Tag Archives: humor

January 5, 2017 · 11:25 am

Scientifical Dog-Poop Theories

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I have been taking note of the Republican approach to science as displayed repeatedly in Congress.  I decided that this is the kind of science that can best explain the dog-poop phenomena, since it is, ultimately, about how the data feels more than measuring and quantifying and dealing with, you know, those fact thingies.

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You see, the problem comes in with the fact that my dog, Jade, is producing dog poop at record levels, and it is all becoming rather a burden.   Now the dog-poop literature, (yes it does exist, since dog lovers write about anything and everything to do with dogs), says that it is not uncommon for a healthy young dog to poop as much as 5 times a day.  But my dog seems to poop exactly one time more per day than the number of times you take her for a walk.  If we go out five times, she poops six.  If I take her out in the middle of the night for a sixth time, she poops seven.  What the heck?

My wife really hates the dog because she poops on the carpet so much.  (The dog, not my wife.  My wife is satisfactorily house-broken.)  There are places on the living room carpet she marked as a puppy five years ago where she insists on re-pooping practically every night.  No matter how often we scrub the carpet and box her ears, still, brown spots and poop lumps to greet us almost every morning.  Maybe she does it because my wife tells her how much she hates her and the dog wants to get even.  But that is the opposite of what the dog says.  She loves Mommy because Mommy gives the dog soup bones.  Somehow, it seems the dog believes she is giving us all a gift by pooping on the carpet and filling the house with her personal scent.  She poops for us because she loves us.

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Here Jade Beyer is busy using Henry’s computer. She has her own Facebook page and everything.

I drew the diagram at the start of this article to better explain my Republicanized theories of dog poop and dog love.  You will notice that, based on observations of total output, I have theorized that dogs must be almost completely hollow.  They don’t apparently store poop in their legs, but the rest of their dog bodies appear to be hollow poop-tubes that store nearly infinite amounts of poo.  Dogs also apparently have some kind of instant-poop-maker at the base of the throat so that anything they eat, dog food, my missing left socks, my son’s retainer, dead rats, whatever was growing behind the rice bag in the pantry, and whatever people food they can steal, is instantly transformed into poop.  Need to poop on the floor because dad didn’t give you any of the bacon at breakfast?  Eat a sock.  Fill up with instant poop ammo.  The poop on the floor will prove how much you love dad and why he should give you bacon more.

So, now that I have studied the poop problem, what solutions could there be?

Well, I have threatened the dog to use corks and other sorts of plugs, but that wouldn’t solve the problem so much as merely delay it.  And I dread the impending explosion in the living room that such a plan suggests to a vivid imagination like mine.  I have thought about feeding her less, but it seems she can still use the puppy beg-eye to such good effect that she could subsist entirely on people food conned out of my son and daughter.  So, I will use a Republican congressional solution.  Since their response to poverty is to give more money to rich people, and the solution to climate change is to cut pollution restrictions, then obviously I need to feed my dog MORE!  I need to cram it down her greedy little throat if necessary.  That will fix it.  Or bring about fat, exploding dogs all the sooner.

 

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January 2, 2017 · 5:25 pm

For the Love of Reading!

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Yes, I know it looks awkwardly painful to read on the floor in a scroochy position like that, but that was me as a kid.  I was the awkwardest nerd in Wright County, Iowa, when I was a boy.  But Dr. Seuss taught me early on to read and enjoy the imaginary worlds that reading created in my stupid little head.

I don’t remember the first actual book I read, other than to firmly believe it was a Dr. Seuss book like Yertle the Turtle, or Horton Hears a Who!  But I do remember the first chapter book, the first great adventure.  It was The White Stag by Kate Seredy.  It was the Newberry Medal winner published in 1937, and told the mythical journey of Hunor and Magyar, two brothers and leaders of two peoples who are on an epic quest to find the land where they belong by following a magical white stag.

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I was nine when I read and fell in love with that book.  I picked it off Miss Mennenga’s reading shelf because it was a simple red book with a plain red cover (the paper illustrated book cover had long since disintegrated in kids’ hands over time.)  Red was my favorite color.

But I fell in love with the movie version that unfolded in my mind’s eye.  It was when I learned to dive so deeply into a  book that the characters became real to me.

The following year when I was ten the book was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  Jim Hawkins was my best friend that year.  That was followed by Rudyard Kipling’s First Jungle Book.  I walked around the jungle with Mowgli and Bagheera the black panther for quite a while after that.

I think it is important to often look back on the beginnings of things.  This is the story of how I became a reader for life.  And it matters now that I am furiously trying to cram in more books of all sorts before the end.  The journey nears completion, and it helps to focus on what goals and what loves I had at the outset.  Will there be reading in Heaven?  I hope so.  Otherwise, truthfully, I may not go.

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December 30, 2016 · 4:09 pm

“They” Don’t Think Like “We” Do

Dumb Luck

I was recently asked how I can live surrounded by conservatives when I am obviously liberal-minded.  I hardly have to think about it to give an answer.

You have to realize that conservatives are people too.  To begin with, I hope you didn’t look at the picture I started with and think, “He must think all conservatives are stupid and look like that.”  The picture of Doofy Fuddbugg I used here is not about them.  It is about me.  This is the comedy face I wear when I am talking politics.  You live a life filled with economic, physical, and emotional pain like I have, you have a tendency to wear a mask that makes you, at the very least, happy on the outside.  People talk to me all the time, but not because I seek them out.  In social situations, I am not a bee, I’m a flower.  And because of my sense of humor, people feel comfortable seeking me out and telling me about their pain and anger and hurt to the point that they eventually reach the totally mistaken conclusion that I have wisdom to share.

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                                                                                                                                                           I do think that corporate bank CEO’s look like this, and I am not sure they count as people.

I hear lots of detailed complaints from my conservative friends in both Iowa and Texas.  I know what they fear and what makes them angry.  Here are a few of the key things;

  1. The world is no longer very much like the world I grew up in, and the changes make me afraid.
  2. I have worked hard all my life.  I’m still working hard.  For my father and mother that led to success and fulfillment.  For me it leads to a debt burden that’s hard to manage, and I am having to work hard for the rest of my life because of it.
  3. I’m not getting what I deserve out of life, and someone is to blame for that.  But who?  Minorities and immigrants seem to be getting ahead and getting whatever they want more than they ever used to.  It must be them.
  4. Liberals are all alike.  They want to tax and spend.  They don’t care about the consequences of trying out their high-fallutin’ ideas.  And they want me to pay for it all while they laugh at me and call me stupid and call me a racist.
  5. I am angry now, as angry as I have ever been in my life.  And someone has to hear me and feel my wrath.  Who better than these danged liberals?  And I can do that by voting in Trump.  Sure, I know how miserable he is as a human being, but he will make them suffer and pay.

I have always understood these feelings because I began hearing them repeatedly since the 1980’s.  They are like a fire-cracker with a very short fuse, these ideas conservatives live with.  And certain words you say to them are like matches.  They will set off, not just one, but all of the fireworks.

So, here is how I talk to conservatives.

  1. Never treat them as stupid people.  Conservatives are sometimes just as smart as I am, if not smarter.  I complement them on what they say that I think is a really good idea.  I point out areas of agreement whenever possible, even if they are rare sometimes.
  2. I defend what I believe in, but I try to understand what they believe and why.
  3. I am open about the doubts and questioning I have about my own positions on things, encouraging them to do the same.
  4. I always try to remember that we really have more in common than we have differences.  I try to point that out frequently too.  This point in particular helps them to think of me as being smarter than I really am.
  5. And if I haven’t convinced them that I am right, which, admittedly is impossible, that doesn’t mean I have lost the argument.  In fact, if I have made them feel good about actually listening calmly to a liberal point of view and then rejecting it as total liberal claptrap, I win, because I have been listened to.

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December 29, 2016 · 4:58 pm

Mortality

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2016 has been a very bad year.  It not only took Princess Leia  away from us, it also took away her mother, the Singing in the Rain lady.

But the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds are not the only the dark clouds that have me down.  I was born in 1956, the same year as Carrie Fisher.  My mother who is still living is practically the same age as Debbie Reynolds.  Life does imitate art if you only look at it carefully.  So what does this mean for me?

2016 is not yet over.  And I came down with a case of the flu on Christmas Day and am still throwing up and having fevers.  My bank account is at zero dollars until at least tomorrow.  So I have no money for a doctor’s office copay.  So if my candle is snuffed today, it is not inconceivable that mother, who is also diabetic and in poor health, could follow Debbie Reynolds’ example.

Those are some gol’ dang dark thoughts.

And that is not the way either Carrie or Debbie lived.  Their lives with filled with humor.  Taking dark and difficult things that happened in their lives they turned it into humor and entertaining bursts of wit and energy.  From her Star Wars experiences Carrie Fisher determined that every obituary written for her contain the words .

“I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”

and now I have discharged that duty in her honor.  She was a writer just like me, having written books like Wishful Drinking and Postcards from the Edge.

Debbie Reynolds tap-danced with Gene Kelly when she was only 19 in the movie Singing in the Rain.  I could claim that my own mother tap-danced with Gene Kelly too, but that would be lying.  And though, as an author of humorous fiction, I have no trouble with lying, it seems a disservice to her lifelong dedication to being a Registered Nurse.  My mother helped save lives.  Movie star and RN are at least equal in importance.  After all, Debbie Reynolds singing and dancing probably created enough love and laughter in the world to help save a few lives too.

So, I intend to get better and not die before the end of 2016.  Rumors of my death, if you hear them, will hopefully be premature.  But all in all, 2016 was a really rotten year.

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December 27, 2016 · 2:55 pm

Stardusters… Canto 27

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Canto Twenty-Seven – In the Bio-Dome

The delicate creature was four-legged and long-necked.  It looked a lot like Bambi to Alden if Bambi had been a reptilian creature with hexagonal violet-colored scales all over it.  It had large indigo eyes that made it look fawn-like and vulnerable.

“It is called a zhar-doe,” said Sizzahl sadly.  She was standing next to Alden and Gracie with the creature in front of them.  She reached out and stroked the side of its Bambi-like head fondly.  “It is the last of its kind, and when it dies, its species will be extinct.”

“Is Zahr-Doe its name?” Gracie asked.

“It is the species.  Why would you give it a name?  When we had vast herds of them, they were a domesticated food animal.”

“Will you eat this one?” asked Alden.   He still had his hands clamped over his private parts, but he reached out with his left hand to touch the thing’s velvety-soft ear.  It was an exquisitely beautiful creature.

“Only if it is a last resort.  It is too beautiful and precious to be butchered without great need.”  Sizzahl was petting the creature tenderly.  Hard to believe it didn’t have a name already.

“Is there no way the species can be saved?” asked Gracie, stroking the creatures neck with both hands.  Alden had loved Gracie since the moment he had first met her, but now, looking at her standing in the Bio-dome’s artificial forest of dying trees and plants petting the Bambi-thing, he noticed how lovely she looked as a completely nude young girl in the middle of a browning pastoral setting.  He was attracted to her in spite of the fact that her body was now a child’s body, but it was so much more than that.  Gracie’s simple, loving concern for a gentle creature of another world… well, it was looking more directly at what he knew to be Gracie’s soul than he had ever done before.

“I have the cloning technology at my finger tips,” said Sizzahl.  “This place was my parents’ attempt to save our natural world from the predations of the greedy and ruthless creatures that dominated our society.  But, the question becomes, should we save the species by cloning it if we cannot feed it and the new creatures will only starve, suffer, and die?”

“We brought you the plants you needed, didn’t we?” Alden asked.

“You did.  I thought being on the space station would protect those plants and I could bring them here to grow new food sources.”

“Is something wrong with the plants?”  Alden shivered, not with the cold of being completely naked in an alien place, but with a sudden fear that he already knew the answer to the question.

“They are all blighted and dying.  I asked he Tellerons to verify it with the instruments, but I’m nearly certain.”  Sizzahl was actually crying.  Alden saw tears in her snake’s eyes.  It was difficult to comprehend a lizard-person crying, but the little-girl alien was so human-like as she was crying…

Gracie, bless her Iowegian heart, wrapped both her arms around Sizzahl and held her in a comforting hug.

“My goodness, girl,” Gracie said, “You are warm and soft to hug.  You are more like us than the Tellerons are.”

“My people are warm-blooded just like yours.  We are not really reptiles, you know.  We are more saurian… like your birds or your dinosaurs on planet Earth.”

“How do you know so much about Earth?” asked Alden.

“Well, I am a genius among my kind.  I have what you would call an I.Q. of about 195 in the terms of your science on Earth.  Besides, the alien visitors that used to come to our world, like the Sylvani or the Zeta Reticulans have brought specimens of your people here for study and to perform certain special tasks that aided in their off-world agendas.”

“Earth people have been to your planet before?” asked Gracie, cuddling the lizard-girl close to her warm heart.

“Oh, yes, and I imagine some of our people have been taken to your world too.  The governments of both our planets have been contacted long, long ago by space-faring races.”

“Really?”  Alden was skeptical.  Walter Cronkite and Bryant Gumbel never said anything about aliens contacting the government.  “Why haven’t we been told about this?”

“Judging by your television broadcasts, I believe your government believes the average person is too stupid and easily upset to comprehend the truth.  Our leaders were like that for many years before your leaders even were told.  There will come a crisis point one day, though, that people will have to find out.  Here it came shortly before we started to destroy ourselves with unending war for profit.”

“You are going to save your planet, aren’t you, Sizzahl?” Gracie asked, suddenly seeming alarmed.

“I don’t know.  Sometimes I think they are not worth saving.  Sometimes a people on a planet can become so self-centered and terrible that they don’t deserve to survive.  The alien visitors gave up on us a few years ago and left.”

“We are alien visitors,” said Alden, “and we aren’t giving up on you yet.”

“You are not afraid I might eat you or take advantage of you?”

“Of course not,” said Gracie.  She patted Sizzahl on the back in a way Alden knew was meant to be reassuring.

“I do want to take advantage of you, though.”

“Oh?” asked Gracie.  “How?”

“Your DNA is somewhat compatible with my own.  Not yours, Grace, because you are a simuloid now, not a real person.  I want some of Alden’s DNA to use to make a fusion race, half Galtorrian, half Earth human.”

“You mean you want me to make babies with you?” Alden gasped.

“Not the way you think.   I want to make them in a sealed jar and grow them in vats.  I will just need samples of your blood and tissues.  It doesn’t even need to hurt.”

Alden felt a bit shaken.  Could he do that?  Or was Sizzahl right to suggest her people deserved to go extinct?  And what did she mean when she suggested Gracie wasn’t real?

At that moment, Davalon and Tanith came in looking sad.  Both were naked.  Both were holding each other’s hands.

“We have bad news,” said Tanith.  “The plants we saved from the space station are all diseased according to the instruments.”

Sizzahl only nodded, then buried her scale-covered face in Gracie’s shoulder to cry more loudly.

*****

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December 26, 2016 · 3:41 pm

A Plethora of Bad Days

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I’m sure you probably are saying to yourself something like, “What the heck is Mickey saying?” or “Why is this gesticulating goombah complaining again?” or definitely, “What the heck does plethora mean?”

Well, the results of 2016 I truly did not love.

Saturday my football Cardinals got a measure of revenge.  They were leading the hated Seahawks by a score of 31 to 18 in the second half.  Then, like God was cheating in their favor or something, the doofy Seahawks made a couple of long scoring plays and should have been able to kick the winning point after touchdown with less than two minutes left in the game.  Miraculously, the kicker shanked it wide left.  Tie score, 31 to 31.  So then, karma finally kicked in and the Cardinals got down into fieldgoal range on a pass to David Johnson, the miracle running back who ran for over 100 yards in his 15th consecutive game.  The game ended with a successful Cardinals’ field goal that gave them the unlikely win.

So, why am I not happy with a win like that?  Because it was practically the only one.  The Cardinals had a talented team this year that was predicted to win the Superbowl at the beginning of the year.  But they kept losing games.  Eight of them, as a matter of fact.  They were out of the playoff picture before Saturday’s game.  And the last time they played these skanky wanky Seahawks, they scored first in overtime, but still only got a tie out of the game.  And these same Seahawks made it into the playoffs as the winner of the Cardinals’ division.  Football life is really unfair sometimes.

And besides that, the Cubs won the World Series.  Donald Trump is going to be President in 2017.  The world is ending (at least within 100 years).  I am dying (at least within ten years).  And I am no closer now to being a successful novelist than I was on the day I was born.  Oh, and I have a viral infection that makes me cough and may kill me.  Life is all dark brown and dumbly glum right now.

So “plethora” means a whole gol dang lot of something.  And somewhere, somehow, someone owes me a good day or two.

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December 20, 2016 · 4:42 pm

Stardusters… Canto 26

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Canto Twenty-Six – On the Moon Gundahl

Farbick and Starbright sat together on the bench outside the fat Galtorrian’s office in the moon base where the Tellerons were now prisoners.  Biznap was inside arguing vehemently about something.  The two lizard-men, apparently the only lizard-men on the entire moon, were arguing from a position of strength and superiority, though Farbick could plainly see that the Telleron landing party out-numbered them, seemed smarter than them, and definitely had better and more capable technology.

“Do you think Commander Biznap will secure our freedom?” Starbright asked guilelessly.  Her large green eyes were shimmering with tremulous female uncertainty.  She was attractive in ways no other female had ever seemed to Farbick before.

“He’s the best officer and negotiator we have in Xiar’s entire fleet,” Farbick answered, “so, no… probably not.  We are not very competent when it comes to things like this.”

“We are doomed?  Will they eat us?”

“Well, Biznap couldn’t bargain his way out of a paper sack,” said Farbick.  “Especially in view of the fact that we can’t really let these cannibal lizards get their claws on high tech devices like cloaking fields, invisibility cloaks, and skortch rays… certainly not star drives for space ships.  But a paper sack is made of paper, after all.  We could punch our way out.”

“What do you mean?”

“These lizard men are not very smart.  They are not very well armed, as long as they don’t acquire and learn how to use our weapons.  They seem tough on the outside, but I think we could beat them in a fight.”

Starbright looked at him skeptically.  “You think so?”

“We need to take the initiative.  I’m sure if the three of us, as Tellerons, worked together and eliminated the little warrior-guy, the fat one would surrender easily.  He doesn’t appear to be the kind who fights his own battles.”

“You are very brave and haves been through lots of difficult situations, but I’m a poor, frail female with skills I learned in the egg, but no practical experience.  I would end up causing you and brave Commander Biznap to die needlessly.  It would be a terrible thing.”

“We are not going to give up and be beaten so easily,” said Farbick.  “If I learned one thing in my time as a captive among Earther primates, it is that every individual has inner resources that they may not even know they have.  Together we are more formidable than we have ever let ourselves believe.”

“You really think so?”

Farbick looked at her lovely round face and earnest expression.  He thought about the kissing thing.  He had seen Alden and Gracie Morrell do it.  He had seen Harmony Castille and Commander Biznap do it.  It was a strange Earther thing, but if he turned his face just a little to the right, he could…

“What are you… mmmph… doing?”  She looked shocked.

“It is an Earther custom, expressing respect and admiration.”

“Oh… it is?”

“And love.”

Her eyes lit up at the Earther human concept that had seemingly been the only thing to thwart the invasion of Earth.  He could see she was intrigued.  Old reruns of I Love Lucy and Bewitched were part of every Telleron tadpole’s how-to-be-like-an-Earther training, programmed directly into their developing brains while in their amniotic egg-sacks.  Tellerons were gestated in eggs and programmed with learning programs until they were the equivalent of an Earther eight-year-old, at which point they were all saturated with the kissing thing poured directly into embryonic brains, and ready to be born.

“Like Darren and Samantha?  In Bewitched?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She leaned in and repeated the gesture.  She improved on it.  It lasted a very long time and Farbick felt that she liked it nearly as much as he did.  They could make tadpoles together… even if he did have inferior Fmoogish blood in his veins.

At that moment they were interrupted by Commander Biznap.

“Good news!  I have secured our release, Farbick!”

“What did you promise them?” asked Farbick.

“That we would strip the entire available tech out of the wing and leave it here, along with Starbright to teach them how to use it all.”

“And how do we get Starbright back?”

“Oh, uh… we don’t.  When they are finished learning how to use the technology, they will eat her.”

*****

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Starbright

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December 18, 2016 · 5:14 pm

The Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge

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The Ixcanixian Cultural Ambassador from the Squeelix Sector of the Planet Ixcanix sent me an e-mail about his planet’s newest idea for a cultural exchange.  He calls it the “Ixcanixian Spleegle Gorn Vorpaloop” which translates to the “Ixcanixian Interstellar Bad Poetry Challenge”.  At least, it does if I am conjugating the verb “Vorpaloop” correctly.  It is difficult because you have to drop the silent “y” before adding the “aloop” without causing it to explode.  I know it is probably a very bad idea to present it here on this planet, but he talked me into it by promising to promote my novel Catch a Falling Star on his homeworld and at least two other planets in the Bugeye Federation.

Here are the rules for the alien poetry contest;

  1. Entries can only come from planets in the Orion Spur of the Sagittarius  Spiral Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.  (So, for you non-astronomers out there, we on Earth do qualify.)
  2. All poets must be less intelligent than the Mud-Eaters of Paralaxos IV as they will be employed as judges of what poetry is truly bad.  (Again, Earth qualifies as we have recently elected Trump and also allow Nigel Farage of Great Britain to continue to exist.)
  3. Entries must not be so long that the total weight of letters exceed critical mass and form black holes in the intergalactic servers when uploaded.
  4. Vogons need not apply.  Their poetry is so bad, they would automatically win, causing the death of trillions of bad poetry readers in the galaxy.
  5. Entries must not cause thermonuclear reactions with cesium.
  6. Please refrain from confusing good poetry with bad poetry.  The Vornloos of Talos XII are looking for poetry they can weaponize, and no one wants a poetry contest winner to suddenly create World Peace on Talos XII.  That would be bad for the galaxy as a whole in ways that are very difficult to explain.

A sample of interstellar bad poetry is included here to inspire the kind of poetry we seek.

Ratzen Bargle’s Bisketoon  (a love poem by Touperary Kloob, Poet Laureate of Antares VI)

Ratzen Bargle was a Doofus,

From the planet Rufus-Ploofiss,

And he had a lovely bride,

With a head not tall, but twice as wide.

She had three eyes and two were green.

She had the loveliest fleen you’ve ever seen.

And as they sat ‘neath a wayward moon,

He kissed his lovely bisketoon.

Immediately before naught was said,

She bit off his tiny three-eyed head.

And then she ate him bones and all

With sauce that really becomes the fall.

And so it is on Rufus-Ploofiss,

That  males all die with one last roof-kiss.

Because they sit under wayward moons

With their lovely, hungry bisketoons.
 

 

Should you have the unfortunate urge to participate in this senseless and probably suicidal poetry contest, you are welcome to offer four-line poems in the comment section, or email longer poems to Mickey at mbeyer51@gmail.com.  I will attempt to transmit the worst offers to the Ixcanixians as soon as I get my interstellar flooglebeeder transmitting again.  I will also post winners in a future alien poetry blog.

I have been warned that prizes range from instant execution by the Lizard Lords of Galtorr Prime to a beat up copy of Mickey’s 2012 novel Catch a Falling Star.  So, good luck with the bad poetry.

 

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December 17, 2016 · 4:48 pm

“It’s a Hard-Knock Life… for Us”

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Yes, this is another in a series of reviews from the Uncritical Critic where I gush endlessly and almost mindlessly about movies, TV, books, and other sorts of stories that I love.  And just like other reviews that I have done, writing mainly to myself, this will probably bore you to the point of having to sandpaper  your tush just to stay conscious through it.  But I do, in fact, have a social conscience.  I do care about things moral and ethical.  That’s why I’m not going to talk about this Annie;

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I want to talk about this one;

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I am not sure how any of my white, conservative friends can work up such an angry fizzyblackengrrr about the remake of the musical using black actors as the principles.  I am not saying I don’t see color and I don’t notice the changes in the basic story to make it fit a more different-race-friendly cultural magnetism.  I am saying I love the changes.

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Quvenzhane Wallis is one of those little girls that, if she were actually an orphan, would be adopted in record time.  She sings, dances, and exudes a personal charisma to a degree that is not only perfect for this particular musical, but is not an act.  It is obviously her real, perky, upbeat self.  I would adopt her instantly even though I don’t have the finances, energy, or good health necessary to make that kind of commitment any more.  And the changes made to the songs, setting, and themes of the basic story I think are not only brilliant, but so very appropriate to our times.  The story of an orphan connecting to a lonely, power-hungry billionaire is transformed by the idea of finding the best way to connect the family that you not only want, but desperately need.  The Daddy Warbucks character, played brilliantly by Jamie Foxx, is able to realize his connection to his own lost father as he transforms himself into the father figure that Annie needs.  Songs are added and dialogue is changed in ways to bring out these complex themes of love and need.  It is a very different story from the one found in the Aileen Quinn/Carol Burnett film of the 1980’s.  And it is a story that needs to be told.

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“You are never fully dressed without a smile!” is an important theme for any person of color, or any outsider in our American society today.  The troubles and strife related to race tension, violence, and the American struggle to rid itself of racism are best faced with a kind of confident optimism that this musical was always intended to be a vehicle for.

It is a statement about the basic goodness of human beings.  This version of the musical even redeems the vile Miss Hannigan, leaving her at the end with a change of heart and a Hispanic boyfriend.  So, I really think that anyone who has a problem with this remake of a beloved musical made by Jay-Z, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith ought to examine the real reasons they feel troubled by it.  I think they really ought to let go of all baggage, especially the alligator-skin bags of racism, and just immerse themselves in this wonderful movie full of singy and dancy stuff.

 

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Filed under humor, movie review, music, racial profiling, red States, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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December 15, 2016 · 4:24 pm

Crazy Head-Bashing List-Making

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Sometimes I have to stop and think where ideas for posts come from.  Yes, and that is usually the point at which my head is empty and I am out of ideas.  I spent years teaching the writing process and I advocated many different pre-writing idea-generating strategies.  I should be able to come up with something to write about without resorting to bashing my right temple with a hand-held blunt object.  After all, those ideas come out kinda wobbly and full of strangely-colored stars.  So, let me find a broom in the upstairs broom closet in the empty hallways of my mind and sweep together all the possible ideas I have in one pile to look at, grimace, and compare.

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There is a letter with a Martian stamp on it.  Inside it proposes I hold an aliens-only poetry writing contest and put the worst possible results into a post.  That could be worth a few chuckles, and possible a gazorpingwallow or two.  At least, that’s what the letter suggests.  It is from some Ixcanixian from the spinward edge of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way.  20160508_113700

 

I have several ongoing cartoon projects.  I could be adding another page to the Hidden Kingdom graphic novel I have been working on for thirty years.  I could also do more action-figure comics to rationalize all the time I spend playing with dolls.  And I like to do novel illustrations to go along with the many bizarre and mentally warped novels I have created.

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Of course we have recently received the kind of political Christmas gift that most of us would like to track Santa down to his lair for and return back inside the reindeer butt that it came out of.  Insulting the new orangutan king is an easy source of insult-based humor that I don’t have to work too hard at or feel too guilty about.  But too much of that is like getting drunk on cough syrup.  You intended to cure the problem, but you have only managed to add new problems and a hangover headache to top it all off.blue-and-mike-in-color

I still have to fix the cracked and leaky swimming pool before next spring, so that should yield some cementing-your-feet-into-the-pool-wall stories later on.  And there are the numerous frustrations of living life with six incurable diseases to write about.  I can probably make the flaking off of all the skin on the back of my neck from psoriasis sound pretty funny if I try hard enough.  The family dog is still producing dog poop at Guiness-Book-of-World-Records rates… and, oh, yeah, I am still a long way from being done telling you about the bad jokes from more than a quarter of a century of classroom cut-ups.

You know, I think the way to deal with the problem is to simply make a list of ideas.  I can throw darts at the list if I still can’s decide.

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Filed under artwork, blog posting, humor, Paffooney, writing, writing humor, writing teacher

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