Again I go back to artwork done for Saturday role-playing games, a thing which I started doing in 1981. It filled my life for a time. And it also taught me to be a teacher. After all, the DM (Dungeon Master, or Game Master) has to be a story-teller and a master explainer… just like a school teacher.
Filed under artwork, characters, Dungeons and Dragons, Paffooney
There is a deal that will be voted on to prevent default. Of course, there are still threats to the process. The Republicans that are sane enough to avoid default will probably be punished for their sanity by the rabid base and MTG (I do appreciate how accurately the cartoonist above portrays her teeth-grinding madness.)
Of course, this doesn’t make the Republicans any less evil. They still desire to give all the plumbs to the wealthy elite and corporate heads. They have no mercy, empathy, or even pity for the rest of us.
Filed under Uncategorized
Yes, they are evil. With three exclamation points.
They will not stay defeated even when their evil has been punished in multiple elections. They will do any evil thing necessary to stay in power.
Joe Biden solved the many fundamental problems Don Cheetoh Trumpaloney caused with tax cuts for billionaires that reduced our government’s income, and mishandling of the Covid pandemic crisis that caused a million deaths, half of which should have been prevented, and crashing the economy because of both of the previous missteps. Joe had the economy coming back, the employment rate at the highest levels in fifty years, inflation overcome after painful measures, and a needed infrastructure bill that was years late in being passed. But Republicans can’t have that. They need Grandpa Joe to be unsuccessful so they can continue to corruptly enjoy power. So, like the mobster criminals they are, they took a hostage and threatened to kill it unless all the progress made is undone.
They have no right to refuse to pay the government’s debts. The budget negotiations are the proper place to make the changes they want. But they are going to have what they want by extortion, or they will wreck the world economy by defaulting on the debt. Solely because they are determined to have everything they want, and no one else matters to them.
They want to control everything school children read and think and learn, but they will not protect them from murderers with AR-15s by passing sensible gun laws. And they want schools to all be private so white kids of rich households don’t have to deal with minorities or poor kids. Public-school-type kids can learn in prison or on the job in the meat-packing plant.
They want to prevent voting by anyone they can identify as a possible Democratic voter. No black people. No Hispanics. No liberals. No young people who are not identifiably Young Republicans. No Jews. And definitely no Muslims.
And they want to be able to tell you what to think, how to worship, how hard to work, and to accept the lowest possible pay for it.
They are the worst sort of selfish, single-minded, melodrama villains. And if Grandpa Joe and Dudley Dooright are going to get us off the railroad tracks in only a week, they both need to stop riding the white horse backwords.
Filed under Uncategorized
The three primary colors of paint are red, yellow, and blue. Together with the neutrals, white and black, these colors can be mixed to make any other shade, tone, or hue that exists on the color wheel and can be perceived by the human eye. When all three are present in a painting, it inherently has a feeling of completeness, wholeness, and balance.
How those primaries are mixed, allowed to dominate, or allowed to recede does a lot to determine the feeling the artwork projects into the viewer’s mind.
All of the artworks I am showing you today haven’t appeared in my blog for some time. But all of them are interpreted in primary colors. I won’t tell you how each picture is supposed to make you feel. I am just the artist. Only you can prevent forest fires, and only you can interpret a painting and tell someone else how it makes you feel.
It has been my intention for a while now to tell funny stories on Friday. Specifically, funny stories about being a teacher and dealing with kids, the thing I know best in life. But, with the things that have happened, the pandemic, the screwball gangster President and his Friday follies, ill health, and other things pressing on my mind, I have failed rather badly.
So, bear with me (pun intended) as I give it another try with a story about Hope and Beauty.
Going back to the last millennium, in the year 1996, I had one solitary class of sixth grade English while teaching mostly seventh graders in a school building that was being renovated while we were learning within it. Often to the sound of electric drills and hammering. (A new wing was being added as our junior high school of grades 7 and 8 was being magically transformed by a school grant, and the addition of 6th graders, to become a middle school.
Esperanza and Bonita were the leaders of that sixth grade class. Fourteen kids, 7 girls and 7 boys. Esperanza and Bonita were the leaders because they were the two biggest 6th graders in the whole school. Not biggest by weight, the fattest boy in 6th grade was also in that class. The most mature. Bonita was hoping to go out for boys’ football in seventh grade, because she had been told that girls had won the right in court to play football if they wished. And she loved to tackle boys. The midgets in that 6th grade class were all terrified of her. One of the midgets spent his 6th-grade days pining in the back row to sit next to her but was too afraid to ever tell her that.
Esperanza and Bonita were best friends, and they were also the two best students in my class. They sat side by side in the front row. They would answer every single question in class if I let them. Of course, I didn’t let them. I got as much of a laugh out of other students’ wrong answers as they did. They were merciless about every goof Sammy Sanchez made, but Sammy had a good sense of humor about it, and I swear, he made some mistakes on purpose just because he loved to hear Esperanza laughing. She was probably the prettiest girl in 6th grade and had an equally pretty laugh. (That is not, of course, Sammy’s real name. I protect students’ real names in my writing. But the double S’s in his name were paired with the word “Stupid” in real life.) I was fond of both girls. And most of the time they were fond of me too.
“You’re my favorite teacher,” Esperanza once told me. “It’s because we can really talk about stuff in your class. Not just book stuff. But real-life stuff.”
Most of the “stuff” she meant was in journal writing that they did at the beginning of class. That is where I learned that she was a virgin. And it was where I advised her that it was entirely up to her when she gave it up and to whom. I told her no boy had the right to pressure her into doing anything she didn’t want to do. I gave similar advice to the boy in question privately after school, and he was actually a bit relieved to get the advice. I know that I was overstepping boundaries to give such advice. But they both believed that nobody else would ever be told about it. I was the only one who read that journal entry, and they knew that. And I have never told it until now, a fact about which you still don’t know the real names to go with it.
That class wanted badly to have a “class party” after Spring Break when the year was winding down. I only agreed if they would turn it into a learning experience. So, Esperanza and Bonita took charge. They planned and executed the lesson; “How to make and appreciate different kinds of Mexican Food”. The two of them taught it. Bonita was in charge of discipline. Esperanza taught us about all the ingredients in her aunt’s prize-winning sopapillas. Sammy gave us a memorable and even remotely possible run-down on how Doritos were probably made. And Max, the white kid, shared his Grandma’s recipe for German chocolate cake. You can’t get better Mexican food than that. And a certain mournful midget got to sit next to Bonita while they ate cake.
Both girls were in my class for two more years after that. I had the honor of being their teacher in both the seventh and the eighth grade.
As an eighth grader, Bonita broke my heart with a story she wrote about forgiving her stepfather for beating her in the third grade. It was a beautiful story. But I was torn. Teachers, by law, have to report child abuse. But Bonita pointed out that the man no longer lived with her, and besides, the assignment was to write a fiction story. (I never told anybody but my wife about my being sexually assaulted at the age of ten at that point in my life, but it was the reason I could clearly see what was true and what was fiction.) That story made more than just me cry.
And in the end, Bonita never got a chance to play boys’ football in middle school… or high school either. The boys eventually got bigger, and she didn’t. But that was a good thing too. Bonita at linebacker… the boys would never have survived it.
I will end by letting you in on a secret. In Spanish, Esperanza means “Hope,” and Bonita means “Little Pretty One,” or even “Beauty.”
Things go up and down. A publisher wants to talk to me about A Field Guide to Fauns. I don’t think he’s read it, and will probably ask me to invest money in publishing it. But it is about living in a residential nudist park and most of the characters are naked for most of the story. Think he’ll continue talking about my book after I tell him that?
But my Chromebook inexplicably broke down this evening. The screen was on but completely black. Fortunately, I have a second laptop, and half of another one. (It works half the time, and when it works, it takes twice as much time to do anything.)
And the city sent me an ultimatum about mowing the lawn and getting rid of the weeds that were blossoming. Of course, everybody in the neighborhood had gotten behind in lawn mowing because of the rain that struck every other day the last two weeks, and threatened to rain every day in between. But the city knows that I am old, arthritic, and slowing down, the most likely one to not get it done and have to pay the $2000-dollar-a-day fine Fooled them. I had started yardwork two days before their threatening court order arrived and I finished a whole day ahead of their deadline.
Filed under Uncategorized
Quite often of late I begin a daily post with no ideas in my head of what the post is even going to be about. The pre-writing technique is known among English teachers and writing teachers as free-writing. But it is basically writing with a completely empty skull.
Of course, I don’t mean that literally. The skull in the picture is not mine, and the completely empty skull of which I speak is not the one in the picture. (That is really a ceramic aquarium decoration for scaring your tropical fish.)
What I did was simply start an essay without any direction or plan in mind, going wherever the insanely creative part of my brain led me. So, I started with the picture of the fairy girl sleeping instead of doing her writing. That led me to the notion that she was supposed to be writing just as I was supposed to be writing, but she had an empty mind just as I had an empty mind at that moment. So, the light bulb suddenly went on over my head. And then I managed to turn it off again before gravity made it fall down on my head so that it would merely bonk my brain and not also set my old gray hair on fire. And then I wrote down the title that the jumble of associatively challenged details inspired in me, “Brain-Free Writing.”
So, then, when the initial surge of notions subsided, I resorted to another Paffooney picture, this time of an old TV character with obviously defective but plentiful brain activity. I selected this old drawing from my WordPress gallery because I often identify with Urkel. I am awash in a world of ideas unique to me, and incapable of smoothly integrating into polite society because of random massive brain farts and social awkwardnesses.
And the Urkel picture inspired me to do a comparison paragraph. Dilsey Murphy here is a character from my own novels who is also brainy and somewhat socially awkward. She, however, is different in her fundamental character make-up from Steve Urkel in that when she turns serious about her goals, in spite of shyness and awkwardness, she gets to the point of what she wants to accomplish, and she doesn’t mess up in the way that Urkel does. She has an underlying practicalness that Steve lacks. I am like her in many ways. In fact, it is that very practicalness that led me to start from nothing and churn out this finished essay.
Filed under Paffooney
The worry is…
…That I am not writing as much as I used to before I had Covid.
…That the Republicans will destroy the world economy just to make Biden look like a loser.
…That somewhere, somehow, a duck is watching me.
…That I won’t get to see any more Marvel movies because of the writers’ strike, Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles, and the short time I probably have left to live.
…That Mickey Mouse when he’s 100 years old won’t still be the Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie in 1928.
…That the Cardinals’ baseball team won’t have a winning season.
…That a tornado or a wildfire or a heatwave will kill me before diabetes or Parkinson’s or stroke can.
…That global warming and climate change will make us extinct in 20 years.
…That my books will never get a fair chance to be read by kids who need to read them.
…That Prexy 45 will get to be 47 and eventually the Undead Evil Emperor of the United States.
…That all these wonderful books are being banned in Republican States, but no Evil Republican Governor with spiders in his soul has been thoughtful enough to ban any of my books.
…That Florida is not underwater yet where it belongs.
… That Cardinals are singing this Spring, but nobody else is really listening to their songs.
Filed under Uncategorized
My daughter forgot her pencil case in school over the weekend. Now, for normal students, this is no really big deal. But for the Princess, like it is for me as an amateur artist, the pencil case, with her colored pencils and pens in it, is one of the most necessary things for life.
Of course, we did not have an opportunity to go back to school for her pencils and pens. So, panicky, she texted her teacher whereupon the pencil case in question was found and put aside for her until early this morning. She then stole my pens and pencils for the weekend, depriving me and causing me to be the one with the anxiety disorder and heart palpitations.
Of course, pens and pencils were always a critical issue when I was a teacher for 31 years, plus two years as a substitute teacher. Unlike the Princess, students in an English classroom NEVER have a pen or a pencil to write with. I swear, I have seen them gnaw pencils to pieces like a hungry beaver or termite. And they chew on pens to the point that there is a sudden squishy noise in their mouth and they become members of the Black Teeth Club. (Or Blue Teeth Club for the more choosy sort of student.)
Having students in your class who actually have pencils and pens to learn with is a career-long battle. I tried providing pens for a quarter. I would by cheap bags of pens, ten for two dollars, and sell them to panicky writers and test takers with a quarter (and secretly free to some who really don’t have a quarter). I only used the pen money to buy more cheap pens. But that ran afoul of principals and school rules. A teacher can’t sell things in class without the district accountant giving approval and keeping sales tax records. Yes, the pencil pushers force teachers to give pens, pencils, and paper away for free. I finally settled -on a be-penning process of picking up leftover un-popped pens, half-eaten pencils, and the rare untouched writing instrument apparently lost the very instant the student sat down in his or her desk. These I would issue to moaning pencil-free students until the supply ran out (which it rarely ever did) at no cost to myself.
I also tried telling them repeatedly that they had to have a writing instrument, or they needed to beg, borrow, or steal one. And if they couldn’t do that, I’d tell them, “Well, you could always prick your finger and write in blood.” That was a joke I totally stopped using the instant a student did exactly what I said. A literalist, that one. And it turns out you can’t read an essay that a student writes in actual blood.
But, anyway… My daughter is safely in school now and no longer panicking because she has her precious pencil case back in her possession. And she probably will not ever make that same mistake again. (And she will probably not return my pens and pencils either.)
Filed under humor, kids, Paffooney, pen and ink, self pity, teaching, Uncategorized
Catch a Falling Star 
Why We Doo
I remember when Scooby Doo, Where Are You? premiered on Saturday Morning Cartoons in 1969. I was thirteen and in the 7th grade. I had been six during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, seven when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, ten when I was sexually assaulted in 1966, and still twelve when Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon in the Summer of 1969. I was obsessed with monsters, horror comics, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and the Pirates threatening Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island. I knew what fear was. And I was mad to find ways to combat the monsters I feared.
Don’t get me wrong. I was under no illusions that Fred, Daphne, Velma, Norville “Shaggy” Rogers and Scooby Doo were the answer to all my fears as viable heroes and heroines. They were goofballs, all of them, based on the characters I vaguely remembered from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. I was aware that Shaggy was just Maynard Krebs in cartoon form (the hippie character portrayed by Gilligan’s Island actor Bob Denver.)
One of the critical things about the show for me was the fact that there was a rational explanation for the monsters. They were men in masks, special effects and projector tricks, or remote-controlled mechanical things.
And the way you overcame them and saved the day was by having Shaggy and Scooby act as bait, cause the traps to get sprung at the wrong time, and then fall on the villains, trapping them under the butt of the talking dog.
Villains and horror could be overcome by laughing at them. They were more likely to be clowns than carnivores. And even if they were carnivores, the teeth were not real.
There was a universal truth in that. Danger and horror and fear were easier to handle when you could laugh in spite of those things.
And to top it all off, those meddling kids and their stupid talking dog were with me my whole life. Those cartoons got remade and spun off so many times that my kids learned to love them as much as I did. And those four meddling kids and that talking dog are still making new stories even now.
And that is why we do the Doo!
Leave a comment
Filed under autobiography, cartoon review, cartoons, commentary, humor, monsters, Uncategorized
Tagged as Scooby Doo