Sometimes you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for every-day posting ideas. But, luckily, I stumbled across a computer file of artwork I had thought I lost when I upgraded to Windows 10. Sometimes bad things turn out well, and sometimes good things go bad. So, I figured I would share some of the inexplicable things I found in the lost file. Why would I do such a thing? Because I am not entirely lazy and out of ideas. No, of course I am not.
Filed under artwork, cartoons, humor, Paffooney, Uncategorized
This meme was created for Tatang by my brother-in-law, his son Jhune.
Ecclesiastes 3: 1&2 For everything there is an appointed time, even a time for every affair under the heavens: 2 a time for birth and a time to die…
My wise and gentle father-in-law went gentle into that good night. It happened last weekend. He had been visiting his home in the Philippines. But when the time came to come back, he was too frail and ill to make the trip. This weekend my wife has returned to the Philippines to be with family for the funeral and time with family. Two of my children and I are left behind in Texas. It is a time for sadness for us. But it is a part of life we will have to face again in the future. And now we need a time to heal.
Filed under Uncategorized
It has been shown in a new study that there are actually more green leaves out there now as a result of industrial emissions of CO2. The world is becoming greener. This is not just Mickey telling stories. You can find a corroborating article from the BBC Here! So my war to keep my wife’s love of flowering plants from eating our house is not all in my head… mostly, but not ALL.
This rake-eating wisteria had climbed, entwined, and imprisoned one of our rakes. I rescued it from being eaten when the other rake broke during my endless battles with live oak leaves.
Texas weather in the month of May has been almost exclusively water from the sky. It has rained more days than it has been sunny. In fact, rainy days have been more than half the days in May. This is a distinct change from the year-after-year drought pattern that we experienced every year we have lived in North Texas up until two years ago.
The ground under our house after shriveling up with drought for eight years is now swelling and moving with the flow of mud and clay. That means the pool is cracked and unusable. The foundation is also cracked and shifting. If the plants don’t eat the house, the wet ground and the fracking earthquakes are going to knock it down.
The greening of our world is not entirely a good thing. It is true that plants turn the carbon dioxide into breathable air. And flowers are wonderful, even though the pollen they produce often makes my COPD chest pains ache and makes it harder to draw breath. But it is also evidence that the whole pollute-for-profit thing that industrialists do without conscience, is destroying our world and making it possible for the planet to pull down our structures and buildings with storms and erosion and earthquakes and general entropy.
Being an Iowa farm boy, I am in favor or the world being green. Even though, as Kermit always sings to us, it ain’t easy being green, if we can do it properly, being green will make our lives better. But we need to do it intentionally. We should not simply rely on the good graces of industrialists who make higher profits from not having regulations about how much green-house gas they can pump into the atmosphere per hour. Let’s see if we can make green a good thing.
Okay, I had accidentally stumbled across the un-shrink button on my computer for the last two posts, and then, somehow, my thumb accidentally found the shrink button again. I am trying to write this post on a microscopically small screen and squinting fiercely at the teeny-tiny letters all the while. So what do I do to avoid total mental meltdown? I call upon my minions. I have a picture file on my computer devoted entirely to minions. So I ought to be able to make a decent collage out of that;
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Okay, I reached a point where I had to punch random buttons without any response and my computer finally enlarged everything again. Ultron is obviously in the system though anti-virus software doesn’t detect him. I guess I am going to have think about a new computer. Meanwhile, a few more minions;
Filed under collage, humor, memes, Uncategorized
I discovered a new artist today. I was reading posts in the Facebook writer’s group, 1000 Voices for Compassion. And there in a post by Corinne Rodrigues was a YouTube video by Andrew Peterson. And it was a miracle. I clicked on the video and he sang my soul. Here is the original blog post. And here is the video.
Yesterday I posted a self-reflected goopy bit of nonsense about how I write and draw. Today, I realized I haven’t explained why I write and draw.
You can capture it in words. You can capture it in pictures. Like Andrew Peterson did, you can capture it in music. It is deep and profound and eternal… and you can’t really explain it, but it is the singularity… the right word… the way to caress the very face of God.
This music from Andrew Peterson is musical poetry that expresses love in terms of romance and religion. Love of the significant other is equal to and intertwined with the love of God. There is a truth in that, and a fundamental reason why despite how religion has let me down, I will never be an atheist again. Through the right words I have come to know God. I speak to him daily. I spent twenty years as a Jehovah’s Witness, even to the point of knocking on doors and sharing the little pamphlets that are supposed to contain the capital “T” Truth. I can’t do that any more, though. The thing is, they believe the chosen of God, the only people who can reach paradise, are the people who all say and do and believe the very same thing, the very same words. Anyone else is left to destruction. No paradise. No life after death. And they clearly tell you what the words are, and you must repeat them like a magic spell. Peterson’s music is forbidden. JW’s don’t want you to listen to anyone’s words but their own. So, since this is Christian music, but not JW Christianity, it is the work of the devil, trying to lead you to destruction. What kind of selfishness is this? And yes, I have repeatedly been shown the words in the Bible that say that this is so. But I have stopped believing that all words in the Bible are the right words. When the Bible speaks of love… those are the right words. When the Bible speaks about what you must hate and who is condemned… those are not.
You may have noticed that I have obsessively searched out and shared this Andrew Peterson music. I do that when I find the right words… good words… I obsessively want to find more and more. I did that once with butterflies. When I was a boy, I chased them down with nets and collected them. But you have to put butterflies in killing jars and then mount them on pins and Styrofoam boards to collect them. I realized too late that this was not the right way to treat them. You have to let them flutter in the sunshine and float on the breeze. You have to let them live. And so must you do with the right words when you find them. You must use them and share them and let them live.
Yes, the reason I write is because my life has been lived and it is coming to an end. But it is a good life. A life filled with wisdom and love and the very best of those words I have collected in butterfly nets over time. And I must share those very right words… and let them live because they are beautiful and true… and it is simply who I have to be.
I recently posted about being synesthetic and discovering how I am different from normal people. Here is the post if you are interested.. Then I discovered that Kanye West is also synesthetic as he gushed some southern-fried crappie-doo about how wonderful he is as an artist because he sees the colors of his music. Well, now I don’t want that mental affliction any more. I don’t wish to be anything like him. Of course, it has to be incurable, doesn’t it.
Now I am wasting today’s post on another metacognative thinking-about-thinking style of paragraph pile when I could be rhapsodizing about the humor of Dave Barry or the wisdom of Robert Fulghum, the author of
I could be shamelessly promoting the work of artists whose works I love instead of examining the random filing cabinets in the back rooms of my stupid old head. But I can’t because I now need to explain myself to myself again. Self doubt and self examination are features of being an artist. We reach a point where we have to think about how we do what we do, because if you don’t know where the magic comes from, you might not be able to call on it the next time you need it.
I am a self-taught artist. I have had art classes in high school and college, but never professional art training. I know how to manipulate the rule of thirds, directional composition, movement, perspective, and lots of other artsy-craftsy techniques, but it is all a matter of trial and error and an instinct for repeating what works. I have had a good deal more professional training as a writer. But I do that mostly by instinct as well. Trained instinct. I have reached a point where my art is very complex and detailed. And I don’t mean to suggest there are no flaws. In fact, I am capable enough to see huge, glaring mistakes that really skew my original intent and make me feel hopelessly incompetent. But others who see it and don’t know the inner workings of the process can look past those mistakes and not even see them. Given enough time to look at my own work with new eyes, I am able to see at least some of what they see.
Now that I have totally wasted 500-plus words on goofy talking-to-myself, what have I really accomplished beyond boring you to death? What’s that you say? You are not dead yet? Well, that’s probably only because you looked at the pictures and didn’t read any of my sugar-noodle brain-scrapings in loosely paragraph-like form. And if you did read this awful post by a colorblind artist who doubts his own abilities, you probably didn’t learn anything from it. But that’s not the point. The point is, I care about doing this, and I need to do it right. And I managed to learn something… how to ramble and meander and make something that is either a hot mess… or something that vaguely resembles self-reflective art.
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 I know now. I am grateful that I survived. But I remember the nightmares as vividly as I do the dreams.
As a teacher, I learned that childhood and young adulthood defines the adult. And the kid who is coddled and never faces the darkness is the one who becomes a total jerk or a criminal… or Donald Trump. I almost feel that the challenges we faced and the tragedies we overcame in our lives are the very things that made us strong and good and worthy.
When you are a boy growing up, hating girls on the outside and pining to get a look in the girls’ shower room on the inside, you can’t wait to grow up and get away from the horrors of being a child. Except, there are good things too. Tang, of course, wasn’t one of them. We drank it because the astronauts drank it, but it was so sweet and artificial it tasted bitter in that oxymoronic way that only fake stuff can achieve. Quisp is nasty-tasting stuff too… but we begged for it because, well, the cartoon commercials were cool. I only ever choked down about two boxes of the vile stuff. You went to school a little queasy on mornings when you ate Quisp in milk for breakfast. But one box had a toy inside, and the other had an alien mask on the back that you could cut out, but not actually wear.
But when it comes down to how you end a goofy-times-ten-and-then-squared essay like this one, well, how do you tie a proper knot at the end of the thread? Maybe like this; It is a very hard thing to be a boy and then grow up to be a man. But I did it. And looking back on it, the pie was not my favorite flavor… but, hey! it was pie!
I was enumerating yesterday all the bad things that make my life exactly the way I expect it to be as a total pessimist. Of course, I left out that I am fully expecting Donald Trump to be the next president of this country. Yes, I expect the worst to happen. Hillary Clinton will not beat Trump either because of her toxic unfavorability or because the email thing will bring down an indictment to nullify her eligibility to be president. And all my conservative friends who love Trump will continue to dance happy dances and sing about me being a hopeless “lib-tard” who doesn’t really know anything about anything as Trump continues to rob them and make their lives more miserable with the help of the government he will control from the inside.
Yes, one of the biggest downers about being too smart for your own good is, you see past the lies everyone tells themselves, and perceive the darkest of the truths that lurk behind them.
I got this meme from a high school friend who served in the Navy and became a firefighter… an honorable public servant no matter how you look at it.
In the meme to the right, I am characterized as a self-centered numb-noggin who thinks his opinion is more important than the realities of this person’s life. It makes me sad that my childhood friend believes this is true about my political beliefs. But I am not claiming to be oppressed. Well, maybe by Trump once he does away with the healthcare law that guarantees insurance companies will cover me despite six pre-existing conditions. This is a straw man argument that sets up liberals as unreasonable norks that want the law to dictate that everything should be the way liberals want them to be. That is not the way I see being a liberal.
I choose rather to look at what people are saying on all sides and make decisions based on my hopefully broad and enlightened mind. I would never advise someone to have an abortion. But I do care what happens to children once they are born. Are we limiting their suffering when they are not wanted by anyone? When they are born into poverty? When they drink lead-contaminated water and are subjected to brain damage and death because the conservative government decided saving money was worth the risk? I believe all people are deserving of respect and all people have value. I have gay friends and former students. Their existence in this world enriches it, and I am not ashamed to know them. I would never ask one of my conservative friends to marry another man… or marry anybody. I have a wife who is from a foreign country and her road to citizenship is still not traversed. Could we be making that road harder than it needs to be?
I am a liberal. But I would not call myself a tax-and-spend liberal. I would rather see the money we already pay in taxes go for better public schools, better roads and bridges and public works, less expensive, or even FREE college education for my struggling children, rather than tax breaks and corporate wellfare for GE, Pfizer, and Exxon. Is it too much to ask that our taxes be spent on us rather than enhancing corporate profit margins? And couldn’t millionaires and billionaires afford to pay the same percentage of taxes that I do? Maybe even more because they have more? Why does believing these things make me evil? Or stupid? Or any of the other things that my conservative friends tell me that I am because I am a liberal? I would rather reason things out than simply insult others, something the other side of this argument doesn’t make a habit of doing.
I have no problem saying, “Black lives matter.” They do matter. And they have not been treated fairly. Not Trayvon Martin. Not Michael Brown. Especially not Tamir Rice, the twelve year old shot to death for having a toy gun. These are children who are not to blame for their own deaths. So I am not burdened to add “…All lives matter” because it goes without saying. White and Asian lives have not been snuffed out in Walmart’s toy section for handling an air rifle. I guess I must be a reverse-racist for saying this like I have been told on Facebook.
I am a liberal. So shoot me. Er… rather, don’t shoot me. But be patient with my fact-heavy and logic-heavy arguments. If you are a Christian, then weigh my arguments against what you know in your heart Jesus actually would do. I know scripture. I have read the entire Bible more than once. I am confident my wanting government to do what helps the greatest number and harms no one will stand the test. And I am preparing to deal with a President Donald Trump who probably won’t see it that way.
Filed under angry rant, grumpiness, humor, Liberal ideas, pessimism, politics, Uncategorized
A breakfast-table doodle done while waiting for kids to get ready for school.
The advantage in life for a pessimist is that you always prepare for the worst, and when the worst happens, you are ready to deal with it. The only time you are taken by surprise, is when something good happens.
So, I was expecting the San Jose Sharks to beat the St. Louis Blues in their championship series. And last night, the Sharks took them down 4 goals to none.
I owe Bank of America money, something that doesn’t go well with being retired and in poor health, and out of money. I am putting my finances in order and preparing to have to pay them. But I got a letter from a collection agency that has taken on collecting the debt.
So, bad things happen in tandem with other bad things. And sometimes being prepared is just not enough.
As a science fiction writer working with apocalyptic themes, I have been researching the problems that could be the end of humanity, if not life on Earth. As the video explains, the way we have used the Earth’s resources, wrecked Earth’s environment, and overpopulated the Earth to unsustainable levels have already left us at a point of no return. We are doomed by our own hands.
So… sometimes being a pessimist is a real bummer.
But terrible things happening doesn’t leave us without resources. Human beings are adaptable and resilient. We may not all live happily ever after, but we are capable of preserving the species through chaos and catastrophe. And if we don’t, it isn’t like we have lived in vain.
In fact, I have already taken steps to deal with the pirates of Bank of America. And the Blues are playing a best-of-seven series which is now tied at one game apiece. Doom looms. But I am not worried. I have already accepted that the very worst will probably happen. Odds are I will be pleasantly surprised more than once.
Filed under autobiography, doodle, drawing, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, pessimism, Uncategorized
Catch a Falling Star 
Dave Barry
dave barry
I threatened to write a post about Dave Barry and the writing gods apparently thought that was a very very bad idea. They have tried to prevent me from carrying out this idle threat by attacking my computer with gremlins. Now my WordPress page is shrinking practically out of sight. I can barely see what I am typing. You don’t believe me? Here’s what it looks like at the moment;
They obviously tricked me into pressing the secret shrink button on my computer, and I have no idea where to find the un-shrink features. Not only that, but my Facebook page is automatically translating everything it can into French. They really don’t want me to tell you about Dave Barry. And why do you suppose that is?
Well, Dave Barry may actually be me from a parallel dimension. He started writing for The Miami Herald in the early 80’s, at about the same time I started teaching. He retired from that in 2004 after winning a Pulitzer Prize and started writing humorous novels…. the same thing I started doing when I left the job I loved and was good at. Okay, so I am stretching the analogy to the point that all the buttons are popping off its shirt… but the point is, we are alike in some ways and I admire his work and I steal things from it whenever I possibly can. Like this post. I deeply admire the way he can say witty and pithy things. Like some of these quotes;
So, you see, he is very good at doing what I want to be good at. He is a humor columnist and all-around imitation Mark Twain. And I have read and loved his novels. Especially the Peter Pan things he writes with a partner.
Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
So, I will leave this post here even though I could talk for hours about how Dave Barry makes me laugh. I have to stop. the words on the screen keep getting smaller and smaller, and my old eyes are about to fall out of my head.
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Filed under commentary, horror movie, humor, Uncategorized