Tag Archives: philosophy

January 9, 2015 · 5:30 pm

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?

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.

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, philosophy

Tagged as action figures, drawing, goofiness, humor, paffooney, pencil drawing, philosophy, self-reflection

January 8, 2015 · 2:08 pm

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.

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!

Those 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.

The Truest of Magicks

Okay, life is like this; you are born, a lot of dumb stuff happens that you are mostly not in control of, you suffer a little bit, you are happy a little bit, and then you die. That is a pretty gloomy prospect, and most of us spend our entire lives obsessing over it, examining it with microscopes, doctoring it with needles and potions and chainsaws, trying to make it last a little longer, wailing and complaining about our sorry allotment, and wasting what little time we have. So what secret exists that could ever make a difference? Could ever open up our eyes… even just a tiny bit?

The secret, as far as I can tell (and I am certainly one of the dumber and more random among you because I am cursed with insight and wisdom won through suffering and making huge mistakes), is reading the right books.

I am not alone in this sort of thinking. There are those who believe that if you gather the best books together into a personal library and read them, they add experiences and knowledge to your life that you would not otherwise have. (Of course, one must acknowledge, especially if you read fiction, that most books are filled with lies and misinformation, and some, Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus leaps to mind, might leave you stupider than you were when you started.) It deepens, broadens, and intensely colors the experience of life.

People who read books a lot… really read them, and re-read them, and collect them, and study them, and think about and write about them… are called wizards. Wizards are wise men. It is what the word means. Being one does not make you better than anyone else. In fact, wizards are generally weaker than normal men. It comes from all that ruining of eyes and fuddling up brains with too much thinking. You don’t want a wizard to back you up in a fist fight. You will certainly lose. And you don’t want a wizard to tell you how live your life. They are not good role models. But if a wizard tells a story, you should listen. Because if you really listen, and the wizard is really wise, you can expand the borders of your life, and push on nearer to immortality.

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Filed under humor, Paffooney, wisdom, wizards

Tagged as artwork, colored pencil, drawings, humor, magic, Paffoonies, philosophy, reading, wisdom, wizards

October 21, 2014 · 2:35 am

Cardinal Points

The cardinal is a personal symbol of mine. Cardinals, for those who only see them in the south where they live in relatively comfortable surroundings year around, are tough little birds of bright color. When the winter comes, and the snow piles deep, the cardinal digs in and stays put. I hope I am like that. Six incurable diseases, financial problems, being forced to retire from a job I loved by poor health, are all winter things that have not driven me out yet.

And, of course, my favorite teams are Cardinals. (Sure, you can argue that it’s a St. Louis thing, the Arizona Cardinals were once from St. Louis.) The St. Louis baseball Cardinals just ended their season with a loss, but the loss was in the National League Championship Series. They were in that series for the fourth straight year. They have been doing well, a good sign for me.

The football Arizona Cardinals are at the head of their football division with a record of five wins and one loss. They had a winning record last year, but were left out of the playoffs because they were in the same division as the Superbowl champion Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco Forty-Niners. Things are getting better for cardinals everywhere.

So things are looking up. I am happy, in spite of anything that stands in my way.

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Tagged as cardinals, inspiration, personal symbol, philosophy, sports fan

September 5, 2014 · 11:07 pm

The Gawd Problem

In my little town in Iowa there were only two Midwestern churches, a brown brick Methodist church and a beige-brick Congregational church. Midwestern Christianity tends to be very brown or beige. So I was raised believing in God. I was taught that there was God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Three people in one. And, since Methodists, the religion of my parents and grandparents, were basically puritans, we were raised believing sex was dirty and shameful, possibly evil, and we should save up all our sexual energy for the one person in life that we would most love, as long as that person was the opposite sex and also pre-conditioned to believe that sex was evil and we should not enjoy it.

The thing is, deeply ingrained religious beliefs like that, based on faith and the words in the Bible, is almost the exact opposite that highly intelligent people who get turned on to science tend to believe. I had the misfortune to locate myself directly in the middle between these two high-powered magnets that were destined to pull me in two opposite directions at the same time. Why are such things always based on contradictions? Religion depends on faith, which Mark Twain suggests means devoutly believing what you know ain’t so. Science depends on evidence and experience, and rejects anything your heart tells you is true that conflicts with the evidence. Is there no middle ground? Of course there isn’t.

So what do I actually believe? I am a Midwesterner to my very marrow. I believe there is a God. The universe has an intelligence, a spiritual element, and is deeper and wider than my mere five senses can verify. In fact, Carl Sagan said in Cosmos that because we have intelligence and discernment, we ourselves make the universe conscious of itself. This is a profound point. The universe is alive and aware because our existence gives it those qualities. That’s the basic truth at the center of Existentialism. Existence precedes essence. A rock has to exist before its “rock-ness” becomes real. So I am an Existentialist who believes in God.

At this point many of the Christian people I know begin yelling at me. “You can’t be both a Christian and an atheist!” But I am not an atheist. I believe in God. Further, because I believe that love is the most necessary quality in the universe, I choose to be called a Christian because Jesus Christ preached forgiveness, helping the less fortunate, and everything else based on love. I also understand that the other major religions of this world are, at their core, based on love. So I call myself a Christian Existentialist (though I realize I could just as easily be a Buddhist Existentialist, or some other kind of Existentialist). I love people, even the bad ones, the ugly ones, and the ones who disagree with me (meaning practically everyone). I don’t wish to be stupid or blind. I don’t wish to be unfeeling. I think the Truth (with a capital “T”) lies between the poles.

Danse Macabre

Every good writer writes about love… Well, not love exactly… Love. Every theme, every idea, every character basically boils down to that one very human emotion. You know that every religion says that God is Love… at least they say the good God is. But love has many facets, and leads to many other essential ideas. Life and Death, Sex and Birth, Love and Hate… all are part of the great dance… Camille Saint-Saens called it the Danse Macabre, the Dance of Death, and wrote about it in symphonic music. I reached a time in my youth where I had to confront the fact that people live and people die and I was no exception.

I have never believed in Hell. The God I know does not punish His creations with eternal torment… especially for reasons like having the wrong religion or making the wrong choices. I have to admit that once I rejected the notion of eternal punishments, I also began to doubt eternal rewards. Looking forward to a time after life is just as foolish and just as much a waste of time as fearing it. We do have to look carefully into the darkness, however, because in the unknown are concealed many traps and terrors. Fear is a real thing, and it does an important job warning us and making us prepare for the worst.

We always seem to associate innocence with goodness and purity. But as important as grappling with the idea of our own death is, is grappling with the loss of our own innocence. There comes a moment that we are confronted with the awful truth. It came for me when I was ten and was sexually abused by a neighbor. Feelings of guilt and humiliation were not totally new to me, but they dropped on me then like a landslide of granite and lava. That which is child-like and trusting is replaced distrust, fear, and loathing.

Where do we find the answer? Where do we find release from suffering and pain? Where do we find peace of mind? Religion can fuel love and forgiveness. It does it well. But it also fuels guilt and self-loathing. Unfortunately it does that well too. Psychiatry is an inexact science and needs a lot of further research. So what is the conclusion to this philosophical quest? What is the answer? What are the last steps of the Dance? I tried to sum it up the best that I could in the final panel of my cartoon Danse Macabre.

Tag Archives: philosophy

Humor Me (Humor? Me?)

Good and Evil

The Truest of Magicks

Cardinal Points

The Gawd Problem

Danse Macabre

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