Bringing the Hammer Down… Making Humor out of Everyday Stuff

No, I am not going to write about violent ways to acquire a trophy wife. Dewey’s courtship methods do not work in a world fairly far removed from the Middle Ages, and Dewey the Goon is a cartoon villain anyway. This post is going to simply be another in a long list of posts where I bend ideas like pretzels in order to justify the spurious claim that this is a humor blog, and therefore, I can truthfully claim to know how to write something funny.

Angry Mallard Eyes are a random non sequitur and need context to be funny.

It can be argued that somebody like me can’t possibly be a writer of good humor simply because I am too gosh-dang smart. (And those of my friends who use this particular criticism on me, tend to actually use country-bumpkinisms like “gosh-dang” way more often than is considered merely foolish.) I admit to using multi-syllable complex words to sound funny because they sound like boobly-doobly-doo gibberish to listeners who have no idea what a word like “bumpkinisms” actually means. And I might add, the listeners don’t usually go to an Oxford English Dictionary (unabridged) simply to be able to laugh at a big word.

I recognize that being an intellectual and having a head full of proven-but-useless facts is actually a disability. You can’t talk to anybody and be fully understood. Talking to somebody who can’t make logical connections between ideas is like walking over a wooden bridge built by an idiot who doesn’t know how nails work… and there are sharks in the water under the bridge. People will pigeonhole you as a “nerd” and treat you like your intelligence makes you radioactive.

So, the logical conclusion is… to be funny you have to act dumber than you actually are.

This man is trying to write humor using chemistry. Beware! He is likely to blow you up if you hang out with him!

Humor can be volatile. Sometimes it insults people. Sometimes it shocks you with things you should be outraged by, but you see the irony and laugh instead. (Preferably without needing someone to throw a steam iron at your head in order to make you see the irony.)

It is probably inappropriate to suggest that kids should go to school naked. Even parents would make other parents uncomfortable by suggesting such a thing. But as a former teacher, I can tell you that most middle school and high school kids are naked in school almost all of the time. Of course, not literally. They are metaphorically naked. Not capable of keeping anything personal a secret. Most of them would never want people to see them literally naked. But they go to great lengths to show you their emotionally naked selves. You can’t keep them from doing it.

And seeing kids emotionally naked is mostly an uncomfortably icky thing for mature adults to contemplate. But teachers have to deal with it. That’s why so few good teachers let themselves become mature adults.

By this point, if you are still reading, you are probably saying to yourself. “Mickey, you are just recycling the same old pictures and lame jokes.”

You got me. That’s what the stand-up comics all do. They tell the same set of jokes over and over, only changing the city they are telling them in.

So, now you know the truth. Writing humor is hard. And most of us who practice it are only pretending that we know what we are doing. You have to be smart, but pretend you are dumb. You have to shock and offend your audience, but only to the point of making them laugh, and never reaching the point where they all grab torches and pitchforks.

So, there it is. Today’s humor post. I said a bunch of things I should not have said. So, rotten tomatoes in the comments are expected. And, please, no pitchforks. I do not know how getting a pitchfork into an internet comment is possible, but I do know that there are Trolls out there with some real skills.

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Being Iowegian

I was born in the 1950’s in Mason City, Iowa… the town that produced Meredith Wilson, the creator of the Broadway Musical, The Music Man.  Yes, River City in The Music Man is Mason City.  So I was born into a unique Midwestern farm-town heritage where swindlers came to town and saved the day with music and an eleventh-hour change of heart.  I was born into the land of Chmielewski Fun Time on the black-and-white TV, Lawrence Welk champagne accordion music, and the Beer-Barrel Polka, courtesy of loads and loads of German ancestry.  I am that unique crossbreed of Scandahoovian and sqare-headed Deutschmann  known by the only slightly racist term of Iowegian.

Corn Country!

943363_457313854350548_485543538_n388135_298275616878726_103835066322783_936339_2005428082_nLand of Long Winter and the ice-storm breezin’ down the plains.

And if you ask an Iowegian if he loves Iowa, he will answer, “You bet!”

And if you ask a northern Iowegian the same thing, he will say “You betcha!”

Iowans talk funny, don’t you know…

There are still corner stores and farm supply stores, though they have gone to brand names now, like Casey’s, BP, and Tractor Supply Co.  You can still find HyVee and Safeway grocery stores.  There are still a precious few family farms that haven’t been swallowed whole by big corporations and agri-businesses.  If you go to the county fairs, you will still find kids showing the cattle or pigs that they raised for 4-H projects, and if you go into the barns after the auction, they are still producing tearful kids hugging and kissing that calf that won a red ribbon and now has to be sold… and they will never see poor Barney or Moo-berry again…

1399024_220039334824422_480122723_o 1450109_688917614523503_5237770938249269421_n 10418988_688917684523496_8272199480536313576_n 10350345_10152788940611349_2865049925004654610_n 10563018_688909541190977_6371844517698833981_n DSCN7127It is the land of the lonely gravel road… the back-street cattle pen… the Saturday night tornado (nearly every Saturday in Spring)…  The VFW and the Lion’s Club Fish Fry at Lake Cornelia….And it is a place where most everything reeks of the past and old ghosts and times long gone, soon to never be remembered because there’s no longer anybody around who is old enough to tell the stories that grandparents and aunts and uncles used to tell.  I not only miss it desperately, but I feel deeply saddened by the loss.  Would I like to go home again?

“You betcha!!!”

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The Final Day of March

I went for a walk in the park today, trying to get the three miles of walking in for the day to help strengthen my heart and blow the filth out of every valve and carburetor in the engine that makes my life run. But it was a gray and dreary day, threatening rain and being downright spitty.

I counted at least four male cardinals sitting high in the tops of mostly leafless trees. Each was surveying his own jealously-guarded territory and singing his little red heart out with the trills of his mating song. No female cardinal was out in the wet and the cold to answer any of them. It appears they were all sitting home in their bird houses sipping hot cocoa by the fireplace. And probably laughing at the stupid males.

March is supposed to be the tail end of Winter and the first bars played in the Song of Spring. It has been more like a skunk’s tail followed by the squawk of a dyspeptic crow.

The trees who lose their leaves are supposed to have buds by now. Even leaves. But that seems to be delayed for cold rain and the frustration of love songs by redbirds going unanswered.

And it reflects the end of the Covid Pandemic like a mirror. There are still masks on faces at Walmart. There are maskless faces as well. Inflation makes spring strawberries expensive. Gas prices made Spring Break travel limited. Donald Trump is still not in prison. And the best descriptive word for the feelings in the moment is, “Meh…”

Things should be looking up. Robins should be returning from their extended vacations in Cancun. The people in Texas should be smiling more. Especially the rich white people. The world is pretty good for them. But apparently we have a bit of hail, a lot of rain, and some killer tornadoes to get through before the season sets itself aright.

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It’s Not Easy Being Green

It’s not easy being green…. the color of so many ordinary things…

Especially as you grow older.

Because green is the color of growth and youth and life. But those things seem beyond the grasp of your outstretched fingers on your spotty and wrinkled old hand.

I am definitely no longer green like Littlebit, the Oceanian ship’s boy from the seas of Talislanta and the pirate ship, Black Dragon.

And, yes, an Iowa boy living as far away from an ocean as you can get in the United States, in all directions, you are bound to dream of pirate ships and the high seas, especially when you’re twelve and your favorite book is Treasure Island.

But now that you are old, green is more often your color because you don’t feel well… again… every day….

B

But there is still bright green in dreams.

You can still go there and be a child again in memories and your imagination.

It’s just that now the green is written down in sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and cantos.

And talking to your kids about movies, art and artists, stories and writers of stories…

Did you know the favorite color of all three of my children is green?

I have known it since they were small and I could sing to them songs by Kermit the Frog, like “Rainbow Connections” and “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”

And with paint, you make green by combining the blue of sadness with the yellow of sunshine and happiness.

And it’s not easy being green…

But it’s beautiful…

And it’s what I want to be.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, coloring, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, poetry

The Phantom Legaecy

I often wonder what the future will think of me… or if they will even think of me at all. Even my family may not remember the real me, particularly those who haven’t read anything I have ever written. My mother passed away in 2021 never knowing that I was sexually assaulted when I was ten. She didn’t want to know anything like that. She didn’t read this blog. She didn’t read any of my novels. But that is mainly because she never read any blog posts or any novels… ever. She was a career RN and read all kinds of things about nursing, health, and medicine. She had thick books of pharmaceutical knowledge and looked up every medication ever prescribed to any member of her family. But my personal inner truth, the things that I have written that define me in my own terms and my own inner mythos, are all available to anyone who wants to read them. They are all available on Amazon. One on Barnes and Noble. And I give e-book copies away for free every month. But hardly anyone takes me up on those things.

So, what does this issue matter to anyone but me? Diddly-poop. I would like to be remembered as a good writer after I am gone. But that is not something I have any control over. Neither did anyone who now has a legacy as a writer. Edgar Allen Poe and Franz Kafka died in extreme poverty. H.P. Lovecraft died in obscurity, horribly alone and mentally ill. The Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche died after having a mental breakdown over the beating of a horse. And their work left a legacy. The legions of unremembered authors have none. I will end up wherever I belong after I am gone.

I exist. Not even God can change that now. And I have written and published my writing on the internet. It has the potential to live on after me as long as there is an internet. The world probably has less than fifty years of life left as it is. So, for now, I have to be satisfied that you bothered to read this and look at my drawings, whether you bothered to register a like or not. That is my legacy, or a ghost of it anyway.

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Inspiration…

So, what if it is true that the future begins with the story-teller? Smart phones are obviously descendants of the communicators and tricorders and computers that Gene Roddenberry introduced to us in the original Star Trek series. George Orwell gave us timely predictions and warnings of the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in his novel, 1984.

If we truly wish to be a force for good, we have to take the evil bull by the horns and turn its momentum away from the future we seek to protect. Like Solzhenitsyn we may be gored in that bull-fight and end up spending time in the gulag. But those of us who choose to be writers, especially story-tellers, must take on that responsibility. What if ours is the story that changes the mind of a nation, like when the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took on slavery and the unjust treatment of others who think that, because they are white, or have money, or are somehow smarter than everyone else, they have the right to abuse, take advantage, or even kill other people? What if ours is the story that turns the rich into selfish engines of greed as Atlas Shrugged obviously did?

It is a tremendous responsibility. It is a power we must not wield unwisely, even if our talent level is only that of the disastrously lazy Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

What sort of a story-teller will I be?

What sort will you be?

Where will I lead my readers (If indeed there ever are any)?

And where will you lead yours?

If any questions are important now during these days of self-reflection, isolation, and Coronavirus, it will surely be these. So, tell me what you think.

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Filed under artists I admire, inspiration

Here’s Proof

The other day, in a post about paper dolls, I showed you the Betty doll without any clothes. She was at that point forced to be a happy nudist. But I also promised that I was making paper doll clothes too. Now, she has a dress. It doesn’t appear to appropriately cover the upper portion of her endowments. But it is my theory that either gravity interfered, or Pinkie Pie was messing with us and pulled it down slightly just before I snapped the picture.

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Nutzy Nuts

Things are not what they seem. Life throws curve balls across the plate ninety percent of the time. Fastballs are rare. And fastballs you can hit are even rarer. But if Life is pitching, who is the batter? Does it change the metaphor and who you are rooting for if the batter is Death?

If you think this means that I am planning on dying because of the Coronavirus pandemic, well, you would be right. Of course, I am always planning for death with every dark thing that bounces down the hopscotch squares of the immediate future. That’s what it means to be a pessimist. No matter what bad thing we are talking about, it will not take ME by surprise. And if I think everything is going to kill me, sooner or later I have to be right… though, hopefully, much later.

I keep seeing things that aren’t there. Childlike faces keep looking at me from the top of the stairs, but when I focus my attention there, they disappear. And I know there are no children in the house anymore since my youngest is now legally an adult. And the chimpanzee that peeked at me from behind the couch in the family room was definitely not there. I swear, it looked exactly like Roddy McDowell from the Planet of the Apes movies, whom I know for a fact to be deceased. So, obviously, it has to be Roddy McDowell’s monkey-ghost. I believe I may have mentioned before that there is a ghost dog in our house. I often catch glimpses of its tail rounding the corner ahead of me when my own dog is definitely behind me. And I am sure I shared the facts before that Parkinson’s sufferers often see partial visions of people and faces (and apparently dogs) that aren’t really there, and that my father suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. So, obviously it is my father and not me that is seeing these things… He’s just using my eyeballs to do it with.

But… and this is absolutely true even if it starts with a butt… the best way to deal with scary possibilities is to laugh at them. Jokes, satire, mockery, and ludicrous hilarity expressed in big words are the proper things to use against the fearful things you cannot change. So, this essay is nothing but a can of mixed nutz. Nutzy nuts. And fortunately, peanut allergies are one incurable and possibly fatal disease I don’t have. One of the few.

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Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, satire, wordplay

He Rose on a Golden Wing… Canto 9

Chopin – Nocturne in E Flat Major (Op. 9 No. 2)

Dilsey Murphy made her way back to Val’s usual seat on the bus the first thing in the morning.  Usually Valerie rode to school of a morning with Ricky in his hand-me-down Ford Fiesta, but he had football practice after school on Mondays through Thursdays.  So, Val was available to sit with Dilsey on a cold Tuesday morning in October.

“Hello, Dils.  Something the matter?”

“It’s Blueberry.  She’s sick this morning.  Not going to school like usual.”

“How’s Mike taking it?  Worried?”

Mike Murphy was Dilsey’s younger brother.  Blueberry Bates was his eighth-grade lady love.  They were always together like salt and pepper shakers on a restaurant table.

“He’s devastated.  The Bates sisters took Blue to the emergency room last night.  She’s in the hospital now.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!  We’ll have to go visit her as soon as possible.”

“She’s not conscious.  Maybe a coma…”

Dilsey sat down next to Valerie and the first thing Val did was put an arm around her and pull her in close.  Dilsey laid her head on Val’s shoulder.  Tears followed.

It’s funny how things work in real life.  Not so long ago it was Val in tears, laying her head on Mary Philips’ shoulder.  Then Mary had been the actual leader of the Norwall Pirates, the infamous liars’ club.  But when Mary was going away to college, she didn’t turn to any of the boys to lead the club.  She asked Valerie to do it.  And then Val shouldered the responsibility until she finally handed the leadership of the infamous werewolf chasers and undead wizard whackers off to her cousin, the Terrible Timothy.

“Is it enough just to hold you like this?  Or is there something you wanna talk about?”

“Holding me helps.  Did I tell you I kissed him?”

“On your date?”

“Yeah.  After the movie.”

“That’s sweet.  But don’t let him take advantage of you.”

“I know… he’s a boy.  And he tells a lot of lies.”

“Big ones… black in color… with hair on them… and sometimes spider legs.”

Through the tears, Dilsey chuckled at “spider legs.” 

“But he has a good heart.”

“He does.  You know he was pretty awful to Blueberry about the whole transgender thing, though.”

“Yeah.  Blue has never really been a boy.  But it was hard for him to accept that when he found out she was born with a penis.”

“Empathy for others was never something he was good at.”

“The Bates sisters convinced him though.  They showed him the x-rays that showed that Blue also had malformed ovaries.  She was only a boy on the outside part.”

“I didn’t know that.  I always thought she just needed to be a girl that badly.”

“Do you think it’s easier to be a boy than it is to be a girl?”  Dilsey looked up at Val and the tears were gone.

“I suppose it is to be your brother Danny.  He always sees the funny side of everything and life is mostly one big joke to him.”

“Yeah, but my brother Mike is the opposite.  He takes things way too seriously.  He fights with Mom more than any of the rest of us.  And he really loves Blue, even though he tells me how much he struggles to understand her most of time.  Mom couldn’t force him to go to school today because Blue is in the hospital.”

“Mike is a gallant young man.  You’re right.  It must be harder to be him than it is to be either of us.”

“I wouldn’t want to be Tim either.  It has to be hard to be that smart and that imaginative all the time.”

“I suppose you’re right.  More than half of all the weird things the Pirates have done over the years happened because of what was going on in Tim’s evil brain.”

“His brain’s not evil, Val.  He has a good brain.”

“Sure he does.  And it’s a fine thing for you to admire him for it.  I just say things like that ‘cause… you know… cousins.”

“Sure.  It’s just like me saying brothers.”

“You know, Dils, it’s a good thing to be able to talk like this.  Me and two former Pirates have started meeting down at the skinny-dipping pond.  It might be good to have another girl there.”

“Really?  Who are the other two?”

“Ricky Porter and Billy Martin.”

“Oh, uh… I don’t really know them.”

“Well, if you come along with me next time, you’ll get to know them better.  It could be good for all of us.  Some of us have problems with depression and it helps to be able to talk about anything and everything with people who will at least try to understand.”

“Yeah.  That might be good.”

“I will get in touch with you for the next time.”

“Yeah, um… okay.”

The two girls sat together in silence for the last couple of miles to Belle City High School.  It felt good to hold somebody like Dilsey.  She was warm and soft and good to be near.  And when they left the bus together, Valerie felt like now she was the wise older girl, while Dilsey had taken Val’s former place as the apprentice.  She would be happy to pass on all the things she learned from Mary when she was younger.  In fact, it felt like a real important responsibility.

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Filed under battling depression, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Paper Dolls Aren’t People Too?

The picture shows you some of what I have been doing when my brain is too buzzy to write, and the news is too depressing. I don’t want to write incomprehensible nonsense. I also don’t want to spend all my time crying. So, I do what art I can with my color printer, printer paper, scissors, glue sticks, and cardboard from the recycle bin. Here you see Shirley Temple, a classic paper doll from the 1950’s, Annette Funicello, made from my own drawing of the Disney Princess, a couple of antique paper dolls you can buy the images of online with a mere $1.50, a Francine doll, nude with cardboard butterfly wings, a puppy my mother cut out from one of our children’s books in the 1950’s, and a mint-in-box Rena Rouge doll from the cartoon series Miraculous, bought at Walmart at an after-Christmas sale price.

But I have to say, the title doesn’t really speak to literal paper dolls. I am simply distracting myself from the horrors going on in Ukraine. They try to save their children by putting them in a theater with a sign on the roof proclaiming they are children sheltering inside, and then Putin targets them for bombing? I cannot deal with that. I treat dolls in my collection as if they were people. But elsewhere in the world they don’t treat people as if they were people? No. I can’t accept that.

Here’s a REALLY DISTRACTING paper doll.

I am sorry for leaving Betty naked. The paper-doll dresses are still being made. I am creating them from scratch, drawing them myself, and the colored ink has run out on the printer. But Betty gets to enjoy the naturist thing I have been promoting, and this doll is nude, not pornographic. There is a difference.

Except in the minds of certain prudish fundamentalist Christians.

Yes, Fairy Ricky is naked too. But he’s also genderless.

I have, this past month, made a lot of paper dolls while watching stand-up comics on YouTube and Netflix. And it is because I can’t deal with the emotional pain the news from Ukraine causes me. Forgive me. I am a former teacher, and the senseless murder of Ukrainian children has pretty much kicked my slats in. My heart is in my shoes. I am in pain in ways I can’t even explain. My only hope is to distract myself by making paper dolls.

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