Tag Archives: paffooney

September 2, 2016 · 3:46 pm

Rise of the Bargain Bin Goon – Part 2

The vile Greek God of computer malfunctions, Sparkensputter Failtolodicuss, put his curse on this post yesterday as I almost had it completed.  He waved his dead skunk, the symbol of his unique power, and made WordPress delete my work and instantly save the changes.  I did some cussing and vowed to try and reassemble the post today.  It was intended to be a continuation of Action Figure Cartoons, starring Captain Action.  We shall see if Sparkensputter manages to thwart me again today.  He is hell at thwarting.

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So here is a brief and goofy explanation of what has happened so far.  Captain Carl Action and the Action Guy Action Team defeated the evil Dr. Evil as he tried to take over Mickey’s library.  You can find that whole mess in Mickey’s vault by clicking here.

Captain Carl Action not only defeated the evil Dr. Evil, he removed and stole Dr. Evil’s evil removable brain.  So Emperor Ming of Mongo, an evil incarnation of the evil Dr. Evil, came up with a plan to retrieve the brain by un-boxing one of Mickey’s mint-in-box bargain bin dolls… er, action figures.  You can review that whole mess here.

So, that brings us to today’s episode in the seemingly endless story of the sequel of a seemingly endless story.

Captain Carl Action has taken the evil brain of the evil Dr. Evil to the Action Guy Action Team Headquarters in the Fortress of Ineptitude, located on top of a useless computer in Mickey’s studio.

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As seen in this dramatic scene, you can probably tell that the Action Guy Action Team Headquarters is run by the Captain Action Council, made up of Captain Action in his Flash Gordon costume, the mint-in-box Captain Victor Action, and the vintage Captain Action in his Steve Canyon costume.  You can also probably tell by Steve Canyon’s goofy brain-eating bug comment that none of them are any brighter than Captain Carl Action.  They have all decided to rely on the dolls of Mickey’s big-headed dolls collection.  That decision also reeks of lack of brightness.

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Captain Carl Action has once again delegated primary responsibility for the situation to a group of dolls who are very good at guarding Crackerjacks.  It was fortunate that DC Comics recently released a new set of DC Super Hero Girls to attract Mickey’s collecting OCD.  It meant that big-headed Supergirl was available now to be an actual super-powered guardian.  Still, she had to find a strategy that would succeed.  So she turned to her crackerjack team for advice.

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Now, I hate to second-guess Supergirl, but why is she asking an evil bunny for advice?  And how did an evil bunny even get on to a gig like being part of the big-headed dolls’ crackerjack team?

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Shelf of Severed Heads?!!!?  That doesn’t sound right.

 

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Oh, my!  This is really not looking good for our heroes.  Stay tuned until next time… whenever the heck that is… same batty time, same batty channel.  And phooey on you,  Sparkensputter Failtolodicuss!

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September 1, 2016 · 3:30 pm

Spitzen Sparkin Time Again

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Today I need to take some deep breaths.  My computer betrayed me just now.  I had been working on today’s intended post for a week with pictures and posing dolls and writing dialogue.  Then, as I was one more panel from the end, the computer pulled another one of its malfunctioning fits.  In a matter of two seconds it highlighted everything I had written on the WordPress writer, deleted it, and saved the changes.  This is now the seventh time the computer has done this.  And I have gotten used to it enough that I have bits and pieces of the work saved.  I can re-construct the piece for tomorrow.  But I was almost angry enough to dash the stupid word-munching machine against the far wall.  So I need calming thoughts.

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Here is a recent picture of a visitor to the park across the street.  A snowy egret… well, in Texas, more properly called a cattle egret.  I snapped this picture while walking the dog.  Jade the dog did not even spook the thing, since she is littler than it is and timid of birds with glaring yellow eyes.  I didn’t realize I had a use for this picture until now.

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Calming thoughts are doubly necessary today.  While I was composing my post, and ignorantly being unaware that my computer was about to eat it, I got a phone call from Page Publishing.  They have looked over the manuscript for Magical Miss Morgan, and have approved it for publication.  Of course, this is not only not a publisher that pays anything up front, they also require the author to invest money in the book’s production.  But they did tell me they do consider using the author’s own artwork for the cover.  And I do have credit again for the first time in three years, at least until Bank of America bankrupts me with their lawsuit.  The dawn photos I put into this post are particularly appropriate.  Calming thoughts with a bit of turbulence in the background.  And the computer tried twice to delete this while I wrote it.  But I foiled it each time.

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August 30, 2016 · 3:13 pm

Stardusters… Canto 10

Galtorr Primex 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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August 25, 2016 · 3:30 pm

The Dog is in the Doghouse

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My name is Jade Beyer, and I’m the loyal, lovable family dog (at least, I hope I still am).  I am writing today’s post because Dad is mad at me.  And I should point out that it takes a lot of effort for me write Dad’s post for him.  I can’t really type with my paws because I hit lots of letters all at once when I do that.  I found a way, however, to roll up my tongue and punch a single letter at a time.  And the dog slobber  only makes the computer spark and fritz a little bit more than usual.  So he should really appreciate me for going to all that effort.

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You see, yesterday, after lunch was over, I got up on the table to look for left-over people food.   Eating enough people food turns you into a people, as I’m sure you already knew.  Really, it’s true!  Otherwise, how could a family dog like me learn to read and write so good?  Anyway, while looking for people food, I found a clear plastic thing in the shape of Henry’s teeth next to his empty plate.  It smelled like Henry.  And I love Henry.  So, I chewed on the thing that smelled just like Henry because I love him.  How was I supposed to know that a new retainer costs $350?  People pay ridiculous amounts of money for stuff that Henry just puts in his own mouth anyway.  It doesn’t justify my family re-telling that awful story about when Uncle Maligaya was a boy in the Philippines and he let his friends talk him into cooking and eating the family dog.  I really don’t like that story.

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A portrait of me as the people I’m meant to be

And this morning, Dad got back from driving the Princess to her new school all grumpy because of traffic and stupid Texas drivers who don’t know how to signal for a lane change but definitely know how to cut you off in the drop-off lane.  I offered to drive for him.  But he’s still mad at me.  And he reminded me that the last time I drove the car, I accidentally ran over three cats.  (I told him the reason for that is because I have no thumbs and can’t hold the steering wheel properly.  But that might not be entirely true.  Mr. Tinkles is evil and deserved to die.)  So, we settled on me writing his post for today so he could have time to call the orthodontist and make an appointment to get a new retainer made.  And if it doesn’t turn out to be any good as a piece of literature, well, it’s because I am dog, and apparently not a very good  dog.  (I’m really not clear on what “I’m going to make dog burgers out of that @#$%&! dog!” actually means.)

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Filed under family, family dog, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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August 24, 2016 · 3:48 pm

The Many People That Are Me

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Yes, I am a wizard.  That is a complicated thing to say.  It is complicated because a wizard has to be a wise man, and wisdom has to begin with the idea that you know practically nothing about anything… but you can find out.  So one version of me has to be my wizard D&D character, the wizard Eli Tragedy.  This is because I know practically nothing about anything… but I am willing to not be stupid and look stuff up before I tell you anything and pretend it is a wise thing to say.

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I have been thinking about who I am because I want to re-do my About the Author page.   And that leads to the difficulty of explaining who Mickey actually is.  You see, I am actually lots of different people in my head.  Mickey is the cartoonist, the humorist, the clown.  He is not the every-day me.  He is the goofy and foofy and lovey-to-drawie part of me.  And yes, I know some of those are not real words.  Mickey is like that.  He speaks Mickian Goof Speak.  I have no control over that part of him.  I am not certain where this Mickey-part of my soul originated, but it may be the result of too much TV when I was a kid.

And of course there is the Teacher-Me, Reluctant Rabbit, the person who stood in front of groups of twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-olds for three decades and tap-danced, told stories, stood on my head, and begged them to internalize at least a lesson or two of what I tried to teach them.

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Teacher

And the wizard part of me was just barely wise enough to realize that a teacher can open doors, but you can’t shove a kid through.  They have to take the critical learning step themselves.  They have to want to learn something.  But even though they actually do the learning themselves, they will come back to me in later years saying, “Oh, thank you, you taught me so much!” when really all I did was be a guide on the side and stayed out of their way.

And, of course, there is the Cowboy Me.  I live in Texas.  I was a Belmond Bronco in high school, but I became a Cotulla Cowboy for 24 years of my teaching career.  I ended up as a Naaman Forest Ranger.  I have worn the hat a lot in my life, being as much of a straight shooter as the Shakiest Gun In The West can be, always trying to shoot the six-guns out of the bad guy’s hands rather than shoot people.

So how do I explain a thing like that?  Probably the way I just did it (ironically).  I should use Paffoonies I have created over time and waffle about stupid stuff that might make people laugh when they realize how self-contradictory it is.  And I should say it like I mean it… because I probably do.

 

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August 23, 2016 · 2:20 pm

Stardusters… Canto 9

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Nine – Aboard Wing One Under the Cloud Cover

“What do we know about the place below us?” asked Biznap.

“The continent is called as a whole Pincara Bolo,” said Starbright, reading from her monitor.  “In Galactic English that means the deadly wastelands.  According to the Pathfinder’s Geophysical Guidebook it is one of the most densely populated places on this high-population world.  The city directly below us is the regional capitol known as Kabiss Pincaralay, the Ruined Palaces.”

“Why do they call it an awful name like that?” asked Farbick.

“If they are like us, they call it that because they were too stupid to call it by a better name,” answered Starbright.  “The Guidebook says they are a very warlike people and their mega-structures in this city have had to be rebuilt and repaired more times than anyone could keep track of.”

A break in the orange-brown cloud-cover revealed the city beneath them.  It was an endless maze of gutted structures, craters, and smoldering ruins.  There really didn’t seem to be a habitable structure anywhere.

“Life signs?” questioned Biznap.

“Scanners indicate there are only a scarce few small life-forms.  None seem to be any larger than a Skoog Monkey,” said one of the two crewman whose names Biznap had not bothered to learn.    Skoog Monkeys were small furry primates from the planet Misko Skoogalia, a part of the Telleron Empire that had been easily colonized because it had no intelligent creatures on it.  Skoog Monkeys were green-furred and just smart enough to make pleasant pet animals.  They also came in handy as a quick snack on long journeys.

“Odd,” said Biznap.  “One would expect a capitol city with so many buildings to be better inhabited than that.  Surely they are masking their presence from our scanners, somehow.”

“Really, I doubt that,” said the stupid cadet.  “This planet is listed as Tech Level Nine just like the planet Earth.  It is a society just beginning to discover the capability of space travel.  We are Tech Level Fourteen, and should be invisible to their primitive detection devices.  They can’t have developed much beyond primitive sonar and radar capability.”

“What?”

“Sound waves and radio waves bounced off objects for the purposes of detection,” supplied Starbright to the Commander.

“There!  Straight ahead!” said Farbick.  “I see a big, intact, domed structure with what appear to be electric lights.  That has to mean some kind of people.”

Biznap looked and saw it too.  It was an impressively large structure, larger than things like football stadiums back on Earth.  Usually Tellerons tried to avoid such things as population centers, but if they had any hope of finding a population at all, it would probably be there.

“Okay,” said Biznap, “Land near there.  We have to risk contact sooner or later.  It might as well be here and now.”

*****

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August 22, 2016 · 3:22 pm

Return of the School Daze

Today, school starts, and my two over-large babies are toddling off to two different campuses on opposite sides of the city.  My wife, of course, is still teaching and has a job to get to, so the responsibility for getting happy little kids to happy little schools (more accurately, big, nasty-smelling gathering spots for belligerent and borderline delinquent teenagers) is mine alone.

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Seriously, it was not a good way to start the day.  I got out of bed feeling moderately ill as the mold spores in the air have been heavy enough to really give the gift of swelling to my COPD restricted lungs.  I grabbed breakfast, an egg burrito with salsa, and quickly discovered the salsa had at least three ingredients in it that I am allergic to (not fatally allergic like a peanut allergy, just GAWD-I-HAVE-TO-VOMIT!!! allergic).

I got in the car after delivering my breakfast to the upstairs toilet, and was only a pale shade of green still, when wifey calls the Princess and I, three blocks down the road, and makes us come back for a first-day-of-school photo, which she now possesses ten of, kindergarten through ninth grade.  So, still determined to get there early, a new school that I had never taken a kid to before, we immediately ran into a pile of rush-hour traffic on Josey Lane.  The road crew had put out cones to indicate another mindless digging project so they could laugh at fuming, frustrated motorists while they stood by the side of the road and had donuts and coffee.  The school is less than a mile from my house, but the traffic jam was easily going to last for an hour or more and make us late, so we executed plan B.  I used Google Maps to chart a route that was only three times as long, and we got there in about fifteen minutes.

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But the school parking lot was a worse design for drop-offs than the one I had been teaching at for seven years before I retired.  It had loads of entry access, but limited exits.  In other words, it is a place for parents and old elephants to go when they are ready to die.  It might’ve been easier to get out of if there hadn’t been so many old junk cars with human skeletons in them dispersed throughout the parking lot.  45 minutes later, I got out, but not before the engine overheated on my little Ford pony.  And I just had a new coolant pump and thermostat put in a week ago.  Ah, well… this is going to be an interesting year.

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Filed under autobiography, daughters, education, family, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, pessimism

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August 21, 2016 · 4:33 pm

The Family That Slays Trolls Together…

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As a family, we play Dungeons and Dragons.  Well, all of us, that is, except Mom.  It’s basically against her religion and means the Jehovah’s Witness version of Hell for us. (Which is a spiritual condition where God refuses to talk to you, and play checkers with you, and then you die.)  But let’s not discuss that here.  I don’t need her to start thinking about reasons to divorce me.  She accepts that it is a thing we do and like and keep mostly to ourselves.  (I just rolled a 15 on a twenty-sided dice to succeed in that charm-enemy spell and avert disaster.)

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As a family we have chosen to use the Eberron campaign available from Wizards of the Coast, the company that now publishes all official D&D stuff.  It is a medieval/Renaissance sort of setting where magic is every-day common and takes the place of science in the real world.

I get to be game master and creator of the basic plots and stories.  My three kids, Dorin, Henry, and the Princess are the player characters who interact with the world and determine the outcomes of the adventures through the rolling of Dungeon Dice.

I want to assure you at this point that my eldest son does not actually have a watermelon for a head.  Maybe metaphorically, but he is easily the smartest and most likely to be a leader of my three kids.  His character routinely pursues ideas like replacing his arms with magical metal arms, or grafting additional arms on his body.  He has chosen the phoenix to be the symbol on his personal flag and coat of arms, but his artifice roll to create the magical ship’s flag turned out to make it look more like a pigeon that someone set on fire.  (You have to watch out for those rolls of “1” on a 20-sided dice.)

Henry, my middle child, likes to play a halfling.  The little hobbit-like character is the one called upon to disarm all the tiger traps and poison-arrow traps that line the dungeon tunnels ahead.  He is a problem-solver in real life.  And he wants to be an architect.  In D&D games, he is often the first one to run up to danger and look it in the blood-shot eye.

Every D&D group needs a wizard or some other magic-user.  Ours has Mira, the Kalashtar mind- wizard.  My daughter’s character can use mind powers to float in the air, pick up and throw things with her mind alone, and figure out ways to do things using as little physical effort as possible.  Oh, and she loves to eat chocolate.  (The character, I mean… or is it actually the daughter?  I don’t know.  It is sometimes hard to tell them apart.)

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In our last adventure, we went to investigate the evil doings going in Evernight Keep, a castle in the country of Aundair.  We were able to not only defeat the evil mind-flayer, Dr. Zorgo, who had turned everyone into golems in the castle, but also to win the castle and the title of the Duke of Passage.  Now that they own a castle, my little band of adventurers will have to defend it, and I know of one old game master who will definitely throw all kinds of evil challenges at them.

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August 20, 2016 · 6:49 pm

Tenfold…

Once again my computer betrayed me and wiped out three paragraphs in this article, instantly saving the changes so that I had to start over with nothing but the title and a lower case letter “u”.  Soon the danged machine will probably explode scattering my words all around the bedroom and getting random punctuation in my chicken soup.

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I was trying to write a post about the difficulties of becoming an “author” when my computer decided to ironically make it harder.  And this goofy notion that I know anything at all about the topic came about because of a random WordPress comment that appeared on one of my old posts.  I was told by the commentator that I had several posts that were good enough to go viral, and that if I wanted to make that happen and improve my “brand”, then all I had to do was Google “Jemensso’s tricks”.

Challenge accepted.  I know how to Google stuff.  I learned by being a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy nutcase.  (Did you know that you can not only find numerous well-argued sources that indicate we never actually went to the moon, and only faked the moon landings in Hollywood, but also visual confirmation that we actually did land with high resolution photos of the various landing sites taken from space telescopes this month?  And those photos even show the tracks where the moon buggies traveled through the sands of the moon.)  So, I first discovered that my blog is not the only blog that got this message.  I found a plethora of them, some in the exact same words.  And then I located this informative page HERE.

It would seem to indicate that any benefits you can get will cost you at least some money.  And that is the biggest irony of being a writer who foolishly imagines that he can become something called an “author”.   You end up having to pay money instead of earning it.  Each of my two published novels were done with different publishers.  The first was a squirrelly print-on-demand company that doesn’t charge you to print your novel.  They don’t employ any editors or marketers either.  It is a good way to get student work into book form, and parents will gleefully shell out the money for a copy of their darlings’ writing in book form, but it is no way to get a novel published.  I could have sent them a 200 page manuscript of monkey-typing, and they would have put it in book form.

The second book, Catch a Falling Star, was done with I-Universe, a publisher that is now a branch of Penguin Books.  But it is basically an Indie publisher.  I had to invest my own money in the creation of the book.  I had to pay the editors, proofreaders, and marketers that I got to work with.  I ended up with a product that made me proud, but that I really couldn’t sell.  I am still more than $6,500 short of recouping my investment.  I do not recommend that path, unless, like me, you really crave the experience of working with competent, professional editors.  It was worth it to me to do it once.

But now I am out of money and out of options.  I led with a banner that shows I have four complete and unpublished manuscripts that I want to do something with.  I am busy with three more that are past the 15,000-word threshold… where you have to consider the work for completion because it is, at that point, almost half done.  Where will I go with them?  What will I do with them?  The answers will, I hope, eventually appear here in this goofy blog.  And I am sure they will probably surprise us both.

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Filed under autobiography, blog posting, dreaming, feeling sorry for myself, humor, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, work in progress, writing

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August 19, 2016 · 3:38 pm

Running In Place

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Sometimes, when you have been writing up a storm, you have to linger for a moment and rest in the storm’s eye.  That’s what today’s post is.  It includes a goofy metaphor that is basically all wet.  It has a picture of my hoarding disorder collection of Monster High dolls… and some of my countless videos… I’m a movie collector and hoarder too.  And there is not a lot of research or hard new thinking in this post.  It is basically a random warble to fill a daily post, since I have posted every day now for a year and nine months.  At 60 and in poor health, I probably don’t have a lot of time left to get the words out.  But I have a lot of words still inside me.  You may have to put up with a few days of babbling here and there.  But I promise, the babbling will be quirky and excessively goofy, so it won’t be totally boring.  Running in place doesn’t get you anywhere, but it is still good exercise.

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