Catch a Falling Star

January 19, 2022 · 8:46 pm

I am Sick of Being Angry

I am sick of a lot of things. Right now, Covid Omicron is probably one of those things. Oh, it doesn’t seem like it is going to kill triple-vaccinated me. But it is not making my life easy right now.

It bothers me that States with idiots in charge of the government are trying to legislate school curriculum in ways that eliminate books about black culture and black experience, life experiences of gay authors and trans people, and anything else historical or factual that makes white guys feel guilty or uncomfortable about not feeling guilty. (Notice I haven’t mentioned any particularly stupid red States like Texas or Iowa or the evil kingdom of Florida, nor have I specifically insulted moron governors like Greg Abbot or Ron DeSantis. I am behaving myself just as I learned to do from FOX News.)

It also bothers me that States with rabid monkeys in charge of the government are rewriting voting laws to seriously make things more difficult for certain people to vote, and rearranging vote certification so that the Republican party does not have to put up with people winning elections when they don’t like them. Voting is easy for me because I live in a mostly white-guy voting district and I look like somebody who might vote for Republicans. But even I could get into serious trouble if I tried to give a bottle of water of to an elderly black woman waiting in line to vote. And my side probably can’t win in the upcoming election because the majority of the voters who vote for my chosen side don’t look like me, or more obviously think like me.

And I am definitely disturbed by the fact that somebody who looks like a badly fermented mango and used to be the President of the United States, obviously, and in front of the world, incited a riot at the Capitol which resulted in violence and death for some rioters, but more Capitol Policemen. He literally tried to overthrow the US government. And a year later, he still has not been arrested and imprisoned, in spite of the fact that in many other countries he would’ve been executed for his traitorous, failed attempt at a coup.

But what good does it do to be angry about these things? Evil, greedy crooks have been running the ov er-all show since at least the 1980’s, and maybe longer, since before then I thought and spoke and acted like a child. I probably wasn’t mature enough to recognize how easily evil comes to mankind. Perhaps we were always doomed to eventual extinction by the excessive evilness rampant in the human species.

If mankind is going to be inventive enough and resourceful enough to survive nuclear proliferation, human-caused climate crisis, and de-evolution into fascistic. authoritarian, criminal empires, it will be the positive, creative, and good-natured among us that will find the solutions. Not the angry men that dominate politics and television.

I have done my part already. I taught kids to read, and a few of them to write. I hope I taught the right ones how to think. And I didn’t give them reason to become hateful. And I tried to teach them lessons on higher morality.

I finished a novel yesterday. That means Aeroquest 4, and The Necromancer’s Apprentice are both only a good proofreading away from being published.

Will I have time before the end to finish another? This I do not know. But there exists enough published stories by me to secure my right to call myself an author. Still, it is a task that makes me happy and leaves more positive than negative behind me when this life is over. It is a better, more-useful thing to do than being an angry man.

I hope you will help me, when the time comes, to vote the evil out of the government… if they let us do so. But I also hope you worry far more about being happy and fulfilled rather than angry.

4 Comments

Filed under angry rant, artwork, autobiography, humor, irony, Paffooney

January 19, 2022 · 3:03 pm

My School-Teacher Soapbox

It has been more than a semester now that I have not been a teacher. I am missing it mightily. I even miss the yelling and screaming, the name-calling and the crazy-eyed threats against life and limb. And that’s just me. I miss what the kids always did too. This was driven home to me as I tried to move my middle child from one school to another. We were hoping to get a bit of a break on his placement. He is a gifted child with a penchant for bizarre and long-lasting obsessions. He has a talent for building huge, monumental structures in Minecraft. He is very computer-nerd and history-wonk. (Yes, I know those are not pure predicate adjectives, but I am a retired English teacher and just don’t care any more.) I was hoping they could overlook his burnout/blowout eighth-grade brain meltdown from the previous year and give him the chance to be a ninth grader for at least half a year. No. Arbitrary rules must be obeyed. (That isn’t even how she said it. More like, arbitrary rules MUST be obeyed). That meant of course that he has to continue to repeat the mindless indoctrination of year number 9, (eight numbered grades plus K), (And Pre-K, come to think of it.) Make that year number 10. No high school yet, though he is more than mature enough, intelligent enough, motivated enough, and sweet-natured enough. We are not loving and forgiving people. We are strict and by-the-book people! Forgive me, Lord. I am writing my own book. (In more ways than one.)

This is what we are doing wrong in Education;

1. We are putting people in boxes. (Little people. Kids mostly. We are calling those boxes things like ADHD, Special Education, trouble-maker, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, disobedient, truant, and “in need of alternative education”… here meaning kid-prison.)

2. We are sealing those boxes with heavy-duty red tape. (Read special or remedial classes as waste-baskets for keeping the rabble and the riff-raff out of the good teachers’ hair.)

3. We are routinely handing those boxes to the box-bangers and package manglers. (The semi-incompetent teachers who have discipline problems because in teacher college nobody tells you what to do with the kid who sits in the corner and sings to himself instead of paying attention, or the girl who gets out of her seat every time the teacher turns his back to go flitting around the room like a bumble bee going flower to flower (except that it is a more hormonal attraction and goes boy to boy); or the competent teacher like me who incurs the principal’s disfavor for having classes that always make noise and are given such classes in boxes as a punishment because that kind of principal is too limited in intelligence to understand that those kinds of boxes are not really a punishment if you merely take a moment to examine the treasures they contain.)

4. We keep the boxes air-tight so that no oxygen or light gets in. (To suffocate learners under piles of worksheets and endless drill and practice is murder. We are killing the precious learners with boring stuff and teaching them to be zombies who all act alike and hate learning because their brains are rotted masses of goo.)

This is what we must do instead;

1. Open the boxes up again and thoroughly mix the contents. (The rich suburban parents will resent the heck out of having their precious honors student sitting in class next to the poor black kid from the projects, but studies show that both kinds of learners do better when they are mixed together.)

2. Notice, we don’t need two any more, because learners are already distributed to different and diverse boxes based on what they individually need and want to learn about and have talent for. Groups should be more like the Shakespeare-loving group or the talkative-socializing group or the Tinker-toy builders group or the vampire-literature-writing group and less like groups of kids all the same color or all the same culture or all the same age.

3. All the teachers need to be trained to handle all the possible… no, make that probable problems that may come up in the classroom. Every classroom needs a proven veteran teacher and an enthusiastic young apprentice teacher. Neither one should have to face the evil hordes alone. And most important of all, any teacher who doesn’t love working with kids (and doesn’t love the kids in a way that will not lead to a prison term) needs be utilized in some way other than as a classroom teacher.

4. Every classroom is a laboratory and every teacher is a creative and daring mad-scientist-type intent on trying new things and only re-doing things that really work well. Forget this nonsense about standard curriculum goals and common core curriculum. Those are only buzz words for suffocating learners and being too lazy to think on your feet in the middle of the every-day classroom battle in the on-going War on Ignorance.

Now you see… I have all the answers and I know everything. The only mystery is… why don’t more people listen to me?

3 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as educational ranting, humor, paffooney, pencil drawing, philosophy, Sir Ken Robinson, teaching, wizard words

January 18, 2022 · 3:55 pm

RumikoTakahashi

This is an art exercise, making a drawing imitating the manga style of Rumiko Takahashi, the greatest female comics artist of all time.

This is a second shameless plagiarism and imitation of Rumiko Takahashi by Mickey the Manga Wannabee.

Yesterday I used a Paffooney I had stolen to illustrate my gymnasium adventures, and in the caption I gave credit to the wonderful comic artist I shamelessly copied it from. The second imitation Takahashi that I did yesterday is now displayed next to it above. I am now compelled to explain about my goofy, sideways obsession with Anime and Manga, the cartoons from Japan. I love the art style. I have since I fell in love with Astroboy Anime as a child in Iowa. Rumiko Takahashi is almost exactly one year younger than me. As a cartoonist she is light years more successful than me. She has been crafting pen and ink masterpieces of goofy story-telling longer than I have been a teacher.

lumstatue1

Her artwork is a primary reason I have been so overly-enamored of the Japanese Manga-cartoon style. I love the big eyes, the child-like features of even adult characters, the weird poses and still-weirder comic art conventions of this culture from practically a different planet. She has created comic series that are immensely popular in Japan, and have even put down sturdy roots in this country, especially with young adults since the 80’s. She is the world’s number one best-selling female comics artist.

inuyasha-vol-4-rumiko-takahashi-paperback-cover-art

Just as we Westerners have to accept numerous ridiculous things to appreciate the stories told in American comics (for instance, brawny heroes running around in tights with their underwear on the outside of their pants, nearly naked ladies with super powers diving into battle next to men encased in armored suits, and talking animals), the Manga-minded must also practice a bizarre form of the willing suspension of disbelief. In Ranma 1/2, the main character is a boy marshal artist who turns into a girl when splashed with cold water. Much of the romantic comedy of that work revolves around boys and old men finding themselves in the bath house next to naked young girls. For some reason that sort of naked surprise causes the boys to spout fountain-like nosebleeds. In Inu-Yasha the whole thing is about fighting demons with swords. Inu-Yasha himself is part demon. Apparently part-demon is a good thing to be. Japanese villains are spectacularly susceptible to fits of crying rage and tantrums. And everybody looks more like American white people than orientals. Oh, and there are talking animals.

Rumiko is a master of pen and ink. Here is a sample of of her black and white work.

Ranma-1-2-Ranma-Akane-_-manga-rumiko-takahashi-27597326-981-567

Rumic-Theater-One-or-Double-_-Miyamoto-Ichiyanagi-rumiko-takahashi-27592213-805-599

And she does color well too.

6976529_orig

The little people are a special style of Manga character called a Chibi, and all regular Manga characters can turn into one at any moment.

b10674ff244da5bae98e0296cd7e09b41437155319_full

And, of course, to read actual Manga you have to master reading backwards. Americans read left to right. The Japanese read right to left. You have to open a Japanese book in a manner that seems both backwards and upside down.

This illustration shows how American publishers flip Japanese comics to make them more accessible to American audiences.

So now, by uncovering the fact that I am addicted to and seriously affected by Japanese cartoons, you have one more bit of evidence to present to a jury in case you decide Mickey needs to be locked up and medicated for a while. Japanese comics are a world of great beauty, but also a world unto themselves. It is an acquired taste that has to be considered carefully. And of all the many marvelous Manga makers, Rumiko Takahashi is the one I love the best.

Rumiko_Takahashi_18050

The Necromancer’s Apprentice… Canto 16

Wayward Butterfly Children

Anneliese’s favorite Gingerbread Boy, Johan of Dusseldorf, found us as we were passing Tornhilda’s Towering Townhouse in the lower part of the castle.

“The Butterfly Child you had me watching is up near the wasp nest asking questions about the Wasprider Cavalry and Captain Bobkin.”

Anneliese frowned at that news.

“Why would she be doing that?” Bob asked me.

I shrugged. “Was she asking about where to find us?”

“Not unless she was intending to look into the iron spikes that the cavalry uses to make the wasp stingers more deadly to the Unseely Court in order to find you.” Johan’s peppermint candy eyes were expressionless, so I couldn’t tell if he was joking or being suspicious. I know I didn’t like the sound of that, and Dolly was my friend.

“Lead us to where you left her,” Anneliese ordered Johan. Over time, the Gingerbread Boy had developed a more Sylph-like shape to make him faster and more agile than the standard waddling cookie-shaped boy.

We found ourselves quickly climbing upward on the castle’s winding central staircase. We passed many Pixies with various animal and bug-like shapes. There were large numbers of Sylphs and Elves and Brownies and Butterfly Children also. I wondered if anybody had ever counted how many lived in this tree-castle. Bob had told me that it had an extensive underground city in the roots of the willow tree too. Could Dolly have been counting them for some reason?

I heard Dolly giggling in that girlish way she did as we reached the topmost landing of the central stair. She was hanging over the shoulder of an older Sylph grown fat and round with age. He wore a captain’s uniform that was tight on him because of his generous belly. He was laughing too, apparently at whatever the two of them had been talking about.

“Ah! Derfie! I’ve found you at last! Have you met Captain Bobkin? He’s in charge of the military defenses of Cair Tellos.” Dolly was smiling at me, but I’m not sure I was very quick to smile back.

“Well, well, I know Anneliese and young Bob quite well. I am even acquainted with Johan the Gingerbread Boy. But who is this charming Sylph who is the friend of the lovely Dollinglammer?”

“This is Derfentwinkle. She’s potentially going to be Master Eli Tragedy’s third apprentice,” said Bob, pulling me forward by the hand and placing my hand om the fat fairy captain’s gloved hand.

“Well, aren’t you sweet.” He kissed me on the cheek. His handlebar moustache was apparently waxed and felt slightly sticky on my cheek.

“We have all been looking for you, Miss Dollinglammer, since the Wizard Pippen arrested and nearly executed Miss Derfentwinkle, and Bob the Apprentice,” said Anneliese with what I took to be a guarded smile.

“Oh, my! Are you both okay? I thought surely the crows would rescue you both!” she said, seemingly surprised.

I wasn’t sure if Dolly was being straight with me, or just pretending. As far as I knew, she had never lied to me before. But Kronomarke can make a girl do horrible things whether she wanted to or not… Though I wondered what memories of evil the Magic Hat had removed from my head that made me think that in spite of not remembering.

And when Dolly mentioned Homer and Bert, I finally realized that I could no longer hear their continued presence in my mind or see what they were seeing through my eyes when I attempted to see through theirs.

I whispered in Bob’s ear, “I can’t feel my crow familiars in my mind anymore.”

Bob whispered back, “That was a special instruction that Master Eli gave to Bibby Joon. No mind can touch yours when you are wearing that cape.”

“Oh.”

I honestly didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Did they not trust me yet? Of course, I didn’t trust me either, not knowing how the necromancer had screwed up my mind before I got the cape.

“Well, Dollinglammer, now that we have found you, we need to get you back to Master Eli’s tower where you will be safe.”

“Oh, yeah… okay.” Dolly turned to go into the stairwell leading into Captain Bobkin’s command center. “It’s the other way, Miss,” said Johan politely. And so we headed down the stair taking us back to the castle.

Something to Wonder About

Here’s the essential context; I am now sick with a viral infection which may or may not be Covid Omicron. Since the pandemic came on in 2020 I have lost my father on my birthday in November of 2020 and my mother almost a year later in September of 2021. The highest fever I have had the past two days is 99.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

Last Night I had a vivid dream.

In the dream I was walking along the top of a wall made of crumbling yellow bricks. The wall was narrow enough that I had to put my arms out to balance myself, as if I was walking on a tightrope. Each step made pebbles crumble out from under my feet. I was continually wobbling as I moved forward along the top of the wall.

My mother was walking along the top of the wall directly ahead of me.

To one side there were sharp stakes pointed upward. They glistened, possibly with poison. The brownish stuff at least seemed to look poisonous.

The other side was a swamp full of green-brown mud, bugs, snakes, and broken tree branches.

I felt like falling either way would be the painful end of me.

My mother then turned around to face me on the top of that wall.

“You know that I love you, Michael. You don’t have very much further to go down this path. Try not to make a terrible misstep, and I will be waiting for you on the other side.”

And then she kissed me and faded away.

At that point I did not fall, nor did I take another step. I simply woke up.

Of course, you know, I choose to believe this dream means something. Something important. But what that is, I do not know.

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

January 17, 2022 · 2:23 pm

Top This!

“Dad?” asked the Princess, “I heard a funny word in school today. What does Fuddy-Duddy mean?”

“Oh, that’s a good word,” I said. “It means an old fogey… a stick-in-the-mud.”

“A what?”

“A fussy old guy who likes to have everything his way. Like, if you accuse your father of being one… which you often do… he’s a fuddy-duddy daddy.”

“Ooh! I get it!” said Henry, chiming in. “And if your father is evil, then he’s a fuddy-duddy baddie daddy!“

“Yes,” I said, “and if it makes him sad to be evil, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie daddy!“

“If you are not sure he’s really your father,” said the Princess adding a one-up, “he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe daddy!“

“Yeah!” said Henry. “And if you suspect he may have fallen into a time machine and been turned back into an infant, he’s a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby daddy!“

“Now that he’s a baby again he will surely want to watch his favorite TV show again,” I said with a tear of nostalgia in my eye, “he’ll be a fuddy-duddy saddie baddie maybe baby Howdy Doody daddy!“

“What’s Howdy Doody, Daddy?” asked the Princess.

“No,” said Henry, “now you’ve spoiled it. It just ain’t funny any more.”

“Yes it is! He’s become a funny bunny fuddy-duddy hoo-dad doo-dad saddie baddie maybe rabies hoo-dah doo-dah…”

“Just stop,” said Henry. “You always carry things too far.”

“Right you are!” I said. “See this grin? It means I win!”

“AW, Daaad!” they both said at the same time.

1 Comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, Uncategorized, word games

Tagged as artwork, cartoon, goofiness, humor, paffooney, pen and ink, word games, word play

January 16, 2022 · 4:46 pm

My Second Quarantine Adventure

I am now confined to my bedroom for another couple of weeks. Me, alone with my imagination, having to put on a mask to go down to the kitchen to make soup or go to the restroom. And it is the second time. But this timek I am the one infected. Before it was number two son who brought it home from work and got us all locked up at home.

To be honest, I haven’t gotten a test yet to determine that it is truly Omicron. If I do, I have to have somebody help me get there as we do not yet have any home tests. That would put whoever volunteers at risk. Plus, an official diagnosis creates more days missed from work for my wife who already has to teach in a germ-filled middle school with a mask on all day.

So, since I am only assuming I have Covid Omicron, I get to take care of myself in isolation. And if it is not Omicron, for which I am triple vaccinated, I have to worry that the regular flu is probably more dangerous than Covid and could potentially kill me.

I tend to get sick from regular flu even when I am vaccinated.

But while I am holed up with headaches and sore throat, I am finishing a novel, The Necromancer’s Apprentice. I have one chapter and two illustrations yet to finish.

This will be the first novel I have written set entirely in Tellosia, the kingdom of Fairies, Sylphs, Pixies, and Elves that exists just beyond the edges of the small town of Norwall, Iowa. All of the Fairy people and fairy animals are shrunk down by modern disbelief in them to a size where a six-foot person would be only three inches tall.

I hope to have it published in the next week. I, of course, now have additional time to work on it.

The Necromancer’s village of Mortimer’s Mudwallow

So, I have a choice. I can sit and suffer and watch TV, or I can get busy and write and publish.

2 Comments

Filed under autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, humor, illness, novel writing, Paffooney

January 16, 2022 · 2:43 pm

What You Should Know About Filipino Families

Not everyone pictured in this post is actually a family member by marriage, but my wife has a big family and everyone who is even remotely related to a Filipino family… or even imagines that they are… is family.

I am about as much of a white-guy WASP-type as you can find in Middle America, having grown up in Iowa and teaching for my entire career in Texas. But I know a thing or two… or three about other cultures. I taught in South Texas for 23 years with students who were over 85% Spanish-speaking. And then, in 1995, I married into the Pinoy culture of the Philippine Islands.

Me and my Filipino-American familia… circa 2003.

There are some things I have learned about this other culture that you should probably be aware of.

#1. The United States is being invaded and colonized by the Philippines. They are coming here in waves, getting jobs in education and medicine that not enough of home-grown America are willing to take up. My wife came here with a placement company as a teacher. Three of her group of Filipino teachers landed in our little Cotulla school district. When she got here, she was met by her cousin and her cousin’s family. There was a Filipina woman and her young son in the Valley that also took an interest in helping her get settled in Texas. All of these people… and all of their friends and relatives are still a part of our lives. My wife’s sister and her family lived in California where dozens of cousins also lived. They and my wife’s parents have since moved to Texas, along with two other sisters and their families. You get the idea. They are taking over.

6180_1137185823650_1047484302_30377205_5910729_n

Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.

16203_810004402380430_7920792609813520717_n

7499_1663348133953699_2177344199468661634_n

17861_1252288587394_1234893830_30687202_F453239_n

#2. As you can see, Filipinos love to take pictures. Above is a picture from class where my niece goes to school back in Floridablanca in the Philippines. People complain about pictures of food on Facebook. My Filipino family puts the Food Network to shame. Sometimes I can’t tell if they are eating another exotic Filipino dish with rice and meat or they’ve been putting firecrackers into fish and exploding them. And the fish eyes are a delicacy. Eeuw! My sisters in Iowa won’t even let me talk about the food at Filipino gatherings. I have to be extremely careful of what I share on Facebook.

1013267_10201161984785458_2113452340_n #3. To know about Filipino culture, you have to understand what Jollibee is all about. Jollibee is the Filipino MacDonald’s. Of course, it is cheaper… and better tasting. There are a few of them around the country here. California has more than Texas. They are like a giant Filipino magnet. You go there to find the Filipino community in any American city. But other people love the food too. You have to sort the Filipinos from the Hispanics and white folks that are not too proud to eat cheap and delicious.

1383526_578968342150705_1648068876_n

Well, those are only about three things that you should probably know about Filipinos and Pinoy culture. I haven’t even gotten into the thing about Matrilineal social orders or the evils of Karaoke addiction… but enough is enough for one day. I have no idea how much trouble I am now in for revealing cultural secrets. It could be a long cold night in the dog house.

6 Comments

Filed under autobiography, family, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as family, Filipinos, humor, invaders, photo Paffooney, Pinoy culture

January 15, 2022 · 6:00 pm