Tag Archives: humor

January 6, 2016 · 4:22 pm

New Dawns for 2016

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You may recall that one of my obsessive-compulsive collection-addictions is pictures of the dawn sky over eastern Carrollton and Dallas.  So far I have only taken two.  Through Sunday I was still sleeping late with no children to drop off at school.  Just so the numbers match, here is number two;

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So, why not three, you say?  Today is Wednesday after all?  Well, I can’t take a picture of the sunrise when it is overcast and threatening cold rain.  We may have our share of clouds on the horizon this year, with El Nino raging to the West and the jet stream dipping down to Mexico to deliver freezing Arctic blasts thanks to climate change.  Does that mean I expect bad things to be coming my way?  Of course I do.  I am old.  I have six incurable diseases, and I have survived cancer once already.  I am closer now to the day I will die than I have ever been in my life.  And now Donald Trump has the technical possibility of being elected President of the United States.  Who says Jehovah God and the Greek goddess of History don’t have bizarre senses of humor?

But despite the ill omens and the badness I anticipate, life is still good and will not be repressed.  I intend to live for all I am worth.  Have I not earned it, being a public school teacher for 31 years?  Have I not earned it by raising three wonderful kids, one of whom serves this country as a US Marine?  Have I not earned it by picking up dog poop in the park four times a day, and sometimes more off the carpet in the house for the last four years?  I believe in savoring what we have been granted, and using the gifts and abilities given to me by God.  That is why I am still blogging every day for the fourteenth month in a row.  And, miracle of miracles, I am not talking to the wind with no one really listening any more.  When I was blogging on Xanga from 2005 to 2007, I only had one or two followers that even read my stuff… and they didn’t tune in every day.  Some of you have started doing more than just looking at the pictures.  I have evidence in the comments that some of you read my posts all the way to the end.  I thought I was the only blogger that did that.  And I had 276 views last week.  349 the week before.  9651 people viewed my blog in 2015.   I have 87 views in just the three days of this week so far.  I can no longer claim to be the best-written blog that nobody ever reads.  I have to compete now with the other writers who write good stuff.  Ooh… I am doomed.  But I intend to enjoy it.  I have at least one novel in the works to be published.  I have another one already published that should be available at least on Amazon until well after I have curled up my toes and went for a final bye-bye.  Bad things are sure to happen.  But for now, the sun is still coming up every morning in my little world.

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January 5, 2016 · 3:35 pm

Grumpy Old Mike

My middle child, my son Henry, recently found an online source that said being grumpy is not as bad for your health as people think it is.  Bless his little black heart… everything on the internet is true, right?  But if it is true, it could be of benefit to me.  Mickey is not the only other me.  There is also grumpy old Mike.

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I recently wrote a poem about being grumpy.  A grumpy poet?  That could be a thing, right?  Here is what that poem looked like;

Grumpy (a poem about Grumpy life)

Dang it, you old grumpy man!

You annoy me as only a grumpy man can.

You grouse and growl and sometimes howl,

And pace the house like a cat on the prowl.

You worry me, weary me, and generally nasty be,

And of course you are… yes, you are… naturally me.

So why do you worry me, weary me, moan and make bother,

Now that you’re old, and you sound like your father?

Because you are cranky now, creaky with age,

And know you now, soon, the book’s turning its page.

And, though you complain, you do love your life,

And, loathe you will leave it, and your sweet-smiling wife.

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Yes, I come by grumpiness naturally.  It is a function of constant, nagging pain from arthritis and constant struggles with low blood sugar from diabetes.  And things go so wonderfully well all the time…

Like yesterday.  It was the first day after winter break, and so, since I hadn’t heard otherwise, I thought the kids had school.  And they go to two different schools at two different times.  So, I got up and cooked bacon for breakfast.  Wife and daughter both ate happily and only complained a little bit that the bacon was too burnt and the hash browns apparently got freezer burn in the freezer.  Then wife reminded me to check to be sure Henry actually had school before I took him.  She got in her car and took off for the school where she teaches.  Then, daughter and I got into the car and I dropped her off at her middle school.  Mere minutes later she called me on her new cell phone and told me that it was a teacher work day and no school for her after all.  So, I picked her up again.  So, grumbling and rumbling only a little bit, because why didn’t wifey tell me it was a work day only?  And then I checked on Henry’s school website.  Their last day of vacation was listed as Friday, January 1st.  That meant they did have school, right?  So I drove him all the way there in Lewisville.  There was only one other student there.  And the door was locked.  Then a principal told Henry that it wasn’t a class day.  Why couldn’t they have posted it on their screwy @#$%! website.  So, I went home again with the boy, and consoled myself that at least we did not have to do the afternoon pick-me-up-from-school tango with DFW area traffic.

This morning my wife got a good laugh at my expense.  After complaining about the slightly burnt sausages I made, I was told in no uncertain terms that I should be humble about making mistakes and not get mad when people laugh at my follies.  That was not fire coming out of my ears.  Honest, it was not.  I put on a happy grin.  But I was told it was a sarcastic smile at best, and I should stop it.  So I stopped it.  I probably won’t smile again today.  I bought a chocolate doughnut from QT, and I wrote about grumpiness as I ate it.  It helped.  I tried to find my son’s article about the health benefits of grumpiness, but, failing that, I found this article;

http://goodlifezen.com/17-sure-fire-ways-to-overcome-grumpiness/

So grumpy old Mike needs to go away now, and leave me alone.  Better days are coming.  And today the kids really are in school.

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January 4, 2016 · 4:16 pm

Gingerbread Town

My recent experiments with holiday gingerbread and happiness have yielded some patently artistical results.  Yes, I know that isn’t a real word.  But I use it anyway because I take bits and pieces and use them to make something new.  You may remember the gingerbread house I made with my kids.  It turned into a disaster you could eat.  But  I got some pictures out of it.  Pictures like this;

I took one and loaded it into an art program and did this to it;

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I also took a picture of some old Christmas chocolate tins;

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I used them together with a stolen background to make this scene;

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Of course, I was not satisfied there.  I had some old cartoon characters lying around.  So, I wanted to use them too.

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And I ended up with an artistical art mess like this;

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If that isn’t artistical, then I don’t know what is.

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January 3, 2016 · 4:47 pm

Monkey-Wild About “Peanuts”

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Yesterday the Peanuts Movie came to the dollar movie theater in Carrollton.  And my two kids at home and me went to it.  I invited my wife, but with the righteous indignation of a Jehovah’s Witness unshakable in her beliefs, she said, “Why would I want to go to a Christmas movie?”  She associated it not with the beloved comic strip in the newspapers, but with the old Christmas special.  And she would not be talked into it.  It is a matter of faith, after all.  Celebrating Christmas, naturally, loses you the chance to live happily ever after on a paradise Earth… after Jehovah God smites all the wicked people and all the deluded people who never worshiped him properly using his proper name, and also that rude postman my wife doesn’t particularly like.  Of course, it is not a Christmas movie.  The only Christmas part it has in it is a brief Christmas carol from the old TV special that Snoopy ruins.  So God didn’t punish us for enjoying this movie… at least, not yet.

We unrepentantly enjoyed the movie.  I enjoyed it as a culmination of more than 50 years of reading and laughing at Charles
Schulz’s satire of the uncertainties of childhood as they affect the whole of our adult lives.  My kids loved it because it is an excellent cartoon that is filled with hilarious moments that trace directly back to the comic strip.

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The central story is about Charlie Brown’s self doubts mixed with his never-ending crush on the little red-haired girl.  In his own hesitant, hide-behind-the-bushes style, Charlie pursues her and plans how he might win her heart.  In the comics, it never worked out.  He always failed.  He was always the lovable loser, and the red-haired girl never noticed.

I was inspired to write a poem about it because I could so deeply identify with his crisis of confidence.  Here is that sappy poem;

Little Red-Haired Girl

You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown

That little red-haired girl, so cute, so nice

You only looked and looked from afar

You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown

You could’ve held her hand

You could’ve walked her home from school

You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown

She never got your Valentine

At least, you forgot to sign your name

You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown

No hope of marriage now, nor children

Happily ever after has now long gone

You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown

Now every love poem is a sad poem

And the world is blue and down

You never told her that you loved her…

You never told her that you loved her…

You never told her that you loved her, Charlie Brown

 

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The main story is paralleled in Snoopy’s Red Baron fantasies as the movie goes along.  The lady-dog-pilot, Fifi, is kidnapped by the Red Baron.  Snoopy, the dashing, daring WWI pilot sets out in his Sopwith Camel dog house to rescue her.  And after being foiled several times… he succeeds!  And not long after, Charlie Brown himself succeeds.  The little red-haired girl actually chooses Charlie Brown to be her summer pen pal project buddy.  I should probably be outraged because in the comic strip she never knew he was even alive… But I loved the happy ending.  Charlie Brown deserves it.  I deserve it.  I believe even Charles Shulz would be charmed by it if he were still alive to see it.

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I apologize if I spoiled the movie for you, but it is something you should already know anyway if you ever read and loved the comic strip.  It is not the surprises that make this movie work.  It is the being true to a time-honored comic-strip and the bringing of it so completely and so beautifully to life.  And my wife looked again at the movie trailers and decided she had been wrong about it being a Christmas movie.  Maybe we are not doomed after all.

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December 31, 2015 · 4:46 pm

Wisdom of the Mickey

 

 

MickeyOne must end the year on a note that is either upbeat or regretful.  A heartfelt, “Meh,” just won’t cut it.

So here are a few particles of wisdom from the dustbowl of Mickey’s imagination.

The world is getting brighter… also hotter.  If we continue to chill on the topic of global warming, soon we will be fricasseed.

Ima mickey

You should definitely pay attention to your teachers.  They are mostly old and cranky and undervalued, and it makes them sad when they realize that no one really listens to them.

I learned this from the poet Dylan Thomas, “Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light!”  He cursed death, and then he promptly went out and drank so much liquor, he died at a very young age.  Thank God I have lived to be old.

You are also pretty much stuck with the face that you are born with, so you better get used to it, and it has many varied uses… especially in the comic sense.

And I would also like to re-iterate the wisdom of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery;

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It is a bit of a disappointment to an artist to realize that what is essential is actually invisible to the eye… but I know it is true.  Truth resides in words.

The only wisdom I truly possess is the knowledge that I am a fool.

Since I was a mere stupid boy, and before I grew up to be a mildly stupid man, I always yearned to have wisdom.  And wisdom comes through experience and pain.  Now, years later, I realize what true wisdom is… I’d have been better off without all that pain.

Millis

People are a lot like rabbits, except that they are not.

They can never eat too many carrots… unless they do.  And then their skin can turn orange.

There is no beast as noble as a rabbit… except for practically every other beast.

Turtles are not as noble as rabbits.  When you challenge them to a race, they cheat.

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People really ought to be naked more.  It’s true.  If you can strip yourself down to only what is fundamentally nothing but you yourself… you begin to know who you really are.  And it is not shame to let other people see.  Oh, wait a minute!  You thought I was talking about being literally naked?  Oh, no!  Metaphorically naked only!

One should be so opaque and obtuse that other people can see acutely right through you.  It is the only thing that makes nonsense into sense.

And we need to sing and dance a little more than we do.  A good song is healthy for the soul, no matter how badly you sing it.  And even if you are old and arthritic like me, dancing a good jiggity-jig keeps the bones loose and the heart thumping.

Everyone needs to dance with their children.  And talk to them.  You can learn more from them than they can from you.  They have more recently come here from the hand of God.  And they know things that you have forgotten… and will need to remember before you return to Him.

 

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I hope my anti-wisdom has not seriously screwed everybody up.

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December 30, 2015 · 5:11 pm

Google “PAFFOONEY”

One of the most important things about my blog has been that I can share my artwork.  I have always been capable of a reasonably high level of drawing ability.  I can also paint and create artistically original photographs.  I have that artist’s eye that sees creatively.  If you follow directions in this first Paffooney, you will see a wider variety of the kind of Paffoonies I post than I will post here.  This will be, however, a picture post.  I intend to share a bunch of my artwork here, both old and new.  Take a gander.  (And while you hold on to that male goose, look at some of my pictures, too.)

Animal Town

tree time_ginger

Aztec

You have to admit that I am clearly not an artist like Van Gogh or Picasso… certainly nothing like Andrew Wyeth or Winslow Homer.  I am more of an illustrator, or … worse, a cartoonist.

Blue in the back yard

So, this is at least partially about sharing artwork.  I am not a professional artist.  I have made no money from drawing, even though my artwork has been published before.  I have been given this talent by God not to be famous and wealthy, but to be a better teacher and a better storyteller.

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December 29, 2015 · 4:09 pm

Home Stretch

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I have almost reached the end of my trek, my year-long goal of posting something every single day of 2015.  I have hopes of finding something profound to say.  That’s what a wizard does, right?  He provides wisdom and wit.  I am not saying my magic is nearly used up.  My cauldron is still boiling and full of eye of newt and gingerbread bat-wings.  I can still weave a few spells from it.  In fact, one of the effects of writing regularly and in a sustained manner is the priming of the pump, enabling me to more readily produce the magic liquids from the very depths of the well.  If I can keep breathing and limping forward, I will write many more good things.  I am not bragging here.  It is just a fact.  Practice empowers the sorcery.  But I also need to slow down and have a break… or two… or twelve.  I will not stop writing.  But I will post less because I will be putting more of my words into my fiction.  I have several unfinished novels to move forward, to shape, to mold, to breathe life into.  There is a necromancy there that cannot be ignored if we are to avoid the results of Victor Frankenstein’s Promethean follies.

space cowboy23 I have given you a picture Paffooney today of the tapestry created by the town of Rowan, Iowa for its centennial in 2002.  I consider Rowan my home town.  I was not born there, but it is the scene of most of my childhood.  It shaped most of who I am and how I am and what I am.  It is the scene of most of my fiction because that’s where the most valuable treasures of Truth are hidden, near the wishing wells of our youth.  I keep it on my bedroom wall because, not only do Pooh and Fozzie like it to be there, it is a beautiful thing to look at and reflect upon.  It keeps what is most important in my life in focus.  I have a lot of physical pain from my six incurable diseases, and pain makes the focus blur at times.  But pain is also the source of what wit and wisdom I have to offer.  I will continue to contemplate and write and think and create… and draw.  I will continue to post at least a portion of the results here.  I do desire to make some money with my writing, but that is only a secondary concern.  I am not really writing for the people who know me in real life.  They already know me and made up their minds about me long ago.  They might read this and that and recognize something of themselves, but they are not the ones I am speaking to at this moment.  I am talking in prose to those who see my ideas for the very first time with new eyes, no preconceived notions about me.  It is for them, the readers I do not personally know, that my magic spells are cast in words.

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December 28, 2015 · 4:53 pm

Pick a Pack of Pictures

As an artist wannabee I have always done the magazine-clipping picture-file thing.  I still have scrapbooks and folders and even bags full of old pictures.  And, of course, the internet makes the whole thing so much easier that my picture files on my laptop are bulging at the seams.  I am going to show you just one of my fer-instances, the unsorted catch-all part of my Miscellaneous File.

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These are not sorted, not source-referenced, not investigated for copyrights… just snipped and clipped from Google and Pinterest and Facebook and etc., etc., etc.

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Here’s one of the wisest pieces of the wisdom puzzle I have ever run across;

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Like any collage, this one has it’s deeper meanings if you think about how you can connect the many unconnectable things in it.

You may have noticed that I like gifs because they add movement to the pictures.  But like salt, if you put too much in the soup… it becomes seawater.

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in the wild

This, of course, is not every picture in the file… not even every picture in this one small part of one file.  But you have enough of my stolen goodies here to get a very good psychological profile of the thief himself.  I don’t sell any of this stuff as being my own intellectual property.  It certainly is not.  It did not even belong to the thieves I stole them from.  But when I pick a pack of pictures, it does reveal a little of the peculiarity of the pilfering picker.

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December 27, 2015 · 6:12 pm

The Force Awakens (with tornadoes thrown in for excitement)

Star_Wars

At long last I got to see it, another thrilling Star Wars movie.  I couldn’t wait for it to reach the dollar movie theater where I could actually afford it, so I saved up my money to take the family to the theater in Valley View Mall off LBJ in Dallas. (This is a doomed and dying mall that no one ever goes to, so the tickets cost only half as much as elsewhere… but it was still necessary to go an hour early to get tickets before it sold out.)  I have seen every single Star Wars movie within the first two weeks of its run, dating back to the original Star Wars which I saw in college at Ames, Iowa in 1977.  And I confess to loving every minute of every one of the movies.  I even like Jar Jar Binks as a character, which gets me kicked out of the Serious Star Wars Aficionado Club for reasons I still don’t understand.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Ph: Film Frame ©Lucasfilm 2015

I was predisposed to passionately love this movie.  And I understand why the critics are saying that it is the exact same plot as the first Star Wars movie, Episode IV; A New Hope.   I am not going to review this movie here because I could not do it without those dreadful spoilers that I had to duck for weeks in everything I read about the movie.  Things happen in this movie that directly parallel the first movie, and that means an unexpected death that tore my heart out as much as when Vader kills Obi Wan Kenobi in the original.  Over time, through movies and books and role-playing games, these characters have become real people to me.  I care deeply about what happens to them.  I almost had to care deeply about what happened to us as well.

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Yesterday was a bad-weather day in Texas.  Tornadoes ripped through the Dallas area  last night.  Eight people were killed as three different funnel clouds touched down and did damage in the area.  As we left the theater and started out for the restaurant where we would get a meal, a tornado warning started ringing on our cell phones and the tornado siren started blaring.  My sister-in-law and her family, visiting from San Antonio, took refuge in the mall we had just left.  They told us that the theaters on the top floor of the mall were evacuated as they sheltered there.  If we hadn’t gone to a matinee, we would’ve been interrupted during the movie.  As it was, we made it to Chili’s Restaurant just ahead of the wind and rain.  We had dinner while the rain poured down, and the Independence Bowl on the restaurant televisions kept getting interrupted by weather coverage like you see above.  We watched the danger zones creep by on three sides of us as we ate burgers and tilapia  in a glassed-in restaurant.  Needless to say, our relatives were unable to join us as they cowered back at Valley View Mall.  The after-movie party and discussion proved to be almost as thrilling an adventure as the movie itself.

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But I simply can’t help myself.  No line or threat of sell-out or adverse weather condition is going to come between me and a Star Wars Movie.  I loved it.  And if I’m still alive when the next one comes out, I’m watching that one too… no matter what.  I love Star Wars!

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December 26, 2015 · 4:31 pm

Roses at Christmas Time

When bad things happen, we can usually make something good out of them.  I have always believed this.  It is Midwestern pragmatism in action.  Hail destroyed the crops?  Martial your resources for the next growing season, or change from a farmer to something else more profitable.  There is always a way forward, even if you have to learn to be tougher and tighten the belt, or next year’s food supply depends on the farmer in the next county.  Global warming is threatening to cook us in our own juices?  Well, this year our confused roses in the yard are blooming like it was Springtime.  The part of the wheel at the bottom, crushed against the pavement, rises to the top again as we move forward on the bicycle of human life.

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All of these roses have bloomed during the Christmas holiday this year when temperatures sank no lower than the 50’s and got as high as 77 degrees.  It recalls a recent year when dorky daffodils poked their yellow heads out of the ground in January only to be murdered by snowstorm a week later.  Will these roses be subjected to the same fate?  Robert Herrick says, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”  We will pragmatically enjoy them while they are here, no matter what happens.  I have been writing a science fiction novel about environmental and political Armageddon.  It is set on another planet, but that planet stands in for Earth in my book.  But the point is that the universe goes on even if we are dumb enough to destroy ourselves by pillaging the natural world.  Yet, I don’t believe that will happen.  I see movement towards renewable energy, and political change for the better is in the wind.  In the end, I think humanity will dig down deep for that magical force we all possess.  We will be able to change for the better when we are forced to.  I don’t expect to live to see it.  I don’t figure I have another whole decade left to live, and the course we are on won’t be decided before 2050… probably.  But, all speculation aside, I am here now to enjoy roses blooming at Christmastime… and to share that rare feeling with you.

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