January 12, 2025 · 1:40 am

The Butterfly of Hope

The sad fact of it is that life on Earth is probably doomed. We elected the Pumpkinhead to be President again, and he will remove the limited climate change mitigations that Democratic administrations put in place. Things like the wildfires in California will be allowed to worsen beyond the power of humans to survive. We cannot work together enough to prevent a convicted felon, rapist, and con man from seizing the office of President for a second time.

We are flawed, and it appears it will be what we all get capital punishment for. But the human race deserves to have existed. Consider art, architecture, science, and philosophy. Religion? Shakespeare’s work, Emily Dickenson’s poetry, the paintings of Norman Rockwell, Vincent Van Gogh, and Leonardo DaVinci, the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the Empire of the Incas, the City States of Hellenic Greece, and the glories of the Roman Empire? The Life of Christ. The humor of Mark Twain. The courage in battle of Sergeant York. The sacrifice of Joan of Arc. It is a good thing that life on Earth existed.

So, our time on this planet is further limited. It is bad fortune. But I will spend what I have left being happy and hopeful. We may not be totally doomed. And there is still laughter in the world. There is still beauty to be seen, truth to be told, and love enough to go around if we allow it to.

Butterflies have a limited lifespan. More so than we do. However, for now… there are still butterflies.

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January 12, 2025 · 1:23 am

Morning Has Broken

Today is off to a miserable start.  I heard on the radio that David Bowie has died.  Ziggy Stardust… the Goblin King… The Man Who Fell to Earth… the Thin White Duke…is gone.  And even though since high school in the 1970’s I have never been quite sure how I felt about his music, I wept.  The man was a musical maker of lyrical poetry.  He could make you feel really really terrible… but he always made you feel.  And he made me depressed as he led me through the Labyrinth… but he also made me soar… on the wings of a barn owl.  It was about facing the darkness and finding your way.   Finding the way out.  Singing the Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby, but not actually singing it… making peace on Earth instead.  Sometimes things are just so weirdly beautiful it hurts.

I dropped my daughter off at her middle school, and then Jody Dean & the Morning Team played this on the radio.

I wept again.  Darkness is my old friend…  I have lived with and through depression after depression.  My own… my wife’s… my children’s…  And it is a miracle I have lived this long without succumbing to the Darkness.  It took Robin Williams.  It took Ernest Hemingway.  But somehow, the Goblin King always goaded me onward, to find the answer at the end of the Labyrinth.  “You… you have no power over me.”  And then I am okay once again.

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I captured the dawn once again this morning.  Once again I failed to truly ensnare the subtle reds and pinks and purples that were actually there.  But there it is, anyhow.  The morning has broken.  The blackbird has spoken.  The morning is new.

My heart is still sore this morning.  The dog didn’t help when she spilled the trash to get at the napkins with bacon grease on them.  We may have a dog-skin rug as a doormat later today.  But David Bowie left so many words and ideas behind to comfort me.  Is he one of those “neon gods we made”?  Of course he is.  But as the owl flutters off in the closing credits, we can take comfort in the knowledge that no one is ever really gone.  And we can always anticipate some… Serious Moonlight.

This is, of course, an old post revisited.

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January 11, 2025 · 1:58 am

Toothpocalypse

It began by chewing a Dorito nacho cheese corn chip. A piece of it went into the hole where the crown on the right-side molar used to be. Biting down caused another small piece of enamel to be chipped out of the bottom of the wrecked tooth. And so, the pain became a focus on the urgent need for some kind of relief. I did not want to replace the crown that had replaced that tooth because none of the three dentists who had worked on it managed to keep a crown on it for more than two or three years. It was more than a thousand dollars every one of the three times. They ignored other tooth problems to replace the work of the crowning dentists. I had a second cracked natural molar that didn’t get worked on until the last time I had the crown replaced before the pandemic. Ironically, that molar lost its one and only crown a couple of weeks ago.

So, not wanting to die of tooth pain, I went to an Epic Dentist who was an Asian lady with a penchant for scolding patients who didn’t care for their teeth well. I listened to her blister the air with orders to two other men who did not properly love their teeth while I was there at the dentist being worked on.

I had lost the molar I was there for during the pandemic, and I lost it for the third and last time. The Epic Dentist agreed that the tooth was destroyed. She also wanted to replace both crownless teeth, by digging them out of my jaw and screwing an implant in both of their places. The cost ranged from $1,700 to $27,000, all of which I could not afford in a lump sum. I thought I had talked her down to the cheapest price and only one molar (the one that was hurting,)

Well, things rarely go the easy way for me. I did pay only $1,777 through a finance deal that allowed me to split it up for 15 months. But she was definitely going to gouge out both molars with a dull instrument. Possibly with a rusty spoon.

She started on the sore tooth. It was, it turns out, seriously infected. And what’s worse, it was stubbornly rooted in my jaw.

“You shouldn’t feel any pain,” she said, “since I anesthetized you with enough numbing juice to make a moose unconscious. You will feel pressure, but not pain. And don’t worry when you hear bone snapping. The procedure is meant to do that.”

Of course, that was a lie. The rusty spoon, the gardening spade, and the jackhammer she used all made crunchy sounds and caused it to feel like she was driving the tool all the way through the bottom of the jaw. That “pressure” certainly felt like PAIN to me.

“Hang in there. You’re fine,” she said every time my back arched and I stifled my scream. “It’s just pressure. However, the root is stubborn and isn’t coming out easily.”

Fifteen minutes and thirty death screams by me led to a break.

Then we went on for another fifteen. I told them every military secret I had ever heard, all none of them. I promised the Devil my soul if it could just be stopped, but he was watching from the corner behind the dental assistant and enjoyed the show too much to stop it. Besides, my soul is only worth 75 cents. The first half of the root finally came out and I was given a recovery break while I trembled like I was going through an earthquake and whimpered like a whipped puppy.

The second half of the root came out easily. Apparently, Satan was satisfied with the three quarters he could get for my soul and absconded with it And I pleaded for another day before tackling molar number two. They gave me two weeks. I was in no shape to endure another Mongolian tooth torture session. So, now, as I sit on my bed at home during a blizzard in North Texas trying desperately to recover on antibiotics and aspirin, I have that one more molar extraction to look forward to (and have nightmares about.)

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January 11, 2025 · 1:28 am

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.

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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.

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.

And she does color well too.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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January 10, 2025 · 1:08 am

Top This!

fuddy duddy

“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.

 

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January 9, 2025 · 1:13 am

What You Should Know About Filipino Families

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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.

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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.

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

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#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.

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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.

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January 8, 2025 · 3:23 am

Chicken Soup Time (a twelve-line poem of recovery)

There comes a time when life really stinks,

A day when the life force grows green-brown and sinks,

Yes, I am ill and my every breath kinks,

And I cough and I burp and the end of the nose pinks,

So, I gather together under the covers,

The rotten parts of me over which the fly hovers,

And cook them in heat of the dreams of old lovers,

And fantasy dreams, whose richness discovers…

The stories that make the sum of my life,

And memories of people who’ve hurt me with strife,

And good things and great things and details all mixed,

And stew while I’m sleeping til things are all fixed.

Blue birdsxxx

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January 7, 2025 · 1:30 am

Exploring the Mind of Mickey

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One really weird thing that teachers do is think about thinking.  I mean, how can a person actually teach someone else how to think and how to learn if they don’t themselves understand the underlying processes?  Now that I have retired from teaching and spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would try thinking about thinking one more time at least.  Hey, just because I am retired, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do some of the weird things I used to do as a teacher, right?

This time I made a map to aid me in my quest to follow the twists and turns of how Mickey thinks and how Mickey learns.  Don’t worry, though.  I didn’t actually cut Mickey’s head in half to be able to make this map.  I used the magical tool of imagination.  Some folks might call it story-telling… or bald-face lying.

Now, a brain surgeon would be concerned that my brain maps out in boxes.  He would identify it as a seriously deformed brain.  It is not supposed to be all rectangular spaces and stairs.  It probably indicates a severe medical need for corrective surgery… or possibly complete amputation.  But we are not going to concern ourselves with trying to save Mickey from himself right now.  That is far too complex a topic to tackle in a 500-word daily post.  We are just discussing the basics of operation.

You see the three little guys in the control room?  They are an indication that not only did I steal an idea from the Disney/Pixar Movie Inside Out, but I apparently have too few guys doing the job up there compared to the movie version.  (It probably makes sense though that a young girl like the one in the movie has a much more sensible configuration in her brain than someone who was a middle school teacher for 24 years.  Seriously, that job can do a bit of damage.)  The three little guys are not actually Moe, Curly, and Larry, though that wouldn’t be far from descriptive accuracy.  They are Impulsive Ignatz, currently in the driver’s seat (or else I wouldn’t be writing this), Proper Percy the Planner, and Pompositous Felixian Checkerbob, the fact-checker and perfectionist (also labeled the inner nerd… I am told not everyone has one of these).  They are the three little guys that run around in frantic circles in my head trying to deal with a constant flow of input and output, trying to make sense of everything, and routinely failing miserably.

I shouldn’t forget the other two little guys in my head, Sleepytime Tim in the Dream Center, and little Batty up in the attic.  I have no earthly idea how either of them function, or what in the heck they are supposed to do.  But there they are.  The other three run up and down stairs all day, locating magic mushrooms and random knowledge in the many file cabinets, record collections, book stacks, and odd greasy containers that are stored all around in the many nooks and crannies of Mickey’s mind.  They collect stuff through the eyes and ears, and it is also their responsibility to chuck things out through the stupidity broadcaster at various inopportune times.  It is also a good idea for them to avoid the lizard brain of the limbic system in the basement.  It is easily angered and might eat them.

So now you should be able to fully understand how Mickey thinks.  (Or not… a qualifier I was forced to put in by Checkerbob.)

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January 6, 2025 · 1:05 am

Poor Ol’ Wooden Head

“Kaw-Liga”
KAW-LIGA, was a wooden Indian standing by the door
He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store
KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.

He always wore his Sunday feathers and held a tomahawk
The maiden wore her beads and braids and hoped someday he’d talk
KAW-LIGA – A, too stubborn to ever show a sign
Because his heart was made of knotty pine.

[Chorus:]
Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he never got a kiss
Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he don’t know what he missed
Is it any wonder that his face is red
KAW-LIGA, that poor ol’ wooden head.

KAW-LIGA, was a lonely Indian never went nowhere
His heart was set on the Indian maiden with the coal black hair
KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show
So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.

Then one day a wealthy customer bought the Indian maid
And took her, oh, so far away, but ol’ KAW-LIGA stayed
KAW-LIGA – A, just stands there as lonely as can be
And wishes he was still an old pine tree.

“The Complete Hank Williams” (1998)

Magicman 3

The quirky movie I reviewed, Moonrise Kingdom, reconnected me with a song I loved as a child.  It was on an old 45 record that belonged to my mother’s best friend from high school.  When the Retleffs sold their farm and tore down their house and barn, they had a huge estate sale.  My mother bought the old record player and all the collected records that Aunt Jenny still had.  They were the same ones my mother and her friend Edna had listened to over and over.  There were two records of singles about Indian love.  Running Bear was about an Indian boy who fell in love with little White Dove.  They lived on opposite sides of a river.  Overcome with love, they both jump into the river, swim to the middle, lock lips, and both drown.  Together forever.  That song, it turns out, was written by the Big Bopper, and given to Johnny Preston to sing, and released the year after the Big Bopper died in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens.

Kaw-liga, by Hank Williams, was a wooden Indian sitting in front of a cigar store.  His love story is even worse.  As you can see from the lyrics above, he never even gets the girl.  Dang, Indian love must be heck!

But I have come to realize that these aren’t merely racist songs from a bygone era.  They hold within them a plea for something essential.  They are a reminder that we need love to be alive.

When I was young and deeply depressed… though also insufferably creative and unable to control the powers of my danged big brain, I knew that I wanted love.  There was one girl who went to school with me, lovely Alicia Stewart (I am not brave enough to use her real name), that filled my dreams.  We were classmates, and alphabetical seating charts routinely put us near each other.  She had a hypnotic sparkle in her eyes whenever she laughed at my jokes.  She was so sweet to me… sweet to everyone… that she probably caused my diabetes.  I longed to carry her books or hold her hand.  I cherished every time she spoke to me, and collected the memories like stamps in a stamp album.  But like the stupid cigar store Indian, I never spoke up for myself.  I never told her how I felt.  I was endlessly like Charlie Brown with the Little Red-Haired Girl.  Sometimes you have to screw up your courage and leap into the river, even if it means your undoing.  Because love is worth it.  Love is necessary.  And it comes to everybody in one way or another over time.  I look at pictures of her grandchildren posted on Facebook now, and wonder what might have been, if only… if only I had jumped in that stupid river.  I did find love.  And I probably would’ve drowned had I done it back then.  Life has a way of working things out eventually.  But there has to be some reason that in the 50’s, when I was born, they just kept singing about Indian love.

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January 5, 2025 · 1:54 am

Ah, Finally Progress

I have written three chapters in the last week. Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons is back on the production line. I would tell you more, but I still have to curse the keyboard and arthritic fingers while typing the wrong thing and correcting it more times than any nudist ever typed the word “naked”.

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