Sometimes people break,
And then, they fall apart,
And it takes a jigsaw master,
To Puzzle back their heart.
And if a foot falls off,
Quite busted on Monday’s hump
They may be legless, headless, limp
And lying in a lump.
But no face is ever busted
To a point of no repair,
And lips are pasted back in place
With a smile that wasn’t there.
There are a number of really, really goofy facts about me that I will reveal in today’s post… No one is trying to blackmail me over these things, believe it or not. I have no money. And I have no reputation to protect. I am nobody. Just a silly, goofy, loony old nobody. But I have a few chuckles now and then at my own expense.
Revelation #1; The clown nose in the picture was a souvenir from Cirque du Soleil. We went to see them in a parking lot in Frisco, Texas. They had an actual circus tent. When I was five, I told my parents I wanted to be a clown when I grew up. Nobody believes me when I say it, but I achieved that goal. They say, “But you were a school teacher!”
And I say, “How is that different?”
Honestly, I have worn a clown nose and played harmonica in front of a classroom full of twelve-year-olds. I can make teenagers laugh so hard the principal has to check to make sure they are not gleefully setting me on fire or duct-taping me to the wall. (Duck-taping sounds funnier, but you have to be accurate when describing real events from modern schools.)
Revelation #2; I am a closet nudist.
I used to be associated with the AANR, a nudist/ naturist organization in the latter part of the 1980’s, I met the nudist publishers through stamp collecting and they tried to recruit me. I bought books and videos from them. I have actually been naked for an entire day… once. I knew nudists in Austin where a former girlfriend stayed over several weekends with her sister who lived in the clothing-optional apartment complex on Manor Road. I am not brave enough to walk around physically naked in front of people on a regular basis though. So, I am a closet nudist. Only a nudist in my closet. I get a lot of mileage out of naked jokes in my fiction, though, because, well… naked is funny.
Revelation #3; I keep scrapbooks filled with collages made of pictures from magazines, newspapers, photos I’ve taken, pictures I drew myself, poems, short snippets of things I find funny or ironic or autobiographically important, and secrets like I am sharing with you today. (The picture of Goofy seen here is one I colored myself from one of the old coloring books left over from my kids’ coloring book days. I hate to see unused coloring book pictures go to waste.) I call these my magical tomes because I use them as source material for the spells I weave in my fiction. I also use many of the images for drawing and painting as models. I also discovered I can borrow whole images and make new art using my cheap-o substitute photo-shop program.
Revelation #4; It is totally by accident that I have come to look like the most important character in Snow Babies, the novel that PDMI is slowly publishing for me. Catbird Sandman is an old hobo who wears a coat that has so many patches on it that it 
has become a patchwork crazy quilt. He wanders around the country, appreciating the world and its people, and using his considerable store of mysterious abilities to charm, help, and change people. He carries around a book, a well-worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and quotes from it, treating it like a sort of Bible-like source of spiritual wisdom. The character looks like Walt Whitman. And now, though not intentionally, so do I. I grew the beard and long hair because of psoriasis. It attacks me under the edge of my jaw line and all around the back of my head. It is easily scratched and bloodied, and then infected when someone cuts my hair or I try to shave. So I have given up that battle and gone all hippy-dippy. It sorta fits with the whole jobless, shiftless, former nudist sort of persona that I have been cultivating as an author.
So what is the equation Goofy Squared all about? Well, if you take the square root of the four Goofy revelations in this post, you come up with Goofy times two. So Goofy obviously equals one. And I think I have clearly proven that I am the goofy one.
Yesterday I re-blogged a post by Daven Anderson because he was doing such an excellent job of promoting my current publisher PDMI Publiching, LLC.
I am relying on this publisher to get my work into print. I have no way of knowing how much longer I can stay alive since only six incurable diseases, financial hardship, and the cruel winds of fate are all trying to overturn my little metaphorical boat. I have found them to be like a family, concerned about all of the members and willing to go to great lengths to help. I am pinning my literary hopes on them. If my novels don’t get noticed soon and cared about by someone other than me, they may die out shortly after I do. At the rate I am going, I don’t know how many I can push into existence, and I’m fairly sure I will not see all of them in print. But I am trying. This is my legacy, my lifetime of collected wit and wisdom, and it is the most worthy thing about me. So I am trying very hard to promote everything I can to help make the publishing company as a whole to thrive and work. But it is not for this reason only that I promote the work of others.
It is my philosophy of literature and art that good work must be shared. If you haven’t seen my posts about Loish, or William Adolphe Bouguereau, Norman Rockwell, or Maxfield Parrish, you really should look them up. I mean the artists, though I won’t object if you want to find and read my posts, either. Part of my job as a writer and a cartoonist is to make others aware of the good things I have found in life. And good art, good story-telling, good music… those things are some of the very best things that humanity has to offer. It is those creations that are the true purpose of life on Earth. We may not be around as a species very much longer because we are such poor care-takers of the planet, but human culture in all its depth and richness had to exist. It is the real purpose God granted to us.
So I encourage everyone who creates art of any kind… anyone who looks at, reads, or listens to art of any kind, to please share anything and everything you find that is good. The more good there is, the less room there is for evil to exist.
Filed under NOVEL WRITING, publishing, sharing
I have been doing an edit on a completed novel called The Bicycle-Wheel Genius, and I have discovered that I have grown quite a bit as a writer since I first began practicing the craft. This particular story has been rattling around in my brain since 1977. The mad scientist who is the title character, Orben Wallace, is based loosely on me. It is also to some degree a favorite science teacher from high school mixed up with a rather eccentric college professor whose bizarre nature led, apparently, to some really profound insights about the scientific reasoning process and how a person thinks rationally. From this character recipe I have learned the scientific method of experimenting, observing, theorizing, and testing theories works in all areas of life, including the complex mess that is our social life and relationship muddle. Order can be imposed on chaos, and even when chaos is not controlled, it can still be tamed.
I have learned also a thing of two about writing science fiction. I have made this story very science-y by adding elements of time travel, UFO’s, and conspiracy theories… as well as genetics, nutrition, black holes, and history from 1916 (World War I). I have done significant amounts of research because, even though the science is all about big, black, hoo-haw lies and prevarications, it sounds a lot more realistic and palatable if the science is right.
I have learned a few things about writing sequels and tie-ins. This novel is technically a sequel to Catch a Falling Star. No, that’s not right either. It is a prequel-equal-sequel because it happens before, during, and after the previously published book. I have learned to pick up scenes from the other book and rewrite them from the point of view of a different character than the story before. The dialogue is already fixed, but the interpretations and commentary on everything is from a whole different perspective. Not easy to do, but very enjoyable and educational.
I have learned that even though I am basically writing a comedy it also has to have its beautifully sweet-sad moments of melancholy to achieve balance and depth of theme. Two beloved characters die in this book, whereas in Catch a Falling Star only the villain dies without getting a last-second resurrection at the end. We do terrible things to our characters sometimes if it gives the book deeper meaning and resonance with reality.
I do still slavishly rely on the ridiculous. One of the characters in The Bicycle-Wheel Genius is a rabbit who bites a high-tech carrot attached to the time machine and morphs into a rabbit man. Millis, the pet rabbit, is the second Paffooney I am repeating for this recycled sort of post.
I have also learned that by using my obsession with that which is surreal, I can actually write things that make me laugh even though I’ve read and re-read them ten times, and am now reading them again. Humor comes from word-play and cleverness as well as from situations full of slapstick.
So, whether you can stand my purple paisley prose…or not, I am definitely working towards throwing a new novel out there… into the world of publishing… or am I throwing it at your head instead?
Filed under NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
Be warned… this is one of those art things that people use to post naughty pictures on the internet. Some of my conservative Christian friends will tell you that the local art museum is one of the most atrocious sources of pornography and images of naked people you can find. It is a terrible thing. People being exposed to what people look like if they take their clothes off! How could I do such a dastardly thing as to draw people… naked?
It is difficult to rationalize my terrible crimes. I mean, the “Beauty and the Beast” picture is clearly the depiction of mental depravity and sex addiction from the mind of a fiend. There could be no other explanation of it, right? I mean, Beauty’s stark nakedness can’t possibly represent fearless innocence in the face of ugliness… or a compounding of meanings that have to do with the notion that true beauty exists also under the outward ugliness of the Beast. After all, I am a cartoonist. How dare I think that I have the same right to draw naked people as some great painter or long-dead artist?
It doesn’t count for anything that I had art training in college and sat through at least two courses in anatomy drawing where I not only drew skeletons and body parts and clothed people, but also sat down in front of live nude models (mostly fellow art students, but all were paid for modeling… I think I posted elsewhere about what happened when it was my turn to model… but I also think you have to search my posts yourself if you want to know more about that embarrassing episode).
I must also confess that I have had some experiences with naturists. Here we are talking about those crazy hippie-inspired folks who go camping in the wilderness with their kids, take off all their clothes, and go hiking and biking and playing volleyball in front of real bears. It was there that the artist in me first noticed there was a difference in anatomy, shape, color, and form between bare kids and bare adults. There are distinct differences between my pictures of Eve and Artemis here, based solely on the fact that one is an adult and the other a child.
I am not trying to depict something evil and horrible that will strike you in the eyes and corrupt your very soul. I am not a pornographer or a pervert when I create these drawings and share them with you. They really represent only about one per cent of all the drawings in my portfolio. They represent mainly my need to get the form and lighting right on the most fundamental level. They are an attempt to share something about what is like to be human. Being naked is a part of the life of everyone except the most monumental of prudes who don’t ever get naked and probably wear long underwear in the bathtub even in the summer. Let me end with the first paragraph of Kenneth Clark’s 1956 book, The Nude; a study in ideal form.
“The English language, with it’s elaborate generosity, distinguishes between the naked and the nude. To be naked is to be deprived of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of us feel in that condition. The word “nude” on the other hand, carries, in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it projects into the mind is not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of a balanced, prosperous, and confident body: the body re-formed. In fact, the word was forced into our vocabulary by critics of the eighteenth century to persuade the artless islanders that, in countries where painting and sculpture were practiced and valued as they should be, the naked human body was the central object of art.”
So, you see? I am not merely making excuses for posting naughty pictures on my blog. At least, not unless all artists are making the same excuses and there is a vast world-wide conspiracy to put pornography in every art museum… Conspiracy? Wait a minute… let me think about that some more.
On days when I am still recovering from life-altering blows, I often try to find new realms, alternate realities to live in. (Retreating into a fantasy world is one of the reasons she gave for leaving.) And since, as a youth in Iowa, I raised rabbits for a 4-H project, I know rabbits better than I do human people. Rabbits are people too. So, I have been walking among the rabbit people. Seriously, bunnies are better people than most human people. They are not trying to profit off you. They are not trying to get everything they can off you. They are merely there to wiggle their whiskers, sniff for food, poop, gnaw on stuff, and make more bunnies.
I often see myself as a rabbit person. In cartoon form, I am the bunny-man teacher known to the Animal Town School System as Mr. Reluctant Rabbit.
As a teacher, I am always pulling out carrots of irony and gnawing on the ends of them in front of students. If they complain that eating food in class is supposed to be against the rules, I ask them, “Do you want a carrot of irony?”
“Oh, no, thank you sir.”
“They are good for your eyesight as well as your insight. You really ought to chew on healthier things like that.”
“Oh, no sir,” they say. “We prefer Hot Cheetos.”
And so, I taught on like that… like a rabbit, fast and frumious (a Jabberwocky sort of word), and never really bit anybody. Teaching is like that. You offer the good healthy stuff to nourish their little animal minds, and they always choose the junk food instead.
And so life goes on like that. Looking to rabbit people to ease my pain and need for good, wholesome carrots of irony.
I have started on the final edit of my novel The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. One of the main characters in the book is Tommy Bircher’s pet rabbit Millis. During the course of the story about invading aliens, Secret Agent Robots from the CIA, and making friends when you need friends, Millis is turned into a rabbit-man by a lab accident. He teaches Tommy that you don’t have to be human to be a good, caring, self-sacrificing person. He also teaches him to eat his carrots and greens like a good boy should.
So, I will spend more time with the rabbit people and heal a little bit. That is what you do with the tragedy that life brings you. You spin it into whole cloth, making humor and poetry out of everything bad that happens… wrapping yourself up in a comforting blanket of lies (you can also call those fiction stories), and eating a little chicken soup on a cold day to heal your soul. (Oh, I forget, rabbits often gag on chicken soup. Let’s make that bean soup with carrot chunks.)
Filed under humor, irony, Paffooney, rabbit people
My life is rather fragile at this point. I have recently been ill with a virus. For me, as a COPD sufferer, that can be fatal. My lungs will easily clog and become a serious case of pneumonia. A virus like that will probably be the death of me. I don’t have the money it takes to go to the emergency room. Medical costs have perched my finances over the edge of the chasm of bankruptcy. Caught on a couple of tree roots, my ability to pay for anything dangles over the abyss. The next emergency will be my last… a conscious decision. Man, my blog is a real hoot so far, huh?
But as cold and rainy weather moves in… I am at peace. I have been at war all my life long. I have fought the war against ignorance by being a school teacher. I have fought to make a life for my family, and though financial security is not a part of that, I can testify that my three kids are creative and wonderful people that will survive and make me proud. And my written work, novels and this very blog, are complete enough to secure my legacy of ideas, beliefs, and wisdom to be passed on.
Now, I know that this all sounds like a depressed person saying goodbye. In some ways that is what it is. But it is not something to be worried over. I am not depressed. I am on medication to prevent debilitating depression. I have helped members of my family overcome depression. I am a warrior, and I know how to strike back against the darkness. I will not take my own life. I am, in fact, very good at survival. Thirty-two years ago I beat malignant melanoma. I have six incurable diseases that I have successfully juggled and dealt with for years. There is no humiliating thing or gruesome test that doctors haven’t either inflicted upon me or allowed me to narrowly avoid. I may continue to struggle on for many years. If I am saying goodbye in this post, it is only a just-in-case goodbye. It is really more of a statement that I believe I have achieved what a person needs to achieve in life to be successful. I have completed a quest. When I was a gawky doofus of an Iowegian teenager, I made a vow to be a wizard. I wanted to learn and share wisdom. I believe I have done so. I am wise enough to know that no man lives forever, and with all the factors arrayed against me, I know what comes next. So, I apologize for no humor in this post. But the Toy Soldier Paffooney in this post inspires me. The forced march continues… and it will not end until the soldiers can no longer put one more foot forward.
Filed under inspiration, Paffooney, philosophy
I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head. And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome. But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what. That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be. It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer. The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.
But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful. Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen. There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward. And people are not born evil. The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another. As a teacher you get to know every type that there is. And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!) Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica. But the Doctor is right. No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful! 
So let me show you a few old drawings of people.
Cute people like Andrew here.
Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.
Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.
Or young people who live and learn and hopefully love…
And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.
And hope and dream and play and laugh…
And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…
And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…
Because God made them all for a reason…
even if we will never find out what that reason is.
Filed under art my Grandpa loved, humor, Paffooney, philosophy
Try not to be upset with me for drawing a naked lady. You see, she is not really a lady, she is a caryatid, a stone pillar for holding up a building. Besides, I have been recently very ill, and drawing naked ladies makes me happy, even though it is a sin and means I will probably burn in hell. I am a hopeless sinner in this regard. I got kicked off Pinterest for liking an oil painting of a naked lady. I think it was a painting by William Adolphe Bouguereau. How could I be so terrible? You should check out my post about his sinful, horrible paintings so you can see how terrible I am for yourself. (Bouguereau) 
Of course, This post is not about naked ladies at all, so why am I fuming and ranting and telling all my darkest secrets about that?
This post is about architecture, about giving structure to things, about holding things together and holding things up. Is it clever that I drew this picture of an ornate pillar and placed it in this post so it looks like it is standing on later paragraphs and holding up the introduction? I find weird surrealist things like that help me write stuff that makes a few people laugh. It helps me because I can focus on nonsensical side-stuff like that (mixed up with obscure puns and alliterations like “pillar” and “placed” that, when cooked together with goofy rhythms in over-long sentences end up sounding funnier than they really are), and then I can say stuff that is actually funny because I don’t realize how wrong, or weird, or silly some of these words I am futzing it all up with truly are. (And I am amazed that the Pinterest police haven’t come and kicked me off WordPress for using a word like “futzing”, even though they don’t know what it means. Heck, even the spell-checker didn’t object to the word!)
But someone like me who is trying to be funny needs structure more than anyone else you can think of. Why? Because the sad-clown-crying-on-the-inside is so very true. The dark dips of depression… pain, illness, and more pain… family stress from others in my family who also suffer… That’s what makes the laughing so very necessary. You need the lighter stuff to fill up the room (somewhat like a really big fart) because you depend on the sheer buoyancy of it to lift the entire house up and keep it from sinking to the very center of the earth. (And the stink of it can also help keep you awake when otherwise you might never get out of bed again)… (But please don’t light any matches around my house.)
So, in conclusion, this stuff I write does have basic structures, basic rules. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a theme, a point that needs to be made, And then it needs to end with some kind of a kicker line or punch line… because when that finally hits me square in the face (like a pie thrown by a pie-whacker clown), it helps me remember… I am still alive, and I can still laugh about it.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, surrealism
I am still quite ill, but I think I have turned a corner and am getting better. The wise thing to do would be to go to the doctor so he can tell me again that this is something I just have to suffer through. I am to the point money-wise, though, that I can’t really afford a couple of hours in waiting room followed by a few minutes of medical amazement that I keep suffering from things no expensive medicine can cure… or even alleviate. The deductible drains my bank account.
So I continue to hurt and rest and try to heal… always knowing that with my six incurable diseases, the present virus could easily be the final one. I was too sick yesterday to drive myself to the emergency room. I feel better, but still far from well today. I am going to get better through willpower… or the problem will be solved once and for all. Still, as I near the edge of the dark forest, and begin to see light through the trees… I am hopeful that I will get to play in the sunshine again.
Filed under Paffooney
