Tag Archives: humor

Dog Writes

This is a repost of a classic bit… A post written by my dog using her tongue to lick-type. I offer this now nostalgically because she left us behind for dog heaven a year ago.

Jade Monster1

Okay, like, my name is Jade Beyer.   I know I look like a dog, but my family lets me be a people sometimes.  They let me eat enough people food from their table to turn into one of them.  You know, like, all fat and unhealthy and some stuff.  So, since Mickey is being lazy today, he said I could write his blog for him.   It won’t be very long because it is taking forever to pick out the right keys with my nose.  And my nose is bif… I mean big enough to hit the wrong key sometimes.  So I have to edif caretully and ofren.

My family does a lot of funny stuff I can tell about.  Like how they pee.  They go in my extra drinking places.  You know, the white things with the extra funky tasting water.  Why are you not laughing about that?  Don’t you get it?  The house is full of carpets where they could pee and mark their territory with their scents.  But they would rather just pee where I drink.  I don’t get it.  And why is Mickey yelling at me that I can’t write about that?  I just did, didn’t I?

But besides that I can tell you about my Momma.  Mickey is my Momma.  Why do I say that even though Mickey is a man?  Well, when I was a wee little puppy and my family found me in the street, Mickey was the first one to pick me up and hold me.  He was the first one to feed me.  He says I must have “imprinted” on him as baby animals sometimes do.  And that’s why he’s my Momma.  I love him best.  Even when he is grumpy and mad at me.  I chew up a lot of his stuff because it smells like him and I love him so very much.

I am writing this today because Mickey is busy shaving off his face fur.  He found some old pictures of himself for yesterday’s post, and it made him wonder if he could look anything like that again.  I tried to chew the old pictures so I could love them even better, but he just got mad at me and swatted me on the ears.  He said I could show you the old pictures, and not eat them.  So here they are before the temptation gets to me;

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Wasn’t he a goofy-looking kid?  I like him better with glasses.  I tasted his glasses once, but not the ones in the picture, the ones he is wearing now.  His face doesn’t look anything like the third grade pictures any more.  I would very much like to lick that little-boy face with the same tongue I use to lick my own butt, but Mickey says he’s glad I can’t because that kid was dumb enough to let a dog lick his face.  Apparently when people get older, you just can’t lick them as much.  It just makes them grumpy.

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Filed under family dog, humor, Paffooney

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

Mickey Mouse Club Music

Today’s essay was inspired by Annette Funicello’s Facebook page.  I was marveling at how a teen idol and Disney child star could have such a large following and leave such large footprints on social media when she is not only all grown out of her child-stardom, but is actually quite dead.   I, however, who am technically still alive, work very very hard at this author-self-promotion-thingy, and I hardly make any headway at all in the ocean of the internet.  So, I did what I always do when faced with the imponderables of this writing life.  I drew a picture.  I drew Annette naked.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate either.  I put clothes on her because, well, young-adult-genre authors don’t always have to think like a teenager.

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You see, I am not mad at Annette.  And my hormones no longer control the other things that once made me deeply regret the fact that Disney never let Annette appear in movies in a bikini, even in the movies that were not Disney movies.  When you’re twelve, there are different priorities than when you are 68.  Hormones don’t do all of my thinking any more… at least, that’s what I tell my wife.

And part of what I still love most about Annette is the music.  The Mickey Mouse Club was always about talented kids.  They could sing and dance and play the drums, and they were as easily professional quality as many of the adults… and cuter to boot.  Talented children have been a significant portion of my life.  As an English teacher in middle school, I taught kids that were Annette’s MMC age.  I taught them how to write and how to read, and occasionally I had to find other talents to promote and help those kids become winners in the great game of life.  And, it may be cruel to say it bluntly, but some kids are downright ugly.  Not merely ugly in terms of what they looked like, but how they acted and how they thought and how they felt about things.  Racism runs deeply through children who’ve been taught thoroughly by parents before the teacher even meets them.  Sometimes you have to dig around really deeply in the black pits of their personalities to find something bright and shiny enough to put the spotlight on.   But it is always worth it.  ALL CHILDREN HAVE TREASURE BURIED INSIDE THEM.  And it deeply hurts that too many adults in every community can’t be bothered to dig for it.

Annette in DLandn

I grafted a background on my picture of Annette to stress the fact that she is not naked in my picture.  She was a very public figure and a good portion of her personal treasure was that screen personality that showed through and sparkled in every role.  My favorite Annette piece is the movie Babes in Toyland, which I saw for the first time at Grandma Beyer’s house in Mason City on her color TV.  The songs from that movie still play in my dreams.

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, teaching

Numbers!

“In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…” a very bad thing for the Native Americans it turned out, and in 1942 Hitler threatened the Jews of the world with annihilation at a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast in January of that year.  1942 and 1492.  What does it mean that my house number is 2914 Arkady Street?  Who is doomed to die?

Life on Mars

Don’t you think I know how crazy that is?  Numbers can’t possibly mean something like that.  Can they?  But all my life I have been plagued by a confluence of numerological signs and connected meanings.  And I don’t think I am alone.  Perhaps it is even a fairly common mental disorder.  Triskaidekaphobia is an irrational fear of the number 13.  And Friggatriskaidekaphobia is fear of Friday the 13th.  Is this a rational fear?  Maybe it was for the Knights Templar, because on Friday the 13th in 1307 Philip IV, King of France arrested virtually all the Knights, confiscating their fortunes and torturing them, then putting them to death after forcing them to confess to blasphemies.  And this was not the origin of the superstition.  There were 13 people present at the feast of Passover in the Upper Room on Nisan 13 (of the Hebrew calendar), the day before Jesus was executed on Good Friday.  When the 13th person left the other 12, that person was Judas Iscariot.  Either numbers do have consequences, or the world is just as crazy as I am.

Okay, so it’s the latter.  The world is just as crazy as I am.  But it is not all bad and dark omens.  I was born during a blizzard in Mason City, Iowa in 1956.  In 1985, the car I was driving had the mileage meter roll over to the point that the last four digits readable were 1956.  That same day I made love to a woman for the first time in my life.  I kept watching the odometer.  In 1994 the last four digits (in a different car) rolled to 1956 on the way home from a date at the Pizza Hut in Pearsall, Texas.  The woman I had dated married me the next January in 1995 and the first four digits turned to 1956 nine months later on the day my oldest son was born.

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And Douglas Adams fans like me all know that the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42.  This magic number is revealed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy that has more than three books in it.  Do I actually believe there is anything to this numerology claptrap?  Are we connected to the universe by numbers and equations through science, particularly physics?  Do numbers have mystical values that can be interpreted for our own benefit?  No.  Yes.  And maybe, I just don’t know for sure yet.  I believe in magic.  But I also believe in science.  Equations measure reality, but only through words can we define it.  Did I make you laugh?  Did I reveal myself to be totally bonkers?  Did I make you actually think?  Again… No.  Yes.  And maybe, I just don’t know for sure yet.  Unfortunately, there were 513 words in this essay… so I added this extra sentence.

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Filed under autobiography, humor, Paffooney

Lying as a Form of Social Responsibility

Mark Twain had a lot to say about lying.  Like in this quote from Following the Equator ; Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar; “There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

Mark Twain

Now, I would have to agree with the Biblical admonition against lying to get the people you dislike thrown into prison or beheaded.  I am especially concerned with some of the false witness pooping out of the mouths of some presidential candidates that would like us to believe their anti-science, anti-climate change, and anti-immigration lies would make good laws for our country.  If they go with Donald Trump’s idea of taking away birthright citizenship from the children of immigrants, then my three children will lose their citizenship and could be deported from the only country they have lived in.  After all, after twenty years of marriage and applications and legal fees and enough frustration to make her give up on the whole idea, my wife is still not an American citizen.  She is from the Philippines, and Filipinos are one of the main groups that politicians site as reason for taking automatic citizenship away from foreign-born marriage mates back in the 1980’s.  And if we truly believe that climate change is a hoax and disproven by having Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe bring a snowball into the senate chamber, I believe we are all going to fry in Venus-like atmospheric conditions (Venus is 400 degrees Centigrade on the surface due to rampant greenhouse gasses like those emitted by the factories of Senator Inhofe’s primary campaign donors).  Some lies have fatal consequences, (and also, apparently, got Senator Inhofe the chairmanship of the Senate Science Committee).

But not all lies are bad lies.  Twain also says; “In all lies there is wheat among the chaff…”
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

And; “The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man’s best and surest friend is immortal.”
– “On the Decay of the Art of Lying”

lil mickey
lil hunter2
dorin 003

So I have actually started to think that the lies not forbidden by the Bible because of their fatal consequences are actually all good things, and not bad.  Yesterday in a post about talking to stupid people, I suggested that you should tell them lies about how you care about them and want the best for them, and you should lie about it so hard that you believe in the lies yourself.  After all, story-tellers like me tell nothing but lies.  My made-up stories are based on real events and people, and reveal real perceived truths about life, but they are basically nothing but lies.  This essay is a lie.  I was brought up in Iowa to be truthful and always tell the truth… and that was repeatedly reinforced by religious training from every church I ever attended.  And yet, the more I tried to tell the truth, the more I realized that I could never say anything that was not a lie.  Think about it, what is there in all the factual things that you know that you can actually prove is true?  “I think, therefore I am,” (a quote from Rene Descartes) is the only thing anyone has ever said that I can prove by my own perceptions.  Every scientific theory is constantly reviewed for lies and untruth and inaccuracy so that they can be revised for something better that is also not ultimately provably true in every detail.  It is entirely possible that everything else truly is a lie, and then the whole universe, science, physics, logic, and everything is basically untrue.

So, what do I do?   Anything I say is a lie.  Some of the lies are hurtful, even deadly.  So I have to be careful about those lies.  I should fight against those lies.  But the lies that make our existence in life meaningful and full of hope and mystery…  I have to let those lies live, and even learn to do them artfully.

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”
Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain.

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Filed under humor, lying, Paffooney

Ray Bradberry Pie

Yes, yes, I know it is supposed to be Ray Bradbury, not berry.  But now that the master has gone, I don’t want to think of him as bury which is too grave a term.  He was a master of metaphor and rhythm and image in writing.  His work is much more berry-flavored, and if you really intensively read a novel like Dandelion Wine, you can very easily get drunk on the richly fermented contents of his beautiful writing.

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angel by Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905)
angel by Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905)

Mental Pie

I’d like to offer you a piece of my mind,

Though not a lecture, rant, or complaint,

But rather a piece of mental pie.

Its taste will be very sweet, you will find,

As I’m constantly thinking in ink and paint,

That gives you wings and allows you to fly.

You see, I think the literary mind does not have to sink to mundane and dark and dreary thoughts and ideas to accomplish lofty goals.  Often it is the special dollop of sugary metaphorical conceit that makes a Ray Bradbury or Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut to soar through the astral plane of ideas.  I know that’s cartoony thinking, and somewhat loony besides, but I am often frustrated when it seems that the only “realism” modern readers and audiences accept is what is gritty and bloody and depressingly painful.  Oh, I get it.  Douglas nearly dies in the course of Dandelion Wine.  Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and Billy Pilgrim all suffer as much as we laugh in order to make their points in the novels they inhabit.  But the misfortune makes the moment of taking flight that much sweeter.  And it is in the language.  The loving description of everyday things and everyday events that become extraordinary through extra-close examination.  Sometimes silliness and humor and logical reason are not enough, and we have to speak in poetry.  We put in metaphors as peaches and plums.  Sensory details are raspberries and strawberries.  Sing-song rhythms and elegant pacing makes the batter whole and delicious.  And I know this whole post makes no earthly sense.  But sometimes you write for earthly reasons… and sometimes you try to reach heaven.  That is what Ray Bradberry Pie is made of.

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Filed under goofiness, humor, Paffooney

In Search of the Mythical Socialist Bigfoot

adventurers2x

While the Republican President continues to shoot his mouth off… and sometimes shoot his own foot off… or put his foot in his mouth and shoot both off… (Dang!  See what you get for being too friendly with the NRA, Republicans?) I decided to track down the mythical creature that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and Jesse Watters… (no, that last one is not smart enough to know who I am going to name) constantly warn is the socialist-communist-terrorist-really-bad-guy behind everything President Obama and liberals do, Saul Alinsky.

You see, I have been battling the evil Bond villain Badfinger for days now.  He has been exercising his evil on my more Republican and conservative Facebook friends for a while.  They have been posting up a storm of crap about how terrible Obama is, the Biden Crime Family, and how false climate change is, and how we should not try to lift up the poor by tearing down the rich… things that sound suspiciously like talking points on Fox News where they mention Saul Alinsky a lot.  (Yes, I do watch Fox News sometimes.  It is always on at my favorite A&W in Lewisville.  And besides, sometimes it is therapeutic to induce vomiting when you’ve had too much poison and disrespect.)

A truck-driver friend posted this on Facebook trying to save me from my liberal Democratic urges.
A truck-driver friend posted this on Facebook trying to save me from my liberal Democratic urges.

Boy, Saul Alinsky sounds like a real monster!  But if Saul Alinsky really said this, and he really is a socialist, why do so many of these sound so much like fascist/capitalist ideas?  The kind of control they are urging is what appears to me to be the thing that would benefit fat-cat oligarchs and rich-old-guy control freaks.  So I turned to Wikipedia to learn more about this evil, very evil guy.  (I know, Wikipedia is discredited because it is edited and referenced by the people who use it… but a source that is factually checked and edited daily can sometimes be more accurate than the rarely updated articles in Encyclopedia Brittanica.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky

Saul_Alinsky

Wikipedia says that he was a Jewish-American community organizer and writer.  (Red flags have to go up for Republicans for that alone.)  And worse yet he was focused on improving the lives of poor people in American cities, particularly black people.  He was working with black people in ghettos in New York City, Detroit, and other notable “trouble spots” in the 1950’s.  How did he avoid the wrath of righteous commie hunters like Senator Joe McCarthy doing a work like that?  Oh, wait a minute… It says in the article that William F. Buckley praised him as an “organizational genius”.  How did he avoid prison after being endorsed by a commie like that?  Um, right?

His book, Rules for Radicals, begins like this; “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

There’s the damning evidence right there.  He means to punish the wealthy and the greedy and the powerful by taking away some of their excess and giving it to the powerless who are starving and suffering from want.  No communist except maybe… Jesus Christ… could have proposed anything more radical and perverse.

And look at some of the terrible methods he used.  He once used what he called a “fart in” to disrupt rich folks’ sensibilities at the Rochester Philharmonic concert in Rochester, New York.  He organized a group of classical-music-loving radicals to eat huge quantities of baked beans, then go to the concert and intentionally alter the atmosphere for rich patrons of the arts.  That will either bring down Western Civilization as we know it, or make somebody die laughing.  You can’t get much more evil than that, can you?

When asked whether he hadn’t actually considered joining the Communist Party, Alinsky responded like this;  “Not at any time. I’ve never joined any organization—not even the ones I’ve organized myself. I prize my own independence too much. And philosophically, I could never accept any rigid dogma or ideology, whether it’s Christianity or Marxism. One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as ‘that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you’re right.’ If you don’t have that, if you think you’ve got an inside track to absolute truth, you become doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated. The greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by such religious and political and racial fanatics, from the persecutions of the Inquisition on down to Communist purges and Nazi genocide.”

Man, oh, man!  I owe such a debt to my conservative Facebook friends for exposing this monster to me.  I didn’t know what Fox News was ranting about until now.  I now believe this evil Saul Alinsky may actually be worthy of respect.  They may have actually reinforced my loony liberal belief that the American Government exists to better the lives of all its citizens.  It has definitely opened my eyes to the dangers of…thinking like a Republican.

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, politics

The Happy Pessimist

“I’d rather be a pessimist because then I can only be pleasantly surprised.”

Benjamin Franklin

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Truthfully, I have always expected the worst out of life.  That expectation has never let me down.  In fact, it has made me a much happier person.  “How is that possible, you dim-witted dolt?” you ask.  Well, just as Franklin said it.  I am never taken unpleasantly by surprise.  In 1983, when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, skin cancer, I prepared myself to die at 27.  But I was pleasantly surprised.  I not only survived, but it was completely eradicated by surgery.  No chemotherapy.  No recurrence.  No more cancer worries (beyond assuming each and every mole I had removed after that point in my life was melanoma revisited).  I can now celebrate 42 years of being cancer-free.

pessimist

Watching politics as a humorous hobby benefits greatly from a pessimistic outlook.  I just assumed that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would win the Presidency in 2016, and I prepared for that dismal dip into depressing gloom.  If Rodeo Clown Bush the Sequel had been elected, or Scott Walker got the nod, the more likely scenarios, I would have been pleasantly relieved and surprised, even though I would still have been expecting the ultimate heat-death of the planet to come from those administrations.  If Marco Rubio got the nod, better still.  He’s kinda young for a senator and stupid, but he’s demonstrated that he does care at least a little bit about the common man, and he doesn’t really want us all to die.  He’s even demonstrated the ability to learn from mistakes.  And if a Democrat had won, especially Bernie Sanders, that would have been a repeat of the marvelous surprise we all got in 2008 from the election of Professor Obama, man of the people. Of course, the worst happened, and the evil Pumpkinhead won in both 2016 and 2024. I will be preparing for the world to end after this next election, but there is actually a higher percentage chance of survival and limited suffering.  After all, people, even the mega-polluters in China and India, have recognized the need to try to repair the planet.

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I was, honestly, as a pessimist, expecting to be dead before the new school year started in 2015.  So I was pleasantly surprised to be able to start a new collection of morning-dog-walk sunrise pictures.  I am prepared and at peace with the world because I always expect the worst to happen.  Looking at everything from the dark side is ironically the way to find the light and hope in the new day dawning directly ahead.

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The Uncritical Critic Likes to Read Books Too!

I told you before that I make a lousy movie critic because I watch anything and everything and like most of it.  You don’t believe me?  You can look it up through this link; The Uncritical Critic

I hate to tell you this, but it is almost exactly the same for books too.

flying goldfish

The Paffooney is an illustration for a proposed collaboration on a children’s book.  My friend and fellow author Stuart R. West (Stuart’s Blogspot about Aliens) had a story about three kids taking a balloon ride when they accidentally gave the goldfish bubble gum to chew ignoring their mother’s warning that dire consequences would follow.  He decided the project was too ridiculous to follow through on, or at least my Paffooney power wasn’t up to making sense of his brilliant literature, and the book did not happen.  And I am sorry about that because I couldn’t wait to find out how it turns out.  I love weird and wild stories of all kinds.  And, unfortunately, I love them uncritically.

So, what kind of books would a goofy uncritical critic actually recommend? Let me lay some bookishness on ya then.

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Here is the review I wrote for Goodreads on Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

I have always felt, since the day I first picked up a copy of Mort by Terry Pratchett, that he was an absolute genius at humor-and-satire style fantasy fiction. In fact, he is a genius compared to any author in any genre. He has a mind that belongs up there with Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and William Faulkner… or down there as the case may well be. This book is one of his best, though that is a list that includes most of his Discworld novels.
Amazing Maurice is a magically enhanced cat with multiple magically enhanced mice for minions. And the cat has stumbled on a sure fire money-making scheme that completely encompasses the myth of Pied Piper of Hamlin. In fact, it puts the myth in a blender, turns it on high, and even forgets to secure the lid. It is funny, heartwarming, and changes the way you look at mice and evil cats.
This is a book to be read more than once and laughed at for the rest of your life.

You see what I mean?  I uncritically praise books that make me laugh and think deeply about things at the same time.  It is as if I don’t have any standards at all if something is brilliantly written and makes a deep and influential impression on me.

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Here’s another book that I love so much I can’t be properly critical when I reread it.  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  I cannot help but be taken in by the unrequited love the dissolute lawyer Sydney Carton had for the beautiful refugee from the French Revolution, Lucy Manette.  Tragic love stories melt my old heart.  And I can’t help but root for Charles Darnay as well, even though I know what’s going to happen in Paris at the Bastille because I have read this book three times and seen the Ronald Coleman movie five times.  I also love the comical side characters like Jerry Cruncher the grave-robber and hired man as well as Miss Pross, the undefeatable champion of Miss Lucy and key opposer to mad Madam Defarge.

I simply cannot be talked out of praising the books I read… and especially the books I love.  I am totally uncritical as a reader, foolishly only looking for things I like about a book.  Real critics are supposed to read a book and make faces that remind you of look on my little brother’s face when I had to help him use an outhouse for the first time.  (Oh, what a lovely smell that was!)  (And I mean that sarcastically!)  Real critics are supposed to tell you what they hated about the book and what was done in such a juvenile and unprofessional way that it spoiled all other books forever.  That’s right isn’t it?  Real critics are supposed to do that?  Maybe I am glad I’m not a real critic.

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Filed under book review, humor, Paffooney

The Blue Man

The Blue Faun who represents the lovely melancholy sensuality that informs my wordy little life.
The Blue Faun who represents the lovely melancholy sensuality that informs my wordy little life.

When I was in Iowa last, and had a chance to see the younger of my two sisters, Mary Ann, she told me flat out that she really liked my most recent blog posts and that I should give up all together on my gloomy pessimistic ones.  This, of course, was confusing to me because all my blog posts are relentlessly gloomy and never make anyone smile, so I did not know for certain what she was responding to.

As I have shared on more than one occasion, I suffer from six incurable diseases and am a cancer survivor.  I don’t plan on living more than decade further at my most optimistic, and I told you recently that I am a confirmed pessimist.  At worst, I could be dropping dead from stroke or heart attack as soon as I post this silly sour old post.  I will be absolutely delighted to live long enough to finish another novel or two and maybe even see them published.   I keep close track of my remaining hours because each one is rare and precious to me, even the ones that are quite painful and hard.  So gloomy is as gloomy does.  I am constantly celebrating that I have lived this long already.  How depressing is that?  … the celebrating every day thing, I mean?

And of all the people who suspect I might be a fish sticks and custard sort of person, Mary Ann is not one of them.  She watches Doctor Who and knows that that is exactly what I am.  I am goofy and scatter-brained and a barely contained barrel of weird energy and misplaced enthusiasm. I do stuff like fill my bedroom Barbie shelf with bizarre and kitschy little 12-inch people.

The Barbie Shelf
The Barbie Shelf

I appreciate melancholy and being blue, because the hollows of the valleys of depression make you appreciate the giddy heights so much more.  And I do realize that I am stringing big words and goopy metaphors together to sound all literary and brooding… but that’s what real geniuses whom I am trying to emulate do to reach the highest heights.  They run down through the valley at the fastest possible pace to build up enough speed to shoot up the side of the mountain on the other side.  It is a Wiley Coyote trick for using cartoon physics in your own favor.  It is the reason I am still tending the flower wagon, trying to coax zinnias into blossoming during the depressingly renewed Texas drought.  It is the reason I keep adding to my collection of sunrises.  The dark blue pieces of the puzzle of life provide the contrast that help you define the puzzle picture of the brightest sunshine and light.

The blossoms in the flower wagon reached a new record number today, despite the heat.
The blossoms in the flower wagon reached a new record number today, despite the heat.
Sunrise on a school day when I don't have to go to school because I am retired.
Sunrise on a school day when I don’t have to go to school because I am retired.

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Filed under battling depression, humor, Paffooney