Tag Archives: Paffoonies

November 10, 2015 · 2:34 pm

Mickey is Retired

Okay, I have discovered that retired means re-tired… You now have to get tired all over again. I live in a modest little suburban home in the suburbs of Dallas. It is a place where kings and queens have their castles, but we are separated from them by castle walls. While many don’t work in this city because they are wealthy enough that their money makes money, I have to get by on less and less of the pension I have earned because expenses keep going up. I am smarting at the moment because the school’s clarinet teacher forgot to send me a bill for two months. Suddenly I owe her $120 dollars, and it is over-due. And she’s mad at me for being a dead-beat that doesn’t keep up with his bills. But that’s a big lump of heart’s blood to surrender all at once. I will squeeze it out of my budget by the end of this week, but I am already cancelling my medical bills before the visit to the doctor in order to get the dog her medical check-up. I feel like she could at least be a little less grumpy about it. I have paid $72 dollars already. Doesn’t that at least earn a partial thank-you?

I recently painted the upper portion of the outside of the house, though the rain stopped me from putting on a needed second coat.

I have spent serious amounts of thought and energy on reducing expenses and living a simpler life. I am doing all my own maintenance on air conditioning, house paint, and minor repairs. I have stopped buying most of the optional items and even reduced the expenses for things like food and gas for the car and… toilet paper (something you really don’t want to run out of at the wrong time). But you see, I had to retire because my health was too poor to continue teaching daily. At this point, I am not really well enough yet to either do sporadic substitute teaching, or working at Walmart part time as a greeter to smile at the people coming and going with a big goofy grin to keep them from realizing I am watching them for signs of theft. (I really don’t want to work for Walmart if I can help it because they still hate my car, but who else hires doddering old retired fools like me?)

I guess that what it comes down to is that in retirement, I have taken up Daffy Duck’s purported profession of being a wizard. I write, I read, I collect wisdom… and I use it to try to do magic, making money out of books and making people laugh. Wizarding is not a lucrative field. People really don’t pay much for wisdom any more. I have gotten some attention and created some smiles with my work here on this blog, but it doesn’t generate much of anything beyond smiles and good feelings and people going “Hmmm, is that right?” I’ll take it. I’m satisfied that I have done my bit to make this world a better place. And I enjoy the freedom to write and think that retirement provides. But at the end of the day… I am still tired all over again.

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, wisdom

Tagged as goofiness, humor, Paffoonies, ranting about money, wisdom, wizards, working

November 9, 2015 · 4:01 pm

All Around the Mulberry Bush…

As you can see in today’s photo Paffooney, I bought another new action figure (The Vision from the Avengers). He is cheaply made and over-priced at $8. And what is worse, he immediately sided with a small group of paranoid PVC action figures who are suspicious of other dolls and action figures just because their elbows and knees don’t bend. Here they are threatening poor Fawn the Fairy from the Tinkerbell collection because I let Fawn go anywhere in the house she wants to go (as long as she stays away from the dog and the dog’s teeth). PVC (polyvinyl chloride) figures are fairly stiff and set in their ways. They don’t changes their hard-plastic minds about anything… ever. So, I can’t convince them to play nice.

Besides the arguments I am having at present with these plastic people and the voices in my head, I am having several other struggles to overcome. The dog has to get her vaccinations in order to continue to legally live in our city. So, since I have limited funds, I have to take away from the medicine expenditures for my own health care so the dog doesn’t have to be illegal. Of course, I quit taking most of my meds a while back. The expense will fit in my budget. But I actually feel better without the depression medicine and the blood-pressure medicine anyway, and definitely the cholesterol medicine was making my muscles hurt in addition to the joint pain of arthritis. So we will keep the dog healthy, since my own health is a lost cause anyway. But I wonder if the way I am approaching my medication dilemma makes me the monkey or the weasel. Am I the weasel being chased by a monkey who represents problems, or the monkey chasing the problems around the mulberry bush? It is an important distinction, because the song does not say, “Pop! Goes the monkey!”

NaNoWriMo is another goal that seems to veer off course. I have not yet written anything new on the novel this month. I am still stuck in the editing phase. Of course, I edited more than 10,000 words yesterday. That counts for something, doesn’t it? One of my children is home with an infected throat. The weather is rainy off and on and makes me hurt. I would have to say there are a plethora of excuses ready to be used for not writing. But I will try not to use them. After all, do you know what a “Plethora” of something is, Jefe? (Bonus points if you know what movie that reference comes from. Steve Martin and Chevy Chase are in it.)

I know this particular post is rambling and vague… purposeless and pointless to be alliteratively specific… but I am nearing the end of my goal to post an average of 500 words every single day of 2015. Six and a half weeks to go and I haven’t missed a day yet. I have written 721 posts on this blog, and been viewed over 14,000 times by over 6,500 folks. I think it is safe to say the writing habit is pretty much fixed in place, but I still have mountains to climb (metaphorically speaking) and goals to reach. I am getting tired of all the chasing around mulberry bushes. If that dang weasel doesn’t pop soon, then it will be, “Pop! Goes the Mickey!” But at least it makes something to write about.

I wonder if Clown Cops are any good at chasing weasels? I plan to make a few more of them in upcoming posts.

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Filed under action figures, goofy thoughts, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as filler blog posts, goofiness, humor, Paffoonies, photo Paffooney

November 8, 2015 · 3:54 pm

Old Poetry By a Silly Old Poet

Okay, people, I am not a poet and I’m sure you know it… But sometimes cartoonists rhyme for no good raisin… and make bad puns too. Today I will share with you a bit of versicular (verse+ick+ular) goofiness that I tend to call poetry. I am putting some in my vault, here; Poetry in the Vault (Mickey’s House of Fiction)

Sleeping Beauty (a Silly Poem of Love and Illusion)

In the dark and in the light

In candle flame and purple night

The beauty sleeps and fails to heed

The young man’s life of lust and need

What happens next is often sad

The want, the hope, the love so bad

And fluttering faery wings of light

Carry life and love and fuel the sight

With never a thought to what could be

If only love would call to thee

And wake the sleeper from her dream

To make the two but one to seem.

Hear the Music (a love poem)

The singer sings his song,

And wants the world to sing along,

Though the world has gone all wrong,

And the darkness stays too long.

The singer warms and croons,

Under bright romantic moons,

And carries hopeful tunes,

To the listening dolts and loons.

Can a song bring truth to light?

Can it help us win the fight?

Does it ease the world’s plight?

And set the wrongs aright?

Yes a song can save the world,

Though the truth must be unfurled,

And the listeners’ ears are twirled.

So the hurts will all be pearled.

Mickey at the Wishing Well of Souls

I found a country well, and I thought I had a quarter,

But I fished in pockets hard, and found nothing for the warter,

And since I had to warp a line to make the poem rhyme,

I figured I would just look in, because I had the time.

I looked into the warty water which sat there still and deep,

And could not see the bottom, and I began to weep.

The water was clear and dark and black,

And the only thing I saw… was Mickey looking back.

And nothing of the wishing well, its magic could I see,

For only there just staring back, the secret thing was me.

Mental Pie

I’d like to offer you a piece of my mind,

Though not a lecture, rant, or complaint,

But rather a piece of mental pie.

Its taste will be very sweet, you will find,

As I’m constantly thinking in ink and paint,

That gives you wings and allows you to fly.

The Cookie

Once I had a cookie… But every time I took a bite, It became smaller and smaller…

With each bite I had less and less cookie left.

But when it was gone, the sweet taste of it…

Lingered on… as memory.

Icarus (A Song Lyric with No Tune)

“You never believe in me,

You only hear the lie,

You never believe in me,

You never even try,

You never see the good in me,

You only fear I’ll die,

You never hear the words I say,

You never tell me why,

You never care how I plan,

Or why I touch the sky,

You’ll never lift me up,

You never let me fly,”

That’s how it always was,

Between my father and I,

Until the day I reached the sun,

And burned my hands on high,

And so it is he’ll never know,

How much his son was worth,

Because he couldn’t understand,

The day

I fell

To Earth.

Scheakenschifter’s Totally Imaginary Emporium

For a while now I have been learning the hard way that being a writer means selling lies for a living, and you only get paid in imaginary money. I mean, I-Universe has a payment policy of 10% royalties, but they only send you a check when they reach $25 dollars that they owe you. So, the $16 dollars they owe me for book sales in 2014 is still in their bank account. Blogging on the internet (what I am supposedly doing as a professional author here on WordPress with a site set up for me by I-Universe) pays in reader appreciation, likes, and shares. I get paid diddly-zilch for that.

So, I have decided to open an online imaginary store. I found a couple of partners, Junius Scheakenschifter the business entrepreneur, and Sam the Banana Man, a cartoonist like me (but a little more loony). The thing that makes them difficult to work with is that both of them are completely fictional people, existing only in my imagination. But that’s okay. The store is made up of entire lines of imaginary inventory and I only charge a little appreciation and some fantasy money for each item.

Let me make a list for you of the best-selling items in my store.

The patent for this alien technology actually belongs to the ruling council of the Telleron Star Empire.

After the failed alien invasion in my second published novel, Catch a Falling Star, I had a number of these alien ray pistols in my possession. They are called Skortch Rays by the Tellerons (Who speak Galactic English just like we do as they learned it from watching I Love Lucy episodes from the television signals that have already traveled to the nearest stars). Testing them out on rats and people who annoy me, I have determined that they are basically molecular disintegration rays that turn solid objects… and rats and annoying people… into loose, free-floating atoms and clouds of gas. This is particularly useful for those people who annoy you, as no physical evidence is left of the skortching for the local authorities to find and give you disapproving stares over. Of course, since it really only works on the imaginary people who annoy you, you probably don’t have to worry about the moral aspects of the things anyway. I believe these items are worth somewhere in the neighborhood of billions and billions of dollars, but I am offering them at the sale price of one imaginary wooden nickel apiece. Surely you can afford that. And they work really well on exterminating imaginary rats.

4th Dimensional Hoola Hoops can be hazardous to your health, so I recommend you read the enclosed user’s manual from cover to cover.

The Fourth-Dimensional Hoola Hoop is really hard to imagine a practical application for, but I think it is obvious that it represents hours and hours of mildly radioactive fun. I am told that the longer you hula with the hoops, the farther your top part gets from the bottom part. I am told this by Mr. Scheakenschifter who tested it himself. But I can’t prove his claims are true because he is still hooping, and the top half of him in the A-ring claims that the bottom half of him in the B-ring is now hooping along the north shores of the Hudson Bay. I am waiting for the news footage of a wandering pair of legs wearing a hoop to be posted on one of the many conspiracy-theory websites I follow. (What do you mean that wouldn’t be valid evidence? I believe them about the crop circles and UFO sightings, don’t I?) We will happily sell you a 4th-Dimensional Hoola Hoop for the low, low price of one thousand Trans-Orgonian Bleeb-chuckers, the standard transactional currency used on the third planet of the Trans-Orgonia Star System. The natives there give Bleeb-chuckers away for free, so all you have to do is make a trip there and collect them. (I also have a special deal available on Earth-to-Trans-Orgonia starships of the imaginary and dream-works variety.)

Moosewinkles are easy to care for and train because they only eat imaginary sauerkraut and speak English particularly well for a moose.

The last item I would like to tempt you with today is a Moosewinkle. These cartoon mooses… er, moosi… er, meese… are the perfect item to use as you discover the strenuous sport of Moose Bowling. Moose Bowling is good for your heart because a moose weighs in the neighborhood of half a ton. Throwing one down a lane in a bowling alley takes strength, determination, considerable skill, and… moose muscles. If you can roll a moose down the lane, you are practically guaranteed a strike on every ball. The moose tends to knock down all the pins whether you hit the head pin or not. In fact, it will probably record a strike in the lanes on either side as well. Wouldn’t it be fun to roll a score of 300 every time you go bowling? Maybe even 900 if you keep score on both sides of your lane at the same time. So please buy my Moosewinkle. In fact, I will send him to you free. He has already grazed on all the grass and flowers in our yard, and most of the curtains in the house too. So, where do you live? I’ll pay the postage and handling myself.

I now stand ready to start raking in the imaginary money. And I will get rich this way just as quickly as I will by being a novelist with I-Universe publishers.

Immigration Explanation

Immigration is important to me. My wife’s half of the family are immigrants from the Philippines. My wife is a resident alien with a green card. Her quest for citizenship, once an automatic thing because she married me, has been so contorted and convoluted that she is still not a citizen even though we have been married for twenty years due to the fact that this country’s bureaucrats and wealthy elite are trying to block literally everyone who is not the proper shade of pinkish white from entering this country permanently. My children, all born in this country, are no different than the many “anchor babies” that Mexican people supposedly have a lot of over here so they can stay here. So I worry that my wife and children will be summarily shipped back to the Philippines for good because we don’t as a people approve of letting them over there come over here and make themselves at home. My wife has gotten so frustrated that she has given up trying to become a citizen. She dares them to send her home. Of course, I won’t be going with them. The climate in the Philippines, as well as the volcanoes and typhoons and mudslides, would do me in quickly over there, and Filipino medicine would finish me off. So, depending on who we elect as the next president, my family is in immigration and deportation jeopardy.

The colorless, lifeless water-zombie Marco Rubio is 90% sponge material… and sponges have no spine.

The orange-haired bloviator known as Donald Trump.

Now, it is entirely possible that the next president will be a Republican. We seem to have a proscribed political cycle in this country whereby each Democratic president is manditorily followed by eight to twelve years of Republican administrations. It is the Republicans’ turn. And as we saw in the 2000 election, they will cheat and miscount votes in order to get their turn. There is apparently a rule that after each Democratic attempt to solve the nation’s problems, the Republicans have to screw things up again to maximize profits.

Republican presidential candidates run a spectrum on the subject of immigration that starts with Marco Rubio, who supports a Path to Citizenship and recognizes that even the illegal immigrants are an essential part of the part of the economy that still works, to The Donald who says all Mexicans are rapists, though he assumes some are good people. Rubio, the best of all possible bad choices, keeps his position on immigration a relative secret. If the Tea Party finds out he holds these anti-American views, he will not only NOT be president, he might get sent back to Cuba (He happens to be an anchor baby too.) Trump, on the other end of the spectrum, will destroy our economy to build a Great Wall of Texas/New Mexico/ Arizona/and California to keep all the brown people out. Of course, he promises to make Mexico pay for the wall, so it is their economy he will try to destroy as he apparently wages war on the Mexicans. Republicans seem to be no friend to immigrants.

As the video I led off with points out, even children running away from from violence and murder in El Salvador are not welcome here. As a people we object to paying our tax dollars to help out innocent people who are just trying to raise children in a state of healthy not-dead-ness. We never object to bombings and invasions by our military that blow up those innocent people’s homes with them still inside. That is just good business sense. War is more profitable. But I don’t remember any pennies from those profits landing in my pocket. Immigration is just a big game of hating-them-because-they-are-not-exactly-like-us. And I confess to being sick of playing the game. I am not exactly-like-us myself. No one is… I think. So, let’s try a little harder to understand this whole immigration thing. Maybe somebody besides the politicians and goofball cartoonists like me needs to take up the issue and solve the problem in a more loving and Christian way.

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Filed under humor, immigration, Paffooney, politics

Tagged as humor, immigration, Paffoonies, politics, Republicans

November 1, 2015 · 4:15 pm

Remember November

November is a light blue month. I suppose me saying that, and especially me believing it is true, is evidence of some further mental illness… I know there are other people like me who think things you can’t see have colors, and they are probably loony-birds too. But I have always felt that months have colors. August is burnt orange. September is rose red. October is yellow-brown. And November is a light blue.

November is also the month that I turn 59 in 2015. Almost 60! I am moving into my cranky-old-coot phase of life. That’s okay too. It is also probably evidence of mental illness. Old brains tend to get a bit fermented… especially when they’ve been sauteed over time in a stew of stress, pain, doubt, and old wounds that never really heal. I enjoy getting older because now I have the excuse that I am a doddering old coot to help me get away with the creatively evil things I was always too goody-two-shoes and afraid to do when I was younger. No worries. I am not changing into Dracula over night. Halloween has come and gone without me doing anything seriously bad… other than writing novels. At least, not that I am aware of.

November is also NaNoWriMo. This year I begin the month putting the final editing touches on Snow Babies. Then it is time to get serious about When the Captain Came Calling.

WTCCC is a novel about girls re-forming an old boys gang… with boys in it, and taking on the magic of sea-stories… lies that old sailors will tell. Captain Noah Dettbarn returns home to Iowa from the South Pacific cursed with invisibility and being pursued by magical monsters. Mary Philips, the girl on the right, has become the new leader of the Norwall Pirates. Valerie Clarke, on the left, is the youngest member of the club, and she is the viewpoint character filtering the sometimes scary world of adults through her imaginative young mind. She’s also in the picture of Mary since she has been turned into a golden-furred squirrel in that picture.

This novel I am using for NaNoWriMo already stands at 41 pages and more than 14,000 words. So I have a good head start. A novel in a month? 50,000 words? Easy for a crazy old coot who is retired and not busy enough by half. As long as I can keep on kicking (the dog is watching me as I write this because she doesn’t want me kicking her) and keep on living, I can do it easily. It is a story idea I have been working on since 1981. And even though November is a blue month, depression is not a problem. It is light blue, remember? The dark blue of depression doesn’t come along until December, a month colored deep indigo blue. And by that time there is no way fickle fate can prevent Snow Babies from being published by 2016.

(Since I am still short of 500 at this point, let me point out the favorite words I have used in this post that tickle me passionate pink; coot, fickle, loony, doddering, and indigo. Now you can ignore this parenthetic expression.)

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as coots, favorite words, goofiness, humor, NaNoWriMo, novel writing, Paffoonies

October 28, 2015 · 2:23 pm

Sarcasm, a Super Power of the Future

It has come to my attention that the need for super heroes has reached a critical point in our history. I have been watching television documentaries about Green Arrow and the Flash, and now there is a new one, Supergirl. And I didn’t miss all the media attention when Robert Downey Jr. formed a super team of powerful people and destroyed a European country so thoroughly that I can’t find it on a map anywhere. So, wanting to get in on the action, I decided I needed a super power of my own. And I know what it is. I am not strong. I am not fast. I am not as smart as Robert Downey Jr. who is both Sherlock Holmes and Iron Man. So I have to settle for one of those second tier super powers. Like sarcasm.

Unbeknownst to most who know me, I went away to the far oriental country of Kathman-dooki to study under an ancient master. His name was Aiknowyooare Butwhattami, ancient master of the Shaolin art of Sarcasto Fu. He was the one who taught me to meditate on the foibles of people I don’t like and the pet peeves that drive me to despise them. He taught me that a well-placed sarcastic comment, like a well-thrown dagger, can cut right to the heart.

“You must focus your ire on the words you say, Grassstomper, to give the desired meaning to words that actually mean the opposite of what you mean to mean… in order to be mean,” said the ancient master.

“That makes perfect sense to me,” I said with a leftward eye-roll.

“Excellent, oh bug-headed one, you inflected that just right to hurt me fatally without revealing your witlessly shallow stupidity.”

I smiled at the praise as he wrote a big letter “F” on my report card.

But if I choose to use sarcasm as my super power, I have the unfortunate problem of competing with the super hero known as Sarcasto Man. He has previously seized on this notion that you can defeat super villains by sarcastically shaming them into committing oriental ritual suicide… called Hairy Kurie, or something like that. Or was that ornamental suicide? You know, the kind that decorates the sides of your house with dark reds and crimsons. I think you do it with a sword… or cut your own head off with a butter knife or something weird like that. Anyway, Sarcasto Man has told me that he achieves his super-power effects by holding a very high opinion of himself and talking down to everyone else around him. He was supposed to become part of a super hero team, but failed at the task because his sarcasm caused as many suicides among his teammates as it did amongst his super-villain enemies and their minions. In fact, he could not use the power on minions very well because they are usually too stupid to understand that you actually mean the opposite of what you are saying.

“It was very discouraging after I defeated the Mangling Mingler,” Sarcasto Man told me, “because after he cut his own head off with a butter knife, his minions, the Mingle Men, blamed me for his death and started pelting me with rocks. I got such a bunch of red welts on my buttocks. Fortunately my head is rock-proof.” (Did I forget to mention that using sarcasm as a super power is greatly aided by having a very thick skull?)

I began to despair of ever achieving levels of sarcasm-ness to be in his league. So I started looking for alternatives that were close in content, but different in application. I briefly thought about using irony instead of sarcasm. Tim the Turtle Boy (whom I interviewed as a potential boy sidekick… um, not trying to be gay or anything) demonstrates my irony skill by holding up his magical cast-iron flat iron with which he either creates irony or flattens out the super villain’s clothing wrinkles. Well, maybe I am not all that clear on how one becomes a superhero, and I don’t want to make Robert Downey Jr. mad by trying to become Irony Man and crowding his personal shtick. He might use sarcasm on me and suggest I would make a really great Pun-Man. You know, killing villains with really bad puns and jokes that turn your head inside out. That would be a truly shameful thing.

Transportation by Imagination

How does one use the mind to move from one place to another? Is teleportation by mental ability possible? Can we find new ways to travel using only the mind? New worlds to travel to? Of course! Anything is possible once you realize there are no barriers to human imagination. It is possible to traverse even the beginning and the end of the universe itself.

Case in point, I have as a cartoonist tried to come up with novel ways to travel. In Catch a Falling Star I imagined that an engineering prodigy and a scientific genius used recovered alien technology to turn an 1889 steam locomotive with a pair of Pullman passenger cars into a space vehicle using an old hot air balloon and Yankee ingenuity. They used it to fly to Mars.

A friend who read that book, Stuart R. West, who writes teenage horror story mysteries (Here’s a link to Stuart’s stuff!) suggested an idea for an illustrated children’s book about three kids that feed bubble gum to a goldfish. The goldfish urps up a bubble that ends up carrying them off on an adventure through the sky. I drew a possible illustration for that book and killed the idea completely dead. I have a secret super power for taking cute and funny ideas and turning them into things that are totally unmarketable. I wonder if that makes me a super villain instead of a hero. So, the cartoonist in me had to develop other ways to travel that are even more ridiculous.

In Clowntown, a part of my Atlas of Fantastica cartoon, you travel the downtown Clowntown skyway by being flipped and flung along the Clowntown Trapeze-way. It makes for a harrowing ride and it’s really heck to use for trips to the grocery store or coming home again with packages to carry.

Travelling in the part of Fantastica dominated by pirates is even worse. Traveling by the science of Boomology means getting shot out of a cannon naked to get wherever you need to go. It is not something I would want to try in real life, but the cartoon me seems to not enjoy it with only minor bumps and bruises.

So, travelling by means of the mind alone, through imagination, is quite possible… and probably infinitely unwise.

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Filed under cartoons, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as cartoons, humor, mind powers, Paffoonies, science fiction, travel technology

October 20, 2015 · 2:25 pm

Rehab for Disney Princesses

I am in the habit of rescuing dolls from places like Goodwill. I particularly look for the abused or over-loved toys that may be a little bit marked up or a little bit broken. My work table (which was once-upon-a-time a drawing table before being over-loaded with unfinished projects) is loaded with doll parts and beat-up dolls. In the photo Paffooney you can see two naked dolls that I have been working on. One is a Disney Princess, Ariel the Little Mermaid. The other is a Barbie doll with jointed arms and legs, possibly a ballerina in her previous doll life with molded ballet slippers. The fairy in the foreground is possibly a real fairy that I have coerced into lending me some of her magic to help these poor once-loved toy dolls. We are in the process of rehabilitating them.

Now, you realize that Disney dolls are more cheaply made than Barbie dolls (that is important to understanding the evil corporate empire run by a cartoon mouse primarily for hideously huge profits… I love Disney, but it is evil). Ariel has a funky body that has a signature lopsided waist joint. She is proportioned in ways that make her hard to make clothes for, and definitely hard to dress in Barbie clothes. That was intentionally done because Disney is in competition with Mattel and, besides, the basic Barbie body is patented. Disney can’t just steal the entire design.

The thing about dolls is that they are created for little girls to love. And their plastic princess personalities are kinda air-headed. They become easily addicted to the love they get from little girls, and they continue to soak it in no matter what it does to their bodies or how it shortens their potentially immortal plastic lives. Ariel came to me with marks on her legs from black and red markers, and apparently melted rubber bands. I had to scrape and clean her bendable soft-plastic legs with cleaning alcohol (the same stuff I use to reduce anti-electric build-up on the wheels and rails of model trains). Her hair was a sunburned frizzy mess. It looked exactly like you’d expect an addict’s hair to look. I had to start to combing it with a metal dog comb, and then I was able to use one of the human combs I used on my own hair and beard. Finally, I found a cheap Barbie costume that has an open seam in front to wrap around the and seal with Velcro.

I dressed Ariel by stretching the fabric around her (especially the badly-proportioned bosom… dang that evil, sexist Disney design). I only had to twist her delicate arms slightly out of shape to make the dress that was never intended to fit her actually fit. You can see that I still need to find a way to restore color to her sunburned hairdo, but it is plastic, and if no little girl talks her back into her cycle of addiction, I can probably use acrylic paint. Ariel looks much better and healthier than when I found her. Of course, I learned to do this doll rehab bit from having a daughter who played with dolls in a brutal way that apparently required ritual sacrifice and dismemberment. Let me show you one of her Princess Jasmine dolls I saved successfully from addiction and death.

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Tagged as doll collecting, doll repair, humor, Paffoonies

October 16, 2015 · 2:07 pm

Gilligan’s Island

I mentioned the other day the G-word from when I started teaching. I mean, Fernando was guilty of starting it with his comment, but it caught on fast. Before I knew what had hit me, every kid in Frank Newman Junior High School was calling me Gilligan. I was, in fact, thin and somewhat gangling as a twenty-five-year-old teacher, and I suppose I did have a goofy sort of smile, and a rather childish innocence (compared to the vato locos I was teaching at the time). You can see for yourself. This is a high school graduation picture of me, but I didn’t change much in the seven years of schooling that passed before they dubbed me Gilligan. Alright, the horn-rim glasses were mega-nerdy, I admit. I only wore that style until they didn’t make them any more.

The reason the name bothered me was because they were trying to use it to gain power over me. The more they irritated with it, the more they could make me mad, the more they could get away with calling me that and only making the principal laugh about it when I tried to report the misbehavior, then the more they could control whether we actually learned anything or not during class. (The principal, at only four foot eight in height was dubbed “Papa Smurf”, and the History teacher, Mr. Stackwell was known as “El Pato” (Spanish for the duck) because of the way he walked and the fact that his face reminded even me of Donald Duck.) But I did eventually observe that other teachers would ignore and even smile about it when they were called their own nicknames. (Thank you, Mr. Stackwell, for giving me that example.) I learned that I could accomplish more by owning it. My classroom became “the Island” or “Gilligan’s Island”. And we began feasting on cooked coconuts of learning. I regularly pointed out that on his show, Gilligan often got the attention of the movie star, Ginger, and the farm girl Mary Ann. There were benefits to being a single guy with two available girlfriends on a tropical island. (I even tried the two-girlfriends-at-once thing in real life, but that’s a horror story for another day.)

El Loco Gongie often accused me of speaking Martian to the class because I used a lot of words that were, to his small mind, too big to be real words. So I owned that too. I would put groups of five big words on the chalkboard (or, at least, words they thought were big) and spent time each week expanding their vocabulary with “Martian words”. I learned to fill dangerous down time when the class wasn’t doing anything else with “puzzlers”, trick questions or thinking games. I asked them to answer difficult questions like; “You are in a room with four southern exposures. Each wall has a window in the center of it. A bear walks by one of the windows. What color is the bear?” (I promise not to tell you the bear was white… oh, uh, well, anyway, you can still figure out for yourself why that is.) We began to have a lot of fun on Gilligan’s Island (Room 2 in the south hallway of Frank Newman Junior High in Cotulla, Texas). Diamantina even told Papa Smurf that I was “funny”. Of course, Papa Smurf had a long talk with me later about why teachers shouldn’t be funny, at least before May of their first year. But I learned that when she had told him that I was funny, she meant my class was enjoyable and she was happy to be there. Funny equals learning. That was the most important lesson Gilligan’s Island taught me.

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Tagged as autobiography, education and humor, Gilligan's Island, humor, learning styles, Martian words, Paffoonies, teaching

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