Sometimes it is entirely necessary to acknowledge the fool and the helpless, hopeless clown that lives inside us all. Okay, I hear what you are thinking. Not you. There is no clown inside of you… only me. That is one of a myriad of mistakes that makes me acknowledge that I am far short of perfection. I am not a know-it-all. I am a know-it-sometimes who too often tries to bluster his way through like he isn’t completely unsure of himself and terrified that other people will see what he truly is and laugh him out of business. I am a pratfall, butt-of-the-joke, snicker-at-snidely sort of buffoon who never gets it right and deserves every guffaw thrown at him. Clowns are often all blue, squishy, and sad on the inside. That is often the only thing that makes us funny. Do you know what brought on this wave of self pity? Of course you do. No man ever went through a day of stumble-muffs and misquotes, goof-ups and stubbed toes like I did without feeling at least a little bit that way. Oh? Not you, again? I hear you. It must be nice to never make mistakes. 
I have my car registered with the wrong registration sticker. When I tried to get the State inspection done, I found out my car is now supposed to be the old van my wife destroyed in a car accident last spring. My bank’s bill-pay service has twice sent money to the electric company which somehow lost the electronic check. I can’t even handle idiot-proof details any more. My son who was home on leave went back to the Marine Corps early this morning. I took him to the airport and had to bring all his deodorant spray, shampoo, and toothpaste back home with me because soap on an airplane equals terrorist. Apparently that should’ve all gone into the bags we checked, because that stuff only explodes in the carry-on bags, never the baggage compartment. I am called out for my many writing mistakes, even the ones I made on purpose trying to be funny, and my self-editor let me down on several occasions in the past week. So I am depressed. At life I am, at best, a .125 hitter, barely making more than one hit in every ten at-bats. I am a rodeo clown trying to play in a basketball game, and the bulls are all Michael Jordan. (How’s that for a mangled metaphor?) 
But it isn’t all the blues that I am singing. Good things have happened too. Life continues in my unlikely body afflicted with six incurable diseases, and I am a cancer survivor since 1983. The golf-ball sized growth the surgeon removed from the back of my head last week was benign, no sign of cancer. My son was home on leave. Every day is it’s own miracle. And I have gotten some writing done. So what if every editor and every reader doesn’t fall in love with every single word? The story goes on for at least another day.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Inner Clown
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More Playing With Black and White Backgrounds
Here is the result of taking a section of my big black and white background and inserting a bit of color. New pictures out of old ones. Can I cheat at the art thing or what?
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Midterm Elections
Politics is, unfortunately, a game with rigged rules that you and I need to win, but have only a snowball’s chance in H-E-double-hockey-sticks of winning. Why do we need to win? And why can’t we? It is a matter of how government serves us and who it really belongs to. It is supposed to work democratically, enacting the will of the majority for the general welfare. It is supposed to belong to the American people who vote to make it so. Unfortunately, the Dark Side of the Force has waxed powerful and Darth Dick Cheney and his apprentice Darth Elefans (possibly the Sith Lord name of Ted Cruz) have taken power. The government has become a fascist oligarchy with Sith Lords and corporations enslaving the masses, crushing the middle class, and stripping us of every benefit our tax dollars are supposed to be paying for.
I know that sounds like I am a liberal, and many of my Republican-leaning friends in both Texas and Iowa cringe at the sound of it. To them “liberal” means bad and “conservative” means good. They have all stopped reading this before it reaches this sentence. But to me, liberal simply means that I care. I want to see government help people even if that means that I have to make personal sacrifices to do it. Conservative seems to mean more and more that such a person is only interested in protecting themselves, their profits and their prejudices.
What, you may ask, am I basing this judgement on? I look at what happened in this week’s election. Republicans won a majority in the Senate and retained their majority in the House. The Republican winners have expressed the belief that the Affordable Care Act, so-called Obamacare, needs to be repealed. That basically means that because the Insurance industry, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment manufacturers make higher profits doing things the old way, they want to take away the insurance that so many people now have that they didn’t have before. In other words, profit is far more important to them than people’s health. These victors have also expressed the belief that global warming and climate change are a hoax, or simply untrue. This means that they reject the scientific evidence that confirms its existence. Science must be wrong because they don’t accept that the recorded facts are true. In other words, they find it more profitable to be stupid and block any attempts to regulate or slow down the highly profitable gas and oil industry. These winners have also stated that the debt and deficit that this country is burdened with (an artifact of a previous Republican administration) needs to be lessened by taking away food stamps, medicare, medicaid, and other social benefits, programs paid for by our hard-earned tax dollars and meant to benefit those among us who fall on hard times or have a need many times created by the wealthy upper class who paid billions of dollars to buy elections and have no need of these services themselves. If we were to return to President Eisenhower’s ninety per cent tax rate on the wealthy, the Koch Brothers and the Walton Family of Wal-Mart heirs could easily reduce the deficit themselves.
We deserve to benefit from the government we paid for. The majority of all taxes have been paid by the middle class and the poor since the Reagan Administration. The wealthy have gotten tax breaks and moved their money off shore or out of the country for too many years. They can now legally (thanks to the Supreme Court which is tilted to the conservative side) buy elections with unreported dark money that corrupts not only Republicans, but Democrats as well. We are left with no one to represent our interests. We are at the mercy of heartless, Dark-Side masters. Whatever can we do?
It is a time for heroes. Senator Al (Han Solo) Franken retained his seat in Minnesota, winning more strongly than he did the last time. There are progressives alive and well and joining the Rebel Alliance in Minnesota. Princess Senator Elizabeth Warren speaks out with authority from Massachusetts (Alderaan) in defense of women’s rights, our right to affordable education, and fairness in politics. And our best hope lies in Senator Bernie (Luke) Sky-Sanders, the Independent Jedi from Vermont. He wields a light-saber tongue that lashes out at the Koch Brothers and their election monkey-madness with dark money. He fights for income equality and the middle class. He may yet bring balance to the Force.
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Troll Treasure
Here is an old Paffooney revisited. Here Prince Robin leads a team of adventurers deep into the darkling wood where they find and take on a troll. The two dwarven filchers are no match for the man-beast, but two of the rogue’s well-placed arrows bring him down. And the treasure is magical and valuable beyond their wildest dreams. But is that an evil glow on the diamond known as the troll’s heart? Will it corrupt the beautiful young rogue? I simply do not know.
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Working With Miss Morgan
Here is a sample from my work in progress, The Magical Miss Morgan.
Canto Nineteen – The Ghost House after Dark
“Bobby couldn’t make it,” said Frosty Anderson. “He says he had chores.”
“We all know he’s afraid of the dark,” said Mike Murphy, lighting another candle.
“We shouldn’t make fun of him all the time,” reminded Blueberry, sitting next to Mike. “It’s hard to get out of the house after dark to come here to an abandoned cellar in the middle of a junk yard.”
“Okay, we already know what Miss Morgan says about that,” said Tim. “We have more important business tonight.”
“Worth getting grounded for a month for?” asked Mike.
“Yes.”
The children all leaned toward Tim as he sat conspiratorially in the middle of the candlelit cellar of the ruined house. Everyone wanted to know what the big reveal was going to be, and Tim was loving it.
“So what’s the big deal?” asked Frosty.
“You know the project about getting kids to believe in fairies?” said Tim.
“Yeah,” said Mike and Frosty as Blueberry nodded.
“There is a secret reason that Miss Morgan needs us to do that project.”
Tim picked up a shoebox and placed it on his knees in front of him. He slowly lifted the lid.
“So? An empty shoebox?” sneered Mike.
“Oh, my!” Blueberry’s eyes got as big as Tim could ever remember seeing them.
“This is Garriss,” said Tim simply, “he’s an elemental fire fairy.”
“I’m a Wisp,” croaked the little naked fire man.
“Cool!” gasped Frosty.
“He looks more like hot,” noted Mike.
“Is he real?” asked Blueberry stupidly.
“Don’t you believe your own eyes?” asked Tim.
“Don’t be rude to the beautiful young lady,” warned Garriss.
“Can I hold him?” Blueberry asked timidly.
“You’ll burn your hands,” said Mike.
“No, you won’t,” said Garriss. “I am more than willing to be held by you, Pretty Miss. And I promise, you can’t be hurt by my magical fire.”
Blueberry put out her open palm, and the little man formed of fire stepped gingerly into it. The girl lifted him up in front of her face.
“You’re made of fire… And you’re naked,” said Blueberry.
“I am a magical being,” said Garriss, “and I need you to believe I am real, for I will not continue to exist otherwise.”
“So,” said Mike, “you are only real if we believe in you?”
“Yes,”
“If I say I don’t believe in fairies, will you die?”
“Can you see me standing in front of you and still say you don’t believe?” asked Garriss.
“Good point,” answered Mike.
“If we are going to help the fairy people of Tellosia,” said Tim, “I had to show you they are real. We can’t risk showing the real fairies to everyone, though. We have to come up with ways to make people believe without actually showing them.”
“Why can’t we just show everybody?” said Mike. “We could take a picture and show everybody!”
“Please, don’t do that,” pleaded Garriss. “Someone might disbelieve their own eyes, and then I, and maybe others, would actually die.”
“Oh, we can’t let that happen!” cooed Blueberry. “Garriss? Will you let me draw your picture with colored pencils?”
“I would be honored, my lady.”
“This is all just too wonderful to be real,” Blueberry said.
Tim nodded in silence. They would generate the belief that was needed, Blueberry’s drawings would do it, if anything could. That girl could really whip pencils around and make good art.
“We have to swear a Pirate oath,” said Tim. “We all swear to make people believe and keep the real fairies safe from discovery and death. If we fail, then may our human hearts shrivel up and we all die an untimely death.”
“I swear it,” said Blueberry.
“If Blue does,” said Mike, “then so do I.”
“Me too,” said Frosty.
“And you have my word on it too,” said Garriss.
Tim grinned an evil grin. This was gonna be great.
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The Whole Enchilada (Though it’s not an enchilada, it’s a Paffooney)
I finished it in black and white. I know it doesn’t make sense as a whole, but it is surrealism, and it is supposed to be cut up into separate parts, as I will show you later.
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Pen and Ink Progress
Here is what the pen and ink background project looks like tonight before I start working on it.
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Walter Mitty
I am still recovering from a heart-attack scare, and as a part of my regimen of rest and fluids, I watched the DVD of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring and directed by Ben Stiller. It is a brilliant piece of film art in my opinion. The basic story is about a day-dreaming ne’er-do-well who is so much like I once was that it is practically an unauthorized biography. Mitty daydreams and pines over a co-worker that he is afraid to introduce himself to. He works at Life Magazine at a time when the printed periodical was going out of business. His job is on the line. Then, he loses a photograph from a famous photographer when he has never made such an error before. To correct his mistake, he goes on a world-hopping quest to find the photographer, visiting Greenland, jumping into the ocean from a helicopter, fighting a shark, escaping from an erupting volcano in Iceland, climbing a mountain in the Himalayas, and finally, getting fired for not finding it, though he does find it, and proves he is more competent and brave and daring and heroic than even his daydreams told him that he was. At the end he even gets the girl. It made me cry to realize how much my life was like that. It has been a comedy of errors compounded by the criticism and negativity of the world around me. I fought hard to be a competent teacher. I had to become an advocate for kids. I fought for the good of the students against principals, parents, the State of Texas, three school administrations, politicians, and sometimes even the students themselves. I rose to new heights during my darkest hours. I made a difference. A lot of kids came back to tell me I was their favorite teacher, that they learned things and remembered things from my class more than any of their other classes. I know some of them were lying for sentimental reasons, but not all of them were. So I was, in the end, a success. I had my Walter Mitty moments.
So what is the point of all of this, and of the picture of my messy studio which is also my bedroom and sickroom? If I had died from the heart attack rather than finding out it wasn’t really a heart attack, I would still be successful in the course of my life and career. Three beautiful and intelligent children with my genetic stamp… more than 2,500 students educated and served… thirty-one years of faithful teachering… like Walter Mitty, I have been worth so much more than I have ever been given credit for. And yet… and yet… I am not finished. I am only now coming into my real magical powers over words and ideas. I am only now reaching out and saying what treasures are truly in my heart for all to take away and enrich themselves with. Some of it is in the books I have written. Some of it is in the blog I am here making available to you. I am not bragging. I am old and in pain and very near the end… but I still have love to give… and laughter… and life. Please, help yourself to it while you may. I am not done yet.
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Broken Hearts
Last night I had an episode that may have been tachycardia, a scary enough thing, but that was followed by chest pain in the area of my heart. I came very near to calling 911 and going to the emergency room at about 2:20 a.m. I didn’t, or rather, I kinda passed out before I got to the phone. But it turned out okay. I have been to the cardiologist twice before for the same thing. It turned out that the electrocardiogram was completely normal. Before it was my COPD that fooled me into thinking I was having a heart attack. This time was probably also that. Lung pain and muscle spasms can disguise themselves in Halloween costumes of myocardial infarction. But I am over the scare now. I am not dead. I am apparently not dying yet. So I am still playing games with Paffooney backgrounds.
Yes, I know you are getting tired of this same background, but I’m still playing while I still am able.
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