August 20, 2020 · 7:52 pm

Love Among the Trolls

Once upon a time in a magical land there was a Troll named Timothy Trollhammer. He was big and ugly and surly and liked to call people names in the Internet.

So, he was busy this one time, this Oncepponna Time, arguing with his friends in the Internet Cafe. (We all know what that is. It’s a huge Orc bar kept by a fat old Orc named Juicy Burgher who foolishly built his cafe in the middle of a Giant’s fishing net.) And he wasn’t just arguing with his friends, he was insulting them, suggesting their Democrat stupidity would get them toasted in dragonfire for the sheer idiocy of their communist ideas, and swearing to visit their homes and poop on their dinner tables.

And then, Dixie Tinytroll suggested the unthinkable.

“Timothy, you are so dumb and ugly, you will die alone and never be married.”

Timothy immediately killed him with his magic hammer, the one that could pound any nail in one stroke, provided it landed at least in the general vicinity of the nail.

“Cripes, Tim! You done killed Dixie. Drove him right through the floor like a railroad spike!” shouted Dimbulb Orcpuddles. And you is only supposed to kill a troll with fire, according to the Dungeonmaster’s Handbook.”

“Well, he wasn’t supposed to think that!” Tim insisted defensively.

“Since it is against the law to hammer trolls into the floor without management’s consent, you will have to prove that what he said was the opposite of true,” Judge Mental Phoole said with authority.

“How am I gonna do that if the thing was true?” moaned Timothy.

“Well, the Barefoot Princess comes by here every day being chased by some princely suitor. Go marry her.”

“How will I do that?” asked Tim.

“Well, that magic hammer of yours started the problem… so…”

So, Timothy Trollhammer marched out into the street with his magic hammer.

Out there, the Barefoot Princess was once again being accosted by the Son of Duke Poofter-Doofus from the kingdom of Poofter-Doofus’s Swamp. One swing of the hammer nailed Prince Spritely Poofter-Doofus, and the Barefoot Princess swooned into his free arm, the one without the hammer in it.

“That’s assault with a deadly weapon, and harassment of a Princess,” said Fontaine Fox, a potential eyewitness.

“I fear the Troll may nail us as hostile witnesses,” moaned Deefenbarger Duck, a second potential witness.

“You two come with me,” said Timothy. “I’m getting married, and I am in need of witnesses.”

And then Tim had Judge Mental Phoole perform the ceremony, only having to threaten to nail him on the head with a magic hammer three times. It was a lovely ceremony. Most of the trolls at the wedding couldn’t refrain from making rude comments, so they got hammered (with wedding-celebration booze, of course. What did you think I meant?)

And after the honeymoon the Barefoot Princess woke up. She was grateful for being rescued from the Poofter-Doofus. But they did not live happily ever after. After all, they had three kids. And the kids were all trolls.

Leave a comment

Filed under finding love, humor, Paffooney, satire

August 19, 2020 · 6:56 pm

Dread Waits

Snowboy is the villain in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.

It is not an easy thing to have to wait for bad news.

You know what’s coming. You know why it will happen. You know how it will happen. The only thing you don’t know is when.

My father is in hospice car. The doctor doesn’t believe he will last much longer. I will still be in Texas when it happens… probably. My mother is planning a cremation and later service when the pandemic has released its grip on us all. Of course, it is a nightmare for her. Not being able to visit the man she has loved and been companion to for 64 years. No kisses. No hand-holding. Only looking at him through a window with a mask on. And most of the time he doesn’t even know who she is. Last week he asked for her, wanting her to come to him. By the time she got there, he didn’t remember what he had wanted… or again, who she even was. There is nothing for any of us, my mother, myself, my two sisters, my younger brother… to do besides wait.

How Timothy Trollhammer Managed to Marry a Princess

And of course, there is more than one dread thing I have to await. This pandemic is highly likely to bring an end to me. My number two son, in his new job working for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, had to deal with a prisoner who has COVID 19, and he was wearing his mask, but three days later he is not feeling well. And I have been sick since last weekend, and started coughing and sneezing today. It may just be that both of us are having a bad reaction to mold from the rain, but if it gets worse, I may end up being tested again so I can wait on pins and needles for another seven days before finding out the verdict. I am too susceptible, and the virus is too relentless. It will eventually have me before it’s run its full course.

So, here I am dreading the impending visits from the Grim Reaper. Why then do I choose to illustrate with cartoon villains? Well, Snowboy is a robotic device originally created to be an assassin by alien beings working for the US Government. He was wrecked by an individual given the power to do so by his future time-travelling self after a good-hearted scientist tries to bring him back to life in the form of the son he had previously lost in a fire the robot had caused. And, much as we all do in a life plagued with random tragedies and ill fortune, he spent time (and lots of it, thanks to his time machine) trying to figure out what he will do and why he should do it (though most of us can’t use WWI German Fighter Pilots and man-eating chinchillas to do it.)

Timothy Trollhammer uses his handy hammer to win himself a beautiful barefoot princess for his wife. But the trick for old noggin-bopping Tim is to keep her once he’s won her. And that’s a problem he can’t solve by bopping it with a hammer. He has to learn patience, and kindness and… maybe even love. The lesson does not go without its moral to the story.

As much as we may fear what’s coming very near,

We must be ready to to pay the price,

It’s certainly very dear

And though it’s something not so nice,

The due date now is here.

What more is there to say? I await God’s twisted sense of humor when it comes to my fate and the fate of my father. And waiting is all there is to be done.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

August 18, 2020 · 1:09 pm

AeroQuest 4… Canto 108

Canto 108 – The Lost Child

Things had been chaotic in and around Outpost for an Earth-time week.   Tron and Maggie were both dragging from one conference and administrative nightmare to the next.

Elvis and King Killer found them sagging in their seats at the conference table in the Outpost control center. 

“Boss, it’s not that bad.  Nobody died in a training accident today,” said Elvis the Cruel.

“Really?” said Tron with a snort.  “Two of those Triceratops starship-thingies locked horns and tore the bridge section off of one of them.”

“But nobody died,” reaffirmed King.

“Well, that’s something,” said Maggie, blowing a stray red hair out of her eyes.

“The problem with those things is that they have a mind  of their own.  It’s hard enough to learn starship combat from complete scratch like these maroonies and alien squid-men have to, without having to learn to accept interference from your own starship at the same time.”  King had offered the same complaint a hundred times already, but it didn’t hurt for Tron to hear it again.

At that moment, Artran, the adult version, wandered into the conference room having heard everything that was said.

“You know these things are shaped like dinosaurs for a reason, right?” Artran asked with a grin.

“Yeah.  A Flintstones reason,” griped King.

“If they were actual living riding beasts, you would have to learn to ride them differently.  You can’t control them so much as you have to guide them.  Think of it like leading them with a tug on the reins.”  Artran’s reasoning was actually quite eye-opening.  The starships shaped like dinosaurs were created by an artificial alien intelligence that came to them by way of the inscrutable Ancients.  It was a superior race that created them from the highest level of technology that living beings had ever known.  If they acted and reacted in contrary ways, it had to be because the lesser beings flying them didn’t understand their ways.

“How did you get so wise since you were a little boy just a couple of months ago?” Maggie asked her son who had suddenly become a man, seemingly overnight.

“Spent the last twenty years in the past with the Star Nomads, exploring unknown space and learning more than I ever could’ve learned from tutor robots on Outpost.”

Actual tears flowed down Maggie’s cheeks.  “I miss the little boy you were.  I feel like your Nomads have robbed me of precious time with my young son.”

“I don’t regret the things I have learned,” Artran said sympathetically.  “And soon you will have another little boy to play mommy with.”

“Really?  How do you know it will be a boy?”

“Star Nomads travel in ways that bend time.  I have seen Starchart in my past and your future.  He’s a great kid.”

“Really?  I won’t lose him the same way I lost you?”

“I guarantee it, Mom.  And you haven’t lost me.  I’m here now.  And I will help you win the upcoming war.”

“So, what are we supposed to be doing differently with these dinosaur-shaped starships?” King scoffed with a note of resignation in his voice.

“Train them to let their Triceratops riding beasts run like a herd.  In life, herds of horned herbivores would stampede together at the enemy as a way to overwhelm and trample their tormentors.  Herds of bison once did the same thing.  If there were enough time, I’d take you back in time to show you.”

Tron grinned.  “And I’d go with you too.  But I have the idea already from what you have told us.  King, can you train them to do what Artran is suggesting?”

“With starships?”

“Maybe you start thinking of them as riding beasts.”

“Yeah.  I could definitely do that.  But I have never flown a bison before, or anything like that.”

That made everybody laugh.  But King had a sense in the pit of his old stomach that the Lost Boy maybe had just solved a major training problem.

Leave a comment

Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, satire, science fiction

August 17, 2020 · 7:02 pm

Fighting the Good Fight

I like to think of myself as a good person. In fact, having been a successful public school teacher, I basically feel that calling myself a hero is not the same sort of toxic narcissism that Prexydental Trumpalump displays when he thinks of himself that way.

I need to get it through my thick head that everyone sees themselves that way, and that it is universally untrue. We let too much badness go unopposed. We are hard-hearted too often towards our fellow men and women… and children… and animals… and the planet as a whole.

We see others who are different than ourselves as “others” and exclude them from our groups, some of us going so far as to villainize others just because their skin is green, or because they know what “Blogwopping” means and we don’t. And what we villainize, or demonize, or verminize, we feel righteous in harming, even exterminating.

So, what’s the point I am making? Am I such a loathsome creature that the only way I can make the world a better place is to curl up and die? Of course not. That’s the darkness talking me back into grave ideas and depressed thinking. I need to spread a little of that old Norman Vincent Peale peanut-butter on the slice of toast that is my world. Yes, a little bit of positive thinking can re-butter your toast for the better in order to prepare you to battle the battles that must be fought and won.

A true warrior is not the guy doing the most killing on the battlefield. And he is not the one who dies for his country either. Both may have their place in a war, but neither is the one who wins it. A true warrior is the one who endures to the end. The last man standing. The one who rules the battlefield at the end of the day.

So, what do I mean with all this warrior nonsense? I mean, my Great Grandma Hinckley was a true warrior, because she steadfastly led her family through five generations of it, and made more generations possible.

You say the world is dying of climate change? My Grandma was a relentless garden-keeper, helping us to survive with garden-fresh sweet corn, sweet peas, pumpkins, squash, and carrots from her garden. And she planted a multitude of flowers every year to keep the bees happy and a everything they pollinated growing.

You say we may succumb to pandemics and plagues? Grandma Hinckley was a maker of chicken soup, a mender of wills and willpower in the downhearted… church-goer, psalm-singer, user of Vick’s Vapo-Rub, Dr. Scholl’s inserts, Werther’s Original Butterscotch and Hard Candies, and if worse came to worse… Castor Oil!

And for political problems… government corruption and such? Well, maybe you can’t still vote for FDR or Eisenhower… but you damn sure better vote.

Yes, my Great Grandma Hinckley was a true warrior.

And so, I am ready for the fights to come. I will be a warrior like her. I will be a problem-solver, and I will endure. Because that’s just what you do, no matter the odds against you. I learned it from her. And I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one with a warrior for a grandma, or mother, or father, or sister, brother, wife, or son… even daughter. We stand a chance if we will only stand together. And we do it for love.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, autobiography, battling depression, family, goofy thoughts, healing, humor, inspiration, Paffooney

August 16, 2020 · 6:19 pm

Laughing Blue Essays

Now you can read some of the best of this blog in book form. Available in both Kindle e-book and paperback forms.

Leave a comment

Filed under announcement

August 16, 2020 · 4:35 pm

I’m More Alive Today Than I Was Yesterday

Yes, I use that picture to illustrate the character Milt Morgan, but it is actually me. I drew it from a school photo from grade school. And yes, that means a color photo from the 1960’s. I am now 54 years older than I was when that picture was originally taken. Being that old… not ancient, but a senior citizen, means I am not as far from the day I will die as I am from either the day I was born, the day this picture was taken, the days I graduated from high school and college, and even the day I got married. Especially since I am ill with 6 incurable diseases and conditions and living in the midst of the 2020 pandemic with anti-health President Trumpalump still in the White House.

Yesterday I woke up with my left arm numb, a sharp pain in my left armpit, a heaviness and pain in my chest, and a throbbing in my temples.

Yes, I know. I promised my family I would go to the ER if I had those Heart-Issue symptoms again.

But the last time I went to a doctor on a Saturday with those same symptoms, my EKG sent me to the ER, who charged me two hundred dollars out of pocket and sent me directly to the hospital. After more than a week of tests, drugs, and worry… no heart indications, stress test passed, and the general consensus among specialists that it was the arthritis in my rib-cage and the arthritis in my neck, near the spinal chord that caused both the anomalous EKG and the numbness in my arm. They got the same heart-warning EKG readings while I was hooked up to a machine that showed I was definitely NOT having a heart attack.

So, yesterday I gambled with my life. I stayed home. I finished my book of essays and published it on Amazon. (At least, if I died, I would leave behind one more product of wit, wisdom, and autobiography from a total idiot.)\

This morning I was better. It is not a hundred percent certain that I won’t drop dead from a heart attack or stroke, but my pains yesterday were definitely from sleeping for too long on my left side with an arthritic rib-cage. Arthritis doesn’t kill you by itself. Only when it masks the pains of something more deadly and disastrous.

So, I lucked out. And I have another finished work. It is Laughing Blue, a book of essays from this goofy little blog. Along with illustrations that I feared wouldn’t all be compatible with Amazon’s file-size limits. I appear to have been 100% victorious on that gamble too.

The book is now live on Amazon. Whether you can actually buy it or not, I don’t know yet. So, I will wait to post a link until I am sure.

1 Comment

Filed under autobiography, health, illness, Paffooney, publishing

August 15, 2020 · 4:56 pm

Another Saturday

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

August 14, 2020 · 5:25 pm

Ah, Fridays!

“Mickey, why are you using that picture for this post?”

“Well, because… um… the picture of Millis I tried to start with didn’t work, because my computer keyboard keeps messing up… or maybe WordPress doesn’t like it now that they are supposed to be paying me pennies to put ads on my blog.”

“Millis the rabbit that became a man?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“That doesn’t make any more sense the picture of the Robot boy doing chemistry in front of a Japanese castle.”

“Who are you to question my decisions?”

“I’m your talking dog, Jade. You know the one that you just took for a walk and doesn’t really talk in real life.”

“You don’t really talk?”

“Mickey, I’m your dog. I only talk to you in your imagination because you know me so well you practically know what I am thinking.”

“Oh, really? What were you thinking when you ran away instead of coming back into the house with me at the end of our walk?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I was thinking, SQUIRREL!!!“

“I should’ve just left you out there to chase them. Instead I waited on the porch for you to come back and beg to be let back in the house.”

“Well, you love me. And besides, I am almost seventy in dog years, and I am really stupid about cars that could run over me and squish my little head.”

“Yeah. Your stupid head.”

“Mickey, are you holding this conversation with me because you can’t think of anything else to write about?”

“Yes… er, no… It’s just that I am trying to finish editing my book of Essays, Laughing Blue. I am almost done with it.”

“Why does that make you write about your beloved talking dog? The one you are thinking deserves a little hamburger meat right about now?”

“Because my brain it numb from the careful re-reading, and proof-reading, and changing pictures from color to black and white. And I have no thoughts at all where you and hamburger meat are in the same sentence… or even in the same paragraph.”

“Hey, I like that picture of Mom and Henry. Why didn’t you post that one first?”

“I am using it to illustrate the point that I have been converting artwork to black and white for the book. And that isn’t really Mom and Henry. Your mistress, who dislikes you and doesn’t want you to call her Mom even in my stupid old head, is actually a human bean. And Henry is almost 21 and working for the Dallas County Sheriff now. Neither one is still a panda bear.”

“But why did you have to make that black and white? Pandas are already black and white.”

“Her poodle skirt was red in the original picture. And they don’t do color photos in the print version of published books.”

“Why even include a picture, then?”

“Well, you know me. I am a cartoonist. I think in pictures. Especially silly Paffooney pictures.”

“Why don’t you end this post with a black and white picture of me, then?”

“Because I can’t connect my scanner to the computer for some technical reason. And besides, you slobber too much when I try to press your head against the glass in the scanner.”

“Oh.”

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

August 13, 2020 · 5:53 pm

Beloved

Teachers are not supposed to fall in love with students. Of course, when the school district tells you that, at the beginning of the year, they are talking mostly about high school students, and they are talking exclusively about romantic love. I have never had a real problem with that rule. Romantically, little half-brained and totally immature middle school students are downright icky. Especially the walking, talking, and sometimes farting middle school boys.

But schools, even though they can’t really say it, and some administrators don’t believe they want it to be so, they want teachers to have “teacher love” for students. That means, in a vaguely defined way in administrative brains compatible with the real meaning of “fully funded,”that they want teachers to become surrogate mothers and fathers to students, the kind of love you have for an orphan you have adopted because you can plainly see they need someone… anyone… to love them and care for them… no matter how ugly they might be on the outside.

“To be a good teacher, you gotta learn to love ugly,” Head Principal Watkins said to us all for the two years he managed to love our faculty. And he meant it. I was not the only teacher I heard him tell, “You are a wonderful teacher because you care about kids.” And he meant it. Not like most principals.

But when you see a picture of David, the way he was back then, you can see he was not ugly. Just his situation was ugly.

He was one of six kids that lived with his single mother in the housing project for low-income families. His mother had, at the time the principal called me into his office, been cited by authorities twice for neglect of her children.

“Mike, I know you have mentored and helped several kids outside of school. And we have a boy coming into your seventh grade class that we would like for you to help out however you can. We know you went through the whole social-services and foster-parent training from San Antonio. And David Gutierrez could really use a bit of a boost from you,” the Head Principal told me behind closed doors.

Boy, was that ever an understatement. I was spending considerable time hanging out with the pretty blond reading teacher. The first time I cooked for her, fried hamburgers and instant mashed potatoes, David had a plate already at the tiny table in my little apartment. And, skinny little thing that he was, he ate three quarters of all the food I had badly cooked. Annabel didn’t mind. And not because the burgers were burnt and the potatoes were runny… I am still not a great cook. She would become David’s second mom for those next three years. She gave him as much if not more “teacher love” than I did.

He was not a good student in any of his classes. But he was an adequate reader, and he actually improved noticeably in the time he was hanging out with us.

But he gave us a turn during that first fall when he got sick. He had the seventh grade History teacher first period every morning. And one day in October he reported to class all listless and red-eyed, And Mrs. Finch was a sharp and capable teacher, knowing what drug problems looked like, and what they didn’t look like. She sent him to the nurse. It was a fever of one-hundred-and-three degrees. The parent was called, but the parent didn’t answer. So, immediately after school Annabel and I took him directly from the nurse’s office to the doctor. And after it was determined he had a bad sinus infection, we took him to my place and put him in the spare bedroom (all apartments on North Stewart Street were two-bedroom, but there was only one of me.) Annabel stayed with him while I filled the prescription for antibiotics. We got him dosed and rested at least before his mother returned from her cleaning job in Laredo, sixty miles south. We told her everything that happened. And she took him home. His two older sisters took over nursing duty.

But when the school contacted the doctor, it was explained that the infection was severe mainly because David was malnourished and dangerously anemic. Of course, that was evidence of neglect and had to be reported.

In order to avoid having to give up custody to the State his mother moved him to Laredo, closer to her work. Both of the older sisters, Bunny and Bea had advised their Mom to give him to Annabel and me. But, of course, we were not married and in no position to become his actual parents.

So, David spent two months in Laredo, calling me every night from a pay phone. His grades in school tanked. He was miserable and lonely.

The problem was worked out in David’s family. His older brother sent money every month to his two older sisters. And Bunny had a job and kept the apartment in Cotulla for herself. So, as a compromise, since Bea was already living there with Bunny to attend high school, David came back to live with them, along with his younger sister. They returned to the school where all their friends were.

Through the rest of David’s seventh grade until the end of high school he was like a son to me. He was constantly at my place, playing computer games, watching VHS movies, and charming my girlfriend. (Annabel had the apartment next door for three of the next four years.) I played games with him. I fought with him about getting his homework done. I basically did the Dad-thing for him, something no other man had ever been bothered to do. In later years he would work as a substitute teacher for me. He would introduce me to new girlfriends. And the last time I saw him, in Uncle Moe’s Mexican Restaurant, he introduced his pregnant wife to me and my wife.

In Hebrew, the name David means, “Beloved.” Hence, that’s the only part of his name in this essay that is real.

2 Comments

Filed under autobiography, humor, illness, kids, Liberal ideas, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life, teaching

August 12, 2020 · 5:22 pm

Honor Thy Father

My father is in hospice care as I write this. He is in the late stages of Parkinson’s Disease and probably has experienced multiple strokes in the last two months of Summer 2020. He is ninety years old. And in many ways, he is already gone. I mean he is living in his past now. He is recalling his time in the Navy during the Korean War. At times he doesn’t know my mother, and he doesn’t remember that he ever had a family. Of course, this essay will not be a happy-go-lucky, full-of-jokes-and-humor essay. We can’t even visit him because of positive tests for COVID in his current care facility. And I am stuck here in Texas while he’s still in Iowa because the pandemic precludes travel between hot-spot States. But neither is this going to be a tear-fest. My father’s life was not a sad thing to reflect upon. My father was a domestic hero.

My father was born into an Iowan farm family in Nora Springs, Iowa. There my Grandfather, Arthur Beyer, worked the land for raising corn and beans, and together with my Grandma, Mary Beyer, raised a family of three, Raymond Beyer, who is my father, Aunt Jean Beyer, and Uncle Roger, better known as Skip Beyer.

Being the oldest, Dad was the most responsible for helping on the farm with chores and odd jobs during the depression in the 1930’s, and during wartime in the 1940’s. He learned a work ethic that involved doing the next thing right away so that you can get a head start on the thing after that. Never put off until tomorrow what you could’ve done yesterday. Stay ahead of the weeds and bad weather. Prepare for the worst and be happy when you don’t get it. But also grit your teeth and pitch in when you do get it. As his oldest son, he taught all of this to me. I hope I never disappointed him as his student.

He came from difficult times. He was still a boy during World War II, but when he came of an age to serve, he enlisted in the Navy, a family tradition, and served aboard Aircraft Carriers during the Korean conflict. Of course, he never saw actual combat. But aboard the USS Bennington, there was a terrible war-time accident. A boiler-room explosion killed the young sailor who had relieved Dad from a duty station in the blast area only a couple of hours before. But for a matter of luck, I might never have been born. Or, more properly, for the Grace of God…

And though it was a difficult time, in many ways it was also a simpler and more innocent time.

My father not only forgave me for the skinny-dipping incident at Randy’s birthday party, he laughed about it when I told him. And I had wisely not finished getting naked for it even before we knew the girls were spying on us. So, I didn’t have to be totally embarrassed by it when he laughed. My father didn’t laugh at everything, but when he laughed, he laughed well.

During the tornado in Belmond in 1966, he was something of a hero… to my way of thinking at least. He was the last one down into the cellar as the fertilizer company’s office building blew apart. Being at the top of the stairs, a shard of something clipped the scalp on the top of his head as the storm leveled the place where he worked as an accountant. So, he was bleeding when he helped everyone emerge from the wreckage. And he continued to let it bleed as he assisted storm victims all the way down Main Street, working his way towards the hospital where Mom worked as an R.N. He found her in the miraculously untouched hospital, and she quickly got him patched up and un-bloodied. We four children had a miserable night at Uncle Larry’s place, knowing that both of our parents had been in the tornado, but not knowing if they survived. It was Dad who was able to pick us up and take us home the next day. If nothing else makes you a hero in life, surviving because your children need you to certainly does.

I would not be who I am if not for my father. I owe to him everything in life I don’t owe to my mother. I wish love could be enough to cure him. He’s still alive at this point, but his mind is lost in the past… reliving the events on the Bennington, reliving the tornado, and somehow not able to remember the good things in life… and remember us, his children and grandchildren. If love were enough, I could cure him so well, he would be young again, and able to live it all over again. But I guess, that is really God’s job now. And who am I to argue with my father’s father’s father?

9 Comments

Filed under family, strange and wonderful ideas about life