagers… and you have to spend four hours a day driving them to two different schools in two different Dallas suburbs… and it rains one day and swelters you in Texas heat the next… and the drive home occurs during rush hour… and you just can’t think beyond loud thoughts like; “Why does that stop light turn red right before I get there?” and “Why can’t somebody teach teenagers how to drive in a high school parking lot?!” and “Why is the sun so bright and in my eyes going BOTH DIRECTIONS?!?” and “Why is the worst driver in Texas always the one right in front of me?!?!!!”
And then you realize, you can’t think any more to make a decent post for your blog. You are dead…
It will probably be clear that I am writing this post because I am currently reading 1941 daily strips from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner.
But I am definitely going to talk about corny jokes, not cheesy jokes, because I grew up in Iowa, not Wisconsin.
And, yes, that is example number one.
There is a certain way of telling a joke or tall tale that is unique to the farmyard. And it does not contain chicken poop, but rather, corn.
Of course, as you can see by this corn-colored definition of what corny means according to Collins Online Dictionary, the word is supposed to be an insult to corniness in jokery. That doesn’t sit well with the people of Iowa, where the tall corn grows. We are also obvious, sentimental, and not at all original. And we are proud of it.
I thought I would re-blog this since the contest is past and the aliens will probably destroy our planet for not participating. It is always good to know the reasons why things happen.
The Ixcanixian Cultural Ambassador from the Squeelix Sector of the Planet Ixcanix sent me an e-mail about his planet’s newest idea for a cultural exchange. He calls it the “Ixcanixian Spleegle Gorn Vorpaloop” which translates to the “Ixcanixian Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge”. At least, it does if I am conjugating the verb “Vorpaloop” correctly. It is difficult because you have to drop the silent “y” before adding the “aloop” without causing it to explode. I know it is probably a very bad idea to present it here on this planet, but he talked me into it by promising to promote my novel Catch a Falling Star on his homeworld and at least two other planets in the Bugeye Federation.
Here are the rules for the alien poetry contest;
Entries can only come from planets in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. (So, for…
Catch a Falling Star 