Tag Archives: humor

January 27, 2015 · 10:49 am

The Paffooney Process

20150127_102111

What is a Paffooney?  A looney-tuney, full of goony-balloony-cartoony-buffooney?  Well, obviously Paffooney is a word made up by me in the Suessian style, to rhyme and dance and sing for a while…  Um, where was I going with this?  Yeah.  It is a word made up by me with three poetic beats in it, a suggestion of the buffoon, the cartoon, the looney tune, to be used to represent one of my wacky doodles set to words.  I blog with that word in my tags to bring together a certain style of post that defines me as a writer and artist.

Some of my posts and Paffoonies help me to define myself and my mission in life.  Here are a couple of examples of this kind of Paffooney post.

https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/things-you-probably-ought-to-know-about-mickey/

https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/11/08/in-the-minds-eye/

Some of my posts use Paffooney pictures to promote a book I am working on and give insight into the creation of one of my babies, my silly stories, my liar’s tales about everything that is true in life.

https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/11/16/miss-morgans-class/

https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/my-latest-novel/

Some are simply silly humor posts, meant to make merry mirth and make you laugh a little laugh.

Goofy Me

An Overdose of Cheerios

Still others describe and critique the things I read and see and that have an effect on me.  Of course, critique is probably the wrong term.  I only describe things I can really gush about.  I don’t post about stuff I hate.  Who has time for that?

Thomas Kinkade

The Majestic

Tess

And then there’s the kind of post I am doing now, about doodling something and waiting to see where the doodles take me.

Pen and Ink Progress

Classroom Cartoons

Can You Draw Happy?

Today’s Paffooney is a drawing of a dippy chihuahua, a potentially evil cat, and a pear-shaped rat.  Where does this go from here?  I honestly don’t even know.  We must wait and see what the future brings.  (Clearly I am trying to hook the foolish readers (who come to this blog just to see how dippy I can be) so that they will be thoroughly tempted to come back for more another day.  And I have even pulled the trick of referencing other dippy posts that might make you click-sick enough to get totally lost in a Mickian maze of Paffooney Posts.  I am such an evil genius that I even exploit myself sometimes.)

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, Paffooney Posts

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 26, 2015 · 3:13 pm

Galtorr Prime

Galtorr Prime

Here is the world where Stardusters and Lizardmen is set.  It is the environmental nightmare known as the planet Galtorr Prime.  It is the world where Sizzahl was born and where young George Jetson, the Telleron cadet from Xiar’s exploration command has to find a new place to colonize.  I should explain that of the characters from this novel excerpt, George Jetson, Davalon, Brekka, Menolly, and Tanith are Telleron tadpoles, or children.  Alden and Gracie Morrell are a middle-aged farm couple from Iowas that were turned back into children in a previous adventure.  Let me share with you a Canto from this work in progress….

Canto Ten – Aboard Golden Wing Sixteen Near an Abandoned Space Station

Looking for interesting places to explore, the tadpole crew of Wing Sixteen spotted the abandoned orbital station before sensors could detect it.  The sensors were set to find life-forms, lizard men in particular, and the instruments all said that none existed on the space platform.  In fact, it was apparently devoid of all life but a few plants.

“Can you dock with that thing?” Tanith asked George Jetson.

“Of course I can.   I am programmed to be the best wing pilot you have ever seen.”

“And you are programmed to be the most modest Telleron we have ever seen too,” said Brekka.

“Or maybe the one with the biggest gonopodium and the smallest brain,” said Menolly.

George just laughed as he focused his instruments on the docking bay.

“What’s a gonopodium?” Alden asked Davalon.

“Father, you would call it a penis,” said Davalon.

“Oh.”  Alden’s forty-year-old sense of propriety turned his twelve-year-old face a bright crimson red.

“Why do you suppose there are no personnel on that station,” Tanith asked everyone in general.

“Maybe there is something wrong with it,” suggested Gracie Morrell.  “Maybe they had to abandon ship.”

“Maybe,” said Davalon, looking carefully at the sensor monitor.  “But I don’t see anything wrong with the on-board systems.  They are all operating like they work perfectly.  That station has air we can breathe, water we can drink, and no alarms are going off anywhere.  It’s as if they abandoned a perfectly good station.”

“Well,” said George Jetson, “we can find the answer by going in and taking a look around.”  He said that just as he pulled a control lever that thrust the wing forward to meet the docking ring and impacted the station so hard that everyone on board was knocked senseless.

“George!  What did you just do?” Davalon asked from his new position prostrate on the floor of the control pit.

“Um, I meant to dock with the docking port, but it appears I may have embedded the wing in the side of the space station.”

“Oh, this can’t be good,” moaned Tanith, rubbing the greenish-brown knobby bruise that now blossomed on her pretty forehead.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 25, 2015 · 7:13 pm

Sizzahl

Sizzahl2

My writing time of late has been mostly absorbed by a Sci-fi novel, Stardusters and Lizardmen, a sequel to my novel about aliens invading Iowa, Catch a Falling Star.  It is not set on Earth.  It is a post-apocalyptic story about an Earth-like world and a civilization of lizardmen that have destroyed themselves by abusing their environment, wallowing in greedy politics, and fighting biologically manipulated war.

The Tellerons, who have failed to invade Earth, accidentally end up at the lizardmen’s planet and have to find a home, though they would rather find it anywhere else in the universe if they had a choice.

If the visitors from outer space, both Telleron and Earthmen are going to survive, their best hope is the character featured in the Paffooney.  Her name is Sizzahl.  She is very unusual in many ways.   She is a little-girl genius who is the only Galtorrian lizard-person on the whole planet who doesn’t eat meat.  She also is a scientist studying ecology and genetics, hoping to bring her people back from the brink of extinction.  I like this character, and she is the reason that I have decided to follow this novel project through to the end.  I hope you like her too, even though she’s a dedicated nudist and hippie-style back-to-nature commie freak.

Leave a comment

Filed under aliens, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 24, 2015 · 2:33 pm

Expelling Evil (and his Grammar Nazis) Part One

Do you remember when Dr. Evil took over Mickey’s Library with his evil minions and Grammar Nazi’s?  No?  Well, the Action-Hero-Guy team charged with protecting the library didn’t either… until finally today one of the Barbies complained that Dr. Evil was totally monopolizing the X-Box.  So now, incensed by Dr. Evil’s audacity… and unwillingness to share…the Captain Action Alliance of Action-Hero-Guys are taking action.

Here’s a link to help you remember what this is supposed to be about; https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/dr-evil-invades-mickeys-library/

CA1

So, lead by Captain Carl P.M. Action, the heroes sneak inside the library door ready for action.

CA2

It did not take the heroes long to realize that they were not alone.

CA3

You know that given a choice, true action heroes always choose action like bopping someone on the head (assuming they are not allowed to kill them with big explosions and lots of blood, thus leading to an R-rating so the kids who are your target audience will officially have to stay away, yet come to your movie in record numbers).

CA4

It is fortunate Captain Carl was careful and did not cut off her gun hand with his wonderous Lightning Sword of Captain Action Power.  That would’ve gotten him an R-rating.  And he was also lucky that the Agent in Red did not try to shoot him in the brain by tipping the gun forward just a tad.  (Of course, it is possible it was the Agent in Red who was lucky she did not think of that.  It is probable that shooting Captain Carl in the brain will only make him mad.  And it is hard to actually hit something that tiny anyway.)

CA5

So, now that she won’t tell him anything, how will Captain Carl defeat Dr. Evil and liberate the X-Box?  Oh, no!  No more X-Box Baseball ’04!  How will I survive it?  To find out what happens next, tune in next time at the same Batty time to the same Batty channel!

CA6

Oh, Nooooooooooo!

2 Comments

Filed under action figures, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 22, 2015 · 2:08 pm

Blowing Up My Brain (Accidentally, of Course)

Color boy

Yesterday was my best day for views ever on WordPress.  I crossed the 100 view, 59 visitors per hour barrier.   How the heck did that happen?  Why do so many people suddenly want to see my goofiness in blog form?  Have I suddenly realized my dream of attracting readers to my words and wit and artwork?  I think not.  No one post brought this on.  I did not have any sudden aha! moment of perfect post creation.  I posted a post yesterday about lying based on my love/hate relationship with politics.  I posted before that about my Paffooney creating process and my psychotic collecto-mania as it intersects that fantastic life in plastic of Barbie.  None of that should have generated so much interest.  And most of the posts viewed, over a hundred of them, were single-viewer hits on separate posts.  So I now have a conspiracy theory of my own to pursue.  Are the Illuminati or the Freemasons trying to lead me down dark paths of misinformation?  Are aliens suddenly becoming aware of the story told in Catch a Falling Star?  Cool!  But probably not the answer.  The only factor I could seize on that might explain this anomaly is the fact that somebody re-posted my Barbie Shelf post.

The Militant Negro (://theobamacrat.com/) The Militant Negro, a progressive political site with keen insights and a lot of followers re-posted my foofoo post about collecting Barbie dolls.  I haven’t been brave enough yet to ask why.  Maybe I should’ve kept it all more of a secret.  Maybe they are all examining my posts now for evidence of dementia or possible lunatic plans to take over the world through manipulative toys… or maybe my paranoia.  But for some reason, I must’ve sparked curiosity in a part of the blog-world where I never suspected it would be.

Creativity

Hopefully I haven’t shot myself in the foot with this post which includes bare butts and butterflies.  Oh, no!

2 Comments

Filed under blog posting, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 21, 2015 · 2:08 pm

Damn Lies, White Lies, Stretchers, and Wild Hoo-Haws

Millis 2

There are limits to what people will believe.  No really, there are, I promise.  You can believe me because I’m a fiction writer, a story-teller, and I therefore tell lies all the time.  I was a teacher for thirty-one years, so I not only tell kids how wonderful they are in order to get good behavior and real learning out of them, but I have been told some of the most convoluted, inside-out, purple-in-the-face hoo-haws that are ever told anywhere in human culture throughout human history, and told them by a child with a straight face, perfectly seriously, and with little red horns holding up their crooked golden halos.  We are taught to misrepresent the truth from early childhood on.

“Do you have to go potty, sweetheart?”

“No, mommy, I jest like to dance.”

“Do you love me, Mortimer?  Or do you just want to get me alone in a car after the prom?”

“Oh, I love you, Alicia.  Really I do!”

“So are you in favor of taxing the oil companies at a fair and balanced rate, Senator, so we have more money to spend on Education and public works?”

“Why, I most certainly do, young voter.  Ignore that man with the “I Love Exxon” button trying to bash me over the head with that Tea Party campaign sign.  Let me kiss that darling little baby of yours.”

mrFuture

This post was inspired by all the lies told in the State of the Union speech last night by President O’Bama (He’s Irish and a conservative like Bill O’Reilly, isn’t he?)  Now, I am well aware of the white lies the President buttered our bread with.  The economy has actually improved, but not nearly as much as was claimed.  And not nearly enough for someone like me, a white male retired educator with significant health problems living in a Red State under Republican-Nazi governor/emperors who want to privatize education and spend my pension money on tax breaks for billionaires.  But those lies are nothing compared to the damn lies told by the Republican response lady, Ernst from Iowa.  She laid out a plan for undoing everything that’s been done to improve my life by the government since 2008.  The Affordable Care Act is to be repealed.  Tax breaks for “job creators” are going to be re-instituted.  We are going to heal the middle class by deregulating industry and predatory banks and by giving more benefits and goodies to the rich folks who will treat us better than those horrible Democratic liberals who want to turn us all into socialists.  This is coming from the Iowa Senator who won her seat by promising your average pork-eating Iowan to use her “hog-castrating skills” to motivate Democrats in congress to see things her way.  Iowans (of which I once was one of) know good fertilizer when they smell it.  It makes you want to shout, “Hoo-Haw!”  (Yes, it’s true, I once knew an old farm hand that, when he heard a ridiculously contorted lie, would shout “Hoo-Haw!” as a sort of derisive laughter to hear such a funny truth-twister.)

cudgels car

Lies are our way of life.  We lie about what we think.  We lie about what we feel.  We lie about how we view the world.  We lie about whether or not we tell lies.  Could we live a life without ever lying?  I hate to tell you this, but if I say, “yes”, then it might not be entirely truthful of me.

4 Comments

Filed under humor, Paffooney, politics

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 20, 2015 · 4:40 am

The Barbie Shelf

Goofy-guy doll collector, me, will now give you a grand tour of the Barbie Shelf.  This is a place in my home that was originally created by the previous owners of the house.  It was a place in the upstairs play room apparently meant for the things that needed to be kept out of little girls’ reach.  Maybe pampers and baby wipes.  Cleaning supplies.  And possibly toys that were not to be broken immediately and had to be regulated.  I don’t know why else you would grace a playroom with a shelf up near the ceiling and above the only door into the room.  It was, however, perfect for the plastic people who were destined to take it over as their own.

20150110_152822

It begins above the bedroom door.  My wife has a thing about keeping her dolls mint in box.  She has more of an eye to their value as collectible investments.  The fashion Barbie nestled above the door in her box is a recreation of a 1962 doll that was reissued in 1999.  You can also see the Teacher Barbie that the Princess once de-boxed and played with.  And there you can also see the start of the Wizard of Oz collection.  There are little munchkin dolls and the Ken doll dressed as the Cowardly Lion in the picture.

20150110_152813

In front of Dorothy and Glinda from Oz, you see some of the recycled Goodwill Barbies that I bought naked and abandoned, cleaned and dressed, washed and tried to brush out their hair.  One of them had some marker on her face that had to be soaked off with secret sauce to restore a more human look.  The one in the middle is a 1980’s Asian Barbie.  There is also a Cowgirl Barbie wearing an extra gun belt from a CA Lone Ranger set.

20150102_080605

The kids are protected by Eustace the purple pottery dragon who was fired in my mother’s kiln during the height of her doll-making hobby and painted by me.  The kids here include a tiny Tommy doll, three Skippers from the early 70’s, and Hermione from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  You can see the Scarecrow and the Tin Man in the back, and there’s also Goodwill Barbie that for some odd reason has purple hair.

20150102_080623

Ricky (a 1960’s boy toy for Skipper) sits with Ashley Olsen between more recycled Goodwill Barbies.  1980’s Skipper is trying to push poor roller-skate Barbie off the shelf.

20150110_152719

My newest My Little Pony in mutant almost human form, Rainbow Dash the Equestria girl, is the blue doll in the middle here.  Mary-Kate Olsen can be seen in the Blue dress.  All you can see of Britney Spears here are her legs and feet, probably a safety feature of this tour.  The topless ballerina Barbie is wearing a jacket, but I could not close it on her extra large Barbie mammaries.  Princess Jasmine, my daughter’s somewhat beat-up favorite begins Disney Princess Row.

20150110_152657

Li Shang is still mint in box, but Mulan isn’t even on the shelf any more.  Some of Mom’s dolls got played with by the Princess.  Mulan lost her hair.  There is one American Girl doll here, bought at a yard sale for 25 cents, but I found a dress to fit her at Walmart in a sale bin.  Unfortunately I can’t name her correctly yet and she is barefoot like most of the Goodwill dolls.

20150110_152645

Almost to the end of the shelf, you can now see Apple Jack and Twilight Sparkle, my other two mutant pony girls, discovered at an After-Christmas Sale at Toys-R-Us.  They are standing on Grandma Beyer’s home bingo set from the 1930’s, and Disney Princesses are lined up behind them.

20150112_145808At the tail end of the shelf you will see Twilight Sparkle again to take the focus off poor 1980’s nudist Skipper (I robbed her of her clothes for one of the older, more rare Skippers that are worth a bit more to collectors).  Seated between is Asian Rock n Roll Barbie (Leah actually).  You may have noticed I am careful not to over-identify any of the members of the collection.  I got taken to task on E-Bay about descriptions of which Barbie was which once.  There are people out there much more rabid about doll collecting than I.  The difference between a 1980’s Butterfly Tattoo Barbie and an Anniversary Edition Malibu Barbie can get you challenged to a duel… with rapiers… in France.  I had to talk him into balloons and blunderbusses (an idea borrowed from Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines), and I lost.  I had to settle for the price offered even though my own research suggested I was not wrong.  (Well, okay, maybe I didn’t really go through with the duel thing, but the argument was just as intense and just as silly as that.)

So that is my long-winded essay on the essentials of the Barbie Shelf.  I will be looking at it a lot for the next few years since it is in the room I am using as my bedroom.  (Not in perfect health, I needed a room that I could completely seal up at night in order to breathe better.)  I really didn’t think I could pull off 500 words about this one goofy shelf in the house, but I now realize that I have nearly reached 900.

7 Comments

Filed under Barbie and Ken, doll collecting, humor

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 19, 2015 · 4:50 pm

Making Memes Again

class Miss M2

Okay, I know it is a fool’s pursuit.  You try to create epigrammatic quotes, sayings, and tidbits of wisdom to post on Facebook and then you hope people will click on “like” and “share”.   You hope it goes viral.  It is a striving after wind to paraphrase Ecclesiastes.  But I do it anyway.  After all, isn’t everything a writer does striving after wind?  The chances of reaching a larger audience and touching a great many hearts are microscopically insignificant.  I have reached a point in my writing career where I am actually, finally able to reach readers.  People really do read my blog, my Facebook pages, and occasionally, my novels.  I actually do score one or two hits on the heart of a reader once in a while.  Is it worth it?  Will I ever make any money at it?  Yes… followed by probably not.  I have managed to leave a footprint on the internet, something that was not possible during all those years of writing and drawing and then storing the work away in boxes and portfolios in the bedroom closets.  If you want to see the shape of that footprint, do a Google image search on the words “Beyer Paffooney“.  The spread of pictures and links is as impressive as that of real artists and writers (and by real I mean those who are well enough known to actually make some money at it.)  Today’s Paffooney is a teacher-meme that should be syrupy cute enough to attract a like or two.  I have no illusions about being a master of this new art-form, but I have investigated and studied it just enough to make feeble novice attempts.  And so what if no one ever notices?  I am posting my heart and wit and wisdom online in ways that will make some of it last beyond the scope of my physical life.  Therein lies at least a portion of my immortality.

Here’s a link for the “Google Beyer Paffooney” thing;

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1600&bih=732&q=beyer+paffooney&oq=beyer+paffooney&gs_l=img.3…1935.7232.0.8091.15.3.0.12.12.0.64.166.3.3.0.msedr…0…1ac.1.61.img..12.3.166.C5lIUlYGDz8#imgdii=_

6 Comments

Filed under artwork, memes, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

January 15, 2015 · 1:20 pm

Paffooney Updates #1

Val in Progress

The work on this latest Paffooney is coming along nicely.  I confessed to mess-ups yesterday.  Today I can show you real progress without further oopsies.  The figure of Valerie Clarke is the most important part of both this illustration and my novel project.  She is the single focus-character in When The Captain Came Calling.  I usually vary the focus character from scene to scene in my fiction, because I have a pathological need to play around inside the heads of multiple characters.  This book will be the first one I’ve written to stay inside the same head through the entire novel.   The story, assuming it doesn’t totally take on a life of its own and change itself, is about how a young girl sees and evaluates the people in her life… Mom, Dad, the boy she has a crush on, the girlfriend of that boy, the goofy members of the Norwall Pirates (a 4-H softball team and liars’ club dedicated to adventure, story-telling, and being a kid while you can), weird people who live in tiny Iowa farm towns, and mysterious strangers who can somehow be invisible.  It is about friendship, love, sex, and growing up.  It is also about overly-protective parents and a world full of dark magic and mysterious dangers.  I am trying to capture that in my Paffooney, to hopefully make it into a possible cover illustration.  I intend to show you in this blog each stage in the completion of the project… the making of colored-pencil Paffoonery.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 14, 2015 · 5:55 pm

Work in Progress

Val inked up

Here is the straight poop.  (Wait a minute!  Not poop metaphors again!)  Okay, better idiomatic expression… Here is the truthful statement about work habits.  (Better!  But that was idiomatic not idiotic, right?)  Right.

Sometimes I mess up.  I am working slowly and steadily on the next story burning to be told, When the Captain Came Calling.  In the illustration I am working on, you can probably see the mess-ups already.  I very carefully blot my black ink pens when I am doing the pen and ink work.  Even ball point pens can blot.  I will admit I press entirely too hard on both ink pens and colored pencils.  I break a lot of colored lead and make a lot of black pens bleed.  I have arthritis in my hands and often push too hard because I am pushing back against the pain.  I can sometimes use a lighter touch with the colored pencil, the area being covered may require a more lightly penciled mark and have more paper whiteness showing through.  Black pen lines are never like that.  To get a steady, even line, I push with pressure to get things dark and full and even.  The pen that I was using had developed a leaky ball and had to be blotted with every use.  When it made the first smear, I changed to a new pen.  I cussed a little too.  (Cussing makes it better.  I learned that from Mark Twain.)  But I didn’t panic and throw the drawing out.  I can fix it up a bit when I add the color.  But the second pen I was using was a pen I switched out earlier for bleeding.  That’s how I got the second smear.  Dang me!  It almost ruined what I think is a very promising portrait of my main character Valerie Clarke.  (Valerie, whom you may remember from Snow Babies posts, is based on a girl I once had a crush on, and my own daughter, the Princess.)Mina & Val

Now, ink smears are not the only thing that had to be twisted and worked around to get this project underway and at least a little bit tamed.  The title was originally a problem.  I tried to call this story The Captain Came  because of the primary antagonist and the fact that he is returning from the South Seas to the little Iowa town of Norwall.   This was a problem because Captain Dettbarn was running from a bunch of psychotic little Juju men (animated Tiki idols) who were chasing him because he made the witch doctor’s chief’s daughter pregnant.  That made the title an R-rated joke that I hadn’t intended even before I considered this story a YA novel idea.

The Juju men themselves are problem.  In this time of unintended racism, I had to work on them to make them be something other than a racial stereotype.  They were not originally made entirely of wood.  I had to eliminate cartoonist’s shortcuts in depiction that made them look like little black men or little dark brown men.  They are of an indeterminate South Seas racial stock.  Their language is mostly Tagalog (because it is a language I have tried to learn due to Filipino relatives).  Their culture is mostly movie fiction that comes from the Captain’s own liar’s brain.  Most of the information about the witch doctor and the mysterious island come from the Captain’s logbook which is a work of fiction written by a drunkard with a vivid imagination.  So I am trying to be fair to a people and race that don’t actually exist outside of the story within the story.  Whew!  I’ve got to stop explaining complicated things now before my brain melts.  Smoke is already coming out of my ears and making it hard to see here in my studio.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, illustrations, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , , ,