Tag Archives: paffooney

Doodle Burger

2040

Recently burger-I have been binging on drawing doodle-burgers.  Burger-I know that sounds a little bit off, but that is because it was written in Burger-burger-Speak-burger .  It-burger is easy to translate.  Burger-I have merely added the word-burger “burger”-burger to every noun-burger and pronoun-burger as either a suffix-burger or a burger-prefix.  So enjoy my recent burger-doodles and ignore my burger-burger prose-burger.

20160722_154518

This burger-doodle was drawn in the car-burger as burger-I have recently been visiting burger-family and have not had to do all my own driving-burger.  Burger-I drew it with pencil-burger and later went over it-burger with pencil-burger.  It-burger was inspired by a burger-guy that burger-I happened to see walking by in Belmond-burger.  It-burger is not a portrait-burger, but it-burger probably accurately reflects his inner-burger-burger-self.  Burger-Iowans are like that-burger.

20160722_154533

The burger-girl being hit on with flower-burgers by a burger-bunny-boy-burger was also drawn in the car-burger.  The longer burger-I look at it-burger, the more burger-I realize what a creepy cartoon-burger it-burger really is.

Burger-burger-Speak-burger is annoyingly hard to do.  And burger-I doubt that it-burger will ever be a commonly spoken language-burger.  But some fool-burgers taught themselves to speak Klingon-burger, didn’t burger-they?

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, cartoons, doodle, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink paffoonies, rabbit people, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Sunrise in Iowa

I still ain’t dead.  So I am still collecting pictures of sunrises.  Today I managed a sunrise picture, or two, or seven, at the family farm in Iowa, where my grandparents once lived, and my octogenarian parents now live.

20160720_063021

20160720_062735.jpg

20160720_063035

20160720_062748

20160720_063204

Thomas Wolfe famously wrote a book, You Can’t Go Home Again, but for all the clever reasoning and poetic insight, you really can.  It is a memory held in the foundation of your soul.  I am almost 60 years old now, and in very poor health.  And the sunrise this morning found a different world to shine upon than it found yesterday.  But I am home.  And I have one more sunrise to add to my collection.

The Road Home

Yes, this painting looks West down Highway 3, but the end is often really the beginning… of something new, and a bridge to a new sunrise.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, Celebration, collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Stardusters… Canto Four

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Four – In the Classroom on Level Six

“Okay,” said Harmony Castille in her Sunday-school-teacher voice, “The most important lesson is this; Jesus says we must love God with all our heart, and love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  He says this law supersedes all others.  If we obey such a law, we will never break any other reasonable law either.”

“Are you saying that Earther monkey people have only one law?” asked Xiar with bulging, surprised eyes.

“I’m saying that if you can break a law without also breaking God’s first law, then it wasn’t a sensible law in the first place.”

“So, how do you obey this first law?” asked Farbick, the Fmoogish Lead Science Officer.

“That’s simple too,” said the beautiful young blond woman who had once been a wrinkled old Sunday school teacher.  “We call it the Golden Rule.  It says that we must do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”

“How do you do an unto?” asked Studpopper, the communications junior officer of very limited intelligence.

“It means…” said Harmony, being used to the stupidity and hard-headedness of children, “If I don’t want you to hit me, then I don’t hit you first.  If I don’t want you to call me names and hurt my feelings, then I don’t call you a brainless stupid-head first,”

“Thank you for not calling me a brainless stupid-head,” said brainless stupid-head Studpopper stupidly… but politely.

“You are welcome,” said Harmony.

“But what if someone hits you first?” asked Farbick.

Harmony appreciated the fact that Farbick was quite clever and insightful for a Telleron.  “Well,” she replied, “we are trying to teach them what is right by example.  If someone hits me in the cheek, I would turn the other cheek.”

“Wouldn’t they just hit you again?” asked Farbick,

“Do you mean a face-cheek?  Or a behind sort of cheek?” asked Studpopper the stupid-head.

Harmony ignored the emerald-faced buffoon and answered Farbick instead.  “Sometimes they will hit you again, but you must persist in your belief, and continue to only show them patience and love.  Against the love of God, no cruel servant of chaos can stand.”

“They hit you on the butt twice?” asked Studpopper.

“They hit you on the part of your anatomy where you brain is located,” said Harmony acidly.

“Oh, you do mean the butt cheek!”

“Yes, of course I do,” the Sunday school teacher said sarcastically.

“Wait a minute,” said Xiar.  “I haven’t examined Studpopper that closely, but my brain is in my head.”

“”I like your first law,” said Farbick.  “I’m not sure it is practical and would really work, but it is more reasonable and moral than any of the laws of the Tellerons that I am aware of.”

“Yeah,” said Xiar, “Galtorrians will hit first and then eat your cheek.  Your idea of love conquering all will only turn you into gourmet monkey burgers.”

“We will see.  My God is all powerful.”

“Charlie the Crocodile God says to eat or be eaten,” said Studpopper with a stupid grin on his froggy face.

“Charlie?” asked Harmony.

“His name is actually Chaka-Boogen-Baall,” said Biznap who had been watching the whole lesson with some amusement.  “When we learned Galactic English from your old television shows, we found it easier to call him Charlie.  He’s really more of a mythic monster representing fear of death.  Not the same as this guy you call God.”

Harmony smiled at her Telleron lover.  He didn’t believe as easily as she would like, but at least he was supportive.

“Are you sure that these lessons will help us deal with the Galtorrians?” asked Xiar.  “I’m not sure I see the benefits.”

“Do you consider them people?” Harmony asked.

“I suppose we do,” said Farbick, “People with big teeth and scaly bodies.”

“Then they are subjects of the true God and live by his rules.”

“The rules of physics and biology,” said Farbick.  “I grant you that those rules are universal.”

“The rules of God’s love are no less universal,” insisted Harmony.

“I hope you are right,” said Farbick.  “It sounds like a universe we should all want to live in.”

*****

DSCN4410

Harmony Castille the Sunday School Teacher and her husband Commander Biznap

1 Comment

Filed under aliens, humor, irony, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, satire, science fiction

Doodle-Bop!

Sometimes the only thing you really want out of life is just to get by. You get tired of always having to climb the danged highest mountain.  You get tired of trying to swim the danged deepest sea.

16750_102844509741181_100000468961606_71393_6278100_nSometimes all you want to do is doodle-bop!…  To draw in pen and ink and post your derfiest doofenwacky doodles so you can just make your way through another danged day.

Cody 1

You aim a lot for different, and undeniably original… because no one thinks like you… certainly no one who is real and has a real brain.  You are gifted with an “other-ness”, a sing-songy simpering something that makes you want to doodle and do what no man has done before.  (Does that sentence exist anywhere else in all of literature?  Even if there is some alternate dimension with infinite monkeys typing on infinite typewriters?  What’s a typewriter, you say?  Danged millennials!)

20160127_205542

I really can’t help it, you know.  I was a middle school teacher for 24 years.  That sort of thing has mental health consequences.  And if you wring the sponges in your stupid old brain hard enough and long enough… doodle-bop! comes out.

20151028_092135

Turtle boy’s magic iron of irony!!!

And you have to wonder why some of the stuff that is in your stupid old head is even in there.  Why is it that sometimes the words “Argyle socks are filled with rocks” are drifting through the vast empty spaces in the logic centers of your brain?  There has to be a reason for everything, doesn’t there?

toon1

I do believe I have made myself chuckle at least a dozen chuck-tacular times in the chuck-a-tational crafting of this cheddar-cheesy post.  But it only really counts if I can make you girlishly giggle or guy-like guffaw with my word-munching and cartoony paffoonies.

Wild Ride

The terror-filled cartoon car chase that is life as usual.

You may have noticed that everything is black and white, even though it doesn’t have to be.  Good versus evil, hot versus cold, everything can be divided up simplistically… but the really profound part of simplicity is vibrating reverberations of complexity that lie just underneath.  Words have meaning, even though they are just a bunch of crooked squiggles marked on a page.  (Yes, I know… “or typed on a computer screen”.  Danged millennials!)

4th Dimension

And so, this is my doodle-bop!  Probably not the doodliest or the boppiest doodle-bop! I could have bopped… but there it is.  I have made it through another sorta creative post without losing my mind…  Honest!  I did not lose it.  It is merely temporarily misplaced for a moment.  It will be back in its proper place tomorrow… probably.

Leave a comment

Filed under blog posting, cartoony Paffooney, goofy thoughts, humor, imagination, irony, mental health, metaphor, Paffooney cartoony, pen and ink, pen and ink paffoonies, strange and wonderful ideas about life, wordplay

Teacher Dreams

wonderful teaching 2

Last night I dreamed I was standing in front  of a classroom again.  But it wasn’t a nightmare.  I had clothes on.  It wasn’t a comfortable situation either.  It was a new teaching assignment with a new classroom and new students I had never met before.  And I had been given no time to prepare my classroom or write lesson plans… and I was late.  The students were already there.  Nervously staring at me, their new teacher, a total goofball-looking goon with a gray beard and goofy Mickey grin on his silly-stupid face.

But the crazy thing is, I could’ve done the job.  I have faced the first day of classes 31 times.  I know how to do the job and do it well… from memory.  I know first-day procedures better than any other lesson type I have ever done.  And I got good at it over time.  In fact, I reached a point in the 1990’s where I told a colleague, “You know, if I had to pay the school money to let me be a teacher, I would do it.  But please don’t tell them that.”  And I worried for real a few years later when she became a guidance counselor, because that is only a step away from administrator, and in Texas they would definitely pay you nothing if they could legally get away with it.

Teacher

But the dream wasn’t totally a regret dream or filled with sadness over having to retire.  I have been in the situation of that dream before.  I started my teaching career in a poor South Texas school district.  The junior high supply budget was basically the money from the Coke machine and whatever the principal had in his pocket (which was usually lint).  I have taught classes with more students in them than there were desks to sit in.  I have taught classes with no textbooks.  I routinely bought things to use for lessons with my own money and made things with my goofy-cartoony art skills.  I have taught a number of times directly out of my memory and imagination with no books or notes to turn to.  An experienced teacher has got skills.  So I woke up from my dream feeling good and satisfied.  It was the feeling you get from a job well done.  The kind of satisfaction you get from thinking on your feet and still managing to come up with the right answer.

I wish I was still teaching.  I could not move my achy old body through rows of desks now if my life depended on it, so I can’t go back in a classroom, but I still wish I could.  Maybe I can clone myself and convince a younger me that teaching is not really the totally terrible idea it seems as a career, especially in Texas.  But maybe now it is only the stuff of dreams… and goopy wish-fulfillment posts by a slightly insane former teacher.

Blue and Mike in color

2 Comments

Filed under Cotulla, dreaming, dreams, humor, kids, Paffooney, teaching

Magic Kingdom Memories

Annette in DLandn

Since the Dallas shooting, and now the Nice attack, I have been needing to rely on things that pull me up from the darkness, and shine some light once again inside my goofy old head.  One thing that always seems to make things right again is looking back on trips to the Magic Kingdom.  Some of the happiest times of my life revolve around family at Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Orlando.

Ima mickey

You see, being an Iowa boy, born in the 50’s, raised in the 60’s and early 70’s, I had one of those rustic, bucolic lives that involved hard work, being frugal with money, and (like I told you yesterday) being around a lot of cow poop.  A great deal of my life was about what the future held, imagination and possibilities, and The Wonderful World of Disney in color on Grandma Beyer’s RCA color TV every Sunday night.  Those Technicolor dreams about things with no cow poop involved  came true for the first time when my family went on a summer vacation to Florida and Walt Disney World when I was in high school.  Oh, how I loved those E-ticket adventures with the Pirates of the Caribbean, the Haunted Mansion, and Space Mountain!  I got to see Country Bears sing and play music on empty moonshine jugs.  We used C-tickets for Snow White’s Scary Adventure and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.  We saw Mickey’s Cartoon Musical Review.  Did you know those last three things no longer exist?

20160318_092958

We went back to Walt Disney World when my family was young, the eldest was six, the middle child was a cranky two, and the Princess was not yet born, though already causing my wife discomfort with six months to go before she made her debut.  That was the time we learned how much my mother really loved It’s a Small World.  We had to take that boat ride so many times that the song still plays relentlessly in my head every time I even start to think about Disney World.  We managed to go back to Disney World again when the oldest was a teenager and the other two were primed to be Disney fanatics.  That time we learned how slowly the other set of grandparents walked.  We also learned that you have to be a master planner to see everything that is good in 5 different theme parks that you just have to check out because, heck, you’ve already mortgaged the future to pay for it.

14633_101127126579521_100000467015920_28954_2607583_n

And we have been to Disneyland in California a couple of times as well.  We were there, in fact, when the Anaheim earthquake happened, knocking down a couple of Los Angeles buildings nearby and shutting down several rides in the park while damage checks were made.  In fact, it happened during the Star Wars lightsaber battle in Tomorrowland, making us think at the start that it was just a really cool special effect.  It also shut down the food vendor before our expensive hamburgers were cooked.  That part was not so cool.

You can see now at least part of the reason I am such hopeless Disneyphile.  Memories of times spent at Disney parks are the exclamation points on my whole creative life.  It influences my artwork and storytelling to a noticeable degree.  And it takes my mind off my troubles a bit just to stop and reflect, “Once upon a time I visited the Magic Kingdom.”

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, battling depression, Disney, family, humor, Paffooney

Idea Fertilizer

manure expo_n

Picture borrowed from the North American Manure Expo’s Facebook page

This morning as I was going to QT for my daily dose of wake-up juice with caffeine in it, Jody Dean and the Morning Team on KLUV radio station were making fun of the North American Manure Expo taking place in London, Ohio this week.  Jody Dean, the radio talk-show host, was suggesting that the Expo would’ve been a natural thing to host in Fort Worth because, well, Texas and cow poop just naturally go together.  But it occurs to me, that this is fortuitously a part of Ohio this month because the GOP convention is taking place shortly in Cleveland, and the bull dookie won’t have to be shipped as far for that.  Besides, having grown up as an Iowan, I have a farm-boy awareness of the intrinsic need for poo-poo conventions where the latest distribution technology is on display.  After all, cow poo is fertilizer… it makes stuff grow.

Yesterday I was unable to write the post I had planned about the tragic police shooting in Dallas.  There was a lot to write about.  It was a terrible thing that affected me deeply and did considerable damage to the fight for human rights in this country and preserving the respect and dignity we owe to the men in blue who too often give their lives to keep us safe.  It also gave our Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick a chance to actually put both feet in his mouth at the same time, and for Dallas resident and former rodeo clown turned president George W. Bush to do a goofy smiley-faced dance during the playing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic while the memorial to the fallen Dallas policemen was in the middle of a rather somber occasion.  Poop makes stuff grow, and that post would’ve been epic.

20160714_102240

A project I was working on yesterday while sulking.

You see, yesterday I didn’t have the usual amount of time for writing because I had to install an air conditioner for my hot wife.  It was difficult to install because the bedroom I installed it in has no regular windows.  Only a window/door onto the patio.  And I had to do the installing because my wife wanted to take a sledge hammer to the bedroom wall and knock out enough bricks to make a vent hole for the air conditioner.  I did not want my determined little wife taking up the hammer herself, so I carefully mapped out a plan and bought supplies to cut a hole in the drywall and then jury-rig a makeshift air duct to a pre-existing hole in the brickwork.  I got the hole cut in the drywall and then ran into a snag when I exposed a support beam in the way of my plan.  Well, this led to a discussion of the details executed rather loudly and I believe I was compared to a donkey at least three times.  We then reached a compromise (by which I mean what husbands usually mean when they use the word “compromise” which is that we did things the way my wife wanted them done.  Or, rather, my wife picked up the hammer and crowbar, and I retreated to my room to sulk like a proper adult.  The air conditioner is now humming.  It is blowing half of the exhaust out through the space left by the two bricks she knocked out rather neatly, and the other half up through the wall into the attic.  Oh, well, it works and she is happy with it.  Hopefully no building inspectors read this post.

20160712_bbbb1025

Another piece of alien art done while sulking.

The point is, cow poop happens.  And cow poop is fertilizer.  It makes things grow.  Including ideas for posts on my blog.  I was able to illustrate the Telleron alien kids from two of my novels while I was busy sulking and feeling sorry for myself.  In fact, the novel Catch a Falling Star probably only exists because of Iowa and cow poop.  Yes, life in farmville is resoundingly boring and uneventful, so my fertile imagination couldn’t help but make up an alien invasion of a small Iowan farming community.  And my imagination was probably fertile due to so much exposure to cow poop on my grandfather’s and my two uncles’ farms.  So now you know.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, autobiography, blog posting, farm boy, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Iowa, irony, Paffooney

Stardusters… Canto Three

Installment 3 in my ongoing unfinished Sci-Fi saga is here for your perusal.  Hopefully it is not too awful.  It is a little bit racy in a junior-high sort of way… and it might turn your eyes black to read it, but it is also a little bit funny.

Galtorr Primex 1

Canto Three – In the Tadpole Chambers Aboard the Base Ship

Alden Morrell was astounded by the changes alien technology had made in him.  His wife, Gracie, inhabited a child’s body which had been artificially created by the Tellerons.  Her mind had been lifted out of her dying brain and placed into a container which had automatically adopted her DNA.    So the aliens had offered him a chance to be the same age and size as his now child-like wife.  They had put him in a device that resembled a tanning bed and processed him like a naked frog in a microwave oven.  When he had come to… no more body hair, penis reduced to a tiny pink mushroom, bald head re-forested with hair, and a renewed youthful energy he could barely contain.

Alden sat now in the moist sauna-bath that was known as the Tadpole Chamber wearing only his fruit-of-the-looms.  Gracie sat next to him, naked, and feeling apparently far less embarrassed than Alden himself felt.  Five naked Telleron tadpoles were with them, Davalon, Tanith, Brekka, Menolly, and George Jetson.  The tadpoles were the reason they were there.  Nutrient baths were absolutely necessary to the continued health of the amphibianoid children.

“We should dance,” suggested Brekka.  She was a lovely female Telleron tadpole with skin of forest green and having a delicate reddish blush on cheeks and neck, as well as her shapely buttocks.  Alden shuddered when he realized what he had been looking at.  He looked away and blushed deeply maroon himself.

“Why do you always want to dance?” asked Tanith, another pretty young female of emerald green.  “You suggest that forty times a day.”

“Since we learned to do that on Mars,” said Brekka, “I haven’t wanted to do anything else.  I want to dance like the Mickey Mouse Club kids we saw on the Earther broadcasts.”

“It doesn’t hurt to exercise,” said Davalon.  “I learned that by playing baseball.  It makes the muscles hurt at first, but then you come back stronger and more filled with power.”

Alden beamed at that.  He had been the one to teach Davalon about baseball during that brief time on Earth when he had tried to adopt the abandoned fin-headed alien boy.

“The computer system has Mickey Mouse Club music recorded from Earther TV,” reminded Menolly.    “We just have to ask for it.”

“Yeah!  Great idea!” said George Jetson.  Like many of Captain Xiar’s children, George was named for something on Earther TV that Xiar particularly liked.  “Computer, play all the Mickey Mouse Club songs.”

Alden didn’t know the song that started to play, but it had a good dance beat and the green children began to sway and move and dip and boogie.  It was a wild collection of dance moves from Earth filtered through alien perceptions.

“Let’s dance too,” said Alden’s beloved wife Gracie.   She stood and held out a hand to him.  “We can show them how it’s done.”

Alden was forty years old and Gracie was two years younger.  But now they inhabited children’s bodies, having been reduced in age to twelve and ten.  Their health was so much better, and many years had been added to both of their lives.  Still, it felt unnatural and somehow wrong.  She was younger now than when they’d first met in Belle City High School in Iowa when he was seventeen and she had been fifteen.

“Do you really have to be naked in front of the children?” he asked her in a whisper.

“Why, yes, you old coot.  I think I do.  You should take those soggy shorts off too.  This is like a sauna bath after all.”

“You know Mrs. Castille wouldn’t approve.”

“That old fuddy-duddy doesn’t have a say in this.  Prudes would tell us we have to wear swimsuits in the bath tub because they have issues, not because we do.”

Alden nodded.  He didn’t agree, but he nodded because that was what he thought Gracie wanted.   She was a mere child again, but his love for her made his twelve-year-old body want her mightily.  He had to dance bent forward because he didn’t want mushrooms blooming and embarrassing him while he danced with naked girls in an alien nutrient bath.

*****

My Art

2 Comments

Filed under aliens, artwork, goofiness, humor, kids, NOVEL WRITING, nudes, Paffooney, writing, writing humor

The Need for Magical Teddy Bears

DSCN4541

I woke this morning in excessive amounts of arthritis pain.  My left elbow has not been working well for a month.  My lower back is always painful after a restless night’s sleep.  Neither of my knees is willing to do the basic job required of knees in the early morning when you first wake up.  So I had to work joints back and forth to loosen them up despite the pain.  I had to stretch parts where muscles were knotted up in protest to stretching.  And it took me a half hour of painful work to get on my feet.

I have been psychologically in pain of late as well.  Being a school teacher who dedicated his life to getting young people to work together and grow up and mature, I have been deeply distressed by both the police shootings of innocent black men and the massacre of policemen here in Dallas.  My publishing goals have also hit a brick wall with recent rejections and cancelling of contracts.  I need to curl up in a corner and lick my wounds.

When I was a child I relied on stuffed animals to make me feel better when I was sick and in pain.  I had a toy tiger that was my constant companion.  I had a couple of teddy bears, one a panda, the other Smokey the Bear.  And there was a terrycloth pink elephant that I shared with my sisters.  Like many children, I talked to the stuffed animals.  Like a strange few other children, the stuffed animals would answer back.  I think that plays a large part in explaining why I am a writer of fiction stories.  I medicate my mind not with drugs, but by talking things out with imaginary people.

At this moment in time, when I am on the verge of being overwhelmed, it is a good thing that my hoarding disorder has caused me to collect stuffed toys.  I have more than one magical teddy bear to turn to.  Everything will be all right in the end.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Depression, feeling sorry for myself, goofy thoughts, humor, illness, photo paffoonies

Return to the Stone Age

20160709_083159

Pebbles Winchuk, South Texas dino-girl

We are swiftly returning to the Stone Age.  We are dividing into armed camps and shooting each other.  Texas is an open carry State and they are allowed to carry rifles to Black Lives Matter rallies.  Former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh took to Twitter to declare the conservative position (at least the lunatic half plus at least one per cent).

ct-joe-walsh-tweet-20160708 (1)

Well, if he is coming for Black Lives Matter punks, then he might as well come for me, too.  I believe black people have been unfairly targeted by law enforcement (even black cops who buy into police-culture prejudices).  I think police forces need to be retrained to be more race-sensitive and determined to de-escalate potentially violent situations instead of executing the suspect on the spot.  If they can do that for white suspects, even armed and potentially violent white suspects, then they can do that for everybody.  As a school teacher, I stopped and broke up at least forty fights in my career.  Two of them involved weapons and I stopped at least four high school fights while being forced to walk everywhere on campus with a cane.  You can bring violence to an end by talking to the participants.  You don’t have to shoot Jose and Deshawn to get them to stop punching each other because they both like Maria.  But the government does nothing to move the national conversation in the direction of non-violence.  The Dallas shooting was made so much more complex because there were so many potential “good-guys with a gun” on the scene that the brave policemen who charged towards the shooting had a hard time determining who the bad guy was.  And Joe Walsh is coming for us because we don’t believe we should be shot without due process.

20160709_083428

A picture of the Pebbles Winchuk picture taken with my brighter light.  Still not as good as sunlight.

So, we are returning to the Stone Age.  I need to start chipping away at pieces of flint to make more spear points.  I probably need to brush up on my dinosaur-training skills, or at least, watch Jurassic World another couple of times.  The Walshian tribe is coming, shouting “Ugga-bugga Thump! Thump!” and getting ready to throw more stones.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, autobiography, gun control, humor, Liberal ideas, Paffooney, pen and ink