Tag Archives: life

Things I Know For Certain

I think a lot of thoroughly thoughtful thuggish thoughts that build and build and build up an idea, and then turn around and knock it all down.  Let me demonstrate by knocking down that title right off the bat.  Rene DesCartes in the early 1600’s said, “Cogito Ergo Sum”, and he thereby totally disrupted the world as we knew it.  Didn’t get that?  Let me translate.  He said, “Je pense, donc je suis.”  Still didn’t help?  Okay, here’s the English, “I think, therefore I am.”  In other words, the one thing that I know for sure is that I am thinking this particular thought at this particular time.  If I am thinking, and I know I am, I must be here and I must be real.  So there is one thing I know for certain.  But do I know anything else for certain?  Uh-oh.  How do I know anything?  I have to rely on my senses.  And my senses lie to me all the time.  I am partially color blind, so I don’t see the world the same way you do.  I don’t see things in black and white, like Great Grandma Hinckley did in her 90’s, but the colors look different to my eyes than they do to yours and I will never know what things look like to you.  Forget politicians and all other people who tell lies, my own eyes lie to me constantly.  So can I know anything for sure?  Of course not.  All I have are firm beliefs based on imperfect senses and best guesses at what is true.  So what I am actually talking about is a list of potential essay ideas that I am merely asserting as true based on my imperfect goofy thinking of thoughtful thuggish thoughts.

Idea #1 that I think is certainly possibly maybe true; My brain was taught and I was raised to adulthood by the movies I saw when I was young.  I want to talk about this at length in another post.  The video is by a guy who was a kid in the 80’s, and he has some really awesome movies to offer as a way to delineate his rise to adulthood.

My list includes the movies of my boyhood seen in the Belmond Theater and on our old black and white Motorola TV.  My list of movies that raised me includes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and The Wizard of Oz.

Idea #2; Animals are people too.

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I mean, as a writer for young adults, I know for a fact that animals are relevant as characters.  They have a point of view, feelings, reactions, and complex lives that people rarely pay attention to.  I have to write about this some time in the future too.

Idea #3; The worst things that happen to us in our lives, are also the best things that happen.  Wow!  What a difficult essay topic.  But I not only think it, I can prove it… at least to myself.  But can I write about it?  Time will tell.

Idea #4; Silly thoughts and serious thoughts are two sides of the same coin.  And this will be particularly difficult to think about if thoughts are literally coins.  That would mean that my head is full of metal, and I know several people who would read that sentence and shout, “I knew it all along!”  Fortunately they are all too sensible to read this far in one of my blog posts.

So, at 600 words I still have lots more to say.  But people with metal in their heads often talk way too much, so my concluding sentence will be simply; “I promise to shut up for now.”

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Filed under foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney, philosophy, strange and wonderful ideas about life, writing, writing humor

The Writing Imperative

I am a writer because I write. I write because I have to. I have to because somebody has to control the words. People are made of words.  Their identity, their inner self, their reason for existence… all made of words.  The very thoughts in their heads are… words. If I want to control the words I am made of, then I must be the writer who writes his own story. I don’t want anyone else to write the words that essentially become me.  Do you? Purple words Of course, authors create characters.  Even autobiographers create characters.  Carl Sandburg could no more make his words into Lincoln than a bird can make its tweets into a cat.   Sandburg can, however, help us to understand Lincoln as Carl Sandburg understands the words that are Lincoln. Lincoln probably did not have the words for “bikini girls” in his head when he wrote those words in the second quote.  But somebody thought that the picture would help us understand the words.  By all accounts, Lincoln was not a particularly happy man leading a particularly happy life.  But he showed us the meaning of his words when he stood firm against the strong winds of harsh words and bad ideas in a terrible time.  And he was as happy about it as he made up his mind to be. Miltie223408 I, too, have not lived a particularly happy life.  But I was always the “teacher with a sense of humor” in the classroom, and students loved me for it.  Funny people are often not happy people.  But they make themselves out of funny words because laughter heals pain, and jokes are effective medicine.  And so I choose to write comedy novels.  Novels that are funny even though they are about hard things like freezing to death, losing loved ones, being humiliated, being molested, and fear of death.  Magical purple words can bring light to any darkness.  I am the words I choose to write in my own story.  The words not only reveal me, they make me who I am.  And it is up to me to write those words.  Other people might wish to do it for me.  But they really can’t.  The words are for me alone to write. Green words And so it is imperative that I write my words in the form of my novels, my essays, and this goofy blog post.  I am writing myself to life, even if no one ever reads my writing.

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Synesthesia (Part One; French Blue Monday)

This link will help you understand Synesthesia

Francois spotlight

Yes, Mondays are blue.  Specifically French blue.  Every day of the week has its own color.  Sunday is golden yellow, Tuesday is a yellow-ochre,  Wednesday is indigo blue and sometimes changes to blue violet, Thursday is burnt orange, and Friday is solid wood brown, and of course Saturday is rich pure red while Mondays are not just any blue… they are French blue.  I learned the names of these colors from being a painter and using oil paints.  I experience these colors every week and they help me maintain the calendar in my stupid old head.  I began to realize when I first heard about the colors of the wind in the Disney movie Pocahontas that there was something to this everyday thing, something different in the way I see the world.  I have in the last few years learned that this condition has a name.  It is called synesthesia.

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It has been suggested to me by more than a few people that I don’t really perceive the world the same way “normal people do”.  When I was growing up, and going to school, I never had trouble remembering to capitalize the first word in a sentence.  I did however, have a great deal of difficulty with capital letters on nouns.  Looking back on that difficulty now, I can say without a doubt that I was having trouble not because I didn’t know the difference between proper nouns and common nouns.  It was because things like the word “dog” or “chair” had to begin with the right color.  Dogs are blue when you are talking about the color of the letters in the word.  But small “d” is blue-green, not true blue.  It doesn’t fit as well as the dark blue capital “D”.  And chairs are orange-red when you write them down, while the small “c” appears light green by itself.

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Sundays are Sun-days, and that’s why they are golden yellow.

I am told that most synesthetes are taken by surprise when they learn that they are seeing things differently than other people do.  I certainly was.  I always got funny looks whenever I described Thursdays as orange, or the month of November as sky blue.  My classmates in 4th grade thought I was nuts… of course, it wasn’t just for the orange Thursdays thing.  I was not a normal kid in any real sense of the word.  I always suspected that if I could look at the world through other people’s eyes, I would probably see the color green as what I called red, or that glowing halo that surrounded things when organ music played in the Methodist church would no longer be there.  But once I learned how synesthesia works I knew it was true.   The visual part of the brain can be scanned to show activity, and lights up on the scanner as if the brain is seeing bright colors when Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is being played while the subject of the scan is actually blindfolded.  I am told that synesthesia is more common in left-handed girls.  My daughter, the Princess, tells me that she also sees color on printed numbers and letters.  She is left handed and also gifted at drawing.  I suspect she inherited the synesthesia from me.

Creativity

Synesthesia probably explains what this nonsense is all about.

Now, I acknowledge the fact that my synesthesia is self-diagnosed and not proven by any of the methods the articles I have read about the condition talked about.  But my personal experiences always seem to fall in line with descriptions of letter/number/color combinations and music/color combinations that I have read about.  And if I do have it, it is not the same as any of my six incurable diseases.  It is not a bad condition to have.  In an artistic sense, it might actually be a good thing.  I could use some good for a change.  Good doesn’t usually come from weirdness… not my weirdness, anyway.  (Oh, and capital “G” is lime green… as is the word Goodness).

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Nutzy Nuts

Things are not what they seem. Life throws curve balls across the plate ninety percent of the time. Fastballs are rare. And fastballs you can hit are even rarer. But if Life is pitching, who is the batter? Does it change the metaphor and who you are rooting for if the batter is Death?

If you think this means that I am planning on dying because of the bird flu pandemic, well, you would be right. Of course, I am always planning for death with every dark thing that bounces down the hopscotch squares of the immediate future. That’s what it means to be a pessimist. No matter what bad thing we are talking about, it will not take ME by surprise. And if I think everything is going to kill me, sooner or later I have to be right… though, hopefully, much later.

I keep seeing things that aren’t there. Childlike faces keep looking at me from the top of the stairs, but when I focus my attention there, they disappear. And I know there are no children in the house anymore since my youngest is now legally an adult. And the chimpanzee that peeked at me from behind the couch in the family room was definitely not there. I swear, it looked exactly like Roddy McDowell from the Planet of the Apes movies, whom I know for a fact to be deceased. So, obviously, it has to be Roddy McDowell’s monkey-ghost. I believe I may have mentioned before that there is a ghost dog in our house. I often catch glimpses of its tail rounding the corner ahead of me when my own dog is definitely behind me. And I am sure I shared the facts before that Parkinson’s sufferers often see partial visions of people and faces (and apparently dogs) that aren’t really there, and that my father suffers from Parkinson’s Disease. So, obviously it is my father and not me that is seeing these things… He’s just using my eyeballs to do it with.

But… and this is absolutely true even if it starts with a butt… the best way to deal with scary possibilities is to laugh at them. Jokes, satire, mockery, and ludicrous hilarity expressed in big words are the proper things to use against the fearful things you cannot change. So, this essay is nothing but a can of mixed nutz. Nutzy nuts. And fortunately, peanut allergies are one incurable and possibly fatal disease I don’t have. One of the few.

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Playing with the Butterflies of Good News

Well, our house will have to have some major repairs to retain insurance because we live in the southern part of Tornado Alley. Climate change has greatly increased our ability to have all our possessions wiped out overnight. And having to pay for the replacement of the entire house is bad for the insurance company’s ongoing ability to make huge profits off of our large monthly premiums. I am so sad for them. Especially since they are putting this pressure on to gain an excuse for canceling our insurance while retaining all previously paid premiums.

I didn’t die last night, however. And the high winds warning is set to expire in two more hours from writing this particular sentence. Big Bad Wolf hasn’t yet huffed and puffed hard enough to blow our house down. So, maybe I am good and things are generally good.

I have overcome my health problems too for the moment. The urinary tract infection I thought I had is not there anymore. I am not following the Jim Henson Road to Death… for now at least. The doctor did give me a final medication to stop the burning sensation that fooled me into thinking I was going to die. Humorously, it turns my pee blue.

I do have to pay taxes as soon as Spring Break is over. And the probability that the Trump Tax Cut, the gift that keeps on taking things away, will increase the amount of taxes the parasites known as retired teachers have to pay. I am almost at the point once again where I can’t afford to pay what more I will owe and will have to beg the government for monthly payments.

And when this week is over, my family, who left me behind on the Spring Break Trip to see Number Two Son at his Air Force base, will return so that I am no longer the only living thing left in the house (besides a handful of Norway rats and roof rats as well as at least two ghost dogs.) They didn’t leave me behind because they don’t like me very much, but because I had at least one doctor’s appointment to attend, partial dentures being made for me to chew tough foods with (like tapioca pudding,) and the fact that my arthritis prevents me from doing a car trip from Texas to Washington DC with any degree of comfort and an ability walk once we get there.

Everything is good news now. Times are at least better than they were.

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Return of the Train Man

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I was an aficionado of HO model trains as a kid.  I continued that horrendous fixation with 1/78th scale worlds long into my extended juvenile immaturity (I was an unmarried teacher of middle school students until 1995.)    Even after I was married, my wife allowed me, to a very limited degree, to continue to be a train man.

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I spent a good deal of time over the years building plastic model kits of buildings, painting and repainting plaster model buildings, and collecting engines, rolling stock, and trackside details.  Painting little 1/78th scale people is definitely an exercise for steady hands and a zen-like, highly focused mind.

But that all reached an impasse when we moved to the Dallas area.  I had to tear down my train layout, box up my trains, and put everything on hold until I had another place to build and create my HO model-train world.  So, while it was all boxed up and transported to first, a house that we rented from my brother-in-law, and then a house that we bought, it got shifted around and stacked inappropriately, and grandma put some really heavy items on top to crush and mangle my treasures.  It also spent a night outside in the rain when my brother-in-law’s water heater had to be replaced in the garage where everything was stored.  I was not a happy camper for a while.

Now, a decade later, I am still taking the tiny items and trying to glue the pieces back together.  I have basically given up trying to get the trains to run again.  But I can use the bits and pieces of Toonerville to make pictures like these.  It makes the art-parts of my psyche and soul a little happier.

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Old number 99 had to have the front part where the headlamp is located reattached and restored.  It gave me something to do this weekend while I was down with a bad back and breathing difficulties.  It would be neat to put the train table back together and get things set up once again, but there is no space, and no unlimited funds, and less and less time.  So for now, the train man comes back to me to rebuild in photographs and in my imagination.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains

The Survivor

Elf on Patrol

I am trying to bounce back.  Yesterday I survived the possible end of the world.  No heart attack.  No asteroid hitting the Earth.  But also no writing contest win.  A huge delay in the publication of my novel.  My writing world is in danger of expiring because my life is winding down to its finale, and I’m running out of time.  I can still do it, though.  I have come back from down and out before.

In 1983, I had a mole removed from my face.  It wasn’t a vanity-type thing.  Removing it wasn’t going to cure ugliness or anything.  But it had gotten larger and had a strange color change.  So, my ancient and doddering Czechoslovakian doctor removed it just to be sure.  As with any such removal, the excised tissue was sent to the lab for analysis.  Malignant melanoma in the very first stages.  At the time, the survival rate for such a cancer in Texas was less than fifty percent.  However, most cases were not discovered so early in the crisis.  I went back in for more surgery.  They ended up cutting a hole through my right cheek and stitching it back together again.  The new tissue underwent very close scrutiny, and it was determined that all the dangerous cells had been removed during the very first surgery.  No evidence anywhere of a creeping metastasizing cancer death.  It was decided that chemotherapy would only do harm and would not help anything.  So I got to keep my hair.  It eventually meant removing two more moles and three lumps, but they were all benign.  Cancer was fought off and beaten 42 years ago this month.  I am a cancer survivor.

I often marvel at the fact that I am still alive and still able to write.  I have had innumerable near misses.  Car accidents that didn’t happen by a matter of inches.  The skidding truck on the icy street in Iowa City missed the front tire of my bicycle by about three inches.  Facing down irrationally angry youths with weapons intending to strike out in anger, and somehow having the right words to calm them and prevent the tragedy.  One of them told me it was because he looked me in the eye and saw no fear there that he couldn’t do it, couldn’t strike me down.  By rights, I should be dead.  It is a supreme irony of life that an almost-atheist like me believes in guardian angels.

I don’t know what the ultimate goal is.  I don’t expect to be a wealthy published novelist like Stephen King.  I don’t know if it is even important that I break through the bookstore barriers and get my work on the shelves for a few paltry dollars.  It is really only important that I write.  This blog has become important to me because I have developed a small readership that actually reads and provides feedback.  I do occasionally reach the hearts of people I don’t even know.  And I have made friends and relatives a little bit misty.  I have written 849 posts, posting every single day of 2015 and every single day of fifteen months in a row.  I have written six complete novels and gotten two into print with an ISBN number and everything.  My writing, like me myself, exists, and it will survive.  I am a survivor.

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Dumb Times Get Really Dumb

The past two months have been a rollercoaster in the dark in a rail car that is barely set properly on the tracks. Every curve I didn’t see coming was a potential derailment and crash. A potential fatal crash.

President Pumpkinhead has been crashing and destroying government services left and right. My Medicare (which I am still paying increasingly high premiums for) is at risk of being totally cut, as is the Medicaid and Social Security that people more poverty stricken than me may lose. The military leadership has been overturned for less competent and lower-ranking officers who are more Pumpkinhead-friendly. The Department of Justice is now set up to unleash a revenge campaign, firing politically neutral officers, judges, and lawyers for less competent and more wishy-washy ones. Will they come for me? Probably not for a while. Big list. But eventually.

And my health woes have taken a darker turn. A broken crown that turned into a dangerously infected broken molar had to be extracted, along with a second broken molar. I ended up with a large dental bill that the dentist’s office tried to help me finance resulting in a credit denial that will stick me with a large bill I cannot pay. That started at the beginning of January and is finishing in the credit denial today. I also had a second serious infection of my urinary tract that required the heaviest possible antibiotics I could take without dying. That was overlapping some sort of flu-like virus and the passing of two, or possibly four, kidney stones. I am floored with lifeforce fully spent… but not quite dead.

Could any of this have been avoided? Any of this dumb stuff? I voted for the nice black lady who took over from the really old but really good President. So did my daughter. We didn’t want the Pumpkinhead to win. And I really would’ve liked Medicare to help me pay for necessary dental work, but you apparently have to fill out a long form by a certain date back in October as explained in a letter I never got in September. I have no idea where the other dumb stuff came from or how it could’ve been prevented.

So, I am now done complaining about all this dumb stuff. I will probably survive it. Maybe not. But probably. It would depend on where the rail car actually went off the rails resulting in a fatal crash I didn’t yet learn about.

,

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Doomscroll for no Gain

I had a terrible month in January. The dentist, in love with causing pain, yanked an infected and broken molar out of my head. The procedure lasted more than an hour beyond the usual time. That by itself put me out of business for January. But, two weeks into the month, my wife brought home a strain of regular flu from her teaching job and gave it to me. And as the flu was ending two weeks later, I passed at least two, and maybe four, kidney stones. Which immediately led to a severe urinary tract infection that had me taking the strongest antibiotic I have ever taken in my life. A fly tried to land on the top of my head. It immediately fell to the floor dead. The antibiotic was that strong. Now, tomorrow, it starts again. The dentist will yank out another broken molar on the other side of my stupid head.

So, I have been laid up and unable to do anything but draw, watch tv, and doomscroll.

The butterfly picture is loosely based on a photo of a spicebush swallowtail butterfly, turning brown into yellow for a very bumblebee vibe. the other two drawings were straight-up doodles drawn from a picture in my stupid brain. All three were enhanced by AI Mirror before publication. Arthritis in the fingers, you know.

But the doom-scrolling thing is an exercise in horror and crushing pains from liberal levels of empathy. Canadians are shocked and horrified that the Pumpkinhead President has declared economic warfare on them with 25% tariffs on everything imported from Canada. He also has the Danish President and the Mexican President preparing for war and trying desperate negotiations to turn away Pumpkin’s wrath.

I got to see a panicky little Hispanic girl crying and pleading because she came home from school to find that ICE had taken both her parents as undocumented immigrants. She was homeless and defenseless. And cruel white people who consider themselves superior to this little girl talked about how her parents got what they deserved for being criminals.

Make no mistake about it. Immigrants are NOT criminals. Being in this country without documents is a civil misdemeanor. The immigration system throws huge roadblocks in the way of immigrants who have the bad sense to choose to live in the wrong colored skin. My wife is an immigrant from the Philippines. After we were married, she lived in this country via green card for more than 25 years. That’s how hard it is unless you are from someplace white like Norway or England or Russia. At any point along the way she could have lost the green card for some technicality, and then she would’ve been in the same situation as the Hispanic girl’s parents. My kids have birthright citizenship like the Bozo in Chief has promised to de-citizenize.

He plans to do away with the Department of Education completely.

I find myself, as an atheist, praying to God after every doom-scrolling session that Pumpkinheads can have fatal strokes or heart attacks. And that a magic couch that can take revenge will eat the VP whole. And that the Speaker of the House sees a porn site on his son’s computer, which makes his flattop head explode. (That, of course, won’t kill him. Cockroaches can live without a head for weeks until they starve to death because they no longer have a mouth.)

I need to stop doom-scrolling.

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People All Have Worth

2nd Doctor  I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head.  And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome.  But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what.  That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be.  It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer.  The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.

But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful.  Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen.  There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward.  And people are not born evil.  The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another.  As a teacher you get to know every type that there is.  And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!)  Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica.  But the Doctor is right.  No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful!  Andrew

So let me show you a few old drawings of people.

Cute people like Andrew here.

Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.

Harker

Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.DSCN4448

Supe n Sherry_nOr young people who live and learn and hopefully love…

And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.

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And hope and dream and play and laugh…

And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…

And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…

Because God made them all for a reason…

even if we will never find out what that reason is.

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Filed under art my Grandpa loved, humor, Paffooney, philosophy