Tag Archives: paffooney

Humor Me (Humor? Me?)

I am wondering now if it is appropriate to call what I do in my writing and my cartooning humor.  I tell stories.  As a school teacher in both junior high and high school, I told stories in class and made kids laugh.  (Okay, I admit, kids that age mixed with hormones, experiments with sex and alcohol, and under-developed frontal lobes in their brains will laugh at practically anything.  I know a teacher who crosses her eyes when talking to kids about their mistakes, and she has them rolling on the floor with giggle-fits.  This is now my fourth longest parenthetic expression, also known as an aside.  They would probably laugh about that.)  But is it fair to call that humor?

Mark Twain

I write stories filled with feel-good crap.  I’m as likely to make you cry as I am to make you laugh.  (At least, that is my intention.  You may laugh at things I intend to make the reader sad, and be sad or nauseated by the things I think are funny.)  How does that fit with the definition of humor on the internet?  I get a big kick out of some humor blogs I found on WordPress.   http://https://irtfyblog.wordpress.com/  I Refuse to Follow Your Blog is a master complainer.  He disses and crabs and totally kicks butt about a number of things.  (Though I must admit I used his list of un-funny humor blogs to follow a few more that give me chuckles… What can I say?  I’m a contrarian at times.  How can you teach seventh graders and not be?)  http://https://buffalotompeabodyblog.wordpress.com/  Buffalo Tom Peabody not only rocks my rib-cage with his wonderful photo-shopped self-cat-portraits, he makes a really guffaw-inducing set of videos on YouTube.  http://http://bensbitterblog.com/  Ben’s Bitter Blog is blithely bitter and better at bitter than any bitter blogger blogging bitterly that I have ever found.  Ben blogs bitter better than other bitter bloggers who blog with bitter butter… (All right!  I know.  Alliteration by itself isn’t funny.  It took me tons of tempestuous years teaching to learn that.)  http://http://dougdoeslife.com/  Doug Does Life  does a blog with a monkey that you have to see to believe.  They all make me laugh and they all seem to know better than I how to do the humor shtick.  So how dare I call what I write humor?

After the Charlie Hebdo incident, (which you may have noticed has seriously bruised my cartoony little heart)  I have to take humor and comedy in a whole new, more serious light.  Ralph Bakshi, a master cartoonist whom I adore, says that if your cartoons don’t piss somebody off and make some enemies, then you’re doing it wrong, and you have to stop calling yourself a cartoonist.  He says you are just an illustrator… in my case a children’s illustrator.  Do I need to be insulted by that?  Am I not a humorist?  Am I not funny?  I will tag this lunatic post as humor even though it’s not funny… well, not funny funny… just funny odd.  Will I get in trouble with the cartoon gods for doing it?  (Wait a minute… cartoon gods?  Are they gonna zap me with a cartoon fun-bolt or hit me in the face with a pie or something?  If they send terrorists, it may elevate my status.)  So I am asking a whole lot of questions and not answering them myself like usual.  After all, who decides if this is humor?  Not I.

Mickeynose

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, philosophy

600 Followers (Or Twice What Leonidas had at Thermopylae)

Aztecx!

Thanks to http://http://theneverchronicles.wordpress.com/http://http://waitingonaword.wordpress.com/, and http://http://createarteveryday.com/ for putting me over the top!

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Filed under Celebration, Paffooney

In Celebration of Alan Watts’ 100th Birthday

Silkie n Donner

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Good and Evil

This was never planned to be a post by me on this blog, but sometimes you just have to respond to what what life and stupid people send your way.  I do not believe anyone should ever condemn a world religion.  Not even Islam.  Religion is a necessary evil in our society because it gives comfort to the suffering, hope to the desperate, and a way to combat the fear of death that plagues every mortal being on Earth.  But any time a fanatic uses religion as an excuse for violence, cruelty, or the kind of insanity committed against Charlie Hebdo magazine and its cartoonists, that is the very definition of evil.  No… not merely evil… I mean EVIL!

Those who do cruel, stupid, and selfish things in the name of God are blasphemers.  This is me, practically an atheist, saying this.  People who are the opposite of evil are in tune with the with the great silent orchestral arrangement that is our collective existence.  People who are in tune with the universe, one with the universe, truly at peace with the universe and themselves never use violence or terror or fear-mongering to change things.  If they ever do, they are no longer there in that eternal peace and shared wisdom that makes up the core of all that is good about mankind and makes us worthy.

Here is a good example of stupid and evil shared from www.facebook.com/pages/An-Uncloudy-Day.

10885091_1526831917574779_8054673923036807657_n We elected this smug, hidey-hole badger to congress and the conspiracy of stupid now in control of the government (GOP probably stands for “goofy old perverts”) put him in as the head of Senate Committee that looks after the environment.  Why does he believe what he believes?  Because of a great and unshakable faith in God and the infallibility of the Bible?  No.  That’s just the cover smoke that is meant to hide his real purpose from the GOP voting base who only hear the buzzwords and don’t realize that he is rationalizing the continuing rape and pillaging of the environment by oil and gas billionaires who want to continue putting profits as a priority above even the future of the planet we live on.  This is the kind of evil that threatens our very existence.  Does he realize that?  Probably.  Does he lose sleep over that?  No.  He looks well rested.   He believes that the consequences of his actions won’t be felt until his life is already over.  He only wants to make a profit and reap rewards while it still affects his own life… the rest of us be damned.  He is probably worse than the stupid-heads that killed the cartoonists because those deluded fools probably actually believe that when they are hunted down and killed, they will go to Muslim paradise and get their promised virgins.  Somebody evil and more intelligent than they are convinced them of that idiocy, even though that somebody probably does not believe it themselves.  Evil is self-interested to the exclusion of others.

What, then is the nature of the good?  No, not good… I mean GOOD!

Dansegawd 4Those who are good seek the good of others.  People like Jesus of Nazareth, Martin Luther King Jr., Francis of Assisi, Mohandis K. Gandhi,  and Joan D’Arc are good because they sacrificed their own benefits, comfort, and even their lives to benefit others.  Completely apart from faith and religion and politics, they chose to give away their precious lives and value to aid people, most of whom they didn’t even know and would never have a chance of meeting.  Love, self-sacrifice, and a peaceful means to any end are the very definition of what is actually GOOD.  If I harp too much on what is evil, and condemn it too strongly, then I can’t claim to be a part of that other side of the eternal struggle, the good.  I have to settle my anger and upset and be willing to forgive.

So what have I really accomplished in today’s un-funny rant and blistering attack on other peoples’ stupid beliefs and warped values?  Nothing important.  I have calmed myself down.  I have stopped myself from crying.  I have found my inner peace again.  And I have done one important thing… I have remembered to thank all of the good people who have ever existed because all of them benefit me and make my life better.  Thanks to all of them, and thanks to you who have put up with my stupid anger, and read… and understood.

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Filed under Paffooney, philosophy, politics

Fire Wisps

Garriss n Torchy

In the novel I just recently finished, The Magical Miss Morgan, there are several different kinds of fairies.  The fairies in the book may or may not really be there.  They are a part of the magic the teacher, who is the main character, uses to be a superior teacher.  She engages the imaginations of her students and they love her for it.  Still, an important part of the plot revolves around a small group of fairies intent on a quest meant to save their fairy kingdom called Tellosia from a take-over attempt by evil fairies.  One of the main character fairies is the fire wisp, Garriss, seen here with his little brother Torchy.  Fire wisps are fairies made of elemental magic, so they can be fire, water, wind, and stone.  They are made of the element they represent, and so, with a brain made of fire they are not terribly smart.  They do, however, have very warm hearts, which Garriss proves to Miss Morgan, to Blueberry Bates, and to all the school children who dare to believe in fairies and fairy magic.  Garriss is totally contained by fire magic, and therefore doesn’t set the teacher’s desk on fire when he walks on it.  In fact, the only way he can burn anything is through the cone of fire spell written on his hands.  And even then, since he is not very bright (in a mental capacity), he has to be allowed to use it by his fairy friends, Silkie, the Storybook fairy, and Donner the Pixie.

This Paffooney is the first one I drew of any of the fairy characters in Miss Morgan’s story, but it is not the last.  I intend to draw more of them in the coming days.

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Filed under artwork, fairies, humor, Paffooney

Dippy Duck Dreams

The hardest dream-to-reality connection to make is my duck nightmare.  I know I bummed the world out yesterday with unfunny dream deliberations.  But in this post I explore the lighter side of nightmares.  It all began when I was about four years old and we went to the Deer Park Zoo in Mason City, Iowa.

Truthfully, when you look at it from the proper point of view, at four you are small and all animals look like monsters.  The three ostriches they had in a chicken-wire pen were at least several hundred feet tall.  The deer were huge with giant Bambi-eyes.  I was little and still very much in a touchy-feely stage of life.  And the goose-pen had a large hole in the front, just large enough for a goose head and neck to fit through at high speed.  That is exactly what happened when one wide-eyed nerd-child wandered close enough to give a gander a premium chance at a beak-first goosing.  Whether my pants had to be changed immediately afterwards is something I have yet to work up the courage to ask my parents about.  No rush.  They are only in their eighties now.

Anyway, I was left with a recurring nightmare, always involving a duck or very similar waterfowl with big, massive, white dentures.  Yes, you heard right, a duck with teeth.  It’s all right for you to laugh now, but I woke up in cold sweat every single time I had that nightmare.  Right from the moment when I realize that the evil little duck-mind has fixed its wishes on taking a nice, big bite, to the split second where the toothy duck-head zips towards me, I am gripped with total existential terror.  And it wakes me up.

20150104_205916

So what does this doozy of a dream mean?  Do dreams have to have a meaning?  All two-hundred-plus times?  (I lost count, so sue me.)  I do believe, however that it must be some kind of anxiety dream.  And the last occurrence was now four years ago, so the possibility of duck-dream remission is very real to me.

If my last post chilled your innards, then hopefully this one lit them up with laughing gas.

Leap of FaithThis closing Paffooney from yesterday is entitled “The Leap of Faith”.  I’m not sure why that is important to know, but it is.

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Filed under dreaming, humor, Paffooney

Watch Me Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat!

20141231_144345bflyySometimes I don’t believe in the magic I believe in… Er, well, it is something like that.  I mean, things happen in life that you never imagine could be possible.  Some things are unbelievably bad, and others are unbelievably good.  For instance, the Cardinals lost their last two football games.  They had an amazing year with eleven wins and a spot in the playoffs, but the @#&$$!!! St. Louis Rams broke their first AND their second string quarterbacks in that last win they won.  No more wins for this year barring a playoff miracle.  And I had been developing a heart problem since we went to San Diego in October to see my son graduate from Marine boot camp.  I have been waking up every night with heartbeat arrhythmia… at least, that’s what I thought it was, and what the doctor suspected it was… but it wasn’t.  I went in yesterday to get the bad news from the cardiologist, and he showed me test results that proved my heart is totally healthy and beating normally.  Apparently I was being fooled by muscle spasms in my chest caused by arthritis in my rib-cage.   Don’t that beat all?   Bullwinkle shows us there is nothing up his sleeve, reaches in into the magic hat expecting to pull out a lion, and we get a little white rabbit.

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Toy Tiger

Tyger!  Tyger! Burning bright!

I see thee holy in the night,

This for that, and that for this,

Shoot the gun,

And never miss!

A sillier poem there will never be,

And Tyger!  Tyger!  this poem’s for thee.

DSCN5213

The first stuffed toy I ever owned was a tiger.  It was almost as big as me the first time I remember it.  I got it from Mom and Dad sometime before I started remembering things in my life.

When my oldest son was born I bought him a stuffed toy tiger.  It was bigger than he was at the start.  I don’t know why, but now that my son is a Marine in dress blues, looking spiffy and military trained… It just seemed important to remember a toy tiger.

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Filed under goofiness, humor, Paffooney, poetry

School Is Out For Miss Morgan

Cool School Blue

I have done it.  I wrote the final scenes in my story of the school teacher who loves to teach and runs afoul of fairies fighting a war of good versus evil.  The epilogue put the cherry on top last night, so I actually finished this book on Christmas Day 2014.  I have great plans for this book.  It is the best thing I have ever written.  I based the lessons presented and the teacher experiences on my own teaching career.  I transformed myself into the viewpoint character, Miss Morgan, though I did not actually have the sex change operation.  The fairies are all based on real fairies I have known… as are the students in Miss Morgan’s classes… based on real students, I mean.  The evil principals, teachers, and parents in the story are totally fictional.  Yes, I have to keep telling myself that to prevent nightmares.  I don’t know about the goblins.  It’s hard to get to know critters you are spending your life stepping on and wiping out.  I hope a few people read this book one day.  I think it is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever to come out of a Midwesterner who moved to Texas and became a school teacher for 31 years before losing his mind, wigging out, and believing he could become a published author writing great pieces of literature.

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Filed under artwork, humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, teaching

Dickens of a Season!

20141224_183408

I shared this Paffooney last year too.  I don’t really celebrate Christmas any more, but I do believe in the self-sacrificing love that informs Bob Cratchit, and is so obvious that it converts Ebeneezer Scrooge.  There in lies the “reason for the season”.

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