Tag Archives: paffooney

August 6, 2015 · 1:52 pm

Making Mickey Happy

lil mickeyI have to admit to being a little blue yesterday.  Not “literally blue” because most days I look nothing like my Paffooney portrait here to the left.  I said a little blue, as in slightly depressed.  Not weeping and roaring with sorrow depressed… more like needing to softly sing to myself sort of depressed.  I wasn’t depressed for valid reasons.  I was mistaken about the writing contest results.  The dental insurance also covers more of what we are going to owe for the privilege of having teeth than I was at first led to believe.  So my deep blue hole yesterday was imaginary and all see-through-y if I had been sane enough to look properly.  But, Mickeys are like that sometimes, getting all bothered about things they really shouldn’t get bothered about.

So, today, determined to still be sad for a reason, I began to list other things that I could conveniently be sad about.  There was school news about an 8-year-old boy in Kentucky being handcuffed by an officer in school and crying because it was hurting him.  That social media outrage led me to an article about school discipline.  “Schools as Punishing Factories”  Reading that made me bitterly depressed.  I have witnessed the truth of that article in Texas where teachers can get in trouble so easily when they try to advocate for kids, especially black and Hispanic kids.  I have seen talking back to the teacher, throwing spitwads, and disrupting lessons become reasons for students to be escorted away in handcuffs.  I like to pretend it is because principals and policemen and community businessmen can be rather stupid sometimes, and not because there is a concerted effort to use the school experience as training for black and Hispanic, as well as poor kids to prepare for the second part of their life, the life they will lead inside prisons for profit.  As a teacher who loved kids, even the bad ones, I am truly depressed about this trend in America.  I have white friends in both Texas and Iowa that want to tell me that I am the one who is wrong, not the system.  Their conservatives beliefs are stronger than any eye-witness evidence I can give them.  So… even darker blues and more depression.  My contest novel is about a teacher like me trying to fight the way things are and teach the way teaching should be done.  I must comfort myself by telling myself that my book will change peoples’ minds and make the problem get solved.  If I just lie to myself hard enough, like those friends who tell me “throwing money at the problem of failing schools will not fix the problem” lie to themselves… a lie I know is false but want desperately to believe anyway, then I can make it true.

So, how do I make Mickey happy?  Well, luckily Mickey is goofy.  I went to Walmart and finally found the doll on sale that I had been searching for.  I bought Operetta. the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera to add to my Monster High collection for only $9.95.  And Mickey is seriously addicted to doll collecting.  It makes him happy and turns him away from despair when other things probably can’t.  I am not forgetting about the education fight.  Oh, no!  Mickey’s dander is up on that.  And he will bombard you with his writer wrath about that another day.  But forgive me.  I need to be happy a little right now.  And Mickey needs to play with dolls.

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July 30, 2015 · 3:25 pm

Updating Futzbatter and Foohbah Recipes

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Having already written well over a thousand words today on a different writing project, I don’t really have to worry about length on this one.  But it is intended to be a scrapbook piece anyway.  Thing #1 is the completion of a mini-collection.  I now have all three of the main Minions from the new Minions movie.  From left to right are Kevin, Stuart, and Bob posing for their picture with their fully pose-able arms in the middle of Cardboard Castle.  There are still many many many Minions left to collect, but the first three are the most important bit… I think.

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I have now reached the climax of the plot in my Sci-fi novel Stardusters and Space Lizards.  I am at that moment in the story when characters, even the most important main characters, may die.  I know, in fact, because of the ending that already exists that some of the main characters will die.  I am not entirely certain that I know which ones yet.  The three I have portrayed here are (left to right again because I am an English speaker/reader and horribly addicted to the same-old same-old) George Jetson, Davalon, and Sizzahl the Lizard Girl.  At least one of them has to die for the plot to work out.  But which one?  I am deeply in love with all three.

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My experimental flower wagon has been producing blossoms, but only one at a time.  Each one blooms, I take a picture of it, and then the hot Texas sun burns the poor thing to blazes, and I have to wait for the next one to appear.

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And finally, I think I need to define the two Mock-Iowegian words in my title today.  Mock-Iowegian (as I am sure you are bright enough to already realize) is a made-up language spoken by Iowan farm folks in Mickian fiction where the object is to capture their eccentricities and mock them ferociously because I love them.  Futzbatter… noun, meaning things that are fudged or made up on the spur of the moment and mixed together into the overall plan (or impending disaster… depending on the situation).  Foohbah… noun, meaning something you tell a fool and expect him to believe, as in a honking-big-fish story, and nobody else will contradict for fear the fool the speaker is trying pull a foohbah on is the hearer, and they don’t want to let on that the foohbah-teller laying the big, fat, hairy foohbah on the group is talking about them, and they are only feebly trying to stop him.

So, there you have it… almost 500 words in spite of myself.

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July 29, 2015 · 2:40 pm

A Letturr to the NRA

(This is satire… so, all you redneck friends of mine… don’t holler “YES!  He finally sees the light!”  Because I am being ironic, and trying to make fun of all the sensible and right-thinking things you believe, and cannot ever give up trying to make me believe also.)

rubber gun duel

Dear Mr. Wayne LaPierre,

You has done got the rite ideer about guns.  I agree whole-heartedly with all the love in my little black one-hunnert per cent ‘Merican heart that the only answer to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a bigger ‘n better gun.  My name is Lester Winchuk, and I is a good, God-fearin’ Texas good-ol’-boy.  And I have bigger ‘n better guns.  Now, my main guvvenner, the great an’ honorable Rick Perry of the grand State of Texas (may God ever bless her little black one-hunnert per cent ‘Merican heart) has suggested on the Fox News that since some of them insane mass-shooter dudes likes to go inta movie theeatters and shoot them up some innocent people, we all otter be takin’ our beloved guns to the movies with us so we can pertekt ourselfs and the other folk too.  In fact, I like the ideer of taking my bigger ‘n better guns to the movies with me.  I jes’ might need to shoot some folks when that there Minions movie plays at the dollar movies in Laredo.

We still has three of these here dis-integrator gun thingies left from the last alien invasion of South Texas, for sale cheap!

We still has three of these here dis-integrator gun thingies left from the last alien invasion of South Texas, for sale cheap!

I does has one question, though.  How does you aim proper at the bad guy’s haid or heart in a dark ol’ movie theeatter?  Does you has to wait for a daylight scene in the movie so you can draw a proper bead on the monkey-flipper?  (I doesn’t mean to actually say monkey-flipper, but I doesn’t know how to spell whut I actually mean, and thass the best the spell-checker thingy can do for me.)  I would like to suggest a common-sense solution to this problem.  I find that if you plug two or three… or six of the folks in the dark where you heard the first dang-old gun shots coming from, you will probably get him.  And gettin’ that old perpetraitor is the main and most important thing, right?  My brother Wayne (not actually named after you, but you is welcomed to be flattered by it) says maybe you shouldn’t plug any of the littler ones in case they may be innocent children or something… but I says, well, the shooter might be a midget, right?

I does has one old idjit English teacher, Mr. Beyer, who tole me I has gots to be more careful with my beloved guns.  He seems to think that whut I thinks about guns is somewhat downright immoral or some such nonsense.  But I tells him, I is always veeery careful with my beloved, bigger ‘n better guns.  In all my years of carrying my guns everywhere I goes, even into the showers at the campgrounds we uses for our Confederate Social Club meetin’, they ain’t never gotten one ding-dang little ol’ rust spot or scratch on any of ’em.

This lettur was lovingly and carefully writ to you by,

Lester D. Winchuk, son of South Texas…

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July 26, 2015 · 2:43 pm

Lazy Sunday with Disney

Mickey

So, today I am lazy…  I chose this old picture to re-post and bore you with for today’s Paffooney because I intend to take my kids to see Tomorrowland at the dollar movie theater in Plano.  (For those radical rednecks following my blog in order to get the necessary logistical information to assassinate me for the dual crimes of talking negatively about the Confederate flag and being a liberal, how do you know I didn’t change the name of the theater to protect the innocent the way I do with people?  And now might not be the best time to be exercising your open carry rights in a local movie theater either.) I have already seen the movie, and even reviewed it for my blog (Tomorrowland Review), but I wanted my kids to see it because I love it.  And they were in Florida vacationing on the beaches when I went to it.  I am passionate about sharing Disney movies I love with the people I love.  And while I am not passionate about giving more money to the Evil Corporate Empire headed by a famous talking mouse, I am still devoted to the original Fantasy Kingdom of Uncle Walt himself.  Sundays were always the day that we would make the 50 mile trek to Mason City to eat dinner with Grandma Beyer and watch The Wonderful World of Disney at 6:00 on her color TV.  That was a major thing in the 1960’s when there were no computer games or internet… no I-phones or Androids… just our imaginations and the fuel from Disney broadcasts “in living color” on NBC.

I have always had a full-color imagination, but Disney fueled so many of my childhood games and dreams and drawings that I can’t even begin to give it a proper acknowledgement.  So I posted a Disney episode here so that you can see what I am talking about in a full-color way… even though I know that Disney Corporation will soon be pulling this video from YouTube because they are as jealous of their intellectual property rights as Scrooge McDuck is jealous of his very first dime.  You may not know this, but Disney sued schools who used their copyrighted characters to decorate classrooms for learning, and sued teachers for using Disney films on movie day in the classroom.  They love every dime they can make with their products with an all-consuming, suffocating love.  Sharing is not a lesson you learn from modern Disney.

But that movie we are going to see is full of hope for the future in the face of all the greed, corruption, and disjointedness of the present.  Black and white days may well be straight ahead, but for this particular Sunday I am making the lazy choice of Disney and bright color.

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July 23, 2015 · 10:29 pm

Coloring Part 3 (Mickey Watches TV and Colors)

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So, here is what it looks like now after watching The West Wing.  I love that show.  They do such a wonderful job of weaving story, theme, and relevant political issues together into a compelling series.  It is like the very best and most poetic of the novel series.  I have read two books of John Galsworthy’s Forsythe Saga, and I think the TV show is better.  Of course, I realize the novels are quite old and fusty in temperment.

I now have all three main characters colored in.  Dr. Elefun on the left in his pinstripe shirt, Astro in the middle, and Mr. Pompous on the right in the back seat.  I have most of the cockpit of the flying car done, and must start pondering how to make it fly in this drawing.  I put a piece of cardboard under the drawing and that gives it a funky ribbed effect with the colored pencil rubbed over large areas.  I am enjoying this homemade coloring-book art project.  I have also added 173 words.

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July 23, 2015 · 6:36 pm

Coloring Part 2 (Mickey and His Crayons)

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Here’s coloring step #1.  I was watching Supernatural, the one where Sam and Dean go to Folsom Prison to fight an old ghost who is killing prisoners.  I could’ve done more, but the episode was good and drew my attention.  I had to do less than I planned because arthritis can make my coloring-knuckles hurt.  I also needed to write a much shorter post today because I had to spend considerable time taking people to the airport and to doctors’ offices.  Yes, it was my family and my in-laws… and yes, I did it gladly without complaint.  And though I did not get to put the usual purple-paisley spin on today’s paragraphs, and I only got a little over 100 words… I did get a post for today, and my post-for-every-day-of-2015 goal is still intact.

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July 22, 2015 · 3:20 pm

Coloring

This post is about Mickey and his crayons.  Little Mickey always loved to color.  He always had a cigar box full of Crayola crayons that he treasured and kept where he could always reach them whenever the art urge struck.  (Well, except for that one time on the drive home from Mason City, Iowa when he left them in the back window of the 1960 Ford Fairlane and the sunshine melted the entire box… tears there for about a week.)

coloring page

But Mickey has grown up and graduated to colored pencils.  Radical change, huh?  The need to color stuff is still there.  So, what do I do about it now that Mickey is a rational, responsible adult?  Well, you know there is a surge in the publishing industry of adult coloring books.  I think that means that Mickey is not alone in the fevered fetish to put crayons… er… colored pencils… er, some kind of color to black and white pictures with plenty of white space to fill in.  This is something I do while watching television.  Other adults do it during meetings, at school functions… during sex…  It is something that occupies your hands and a tiny portion of your brain and fills in all the blank spaces with color.  And Mickey has the added advantage of not having to buy adult coloring books because he can make his own black and white pictures to color.

So, the crayons are out… er, the colored pencils, anyway.  Mickey has this new picture he drew that honors his childhood cartoon hero, Astroboy.  He is going to fill it in with colors and patterns and two-or-three color blends and have a whee of a time while watching Supernatural or The West Wing or Dr. Who on Netflix.  It is a hoot.

And you may be wondering why the narrator of this silly Paffooney post always refers to himself in the third person as Mickey when talking about his art?  Well, no one actually calls me Mickey in real life.  Mickey is the cartoon character who lives within me and controls the part of my brain and personality that paffoonies out all kinds of art.  It is not complicated.  Mickey is definitely me.  But not everything I am is Mickey.  Mickey will always be that little boy with the cigar box of crayons coloring an original picture of lions eating that bully in third grade who called him a sissy for liking coloring books.

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July 21, 2015 · 3:15 pm

The Unique Joy of Having Redneck Friends

redneck friends

Yes, I live in Texas… And yes, I know a redneck or two… or 600.  But it is a unique joy that almost has to be shared to be believed.  They do not think like I do.  To them, I am just a commie, liberal, tree-huggin’ atheist with very bad hippie-hair.  But not all of them are automatically unkind to me for who I am… in fact, some of them are my friends.

Now, I have to say that, being a Texan is not an advantage for making friends with rednecks.  The home-grown brand of Texas Mexican-hating, gun-loving redneck are suspicious of me because I was a gol’ dang Texas edjumacator for so many years.  You gotta be suspicious of anybody who teaches, cuz they want to make our children smarter than us.  That’s a gol’ dang liberal trick from way-back-when.  Who knows what kind of communist liberal ideas a communist liberal college edjumacated idiot wants to plant in the heads of our kids?  Oh, and people who are smarter than us are all idiots, because they have all them new-fangled ideas and facts and some-such, but we got common sense.  That makes us better’n them no matter how gol’ dang smart they are… gol’ dang ’em!  (I can’t even write these words without hearing that South-Texas Winchuk-family-from-the-Brush-Country accent in my head.)  Texas rednecks are hard to warm up to unless they’ve already reached the stage of wanting to grill your ass on the Winchuk family barbecue pit.  Then it is entirely the wrong part of you that gets warmed up because they don’t accept that the word “ass” is the Biblical word for donkey.

The majority of my redneck friends are actually from Iowa.  They are the people that I grew up with who knew me as a boy.  They know I am intelligent all the way to insane levels of intelligence.  And while they also believe their common sense trumps my intelligence, they have a soft spot in their hearts for the old egghead Superchicken they used to know in high school.  They mistakenly believe I am still a Republican by nature and probably support Ted Cruz for President, because he seems like a good Christian conservative fellow.  They argue with me about why they have a right to keep their guns and refuse all background checks or gun registration or licensing of guns because, sure you have to have a license to drive a car and get married because those are seriously important and potentially dangerous things, but we are talking about guns here.  They argue about why I should not be offended by their Confederate flags and why I really ought to listen to Fox News because they don’t lie to you like the rest of the liberal media.  And how did they get to be so sunburned on their backs of their necks and all over their political ideologies?  There was a time I voted for Charles Grassley.  But Republican Iowa… the Iowa of Republican Governor Robert Ray in the 70’s and President Eisenhower supporters in the 50’s… has changed right along with the entire Republican party.  They are now goose-stepping along to the conservative beat of drums worthy of Hitler and Goebbels politically.  But they don’t identify with fascism.  They believe conservative means good and liberal means bad… so Hitler was a liberal, right?  They vote in a way that allows racist-fascists like Iowa Congressman Steve King to goosestep all around the country saying ignorant and destructive things, and think that General Eisenhower wouldn’t shoot King as if the Iowa Congressman were one of the enemy were he to hear some of King’s rants in favor of the military industrial complex that Ike himself warned us against.  You can’t convince them that they’re wrong.  They are louder than you, and that makes them right.  But I love them.  I grew up with them.  And I know they are too Iowa-stubborn to ever change their Iowegian minds in a direction that might actually make their lives better.  So bless them and take care of them for me, Lord, because they have common sense… which makes them better than me.

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July 19, 2015 · 2:24 pm

700!

I know this is incredibly hard to believe, but there are now 700 people who are computer literate enough to follow a blogger on WordPress who actually made the mistake of following my goofy little blog and failing to figure out how to un-follow someone.

Cool School Blue news

I believe, based on evidence in the comments I have received, that some people go beyond looking at my happy little Bob-Ross-and-Disney-crossbred-clone-artworks and actually read my posts.  And further, they seem to enjoy and be mostly amused by my witless attempts at humor and wit… at least the non-political and non-kook-apple-conspiracy-buff stuff.  How I ever managed to thoroughly snow and deceive that many literate people… I will probably never figure out.  But if you have waded through this lazy-post paragraph of purple paisley prose about own-horn tooting… thank you so much for reading my words.

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July 17, 2015 · 2:07 pm

“That Night in Saqqara I Was Taken By Surprise”

That Night in Saqqara 1

Life is never quite like the way it is in your head.  Things you don’t believe are true will constantly surprise you with the reality they belt you over the head with at the most inopportune of times.

Today’s colored-pencil Paffooney masterpiece is a case in point.  I never believed it was possible to take this good of a picture of it.  It is a horror movie to try to light this picture so I can snap it with a camera and get a result with no fades or reflected glare.  It was created in 1992, when I was really at the height of my colored-pencil cartoonist super-powers.  The subtle lighting is so much better than I can convey with the arthritic turkey-claw hands I now use for such artwork.  Torchlight in a pyramid is a hard thing to convey.  And over time, this picture’s colored-pencil patina has become glossy and difficult to photograph without glare.  It has subtle waves in the paper that photograph as shadowy valleys and reveal the two-dimensionality of the piece.  You can still see them if you look closely.  But it is far better than any previous photo.  Go back and check my archives if you don’t believe me… or you wish to be bored to death with old posts that you have somehow managed to dodge before now.

But like Tanis in the Tomb, things always turn out to be surprisingly different in their reality than they were in your little mind’s eye when you went into that dark hole in the ground.

We were discussing this at lunch, my kids and I.  We were talking about how Sims 3 portrays reality and how really surprising it can be when you realize that the game has got it right.  When I walked all the way to the bottom of the stairs this morning before realizing that I had forgotten my shoes upstairs, I had to turn around and go all the way back upstairs.  This, I am told, is exactly how it works in Sims 3.  A character in the game cannot turn around on the stairs.  If you change your mind half way down, the character. or avatar I think they like to call them, must go all the way to the bottom to turn around and go back up.  So obviously this morning, God was playing Sims 3 and using me as an avatar.

Now, I don’t really like to believe God plays video games with reality… but my son Henry brought up the Rolling Stones as proof.  It is common knowledge that Kieth Richards is an un-dead creature, having so completely altered the bio-chemical make-up of his entire body with drugs that he died in 1988 and still goes on tour because his brain has not yet fully registered the fact that he is dead.  My son pointed out that in Sims 3 you can make your avatar all gray or green and zombie-looking and then play the game with your avatar walking around and doing all sorts of stuff without realizing he or she is dead.  So, not only Kieth Richards, but the entirety of the Rolling Stones who are all skeletal old druggies who should’ve passed half a century ago, goes to prove that God is playing Sims 3 with the universe.  My gasted is totally flabbered!  And I hope this glimpse into the unholy truth has not ruined your day.

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