Tag Archives: photo Paffooney

July 18, 2015 · 3:53 pm

My Own Minions

You know by now, if you have been reading my posts and not just looking at the pictures, that I am a doll… er, action figure… er, toy collector with a raging case of hoarding disorder. So, after finishing the My Little Pony/ Equestria Girl collection, I went on to work on a Monster High collection. I still need at least Draculaura to complete that set. But I stumbled into Minions. I couldn’t resist. “Oh toot jour, Pappagaina!” Stuart said from the shelf. So I had to buy him.

You know how dangerous it is to have Minions. Just look in the background at what happened to the Red Baron when I bought Stuart. Minions can have a bad effect, as well as a funny effect, on the outcome of an evil genius’ evil plots for doing evil-ness. So I started thinking of the dangers. The Minions only cost $8.85 apiece… but of the three main movie Minions, Stuart, Kevin, and Bob… there were already at least three different versions of each. Besides the “bored silly” set, there was a pirate set and a beachwear set. And what if they start issuing all the other minions? You know, Dave and Charlie and all the boys? I could be financially doomed by my need to collect.

And what am I investing in? Here is a close-up of Stuart after taking him out of his mint-in-box to play with him, posing in the cardboard castle atop Mount Blue Blankie where I have built my secret evil genius’ lair. Please don’t tell any would-be heroes or rival despicable villains that my lair is located in my bedroom.

And it turns out that Stuart is fully pose-able. That is going to be even harder to resist. Let me prove he is pose-able.

And after I made the horrific mistake of buying fully pose-able Stuart, I discovered he was not my only Minion. I also found out today that my novel Snow Babies has been assigned to an editor finally. Jessie Cornwell of PDMI LLC was assigned to edit my novel back on June 28th. Of course, I didn’t know about it until today because the email informing me went straight to the spam folder in typical Minion fashion. So now I feel fully ready to face the evil world and try to steal the moon, while actually accomplishing something completely different that I don’t expect. That’s what having Minions means.

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Filed under doll collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as doll collecting, humor, Minions, novel writing, photo Paffooney

July 16, 2015 · 3:16 pm

An Anatomy of an Angry Argument (The Stars ‘n’ Bars Controversy)

I get a little tired of friends, family, and especially online acquaintances calling me a liberal and meaning it as a severe antonym of a compliment. They are basically conservative by nature and they are trying to hurt my feelings by calling me liberal. (Or “libtard” or “libturd” or “liberaloon”) They don’t like my fact-based arguments and strike out at me from the deepest depths of their deeply-held-and-so-long-stored-in-the-same-barrel-that-it-fermented set of conservative beliefs. Often they pull potentially intoxicating talking points out of the well of watching Fox News and expect me to drink it… even though I know it has intentionally been laced with poison.

I am not offended by the Confederate flag. It was a part of the Civil War that fascinates me and still stands for the brave regiments of Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg who marched into a hail of cannonball-laced death to prove once and for all that an entire way of life can be destroyed on the battlefield. It was a terrible tragedy and those men paid the ultimate price for being on the wrong side of that argument. I believe we should honor them and reconcile ourselves with what remains of them. They are indeed still out there. But we do not have to honor the thing they were fighting for and ended up losing. Slavery is inherently unjust and evil. And the racism that is its aftertaste is just as despicable. It is understandable that in that long gone culture it was normal to view black skin as the sign of an inferior creature. They treated slaves as working farm animals, like oxen or donkeys. It is the way they thought of those… actually people… whom they failed to accept as fellow human beings.

I am not offended by the Confederate flag. But I am upset at the most common uses of it. Klansmen use it as a symbol of their race-hatred. They fly it at their protest marches along with the Nazi swastika. The flag at the South Carolina capitol building went up during the equal rights struggles of the 50’s and 60’s as a defiance of the entire movement. I am not offended by the flag, but I do not like when it is used as a symbol of redneck America believing they’re better than blacks and Hispanics because their skin is white, and that their conservative white values are superior to the values of Jews, liberals, and intellectuals. I don’t like being told that their heart-felt hate trumps my nerd-boy thinking-too-much. I don’t like the way they believe they win the argument by shouting at me in a louder voice than I am capable of shouting back. (Watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox News and see if he doesn’t do exactly that.) I don’t like the way they don’t listen to me in the same way that I try hard to listen to them.

People I care about and even love in Iowa are posting things on Facebook about liberals attacking the Confederate flag, and how terrible it is that liberals are trying to take away “our heritage”. But wait a minute… At the Battle of Shiloh in Missouri, the 5th Iowa Infantry Regiment and the Iowa 13th were embroiled in the Hornets’ Nest, the intense fight all along the “sunken road” that ultimately tipped the horrible battle in favor of the Union. Iowans were shooting at the Confederate flag. Many of them were killed by it. How can that flag possibly be “our heritage“?

I believe the rebel flag is not an appropriate symbol to be used in government buildings or 4th of July parades. It is a symbol of more than one thing… and some of those things are terrible things. I am not advocating making the flag illegal in the U.S. But, consider, the Nazi flag is illegal in Germany. It is the flag of a defeated rebellion against our government, fought for the purpose of defending the institution of slavery. Why are my conservative Iowegian friends supporting such a flag?

And I refuse to be insulted by being called a liberal. Conservative doesn’t mean “good” while liberal means “bad”. Conservative means wanting to preserve the good things about the past and not change them without good reason. Liberal means wanting to change things for the better. I used to be a conservative. I am only comfortable being a liberal now because conservative powers are trying to protect things that have to change because they are hurting us. I love all people in general… and I don’t want to see them hurt by their government or their society. So, if you feel the need to argue in the comments… or if you feel you have to call me a libturd… feel free to do so. But please don’t call me a libturd in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!!!

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Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, politics

Tagged as Confederate flag controversy, humor, Iowans, philosophy, photo Paffooney, politics, symbolism

July 9, 2015 · 2:38 pm

More Texas Airport Follies

I would post a picture of my son the Marine in his uniform, but I have promised him never to use his real name, or pictures of him in his military persona, or even reveal destinations where he was going for the armed forces. He is not going on secret missions, but he likes to play like it is so, and is capable of getting very, very mad about it. So you will have to be satisfied with the harrowing tale of delivering him to the airport, putting him on a plane to… somewhere… and finding out first hand what the term SNAFU is all about as it relates to the military and deployment.

You may remember that I posted about collecting him from Love Field and what a wondrous, lovely adventure that was, at the start of his leave for the holiday. (Texas Airport Adventures) Well, unfortunately, we didn’t have the same easy time of it on the butt end of his journey home. We had to go to DFW… The Texas-Sized airport that makes you appreciate how loud and braggart-y and smug and foul-tempered Texas is as a whole. Practically nothing went as planned.

I used this scene to represent the airport and blurred it on purpose (yeah, right!) to protect the identities of the random airport denizens I was photographing because I obtained a release from no one and no faces can be actually visible. (I also thought the pretty little Asian girl dressed in blue was particularly cute, but wanted no part in taking some sort of weird stalker photo.) To use this photo to imagine what the airport is really like, you have to realize that this is one of thirty-five-something waiting areas in only one of the Terminals A, B, C, D, and E that litter this monster airport. You have to take this particular photo times one-hundred-seventy-five-something to get an idea of how labyrinthine and utterly foul and soul-munching this cesspit of Texan humanity and lurking random monsters truly is. And we didn’t even have the misfortune of finding the Minotaur in the middle of the maze.

We started our quest at Terminal C, not quite sure which of the many, many American Airlines spots we were supposed to find out of all the x-marks-the-spots x-es that were to be found on the GPS and Google Maps. We checked his bags and asked about boarding, and if we could get passes to eat dinner at one of the terminal restaurants with our boy before he winged off somewhere into the military world far, far away. Helpful little lady in the official red jacket said we had to go to Terminal B to the USO office and get passes because he was military and that was a USO responsibility. Then she said we should hustle onward to Terminal A to catch his plane. So we went to terminal B. The nice lady at the USO said she had no earthly idea what red-jacket-supposedly-expert lady was talking about. We needed to get our passes from security at the Terminal where we were actually putting him on the plane. So by now, we didn’t trust anything that red-jacket-lady had told us and checked the ticket to see if she had given us the wrong terminal as well. Sure enough, the ticket said we were to put him on a plane at gate D20. There is, of course, no such gate in Terminal A. So we went to Terminal D. There we tried to get passes. The ticket agent that was helping us said we had to go to the special customer services desk at the other end of the free-world side of Terminal D. So, armed with my cane and two aching knees (from arthritis pressed into walking too far already) we stumped and slogged and slithered down to the far end of Terminal D. On the way (during one of my frequent puffing and panting and gasping stops) I checked the departure board for number one son’s flight and saw, to my shock and dismay, that his flight was leaving not out of Terminal D, but out of Terminal A, from gate A11.

The red-jacket-supposedly-expert lady from the far end of Terminal D apologized profusely that we had been misdirected by red-jacket-but-know-nothing lady and recommended that we get our passes from the special customer services desk that was now within fifty feet of where we stood. We went there and lucked out with a quietly competent special-customer-services guy who quietly and competently issued us each of the four passes we sought. (The poor Asian gentleman arguing with the next ticket agent over had already missed his plane because he had been waiting in long airport lines through boarding and take-off. I was so glad not to be in his shoes that I overlooked the fact that smoke was already rolling out of the soles of my shuffling shoes.) From that point on, we got what we wanted. We went to Terminal A and got in through security without being strip-searched… completely (only my feet were actually bare). We found a nice, expensive airport restaurant and consumed enough carbohydrates that it should have killed diabetic little me. The waitress was even a bit smitten with number one son, although the boy did not even notice her big brown calf’s eyes. And then we got him on his plane. And he was gone. Of course, the SNAFU (Situation Normal, All-French-worded-Up) was not completely done with number one son. He reached the place where he was supposed to go from American Airlines to the military transport flight, and was promptly grounded for a couple of days as there was a huge, nasty weather event across the ocean at his destination.

So, there you have it… the abridged to less than one-thousand-one-hundred-words version, anyway. More airport follies to tickle your glee-and-giggles center in your brain. And I may live long enough to go through similar stuff a number of times more. Such is the life of a military parent. But when we got home, just like the last time, the flower wagon had another surprise for us… just before the thunderstorm.

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Tagged as airports, autobiography, humor, metaphor, military travel, photo Paffooney, Texas

July 8, 2015 · 2:20 pm

Monster Collecting

Okay, it has been a while since I bought a new doll and was going through a bit of hoarding-disorder withdrawal. Plus a little windfall of cash finally came through. So, I added to the Monster High collection. Here is the new purchase still in the package; (Mint in package- can I resist the urge to take it out and play with it? Probably not.)

This is Lorna McNessie, daughter of the Loch Ness Monster. I am not sure how an aquatic plesiosaur who has managed to live from the Jurassic until the present by hiding in a lake and apparently only eating people no one would ever miss can father a daughter that looks like a scaly blue human girl with a big head, but apparently he did it. Here is a picture of Dad so you can compare and figure it out for yourself.

http://www.dinosaurjungle.com/prehistoric_animals_plesiosaurs.php

This purchase is within the rules of collecting. At $19.95 she comes in at a nickel under the maximum allowable price. She is also the first and only collectible purchased in July. So now I am closer to my goal of collecting all the daughters of famous movie monsters who fill the bizarro surrealist realm know as Monster High cartoons. Here is a look at where the collection now stands (or sits… displayed on the corner of my bedroom dresser next to the drawing table with all the Barbie parts and Goodwill reclamation dolls.);

As you have probably noticed, I have added Frankie Stein as well in the recent past, the daughter of Frankenstein’s Monster. She has surgical seams on arms and legs and neck, along with neck bolts, so one has to question why she is technically the daughter of the Frankenstein’s Monster if she is made of dead girl-parts, sewn together in a laboratory, and re-animated. Wouldn’t that indicate she’s Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster? Oh, well.

I still hope to acquire Dracula’s daughter, Draculaura, and possibly Venus McFlytrap, the daughter of the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. I am also pretty sure there is a daughter of some ghost-guy or other and the daughter of an evil genii. I don’t know what all is pertinent to this collection. They are somewhat oddball in nature, and I have not watched the animated cartoon (nor am I sure I can stomach it… there is no guarantee it will be a pleasant surprise like My Little Pony).

Here is what they look like naked. This is not intended to prove I am a pervert when I play with my dolls, but this does show the problems I face if I buy Goodwill rescue dolls that need repair or clothing (as most Goodwill dolls do) because their limbs and torsos are unique. You have to have character-specific replacement arms and legs, or be willing to paint the parts. The bean-shaped torsos are a bugbear for making your own clothing. Standard Barbie patterns don’t even come close to fitting, and you have to accommodate things like tails and fins and neck bolts. I may have to buy cheap ones so I can take their dresses apart for patterns. This is why I have never been tempted to collect Bratz dolls. Oh, well, the troubles unique to doll collectors, you know… And besides… I am well past 500 words for today.

Mason City in Pictures

We went to Mason City, Iowa on July 6th to see the new statues in the downtown business area. This is a post shortened by the need for travel, but because a picture is worth a thousand words, this must be a nine thousand-word essay.

Beloved Books

While visiting home in Iowa, I re-connected with an old family friend. It was in the farmhouse upstairs bedroom where I was being quartered as a visitor. It was an it, not a him… a book, not a man. It was a very old book, published in 1938.

Yes, the Ittle Red H is a child’s picture-book. Of course the first time I saw it, it was titled The Little Red Hen . It was in much better shape then. I was a beginning reader back then. My mother and my two uncles were the first beginning readers who began reading this book. It was in very good shape after it passed on to my generation at grandpa and grandma’s house. Does that mean it was my fault that it got all child-chewed and doggedy-eared? There was, after all, my cousins’ kids, and my cousins’ grandkids in between there looking at the book and possibly eating it too.

Members of my family learned valuable lessons from this old book. We learned that you can tape pages back together as long as you retrieve the page-parts from the child’s mouth before they actually get swallowed and digested. We also learned that a Red Hen can still bake bread even though the top of her head has been removed.

Alternating pages were printed in black and white and pink ink. I can remember studying these pages for a long time and wondering why sometimes the duck and the goose were pink, and other times yellow, and other times black and white. I think that may have taught me that color doesn’t matter… it’s the character of the character that can be recognized in spite of pink ink. A very profound realization I do believe.

I also learned that ducks and geese are richer than chickens, as determined by the fine clothing and the fact that their noses are held high in the air. Monocles in duck’s eyes mean that ducks are supposed to be smarter than chickens too. Apparently if you are smart and rich, you don’t do any of the actual work, yet expect that you are going to get to eat the bread anyway when it it is baked.

You can tell by the many tools and the grouchy face on the Red Hen that she is a chicken and expected to do all the work, even though she has kids to support and is the same pink color as the duck and goose sometimes appear.

When the Red Hen is in full color, she’s kinda brown in color. That is certainly telling too.

I love the comical comics in the illustrations of this book. I traced them and copied them many times in my misspent youth.

Perhaps I have blathered on a bit too much. Maybe I should just shut up and show you the rest of this precious old book.

As I go back and edit and re-read, I am just guessing, but it may be easily apparent that I was watching the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup while writing this loopy post. But it is, after all, mainly about using my meager photography skills to preserve this beloved old book.

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Filed under humor, old books, photo paffoonies

Tagged as antique things, humor, illustrations, old art, old books, photo Paffooney

July 2, 2015 · 3:13 pm

Homely Art, Mom-Style

I am assuming, probably incorrectly, that you have seen enough of my art work to come to the conclusion that I am a bit of an artist. Amateur, of course. You have to make money at it to be professional. I used a great deal of my artistic abilities in the classroom as a teacher, and while you come eventually to an appreciation for that small sacrifice, you can’t really call that making money at it. And I am good enough at drawing to know where the mistakes are… the flubs and the flaws and the not-so-happy little accidents (I truly appreciate the genius of Bob Ross, and I know I am not Picasso or Da Vinci… but I can draw better than he ever could.) I know my artistic junk is kitschy junk in so many, many ways. But I believe that some of the best art is homely art… the art you keep in your house… not gallery quality, but irreplaceable to you yourself. And the point of this article (dreamed up while spending some alone time in my octagenarian mother’s house due to illness) is that I got my love of homely art from my mother’s house, the house I grew up in.

These two goofy dinos are an example of what I am talking about. These two revered family art objects were bought as greenware porcelain from a mold at an Austin pottery-art store. Mother fired them in her kiln. I painted them in acrylic. They are now living happy lives in my Mother’s dining room. Oh, and they are made to be displayed together like this;

Most of mother’s art gallery-like house is filled with items just like this. No value to the history of art. Not museum quality. No more important than any other item of homemade functions-more-as-a-token-of-love-for-the-person-who-gave-it artwork.

Let me show you more of the many wonderful grandma-treasures that fill my mother’s house.

This was our Grandma Beyer’s glass doo-dad cabinet that for many years held sacred glass gewgaws and thingamajigs from the the thirties and forties. Mom inherited it and put all new grandma-treasures in it.

The cabinet holds all manner of precious vacation souvenirs, graduation photos of my sisters and brother and I, weird animal salt-and-pepper shakers, candle holders, souvenir plates, Precious Moments figurines, Hummels, pictures of long-gone relatives, and a variety of other things that each has a story behind it, a long and lovely story of years and tears and fears and more years. It is a cabinet full of memories and celebrations. Collectibles and corny joke items. There is no price that ever could be put on it, and one day it will all be given away.

Mom has collections of stuff everywhere. Christmas stuff, Thanksgiving stuff, and stuff on display just because Mom likes it sort of stuff. Much of it is antique simply because the people are old and have kept this stuff long enough to make it antique. It is displayed in every available nook and cranny and corner of the house.

And, of course, what every visitor to Mom’s house most wants to see are the dolls.

She was a very talented porcelain doll maker.

The art that is most important of all in my mother’s house, though, are her greatest and most valuable creations. That would be US.

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Tagged as autobiography, doll collecting, Grandma's House, homely art, humor, photo Paffooney

July 1, 2015 · 12:18 pm

The Uncritical Critic

The Lyric Theater on Main Street, Belmond, Iowa

My family took me to the movies last night. We went to see Jurrassic World. We went to the local hometown theater in Belmond, a place that I first went to movies at in the 1960’s for I don’t remember what… well, I’m old… you can’t always remember early childhood when your old brain is clogged with fermenting memories and nostalgia on steroids. I saw Battle for the Planet of the Apes here. I saw Tarzan and the Valley of Gold here. Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Gnome-Mobile, The Love Bug… Disney movies, Christmas movies, musicals, cartoons, westerns… science fiction… This was an important feature of my Midwestern Iowegian childhood. I watched all kinds of movies here, and they were all the best movies I have ever seen. Even the really bad ones. Even Harum Scarum with Elvis Presley. I love movies with the uncritical heart of a seven-year-old boy.

I know in my stupid old head that some movies are better than others. I know enough about movie-making and story-telling to know that Jurassic Park was a better movie than Jurassic World. I know that these two movies are better than Jurassic Park, the Lost World and infinitely better than the hot mess that was Jurassic Park III. But I love them all. Formula or not. Consistent plot or not. Humor that is actually funny or simply sad enough to make you groan. I watch practically anything that flickers with an uncritical eye. I have never walked out of a movie theater before the Best Boy and Key Grip’s names have appeared in the credits. I would especially never walk out of this particular theater. Who I am is pretty much shaped by the movies I have seen..

Why does this poster-saurus want to eat the pretty red-head’s head?

And Jurassic World is a good movie. The characters are engaging. You are sucked into the drama to the point that if either of the two kids are eaten by dinosaurs, you will be totally devastated and may actually die in your seat because you have been jumping and flinching with every scare they get, and for at least part of the movie you are seeing everything through their eyes. And the heroic Chris Pratt character allows you to stride boldly through the dinosaur-infested jungle with deadly velociraptors at your side. You get to be a bit of a bad-ass… er… bad donkey, as you tackle the man-made monster dinosaur at the center of the monster-movie disaster. Movies are supposed to surprise you and give you something new. (But I don’t mind when the story hits certain predictable patterns and cliches.) This movie let me have the pleasant surprise of the villainous velociraptors of the first movie transforming into the heroes of this movie (but they did eat a few minor characters along the way… and one human villain… though I hope the poor velociraptor didn’t get a stomach ache from that icky old guy). If you are looking for a reliable movie review to gauge the quality of the movie, you probably shouldn’t be looking at this article. I am not really a critic. I love movies beyond the point where sanity, reason, and critical thinking can actually protect you from cinematic evils.

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Tagged as autobiography, humor, Jurassic world, movie review, photo Paffooney

June 30, 2015 · 1:11 pm

Butterflies and Blossoms

A Red Admiral butterfly…

I am temporarily at home in Iowa, visiting the farm where my grandparents and great grandparents have owned the land and raised crops for over 100 years. My parents live there now in retirement, and while somebody else tends the corn and rents the land, they maintain the yard and grow flowers. Retirement is hip deep everywhere around the place. My old retired self and my wife and my kids are all descended upon them just like the butterfly who came to sample the purple flowers on the porch trellis. Little work gets done. My wife and eldest son have jobs and contribute to society still, but we retired folks putter and stutter and watch the butterflies flutter. We watch the kids and the flowers grow.

The Family Farm House

Watching stuff grow has always pretty much been what farming-family Iowegians do. Corn and soybeans, watermelon, pumpkins. cucumbers, string beans, sweet corn, pop corn, strawberries, potatoes… at one point or another I have helped to plant, tend, harvest, and eat all of those things… well, not seed corn and field soybeans… you can’t directly eat those… but you know what I am talking about, making things grow to feed myself and my family. There is satisfaction in working the land and making things grow… a fundamental feeling of achievement that helps us feel like we are not mere parasites, consuming and wasting and decimating… we build for the future rather than take maximum profit at the present moment. Farmers are the good guys.

Only, not so much any more. For our family farm, with three grandsons (of which I am one) available to do it, none of us have become farmers. The next generation after us includes no farmers either. So that fundamental feeling of achievement is basically a memory now. Only a memory and nothing more. Feeding the world has become somebody else’s problem now. We are watching the flowers grow.

Is there value in old farmers watching the flowers grow? Of course there is! The land is still functioning farm land. Iowa is still the breadbasket of America. We still feed the world. And we who own the land are at least providing the flowers and the nectar necessary to feed butterflies. The beauty, as well as the meaning and the metaphor, is there for anyone who wants to see it.

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Tagged as autobiography, butterflies, family farm, farming, flowers, humor, photo Paffooney

June 28, 2015 · 2:43 pm

Winning Easy

Now that Captain Action finally liberated my X-Box from the evil Dr. Evil who was holding it for ransom and not letting me play EA Sports Baseball ’04, I have been able to play Baseball ’04 again. (It happened in this blog; Dr. Evil’s Removable Brain) I have been playing this video game now with a passion, as you can plainly see. You are probably aware that the St. Louis Cardinals are my very favorite team in any and all sports. Notice, please that I have just pitched Matt Morris’ 30th victory against no defeats over stinky old steroid-fueled Roger Clemens. It was also his 9th shut out of the season. This is the first 30-game-winning season since Denny McLain in Detroit, in the 1968 season. I only had to replay the entire 2004 season 4 times to get there. Oh, and Albert Pujols has hit 114 home runs and Scott Rolen hit his 70th and 71st in this game. You are certainly smart enough to figure out by now that I have left the difficulty level of this game permanently set at the Rookie level. Hey, I’m old. I like easy wins.

A close-up of the Flower Wagon’s first bloom.

This is true in so many areas of my life. The flower wagon that I posted about on Friday is another evidence of my dedication to the philosophy of the easy win. It was a victory over many things… depression, tragedy, Texas gully-washers that keep on coming, the tragedy of an old toy that no longer gets played with… things where my decrepit old self with six incurable diseases needs desperately to win.

Flowers in our yard in general are a victory of sorts. This is Texas. A couple of summers back we were in a severe drought with like 99 days in a row of high temperatures of 100-plus. Flowers in June in Texas are a bit of a miracle. Good flower pictures recently taken are another miracle. My cell phone camera takes so much better pictures with all its automatic settings than my digital camera which cost twice as much, that it makes me wonder why I ever bothered with it.

A Yellow Rose of Texas in our yard.

Another yellow perennial that came up due to funky wet weather.

Of course, this is pictures the easy way because I am not trying to adjust the color balance (in spite of partial color-blindness), or the brightness compensation, all by my own little self with my modest-to-insignificant photography skills. (I am just skilled enough at photography to recognize a great work of art photographed by someone else, not skilled enough to take one myself.)

I am retired now. I have had a long hard career as a public school teacher, and I am working hard at being a good writer (professional or not) in retirement. I figure I deserve the odd easy win. Using my writing skills to tackle toxic ideas like prejudice and politics recently I was able to score some real points with some of my very conservative friends. I discovered by concentrating on the things they believe which I agree are very good things, I was able to make them consider a more liberal point of view, and not cling to Fox-News-sort-of faux-Fox-facts. I can even get them to laugh at things like saying “Fox-News-sort-of faux-Fox-facts” because it sounds funny even if you are only reading it silently in your head. It is an example of arguing towards an Easy Win, and I have become an addict.

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Tagged as autobiography, goofiness, humor, philosophy, photo Paffooney, politics, sports

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My Own Minions

An Anatomy of an Angry Argument (The Stars ‘n’ Bars Controversy)

More Texas Airport Follies

Monster Collecting

Mason City in Pictures

Beloved Books

Homely Art, Mom-Style

The Uncritical Critic

Butterflies and Blossoms

Winning Easy

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