MAGA Man
The cartoon portrait exaggerates and calls attention to things that are not ordinarily something to be proud of. MAGA Man’s defiance, Doofy Fuddbugg’s toothless grin, or Dorothy’s threatening presence can all make us laugh and enjoy the funny thing that no one else can give us.
Crazy Catnip is here to put an end to this.
I decided I wanted to be a novelist because of Charles Dickens. I loved the way he told a story with vivid characters, rising and falling crises, and story arcs that arrive at a happily-ever-after, or a how-sad-but-sweet-the-world-is ultimate goal. Sometimes he reached both destinations with the same story, like in David Copperfield or The Old Curiosity Shop. I have wanted to write like that since I read The Old Curiosity Shop in 9th Grade.
Thomas Hardy has a lot in common with Chuck. I mean, more than just being old Victorian coots. Hardy knows the Wessex countryside, Blackmoor and Casterbridge with the depth and understanding that Dickens bestows on London. Hardy can delineate a character as clearly and as keenly as Dickens, as shown by Diggory Venn, the Reddleman in Return of the Native, or Tess Durbyfield in the novel I am reading at the moment. These characters present us with an archetypal image and weave a story around it that speaks to themes with soul-shaking depth. Whereas Dickens will amuse and make us laugh at the antics of the Artful Dodger or Mr. Dick or Jerry Cruncher from a Tale of Two Cities, Hardy makes us feel the ache and the sadness of love wrecked by conflict with the corrupt and selfish modern world. Today I read a gem of a scene with the three milkmaids, Izz, Retty, and Marian looking longingly out the window at the young gentleman Angel Clare. Each wants the young man to notice her and fall in love with her. Sad-faced Izz is a dark-haired and brooding personality. Round-faced Marian is more jolly and happy-go-lucky. Young Retty is entirely bound up by shyness and the uncertainty of youth. Yet each admits to her crush and secret hopes. Tess, meanwhile, overhears all of it, all the time knowing that Angel is falling in love with her. And worse yet, she has sworn to herself never to let another man fall in love with her because of the shameful way Alec D’Urberville took advantage of her, a quaint old phrase that in our time would mean date rape. There is such bittersweet nectar to be had in the characterizations and plots of these old Victorian novels. They are more than a hundred years old, and thus, not easy to read, but worth every grain of effort you sprinkle upon it. I am determined now to finish rereading Tess of the Durbervilles, and further determined to learn from it, even if it kills me.
Filed under Uncategorized
One of my most valuable books of magic is Uncle Scrooge by Piero Zanotto (with a forward by Carl Barks).
This book is filled with some of the best cartoons from Duckburg written and drawn by Carl Barks. Scrooge McDuck was first created by Carl Barks in 1947. Barks had inherited the Donald Duck comic book franchise from Al Taliaferro in the 1940’s. He used his animation training to create an artfully sequenced series of stories that transformed Donald from an enraged character screaming at life into a responsible Uncle with three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, as well as relatives like his unfailingly lucky cousin Gladstone Gander, crazy inventor Gyro Gearloose, villain Magica DeSpell, and the richest duck in the world, Uncle Scrooge McDuck. His run of amazing adventure comics created through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s fueled much of my art training and story-telling training as a boy through comics like the following;
http://pencilink.blogspot.com/
http://www.empirecollectibles.com/
I read these comics to pieces. I studied every panel in great detail. Carl Barks means more to me than most of the teachers I had in school… all but three or four of them. And I hope this little post of praise will inspire you to look into the man and his ducks, and find there the beauty, the wisdom, the adventure, and the humor that completely captivated me.
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Much of what I draw is inspired by Maxfield Parrish, the commercial artist who created stunningly beautiful work for advertisers in the 1920’s and 30’s, and went on to paint murals and masterworks until the 1960’s. He is noted for his luminous colors, especially Parrish Blue, and can’t be categorized under any existing movement or style of art. No one is like Maxfield Parrish. And I don’t try to be either, but I do acknowledge the debt I owe to him. You should be able to see it in these posts, some of mine, and some of his.
Mine; (In the Land of Maxfield Parrish)
His; (Daybreak)
Mine; (Wings of Imagination)
His; (Egypt)
Believe me, I know who wins this contest. I am not ashamed to come in second. I will never be as great as he was. But I try, and that is worth something. It makes me happy, at any rate.
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Sometimes it seems the stars are simply set against us. But the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.
It was in a pothole in Scott Mill Road, actually. We hit it at thirty miles an hour near the roped-off road construction as we were going to the CVS to pick up my glaucoma eye drops. I immediately thought we had probably popped a tire, as we did on monster-canyon in a Dallas street a few years ago. But no warning lights were on. And later inspection showed no visible damage.
Still, the next week saw a check-engine light coming on and then going off again… And a few days later the engine began coughing and spitting like a fat man having a heart attack. I had to wait for Monday for the Five Star Ford service department to be open. But Monday I got ill during the weather change and the onset of intermittent rain. So, Tuesday, I barely got the car started, and we limped down to the service center, the car chugging and farting all the way.
So, we get there and immediately find out that the service department was already booked well into October. And the car was too dead to get it anywhere else.
Dang! What lovely bad luck!
And I am going to absolutely need a car at the very least a half-dozen times in the next week. The Princess has to get to the junior college campus in Richardson a couple of times. We need to get to the store and back enough not to starve. And my wife gets back from a wedding in the Philippines on September 12th. She will then need a car of her own too.
I can’t get by for two months without a vehicle of some kind. And getting a new car before the old one can even be looked at is tricky at best.
But I have navigated worse setbacks in my 65+ years on this planet. I don’t actually remember how it was on the planet before this one. I am fairly certain, though, that there is a way to get across this crevice in the rugged path of life.
Filed under autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney
Found poetry begins with three found things
Picked up at random
Like three pictures from my internet gallery
Plagiarized from somebody’s fandom
And then you have to sit and have a thought
About how it fits together
To make a stupid poem you’ve wrought
That’s not about the weather
You must pretend the very best you can
There’s sense in what you’ve found
And it fits together as if you had a plan
That was always quite profound.
———————————————————————————————–wow!-a-weird-divider————————-
Writing a found poem
Okay, this is the essay part. That first part is a terrible poem written by me to illustrate how to make your own found poem. Of course, you should know that I was not a natural-born poet. I am among the lower percentages of America’s worst-possible poets. Right there somewhere between the poetry books of Farley Bumbletongue and the Collected Musings of Hans Poopferbrains of Snarkytown, Wisconsin.
But I take great pride in my abilities as a terrible poet. You see, what I mainly was, truly was, was an English teacher of middle school and high school kids. And found poems were an activity in the classroom intended to teach writing skills, creativity, and an appreciation of what a poem actually is.
I needed a large usable picture file cut out of Christmas catalogs, Walmart advertisements, newspapers, magazines (“What are those?” is the most common comment you would get out of today’s classrooms,) grocery-store bargain flyers, outdated calendars, and any other non-pornographic picture sources available.
I would hand out three random images pulled out of the picture file without looking at them to each student (or small groups of students) and then require them to create a poem of at least twelve lines with an optional rhyme scheme and rhythm.
I would have to remind them not to eat the pictures, even if they were pictures of food. And with middle school students I would have to have extra pictures for the next class to replace the ones they ate anyway.
I would tell them there was a time-limit, specified to be much shorter than the actual time I planned to give them, and then let them create horrible poetry. Near Vogon quality in its horribleness.
When all of this was done, we would have a good long laugh by sharing the pictures and poems, and find out who the truly wacky and perverted poets were.
Now, don’t go telling parents that we teachers are wasting their children’s precious learning time this way, but it is not I lesson I created. Simply a lesson I used at least once every year.
But the real question on my mind is, “Given three random pictures, what kind of poem would you write?” Feel free to share.
I do write poetry. But I must admit, I am not a serious poet. I am a humorist at heart, so I tend to write only goofy non-serious poems like this one;
So here is a poem that rhymes but has too much “but-but-but” in it. A poem about pants should not have too many “buts” in it. One butt per pair, please. So this is an example of spectacularly bad poetry. Why do we need bad poetry? Because it’s funny. And it serves as a contrast to the best that poetry has to offer.
As a teacher I remember requiring students to memorize and recite Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken”. Now this sort of assignment is a rich source of humorous stories for another day. Kids struggle to memorize things. Kids hate to get up in front of the class and speak with everybody looking at them. You get a sort of ant-under-a- magnifying-glass-in-the-sun sort of effect. But in order to truly get the assignment right and get the A+, you have to make that poem your own. You have to live it, understand it, and when you reach that fork in the road in your own personal yellow wood, you have to understand what Frost was saying in that moment. That is the life experience poetry has a responsibility to give you.
Hopefully I gave that experience to at least a few of my students.
Bad poetry makes you more willing to twirl your fingers of understanding in the fine strands of good poetry’s hair. (Please excuse that horrible metaphor. I do write bad poetry, after all.)
But all poetry is the same thing. Poetry is “the shortest, clearest, best way to see and touch the honest bones of the universe through the use of words.” And I know that definition is really bad. But it wasn’t written on this planet. (Danged old Space Goons!) Still, knowing that poetry comes from such a fundamental place in your heart, you realize that even bad poetry has value. So, I will continue writing seriously bad poetry in the funniest way possible. And all of you real poets who happen to read this, take heart, I am making your poetry look better by comparison.
Filed under humor, insight, irony, philosophy, poem, poetry, Uncategorized
Canto 146 – Robo-Alliances
Smoky Hardretter was adding the final touches to the image on the 3-D display of a Mechanoid-control device. It was essential that they get things right. If they were going to establish control over the planet Mingo, Smoky and his ally Raylond King, two thirds of the ruling triumvirate of the local star cluster, would have to develop a stronger Mechanoid army than the one already controlled by the third triumvir, Evil Emperor Mong the Maniacal.
“Ray, what are we going to do if we can’t overcome Mong’s superior control mechanisms?”
The handsome young Raylond and his beautiful young wife, Tara Salongi, stepped in from the nursery.
“We just got little Amanda to sleep, Smoky. You have to discuss quietly.” Tara’s stern look gave him no room to raise his voice in protest.
“Mong is such a weak-willed ruler. There has to be a way to overcome his advantage.” Ray’s jaw was set in a grim line.
“You haven’t really taken him on directly, Ray. He’s tougher in conflict than he seems when he’s drinking coffee or participating in the mechanical-dance ritual. And he was the one out of the three of us responsible for the defenses of the entire star cluster.”
“Oh, I am aware of that. And it only got worse when we tried to force him to join the New Star League with us. He went directly to Sir Saurol to report us and get Admiral Tang to replace and recall us.”
“Um, guys…” Tara indicated the man-shaped thing listening to their conversation while leaning against the door post.
“Interesting… I seem to be here at just the right time to hear exactly what I needed to hear.”
“Who are you? And what do you want?” Smoky asked.
“He’s the synthezoid robot known as Sorcerer. He’s a bad guy, and you need to shoot him in the head before he can do his robot thing.” Tara was glaring commandingly again.
“Wait! I’m not the early model. I’m Sorcerer 27. New and improved. And I’m the solution to the problem you were just talking about.”
“You want to help us revolt against the Imperium?” asked Raylond.
“I’m tired of being shot in the head before I can perform my miraculous functions. I need to be on the winning side for a change.”
“What can you do for us?” asked Tara suspiciously.
“I possess access to Syn Corporation AI control systems. I can turn your Rot Warrior Zombie Soldiers into reanimated beings who can think creatively and independently, even as well as they did when they were living beings.”
“Why would you help us?” asked Smoky.
“You will reward me with sole control of the planet Zadukar that orbits the Lonely Star in the far corner of the cluster.”
“That miserable hot rock with methane for an atmosphere?” asked Raylond.
“You have a deal!” declared Smoky.
“Yes, but the prince is probably long dead. And, besides, Slythinus himself was probably killed on Stanley,” said Sorcerer.
“Why do you want it?” asked Raylond.
“I just want to be a ruler among the good guys for once,” he said with an evil robotic smile.
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
Every day has its own badness.
Enough to sour the milk.
But if you put your rollerskates on,
Wool sweaters start to feel like silk.
And the rolling life goes up and down,
And you’ll probably have some spills,
But do not take the rollerskates off…
It’s worth it for the thrills.
**Please note** This is a fiction story. It absolutely did not happen in real life. So, no real-life school administrators should be fired over it. And the author is a RETIRED school teacher, so it is not necessary to hire a hit man to protect future students from evil ideas like the ones presented in this story.
Rudy was miserable as he sat in the counselor’s office staring at the note from his teacher. Miss Nactarine. the sympathetic young counselor, sat behind her desk praying silently that the poor boy would be able to overcome his extreme shyness for long enough to explain what the problem really was.
“Well, um… you see, Miss…. I, uh…”
And then, once again, he simply stopped talking. She waited for several minutes.
“Rudy, just take a deep breath and let it all come out. You were sent here for sleeping in class. Tell me why that happened.”
“Okay, Miss. I been having bad dreams.”
“Oh? They’ve been keeping you from sleeping at night? What are the bad dreams about?”
“Um, well… In my dreams, I keep forgetting to put my clothes on before coming to school. I end up having to give a speech in Miss Burkett’s class standing naked in front of everybody. And the girls were laughing.”
“Oh, I see. Hmm. And what do you suppose is causing these dreams?”
He didn’t hesitate even for a moment. “P.E. Class!”
“Why P.E. Class?”
“Well, because… when it’s over, sixth graders have to take a shower. You have to get naked and go into the shower room where everybody can see.”
“But there are only other boys in there.” She knew as soon as she said it why that didn’t matter to Rudy. Even as she said it, she could see this shrinking-violet child trying to disappear in his chair.
“What do you think we should do about this problem?” She was thinking swim-suit for showers or something.
“Can we cancel P.E. Class?”
“Honey, that’s State-mandated curriculum. You can’t pass to the seventh grade without taking that class.”
“Can we cancel showers?”
“Young men in the sixth grade begin to have body odor. You know how that smell would affect learning?”
Rudy was dissolving in front of her.
“You are a vary brave young man. The best way to overcome this problem is to simply make up your mind not to let it affect you. The next time you have to take a shower, just face your fears head on. Take your clothes off and act like you want everybody to see you naked. Once you have endured the worst that can happen, you won’t have that bad dream anymore. You will know that you can do anything by being brave enough to try.”
Miraculously, Rudy seemed to brighten up, as if he had finally come to terms with the problem.
“Thanks, Miss. That helps a lot.”
As she dismissed him back to class, she couldn’t help but congratulate herself on saying the right thing at the right time.
The next morning, as students who walked to school from the neighborhood gathered in front of the school, Rudy showed up striding purposefully towards the front door wearing only a hat.
Most of the girls squealed in response, and then broke out into laughing conversations.
One of the most popular seventh-grade cheerleaders said loudly enough for everyone to hear, “I think he looks really cute like that! I wish all the boys were brave enough to come to school like that.”
“We would if all the girls did too!” hollored some invisible boy from somewhere in the back of the crowd.
Principal Eirohnee quickly brought both naked Rudy and Counselor Nacterine into her office.
Rudy was very comfortably nude as he stood in front of the principal’s desk and explained.
“It really cured my problem,” Rudy said. “From the time I made up my mind to do this I have felt nothing but confidence. If I can come to school naked, I can do anything!”
“Intend to go to all your classes today naked, do you?” asked the Principal.
“Yes, if you let me. If you don’t, it was still worth it.”
Full of pride for her part in Rudy’s transformation, the Counselor said, “I think we should allow it.”
“Well, isn’t that precious. Why don’t we just change the dress code for the day and have everybody go to school today naked?”
“I’d be willing to try that,” Miss Nacterine said.
**Author’s note** You could argue that the Counselor was fired for not understanding what sarcasm was, but, more likely, it was because of how the majority of the students showed up the following day.
Catch a Falling Star 