Outpost was abuzz with activity. The airless world had only limited defense from attack. The primary protection had always been the secret of its location. As an airless world, the surface could easily be lasered or bombarded with no atmosphere to interfere with the destructive force. Tron had ordered the mirror fields raised, hoping that some laser fire could be reflected into the surrounding darkness. He knew, however, that the only hope he had was in his fleet. If they could somehow use the dinosaur-shaped starships made with Ancient technology to destroy enough of Admiral Tang’s fleet to make him feel the losses were no longer worthwhile, then maybe the ground-side installations could survive intact.
There were still very talented corsairs able to fly fighting ships. Elvis the Cruel and Apache Scout were both peerless star warriors. But Tron had to believe that Admiral Tang had a few potent killers left to his name too. There was every chance that the situation was hopeless and would end in a massacre.
Still, there were a few unknowns on Tron Blastarr’s side. The crazy alien starship known as the Megadeath was the most agile killing machine that Tron had ever seen. The goofball rock-and-roll crew that flew it for Trav Dalgoda was now very adept at handling the alien thing, and Tron had kept them to help in his mad last stand. They were not smart enough to be scared of the upcoming battle. He was able to send his son onward to Don’t Go Here, the planet where the newly formed New Star League gathered its forces. So, hopefully, Artran would be safe and carry on the Blastarr name long after Tron and Maggie’s bones littered the airless sands of Outpost.
“Boss,” said Hassan the Elf, breaking Tron’s train of thought, “I have made something that I think might be of help.”
Tron looked at the child-like Peri and the invention he was now holding up. “A suit of armor?”
“Yes, boss. A special kind of suit of armor. It is made up of nanites.”
“What? Nanites?”
“Yes, microscopic robots that share a command pulse and can reform themselves into any sort of armor that might be needed.”
Tron looked quizzically at the bluish suit of nanite armor. “How do you make it work?”
“Well… for instance, if you want it to form an anti-grav pack on the back, you just say, “FLIGHTPACK.” The suit rearranged itself at Hassan’s command and an anti-gravity flight pack instantly took shape on the back side of the armor’s breastplate.
“Does it have weapons?”
“FUSIONGUN!” said the elf with a grin. A man-portable fusion generator and discharge barrel formed on the pauldron.
“That’s really good, Elf. That will help. But one isn’t going to be enough to save us.” He grinned sadly at the small Peri Space Elf originally from the planet Djinnistan.
“Oh, that’s the best part,” said the Peri. “Nanites can replicate themselves from raw metal ore. Since the planet is mostly metal and crystal, we can set them to making a million copies of themselves in an hour. You have to specify the number, though. We wouldn’t want the little buggers transforming the entire planet.”
“Amazing,” sighed Tron. “If only I had a million commandos to fill them with.”
At that moment Maggie came trotting up to him with a handheld communicator. “The call is for you,” she said, looking grim. “Arkin Cloudstalker has finally found his way back to this system. And that Lazerstone rock-guy is with him. Admiral Tang is sure to follow.”
“Yes. Sure to follow,” said Tron automatically, still gazing at the grinning elf and his newest invention.
Sometimes the US Government does actual good things.
Of course, it helped the process along that we voted out the mutant orangutan covered in Cheeto dust that somehow chose the White House as its unnatural habitat. That was a long four years totally misspent until the last gasp of the Republic in peril.
But now that we have actual governing professionals somewhat in charge of both houses of Congress, we actually got some good things passed in a reconciliation bill. There are over 360 billion dollars for combatting the climate crisis in the bill. Solar power, wind power, air scrubbers, and carbon-sequestration methods got a huge boost and may help mitigate the worst of what’s coming.
Of course, the stupid people who are guided by shape-shifting lizard men who tell them comforting lies on Fox News, still think Biden is destroying the economy and wants a socialist country instead of a patriotic one that knows better than to believe phony science from liberals about climate catastrophe, and never mind about the record heatwaves all across the country, that’s just a coincidence. Republican paradise which was granted to us by the orangutan can only be restored by, at the very least, not allowing a cap on insulin costs to protect pharmaceutical profits from diabetics who keep scheming to stay alive without pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. (That one thing was the only Republican priority that was voted in by Republicans, who voted, “No!” on everything else in the bill. They had to get something. So, economic pain or death for diabetics was a real Republican win.)
And it wasn’t just a climate-crisis win for the good guys (or somewhat good guys.)
The ability to give Medicare the control to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies is also in the bill. As are tax increases for corporations (especially the ones who pay nothing in taxes on billions of dollars.) Good things were wrested out of the hands of lizardmen who work for the supposedly-ruling 1%.
But the Republicans still plan on winning back both houses in the midterms. Then the Hunter Biden trials will begin with lizardman fervor and cold-blooded profit policies will again rule the day.
It’s nice, however, to at least win one before the end of the world.
I wish I could be more efficient in my old age, especially with writing things for this blog, continuing to write good books, and doing all the things around the house that need to be done just to make my way from one week into the next. But now that I have to lug baskets of clothing to the washateria to get my clothes clean, and I have to pick my clothes up off the floor of the bedroom to put them in baskets, and my arthritis says “NO!” rather painfully every time I need to do these things, I get discouraged and have to be a nudist more or accept being a rather smelly individual.
I have also found that being in pain and having the volcano-hot weather make the pain worse slows me down when it comes to getting good ideas for the daily blog. This blog is a good example of what I am talking about.
The one thing that has gotten easier, ironically, is going to the toilet. Zip, splash, zoom! And I am done with something many people my age take a half hour or more with the assistance of a newspaper, I-phone, or a good book to accomplish. Dang! Eating lots of fiber does pay off.
Imagination is always the place I go in times of trouble. I have a part of my silly old brain devoted to dancing the cartoon dance of the dundering doofus. It has to be there that I flee to and hide because problems and mistakes and guilt and pessimism are constantly building un-funny tiger-traps of gloom for me to rot at the bottom of. You combat the darkness with bright light. You combat hatred with love. You combat unhappiness with silly cartoonish imaginings. Well… maybe you don’t. But I do.
When reading the Sunday funnies in the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons, I spent years admiring Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes for its artistry and imaginative humor, believing it was about a kid who actually had a pet talking tiger. I didn’t get the notion that Hobbes was actually a toy tiger for the longest time. That’s because it was basically the story of my own boyhood. I had a stuffed tiger when I was small. He talked. He went on adventures with me. And he talked me into breaking stuff and getting into trouble with Mom and Dad. It was absolutely realistic to me.
I have always lived in my imagination. Few people see the world the way I view it. I have at least four imaginary children to go along with the three that everybody insists are real. There’s Radasha, the boy faun, my novel characters Tim Kellogg and Valerie Clarke, and the ghost dog that lurks around the house, especially at night. That plus Dorin, Henry, and the Princess (the three fake names that I use in this blog for my three real children).
Have you noticed how Watterson’s water-color backgrounds fade into white nothingness the way daydreams do? Calvin and Hobbes were always a cartoon about turning the unreal into the real, turning ideas upside down and looking at them through the filter-glasses of Spaceman Spiff.
Unique and wonderful solutions to life’s problems can come about that way. I mean, I can’t actually use a bloggular raygun to vaporize city pool inspectors, but I can put ideas together in unusual ways to overcome challenges. I almost got the pool running again by problem-solving and repairing cracks myself.
So, I am now facing the tasks of working out a chapter 13 bankruptcy and having a swimming pool removed. The Princess will need to be driven to and from school each day. I will need to help Henry find another after-school job. And the cool thing is, my imaginary friends will all be along for the ride. Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Hobbes. You made it all possible. So, please, keep dancing the dance of the dundering doofus.
I like taking pictures of my doll collection. Those pictures are then qualified for Art Day posting. So, here are random pictures of dolls, most of which are from the doll shelf in my bedroom.
Not all of my dolls are on the doll shelf.
Chilly Willy here is a carnival prize that was probably won in a basketball-toss game at Six Flags and purchased by me for five dollars in a garage sale. He is technically not a doll. He is a stuffed animal.
So, let’s get back to dolls.
More stuffed animals, as well as ponies and paper dolls to add to this immense doll collection.Creepy Captain Action lurks behind mint=in-box Emma Watson as Belle while he looks for his lost hat. But Bo Peep and Wonder Woman are keeping an eye on him.I had to stop here as the caveman Minion had to go and start a fight with Peter Rabbit. Leave it to a mindless Minion… “Oobah Dee?” “Sorry, boss.”
(This is a post from 2017, before the swimming pool had to be removed, before it caused my heart trouble, and before I had to declare Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.)
Being retired for health reasons and unable to work, I would be dead already without my writing and art endeavors to fill my time and keep me sane. I can do some work, as proven by my attempts to patch and repair the swimming pool this summer. But my limitations drive me crazy, as proven by the fact that I did about half of the work on the pool wearing only sunscreen and a hat. My kids are not married yet, and two of them are still in high school, but they are not much interested in toys any more. And I don’t yet have grandkids to spoil. So when I go the Resale Store or Goodwill to shop for old toys, I am basically buying them for myself.
The Princess of the Korean Court Barbie was lying on the bargain shelf for $3.49. I bought the ceramic wishing well behind her for $5.00. So the bargain-hunting gene I inherited from Scotch ancestors was duly satisfied. But I had to do more with things like these than merely own them. Toys are for playing. And what does a 60-year-old man do with dolls when he is playing? Besides being a bit creepy, I mean? Well, this photo is the answer. I use my toys to create pictures and artwork.
Here’s a creation using the ceramic wishing well again. It is apparently, on closer inspection, actually a candle holder. But it serves to make my Walmart Clearance Sale Disney toys happy. Here you see the pony-brushing party held by Minnie Mouse with Daisy Duck and the gay snowman from Frozen.
Here you see the metal miniatures I got in a pack from Walmart as they visit the cardboard castle. Two of the lead figures on the ground are hand painted by me in days long ago. The entire cardboard castle was printed and glued on cardboard, cut out and put together entirely by me. Mickey, Minnie, Alice, Stitch, and Kermit are the metal miniatures not painted by me.
So, my days have not been overwhelmed by boredom and frustration and problems with city pool inspectors (he doesn’t even know about doing the repair work in the nude, so he can’t give me a ticket for that.) I have been filling my time with toys and creative play. I have been mostly a good boy… err… old man.
My two previous laptop computers were really hard-working and amazing machines. The first one my wife bought me in about 2008. That was after a series of big, boxy desktop clunkers, only one of which could fill up an entire desktop, especially with speakers and scanner/printers attached. The biggest problem with desktops was finding new parts when one broke down. Computers are in a hurry to become obsolete. Monitor not showing a non-fritzing picture anymore? A new monitor compatible with your clunky old computer is going to be super expensive. Whatever everybody is using during the year it broke down requires an octopus-like 5,000-pin adapter. And Apple don’t play dat with Windows. And Windows 98 don’t play dat with Windows 7, 8, or 9. And there’s no Intel inside the expensive new processor you get to match the new cpu and keyboard you have to buy. Your system, which is slowly taking over the house, now costs three times as much as the laptop your wife bought, and it still doesn’t work properly.
Laptops are better than desktops. As you can see, even nudist Stacy dolls can monitor the Webb Space Telescope with it.
So, I relied heavily on a laptop from 2008 until 2018 when the battery finally died. I had, fortunately, bought a second laptop in 2012 for my number two son to use, and when he was finished with it, having bought an expensive gaming system with his own money, he passed it on to my daughter, who also bought herself a computer after using it for a couple of years. So, when the battery of Mickey Computer 1 died, and no battery could be found that fit as a replacement battery, I started using Mickey 2, with all kinds of hidden downloads on it from being a kids’ computer for six years.
And so, I discovered that I quickly had to relearn Windows 8, upgrade to Windows 9, and finally be forced to use Windows 10 because the laptop had been customized twice by two different customizers. And for a while I was forced to log into everything through my daughter’s Google Account. Very quickly I found myself degrading in my computer skills from negotiating the ins and outs of a well-used computer’s eccentricities to panicking and running to my daughter to help me handle actual glitches. The computer would erase whole paragraphs of my writing and autosave immediately so that my only recourse was to recompose the writing from an increasingly fallible memory. And the more I depended on my laptop to publish 21 novels through my retirement from teaching, to years of Uber Driving to pay off medical bills, and then a bankruptcy, to a brief stint as a substitute teacher that ended with the pandemic the more the computer glitched… or possibly my arthritic fingers and stupid brain made it seem that it did. The computer becamme glitchier and glitchier. I wrote more and more. I ended up with typos in my final drafts that made it through to publication because my computer would make auto-changes on pages that weren’t even on the screen. How did it do that?,
Then Grandpa Joe Biden repeated the Trump thing about sending us survival money without having to wait for Biden’s name to be printed on every check. And I could pay off my debts and still squeeze out just enough money to buy a new and better laptop. Oh, Goody! Learning Windows 11! Except, I bought a Chromebook. Windows 11 was incompatible. So, I learned Google Chrome. Or it learned to enrage me more effectively than my old computer did.
What I continue to do in spite of glitches… and fingers and stupid brain.
At the end of this brief computerized history of how computers have taken over my life and changed me for the worse, I am still glitching along. I had a brief computer crisis today. But I have already learned the lesson about turning it off and turning it back on today.
This is actually a writer’s literary site meant to promote novels, and one day possibly earn money from writing instead of simply filling my closets with prose and old manuscripts (along with the wife’s many, many shoes). But since I am also an amateur artist of the irradiated subspecies known as “cartoonist”, I also have many visuals to share. I think in pictures as often as I think in words. So one of the features of this blog is that I tag artwork with a made-up word I coined myself. It allows the curious (or those immune to nightmares) to get an almost instant idea of how afflicted I am with cartoon-ism.
Yes, I tested it out. If you do a picture search on Google using the words “Beyer Paffooney” you get a free gallery of my artwork, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You might even find my picture of Clint Eastwood… but beware, he shoots first if you try to “make his day”. If you are brave… or foolish enough to try it, it should come up something like this;
So, there you have it. A cheap and easy 200-word post from a bad idea that’s still out there working.
Catch a Falling Star 
As If It Weren’t Enough…
THE WISDOM OF THE LITTLE FOOL
A fool can’t really sum up all of life in a sentence.
But a fool tries.
A fool can’t really say something in immortal words.
Because a fool dies.
A fool can’t really do the job of the wise.
But never-the-less, the fool applies.
But a fool can write a really dumb poem,
And let it sit to draw some flies.
Leave a comment
Filed under commentary, foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, insight, inspiration, photo paffoonies, poem, poetry, strange and wonderful ideas about life