Tag Archives: humor

Making Mickey Happy

lil mickeyI have to admit to being a little blue yesterday.  Not “literally blue” because most days I look nothing like my Paffooney portrait here to the left.  I said a little blue, as in slightly depressed.  Not weeping and roaring with sorrow depressed… more like needing to softly sing to myself sort of depressed.  I wasn’t depressed for valid reasons.  I was mistaken about the writing contest results.  The dental insurance also covers more of what we are going to owe for the privilege of having teeth than I was at first led to believe.  So my deep blue hole yesterday was imaginary and all see-through-y if I had been sane enough to look properly.  But, Mickeys are like that sometimes, getting all bothered about things they really shouldn’t get bothered about.

So, today, determined to still be sad for a reason, I began to list other things that I could conveniently be sad about.  There was school news about an 8-year-old boy in Kentucky being handcuffed by an officer in school and crying because it was hurting him.  That social media outrage led me to an article about school discipline.  “Schools as Punishing Factories”  Reading that made me bitterly depressed.  I have witnessed the truth of that article in Texas where teachers can get in trouble so easily when they try to advocate for kids, especially black and Hispanic kids.  I have seen talking back to the teacher, throwing spitwads, and disrupting lessons become reasons for students to be escorted away in handcuffs.  I like to pretend it is because principals and policemen and community businessmen can be rather stupid sometimes, and not because there is a concerted effort to use the school experience as training for black and Hispanic, as well as poor kids to prepare for the second part of their life, the life they will lead inside prisons for profit.  As a teacher who loved kids, even the bad ones, I am truly depressed about this trend in America.  I have white friends in both Texas and Iowa that want to tell me that I am the one who is wrong, not the system.  Their conservatives beliefs are stronger than any eye-witness evidence I can give them.  So… even darker blues and more depression.  My contest novel is about a teacher like me trying to fight the way things are and teach the way teaching should be done.  I must comfort myself by telling myself that my book will change peoples’ minds and make the problem get solved.  If I just lie to myself hard enough, like those friends who tell me “throwing money at the problem of failing schools will not fix the problem” lie to themselves… a lie I know is false but want desperately to believe anyway, then I can make it true.

So, how do I make Mickey happy?  Well, luckily Mickey is goofy.  I went to Walmart and finally found the doll on sale that I had been searching for.  I bought Operetta. the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera to add to my Monster High collection for only $9.95.  And Mickey is seriously addicted to doll collecting.  It makes him happy and turns him away from despair when other things probably can’t.  I am not forgetting about the education fight.  Oh, no!  Mickey’s dander is up on that.  And he will bombard you with his writer wrath about that another day.  But forgive me.  I need to be happy a little right now.  And Mickey needs to play with dolls.

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, Paffooney, teaching

Mickey’s Blue Summer

The SuckerOkay, this is not going like I had hoped.  Medical bills are overwhelming.  Impacted molars are going to cost my family over three thousand dollars when we still can’t afford bills of bigger than 50.  And I got word today that I did not win in the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel-writing contest.  I was beaten out for the prize by Elisabeth Hamill’s book Song Magick.

I am bummed out.  It is not that I expected to win that contest, but Magical Miss Morgan is a better book than Snow Babies, and that one at least made the list of finalists.  I seem to be getting further away from the goal.  If I placed, or got a prize in that contest, I would at least get the attention of literary agents and big publishers.  Perhaps it is God’s wish that I remain an unknown novelist who makes no money at writing.  It is consistent with His divine sense of humor.  The angels get a good laugh whenever I fall on my figurative face for wishing too hard for money and success.  God wants people to be happy being poor.  Right?  That’s what Republican politicians in Texas keep saying.

But if I keep playing the same sweet-sad songs and singing in the lonely darkness… at least I can make a melody or two that lifts the souls of my fellow dwellers in the dark.

MaxP

But, wait a minute… something is not right here!  Why are the winners the same ones they told me about a couple of months ago?  Ms. Hamill’s book is also listed on this… 2014 list?  Did I jump the gun?  Look at this list for me; Dante Rossetti Awards

Am I wrong, or does that say these are the 2014 winners?  There’s the due date by which I sent in my novel for the NEXT COMPETITION in 2015!  That means I won’t actually hear about my novel until next summer!  Hang dang it!  Both bad news and good news in one fell swoop. So, I am not out of the running yet.  Perhaps there is time to do more and be more and write more after all!

Francois spotlight

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, self pity

Psoriasis, the Disease of Choice for Sith Lords and Zombies

psoriasis

Of all my six incurable diseases, psoriasis is the one least likely to kill me, and also the one I hate the most.  It tortures me daily and makes me wish I could take off all of my skin and switch it out for an entirely new set, like a suit of clothes.  Seriously, does it come in Brad Pitt?  How about blue?  That would be special.

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Psoriasis, for those of you lucky enough not to know this, is a skin disease where the skin develops little volcanoes of dead skin cells.  They become white or silvery or red flaky patches that continually erupt, crack, and embarrass me to no end.  People like me who suffer from the disease become rather paranoid about letting our spots show.  I look like a pink and white Dalmatian at times, and I end up wearing long sleeved shirts in summertime Texas where it gets to be 104 degrees in the shade on a regular basis.  No more swimsuits for me.  No more shaving or haircuts either.  I accept being called a hippie or a dirty bum now because it is easier than making people understand about my disease and its consequences.  I itch constantly.  Whole areas of my body burn with skin irritation and make people draw back in horror if they see it, mostly because of the erroneous perception that I might infect them too.sith skin

It is a disease of the body’s immune system, and it can’t be transmitted by contact in any way.  It is more of an inherited thing passed on from my parents or grandparents… though it probably was greatly aided in plaguing me because I am also diabetic.  I cannot infect anyone with the disease… though I don’t enjoy the reaction I get when someone sees the large patch of psoriasis I have on my lower back.    It is a horrible, decayed-looking open sore that takes practically forever to go away.  I also enjoy a healthy crop of psoriasis patches on my private parts… the reason I often spend alone time sitting naked at the computer, writing and complaining about stuff, and trying to be funny about stuff like death and psoriasis, while all the time trying to avoid the urge to scratch and make it worse.  There is probably a snowbank of dead skin flakes under my bed by now… I’m afraid to look and see what might be growing under there.  If I decided to be a Sith Lord like Darth Vader, I don’t have to burn off all of my skin before I put on the suit.  The crusty patches and scarring are already in place for the big take-off-the-helmet scene.  I could also probably win a part on the Walking Dead TV show because I wouldn’t need as much skin make-up.  But I would certainly be willing to forgo these wonderful opportunities if there were a way to suddenly get rid of this disease.  Unfortunately, I think that is not exactly what the word “incurable” has in mind.

So what’s the point of sharing this beyond the gratuitous gross-out value of the humor?  Well, that’s probably exactly what I had in mind, but I hope you will also realize that I am not the only person in the world who has this disease.  Many people have it worse than I do.  Children have it far more often that seems fair by the standards of karma.  Maybe, when you meet someone who has the problem, you could be a little nicer to them.  They are not lepers or plague-carriers.  They are not infectious.  And they could use a little more understanding…a little more love.

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, psoriasis

Working on Snow Babies

I really don’t have to put very much into this blog since most of my 500 words are already taken up with novel editing.  So I will just put in a few comments on this novel that has consumed me since 2012.   It is called Snow Babies Val at the barn

because it is basically about lost children and a blizzard that threatens to take them away completely.  Now, there are fantasy creatures in the story, child-like ghost-things that come in the teeth of the blizzard to take away the souls of those who die in the cold.  But the title actually refers more to the child characters in the story, Valerie Clarke (as seen above) and the four runaways from the Trailways bus.  It is a story of survival during a blizzard, and survival when you have lost the ones you love.  It is also a story of quilts… patchwork quilts… of many colors and varieties all stitched together seemingly at random.  Because that is what life is like.  Random stuff.  Stitched together…to make something beautiful that can save your life in the cold.

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This novel was submitted in manuscript form to the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel writing contest for Young Adult fiction.  The contest is called the Dante Rosetti Awards as seen in this logo.  The book didn’t win, but of the many manuscripts submitted it made it all the way through to the final cut and was a finalist in the contest.

I am currently working with editor Jessie Cornwell of PDMI Publishing to get the book ready for print.  I hope to have it published soon.  Clay Gilbert, Managing Editor of PDMI LLC recently did a profile on me because of my upcoming book.  Here is the link for that;

Portals and Pathways by Clay Gilbert

Let me leave you with a look at the frost spirits from my novel.

7snowbabiesAI hope you don’t feel hopelessly mooned by that, because there are worse things that Snow Babies can do than that.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, Snow Babies

Being Old Enough to Know Better…

I am the man from the Setting Sun,

Come to the future to deliver the past.

What does that even mean, that silly little two-line poem I wrote twenty years ago?  Am I not old enough to know better than to create a snippet loaded with goofy contradictions?  Apparently not.  But I am old enough to deliver the past.  I have been around long enough that I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated.  I saw Neil Armstrong take that “small step for man” on the surface of the moon.  I have learned a number of lessons from the past.  And as a writer, I can deliver those lessons in the form of stories.  I was born in a different century.  I have been around for more than half of one… approaching two thirds.  I have collected all kinds of wonderful things in my goofy old brain.  And make no doubt about it, with six incurable diseases and being a cancer survivor since 1983, my Sun is about the set.  So, I have a mission, to open the eyes of people who are too foolish to avoid listening to what I have to say, or to read what I have written.

I saw The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews in the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa in 1965 when I was not yet ten years old.  I heard the song My Favorite Things for the very first time on the old black and white Motorola TV set in the clip I posted at the start of this post.  Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was a puppet show I never missed on Saturdays if I could help it.  In a world before video games and computers and even color TV, kids still had priorities.  And my world was definitely a world of imagination.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

So, what kind of knucklehead must I be to think younger folks would want to know about any of this stuff from the time of dinosaurs and black-and-white TV?  I write books that are basically genre-breakers and about way too many different things to make sense to adults.  As a result, I classify myself as a Young Adult novelist, a writer for children… but not the beginning reader kind, or the early chapter-book kind… the kind like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Light in the Forest, or Dicey’s Song.  I write books about what it was like to be a kid in the past… the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s… last century.  And I have some knowledge and expertise in this area because I was one of those teachers during that time period that got to know the kids in my classes.  I made the horrifying mistake of actually talking to kids, asking them about their lives, and listening to their answers.  I talked about all manner of things with all manner of kids… brilliant things and stupid things… with dumb kids, smart kids, smelly kids, charming kids, and the kids everybody else hated.  You know… I did all the stupid mistakes that teachers who have no earthly idea how to do discipline would do, and got those kids to learn to behave at least halfway like human beings by being somebody they trusted and respected and… on rare occasions… believed.  Right now I am working on Snow Babies.  It is set in 1984.  And I hope to be good enough of a Sunset Man to be able to deliver it to the future.

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, oldies

Minions (the Movie Review)

If I were going to say it in Minion-speak, I would say, “Bwayno!  Eebee da Minion apatoy tu La Mancha!  King Bob!”  Which sums up my entire movie review.  So, there.  Now I am done.

This is my lame attempt at copyright infringement... also known as "fan art".

This is my lame attempt at copyright infringement… also known as “fan art”.

Seriously the movie is a non-stop slapstick and funny-punny carnival ride.  And Bob is featured in this movie as the over-eager, reluctant adventurer who eventually becomes the rightful King of England.  (Oops!  I had promised myself to write no spoilers that weren’t in Minion-speak.  Oh, well…  Oopsie, again!)

So now you know why I posted such a pitiful excuse for a humor post yesterday… I took my family to the movies.  Did you know the Minion language uses Tagalog words?  My wife and in-laws are from the Philippines, so they recognized a number of Tagalog and Spanish words.  They didn’t much get the jokes, though.  The humor was apparently too sophisticated… or they were.  They did appreciate all the nice explosions, though.

So, another lame humor post today… two in a row, in fact… because I was busy yesterday and lazy today.  And don’t accuse me of building up to things by dropping hints about what I am going to be writing about next in today’s post.  I am definitely not doing that because I am too busy now with Snow Babies, having got it back from the editor this morning with a number of revisions to make.  I am working on those revisions this afternoon.  So don’t bug me about it.  Wait… wrong cliche for a comedy romance novel about freezing to death.  How about, don’t snow on my parade?  No?  Oh, well… goofy is as goofy does.  Go see the movie.  It’s goofy.  And if you’ve already seen it, then see it again.  Slapstick jokes about losing your pants never get old.

This is what my Minions picture would've looked like in the 1960's when the world was black and white.

This is what my Minions picture would’ve looked like in the 1960’s when the world was black and white.

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Cooking More Futzbatter

minions6“What’s this with the made up words thing?  You can’t just make up words!”

“Why not?  I’m an English teacher.  Who better to make up words?”

“But you are making up nonsense words, and using them to make fun of Iowegians!  That’s, like, racist or something!”

“Iowegians is a made up word.  It is a play on Norway, Ioway, and Norwegian… and because a lot of white people in Iowa are of Scandahoovian descent.”

“See what I mean?  Racist!  Scandahoovian makes fun of people of Norse descent.  That is totally unacceptable!”

“I don’t see it that way.  I think we Iowegians should own it.   You know, like the way Texas rednecks are proud to be called rednecks.  I think that’s far more racist than saying Iowegian or Scandahoovian.”

“Why are we even talking about this?  Why couldn’t you have just posted more about your goofy flowers?  You have a lot more flower pictures you could use.”

“Yesterday was just a scrapbook sort of entry.  I wanted to post a variety of different things to fill space and waste time.  My writing goals were already completed for the day yesterday.  My novel is at 39,565 words right now.”

“But why did you have to make up gibberish words?  Don’t you know enough real words?”

“My Uncle Everett used to use Foobah when he was around the womenfolk so he didn’t say the word he was really thinking and offend Grandma Beyer.  That kinda makes it a real word.  And you’ve heard me say Futzbatter before.  It is a word like Paffooney… something I have used enough that you know what it means without even asking.”

“But what gives you the right to make up words?”

“What gave William Shakespeare the right?  Or Lewis Carroll?  Remember Jabberwocky?”

“But they were famous writers.  They probably earned that right.”

“I’m a writer too.  Are you saying I shouldn’t do what great writers do?”

“But your not a great…  Republican… yes, I meant to say Republican.”

“I’m not a Republican at all.  I’m an independent liberal.  I’m a progressive.  I believe we need to change things to make the world a better place for all of us.  Using new words and changing the language can’t be that bad a thing, can it?”

“We aren’t talking about politics!  We’re talking about you making up weird-sounding goofus-doofus words and using them like they actually mean something!  You can’t love the language and change it at the same time!”

“Why not?  You just did.”

“I did?  How?”

“What does goofus-doofus mean?”

“OH!  Darn it!  Don’t you see what you are doing to me with all your nonsense?  You’re making me talk funny too!”

“Speaking of funny talking, do you want to see the new Minions movie with me this afternoon?  It is playing at 3:25 at the Webb-Chapel Cinemark 17.  There’s a lot of funny talking in that.”

“Dang it!  You just posted the time and place you are planning to be.  What if that lunatic Winchuk boy decides he wants to use the information to get even with you for his entire seventh-grade year?”

“No chance of that.  He can’t read… or tell time.  He had me for a teacher.”

At that point the logical left side of my brain doubled up both of his fists and belted the creative right side of my brain in the chin as hard as he could.  Of course, that didn’t hurt at all, because both of his fists are metaphorical.  What a futzing foobah!

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Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, wordplay

Updating Futzbatter and Foohbah Recipes

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Having already written well over a thousand words today on a different writing project, I don’t really have to worry about length on this one.  But it is intended to be a scrapbook piece anyway.  Thing #1 is the completion of a mini-collection.  I now have all three of the main Minions from the new Minions movie.  From left to right are Kevin, Stuart, and Bob posing for their picture with their fully pose-able arms in the middle of Cardboard Castle.  There are still many many many Minions left to collect, but the first three are the most important bit… I think.

Galtorr Primexvx

I have now reached the climax of the plot in my Sci-fi novel Stardusters and Space Lizards.  I am at that moment in the story when characters, even the most important main characters, may die.  I know, in fact, because of the ending that already exists that some of the main characters will die.  I am not entirely certain that I know which ones yet.  The three I have portrayed here are (left to right again because I am an English speaker/reader and horribly addicted to the same-old same-old) George Jetson, Davalon, and Sizzahl the Lizard Girl.  At least one of them has to die for the plot to work out.  But which one?  I am deeply in love with all three.

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My experimental flower wagon has been producing blossoms, but only one at a time.  Each one blooms, I take a picture of it, and then the hot Texas sun burns the poor thing to blazes, and I have to wait for the next one to appear.

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And finally, I think I need to define the two Mock-Iowegian words in my title today.  Mock-Iowegian (as I am sure you are bright enough to already realize) is a made-up language spoken by Iowan farm folks in Mickian fiction where the object is to capture their eccentricities and mock them ferociously because I love them.  Futzbatter… noun, meaning things that are fudged or made up on the spur of the moment and mixed together into the overall plan (or impending disaster… depending on the situation).  Foohbah… noun, meaning something you tell a fool and expect him to believe, as in a honking-big-fish story, and nobody else will contradict for fear the fool the speaker is trying pull a foohbah on is the hearer, and they don’t want to let on that the foohbah-teller laying the big, fat, hairy foohbah on the group is talking about them, and they are only feebly trying to stop him.

So, there you have it… almost 500 words in spite of myself.

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A Letturr to the NRA

(This is satire… so, all you redneck friends of mine… don’t holler “YES!  He finally sees the light!”  Because I am being ironic, and trying to make fun of all the sensible and right-thinking things you believe, and cannot ever give up trying to make me believe also.)

rubber gun duel

Dear Mr. Wayne LaPierre,

You has done got the rite ideer about guns.  I agree whole-heartedly with all the love in my little black one-hunnert per cent ‘Merican heart that the only answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a bigger ‘n better gun.  My name is Lester Winchuk, and I is a good, God-fearin’ Texas good-ol’-boy.  And I have bigger ‘n better guns.  Now, my main guvvenner, the great an’ honorable Rick Perry of the grand State of Texas (may God ever bless her little black one-hunnert per cent ‘Merican heart) has suggested on the Fox News that since some of them insane mass-shooter dudes likes to go inta movie theeatters and shoot them up some innocent people, we all otter be takin’ our beloved guns to the movies with us so we can pertekt ourselfs and the other folk too.  In fact, I like the ideer of taking my bigger ‘n better guns to the movies with me.  I jes’ might need to shoot some folks when that there Minions movie plays at the dollar movies in Laredo.

We still has three of these here dis-integrator gun thingies left from the last alien invasion of South Texas, for sale cheap!

We still has three of these here dis-integrator gun thingies left from the last alien invasion of South Texas, for sale cheap!

I does has one question, though.  How does you aim proper at the bad guy’s haid or heart in a dark ol’ movie theeatter?  Does you has to wait for a daylight scene in the movie so you can draw a proper bead on the monkey-flipper?  (I doesn’t mean to actually say monkey-flipper, but I doesn’t know how to spell whut I actually mean, and thass the best the spell-checker thingy can do for me.)  I would like to suggest a common-sense solution to this problem.  I find that if you plug two or three… or six of the folks in the dark where you heard the first dang-old gun shots coming from, you will probably get him.  And gettin’ that old perpetraitor is the main and most important thing, right?  My brother Wayne (not actually named after you, but you is welcomed to be flattered by it) says maybe you shouldn’t plug any of the littler ones in case they may be innocent children or something… but I says, well, the shooter might be a midget, right?

I does has one old idjit English teacher, Mr. Beyer, who tole me I has gots to be more careful with my beloved guns.  He seems to think that whut I thinks about guns is somewhat downright immoral or some such nonsense.  But I tells him, I is always veeery careful with my beloved, bigger ‘n better guns.  In all my years of carrying my guns everywhere I goes, even into the showers at the campgrounds we uses for our Confederate Social Club meetin’, they ain’t never gotten one ding-dang little ol’ rust spot or scratch on any of ’em.

This lettur was lovingly and carefully writ to you by,

Lester D. Winchuk, son of South Texas…

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, satire, Texas

Stooges

borrowed from Wikipedia

borrowed from Wikipedia

Life is like a Three Stooges movie where I get to be Moe.  Yes, you heard me right.  I am the “smartest Stooge”.  And although a lot of the wacky plans my family carries out are my plans originally, I get more than my share of eye-pokes and head-slaps.

Financially I get more than my fair share of head-slaps.  My income has now been frozen in retirement mode for the remainder of my life.  I have to live three more years to get back all the money I paid into the pension plan for Texas teachers.  It is a better pension than teachers can earn now, but it is set up with standards from over two decades ago.  And, well, it is rather a difficult budget to manage when income is frozen and expenses are free to rise at will.  I just paid $45 for groceries at Walmart and got four sacks of edibles.  Seven cans of cheap-meal servings of chili and pork-n-beans (creating an alarming natural gas potential at our house), two cans of Pringles, 24 sodas in cans, two gallons of milk, Oscar Mayer salami, and some shampoo (hopefully we don’t have to eat the shampoo to avoid starving to death.  I remember a time when a similar stash for the pantry cost a mere $10.) The point is, Walmart is treating us like Stooges, in the same way Mr. Dimsell treats his Stooges while working in Dimsell’s Drug Store in the movie, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.

The biggest point I am trying to make, I guess, is that I am at the bottom of Poop Mountain when it comes to the matter of finance and wealth.  (And poop not only rolls down hill, it avalanches down mountainsides.)  Right now the games that rich people and the Mr. Dimsells of the world play with money give us all sorts of head-slaps and eye-pokes.  Being able to own the whole drugstore is an unfair advantage.  Now that Dimsell is the only drugstore operator in the area, he can set prices as high as he pleases without worrying about losing Stooge business to other stores.  And he doesn’t have to treat his Stooges well, either.  He can be mean.  He can cut salaries and pensions in the secure knowledge that his Stooges will still have to come to him to spend their money no matter what.  More and more of the wealth goes into Dimsell’s pocket, and none comes out.  He is not compelled to share.  He doesn’t pay anything to fix the potholes in the streets outside his store.  He is, in fact given tax incentives just to be there and take our money.  So when my car needs repair because the pothole wheel-kicked my car to the point of needing repair, I will be forced to pay Dimsell to fix a problem that he allowed to poke me in the eye financially.  It is a real dumb deal, Porcupine.  (And yes, I know that drugstores don’t normally sell or repair tires, but Dimsell is a metaphor for Walmart, if you hadn’t figured it out by now.)

So, the only answer is to accidentally send myself back to the days of Hercules with a homemade time machine invented in the basement under the drugstore.  It will bring Dimsell to his knees and give him his just comeuppance.  And it will thoroughly prove I can carry metaphors and analogies way too far.

Minions are another form of Stooge... and I now have Kevin, Bob, and Stuart.

Minions are another form of Stooge… and I now have Kevin, Bob, and Stuart.

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Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, Three Stooges