Tag Archives: writing

September 8, 2025 · 12:11 am

Really Odd Things are in the “Wrong File”

On my computer I keep a lot of picture files for inspiration both as an artist and a writer.  One of those files is labeled simply the “Wrong File”.  Everything in that picture file is in there for the wrong reason.  Or does a wrong file need to be filled with the wrong stuff for the right reason?  I don’t know.  There is a lot wrong with this world.  The fact that I am going to post stuff from the “Wrong File” is merely proof of that.

993359_218985714918868_1320990868_a

Liking Grumpy Cat posts on Facebook is an oxymoron of the lowest order.  It is an example of what is wrong in the “Wrong File”.

1378723_675977859080647_2108828186_n

Certain puns are just so wrong in a fundamental way.  That’s right.  They are both fun and mental.  So that’s wrong.

902790_602251473138086_553382447_o

As an educator I am aware that this thing we thought was true is now an untrue fact.  That’s wrong also.  My left brain tells me so.  But my right brain tells me it feels right.

Yes, these things are wrong.  Just wrong.

554816_609806149049285_1813792231_n

Why did I put this in here?  This is not wrong.  This is right.  So I must’ve put it in the wrong file.  So that’s all right, then.

557053_10151213635738857_618334895_n

Putting this in a file my wife could find on my laptop… Yes, that was wrong.

996519_10151713039531203_1793267040_n

Saddle shoes have been wrong for many years now.  I still draw them on the feet of kids, especially girls, especially school-age girls, and that is especially especially wrong because it means I am just too old and out of fashion.’

Boy!  Is that wrong!

These things are all older than me, but I remember two of them.  Is that wrong?

969118_561980263864893_396241353_n

I’m not sure I believe this is wrong.  So is that wrong?  To believe that it is right, I mean?  I’m probably wrong.

988289_10201821431282097_1326790710_n

My wife constantly tells me I am wrong… about everything.  And I probably am.  So that is not right.  And if you think that’s my wife in the picture, you would be wrong.  She’s much larger than that in real life.

And many people find surrealism is wrong.  Surreal is when you put wrong things together on purpose to make something that almost seems right.

So that’s what is odd about the “Wrong File”,  It is so wrong that it is right.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, collage, collecting, goofiness, humor, irony, strange and wonderful ideas about life, surrealism, wordplay

Tagged as , , , ,

September 7, 2025 · 12:45 am

There Are No Stranger Things Than Kids

I am planning to re-watch all eight hours of Netflix’s Stranger Things.  I can’t help it.  I really seriously love that show.  And the reason is the kids in the series.  Yes, it was set in the 80’s, a decade I long to return to, but I wasn’t a kid myself in the 80’s.  That was my first decade as a teacher.  The thing is… I taught each and every one of the kids in that series.  I admit, they had different names and lived in different bodies, but they were the same faces, the same personalities.

And it is not so much the characters the kids inhabit in the show, though they were obviously cast as themselves.  It is the real-life screwiness that Jimmy Fallon brings out with the silly string that I recognize.

tumblr_oamg706Hrc1tvua8uo1_500

Finn Wolfhard’s character, Michael, is basically me.  The dreamer determined to make the fantastic become true.  And when they played Dungeons and Dragons in the basement, he was the Dungeon Master.  That was me.  The teller of the stories, the maker of the meaning.  He’s the one who creates the Demogorgon adventure that eerily comes to life.  He is also the one who finds and befriends the mysterious Eleven.  He is the driving force that leads them all to the inevitable conclusion of the adventure.

2016-08-31-1472668173-2647175-monsterstrangerthings

And while I never met anyone quite like the mysterious Eleven, Millie Bobby Brown is definitely no stranger to me.  She is bubbly, outgoing, and utterly charming.  She can channel Nikki Minaj.  I must’ve taught at least five different versions of Millie in three different schools when I was a teacher.

Millie-Bobby-Brown-Stranger-Things1

She makes the weird and otherworldly character of Eleven become believable through the sheer force of a natural talent for empathy and understanding.  She is a highly intelligent girl with a knack for making things work.

netflix-casts-a-great-group-of-young-actors-but-stranger-things-have-happened-gaten-ma-1063261

I have also taught about four different incarnations of the Dustin character’s actor, Gaten Matarazzo.  The goofy but courageous kid with a broad sense of humor and a focus on food is a very common type of junior high kid.  And while he isn’t usually a leader in the classroom, he’s the one you turn to when you need help getting the group to choose the right path.

11-78

I swear to you, I know all these kids, even though I have never met them.  You see, when you are a teacher for long enough, everyone in the world comes in through your door.  You have to get to know them and learn to at least like them if not love them.  You do the thing for long enough, and you learn that there are a limited number of different faces and personalities that God distributes over time and circumstance to many different people.  It is possible to get to know nearly all of them.  And there are no Stranger Things than kids.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, horror movie, humor, kids, review of television, strange and wonderful ideas about life

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

September 6, 2025 · 12:02 am

“Unfortunately, you are a Writer,” He Said.

I have made up my mind to risk investing more money in getting another book published.  Being an author, especially an unknown Indie author, is really just an expensive hobby.  Even investing in professional editorial services and print-on-demand publishers can’t help you make any money at it, even if you are talented and good at story-telling.  The best I can really hope for is to get my books in print and pray that people will discover them and like them after I die, beaten to death for a crust of bread in debtor’s prison.

So, why would anyone in their right mind want to be a writer?

It is entirely possible that I was simply born that way.  I have been drawing cartoons and telling stories since I was about five years old.  Maybe even before that.  I don’t have many clear memories of my pre-school years.  It is possible that I was lost in a library once… or dropped on my head… or in a library and having a book dropped on my head… something set it off if it wasn’t simply in my genes.

I am planning to publish Magical Miss Morgan with Page Publishing.  They are a pay-to-print publisher who are slightly more affordable than I-Universe that I used to get Catch a Falling Star into print.  I feel like I have to get it published before I die because it is the distillation of my entire life as a classroom teacher.  Books like this are important to me.  In the Bible, there are prophets and holy men who are filled with the Word of God, men like Jeremiah, that claim the Word is burning within them, and will burn its way out of them if they don’t speak it.  My stories that I am working at turning into books are like that.  They are consuming me from the inside out.  I have to get them written and printed if I possibly can.

I have recently tried and failed to get novels like Snow Babies, Magical Miss Morgan, and Superchicken published with publishers that don’t charge for their services.   I got several rejections and one contract that came to nothing because of the economic failings of the publisher.  I have tried being infinitely patient.  It doesn’t work.

Cool School Blue

I will try to bargain for the most affordable deal I can to get Magical Miss Morgan into print.  They will apparently let me input artwork into the final cover.  I understand that successful writers tend to starve for at least fifteen years before they see any success and profit.  At best, I have six more years of that to go.  But this, after all, is my life now.  I need to write books and I need to get them published.  I am, unfortunately, a Writer.

This being an old post reposted, I now have this book available on Amazon.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, illustrations, novel, novel plans, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, publishing, writing, writing humor

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

September 5, 2025 · 12:12 am

Translating Texican

20160722_154518

I came to Texas from Iowa.  I was well-versed in how to speak Iowegian.  (I was, don’t-ya-know, and spoke it fluently, you-betcha.)

Then I arrived, fresh-faced and ready to change the world as a twenty-five-year-old teacher, and began working in a mostly Hispanic middle school in deep South Texas.  Dang!  Whut language do they speak?  (Yes, I know… Spanish.  But my students straight from Mexico couldn’t understand the local lingo either. South Texas Spanish and Castilian Spanish from Mexico are not the same language.)  I couldn’t talk to the white kids either.   It is possible to communicate with Texicans, but it took me years to learn the language.  It takes more than mere usage of “ya’ll” and “howdy”.

untitled

You can probably see what I mean when you look at these fake quotes based on the things real Texicans actually once said to me.  Of course, I can be accused of being a racist by interpreting things this way.  Texicans are concerned that you understand that they are not racists.  They merely rebel against being “politically correct”.  Apparently the political-correctness police give them all sorts of unfair harassment about speaking their minds the way they always have.  I should note, however, that I had to use a quote from Bubba rather than Dave Winchuk.  Dave is so anti-political-correctness concerned that he regularly said to me things with so much racial heat in them that they would even melt the faces off white people.  Face-melting is bad.  If you don’t believe me, re-watch the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

redneck-friends

And to speak Texican, you must actually learn a thing or two about guns.  Yes, Texas is an open-carry State.  Apparently, Second Amendment rights are the most important rights in the Constitution.  My two sons grew up in Texas; the oldest is a Marine, and the younger is in the Air Force.  Guns are important to them.  I have those same arguments with former students, too.  I have learned to say the right things so that they will tolerate my unholy pacifist ideas about how the world might be safer if everybody didn’t have five guns in the waistbands of their underpants.  So gun-stuff ends up as a part of the Texican language I have learned to speak.

The point of it all is, language is a fascinating thing that grows and changes and warps and regresses.  I love it.  I try to master it.  And the mistakes I make usually sound purty funny.

Leave a comment

Filed under angry rant, education, gun control, humor, irony, kids, Paffooney, red States, self pity, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Texas

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

September 3, 2025 · 12:16 am

Skyscapes of the Cloudy Mind

I admit it.  Even though I collect pictures of sunrises to glory in the fact that I still have another day of life in this world, I rarely snap a picture of the cloudless sunrise.  It is very possible that this has something to do with what ultimately gives life value and makes it worthwhile to live one more day.

20160918_084554

20160629_211128.jpg

If there is no pattern, no color-changes, no contrast, no variation… then why bother?  And this doesn’t only apply to living your life.  It applies to taking pictures of the sky too.  Solid blue or solid yellow are about as interesting as a minimalist painting.  (Have you ever seen the big beige squares and red squares that fill entire walls of the Dallas Art Museum?  Like a picture of a polar bear in a fierce blizzard or an extreme close-up of the side of a tomato.)

20160831_071202

Yes, sunshine and happiness are all well and good… but you don’t get a satisfactory skyscape without some clouds in it.  In fact, rain clouds provide the most fascinating patterns and colors.  What would the picture be without a little drama splashed here and there to make a center of interest or a counterpoint to the happy ending?  They say that variety is the spice of life.  And when they say that they probably mean cayenne pepper rather than parsley or oregano.  If that’s not what they mean, then why the hell did we bring food into the discussion?

20150501_195607

So, I am thinking, there have to be clouds.  (Notice, I said “clouds”, not “clowns”, because… according to the song, there “ought to be clowns”, not “have to be clowns”.)

20150317_072147

It is true that clouds can mean sadness… that the rain is coming, that your vision is obscured, that something has come between you and God’s eye.  But without clouds, the sky would be plain and boring.  Better to burn bright and explode in a short amount of time than to linger over a plain pale blue.

Leave a comment

Filed under clowns, commentary, foolishness, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as , , , , , ,

August 27, 2025 · 12:24 am

Anita Jones, the Little Red-Haired Girl

Anita Jones is a character in several of my books, but she also represents a girl from my own childhood who was as much of a regret for me as she was for poor old Charlie Brown.

Anita Jones, of course, is not her real name. You can’t even look at the picture and tell by what she looks like who I am secretly portraying. But the thing is, she was definitely real to me. And I would still be horrified to have her find out how I really felt about her.

She was not my first crush. I mooned over the beautiful Alicia Stewart (also not a real name) from second grade through sixth grade. But Anita was always right there. Often right behind me and to my left whenever I turned around on the playground. Not looking me in the eye, but probably looking at me until I began to turn. I know I looked at her whenever she wore dresses or shorts. She had beautiful peach-colored legs.

There was a time when, in Music class, the boys were forced to ask a girl to be a dance partner in the square dancing lessons that Miss Malik was giving us. My best friend Mark had asked Alicia to dance with him, so my number one choice was already taken. And when it was my turn, Anita looked at me with those wonderful brown eyes and heart-shaped face. And I… was too embarrassed to pick her. Then everyone would know how I really felt about her. So, I picked my cousin instead. My heart was lodged in my left shoe for three days after the look I saw on her face. Not my cousin’s face. The brown eyes and heart shape.

Then later, when I was on the high school bus to Belmond, Mickey Schmidt (we never called him Michael because I was Michael) made a joke that embarrassed me.

“Have you ever been caught masturbating in the bathtub?”

“No,” I told him, in disgust. Anita was in the seat across the aisle listening.

“It’s a good place to do it in, then, ain’t it.”

I turned as red as any maple leaf ever managed in late fall. She was smiling at me.

“I would’ve liked to have seen that,” she said. “I bet you even have a lot of hair down there.”

I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been so embarrassed that my head might’ve caught fire.

But thinking about that humiliating moment on the bus later, I realized that she had actually been brave enough to admit she was thinking about my genitals. I had never asked her on a date or sat beside her in Art Class as I should have. My life might’ve been very different if I had. Even if I had asked her to dance.

But somewhere in the Multiverse, a parallel me is probably married to a parallel Anita. And I bless them for what might’ve been. At least, it’s lovely to think so now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , ,

August 23, 2025 · 12:17 am

Dog Writes

This is a repost of a classic bit… A post written by my dog using her tongue to lick-type. I offer this now nostalgically because she left us behind for dog heaven a year ago.

Jade Monster1

Okay, like, my name is Jade Beyer.   I know I look like a dog, but my family lets me be a people sometimes.  They let me eat enough people food from their table to turn into one of them.  You know, like, all fat and unhealthy and some stuff.  So, since Mickey is being lazy today, he said I could write his blog for him.   It won’t be very long because it is taking forever to pick out the right keys with my nose.  And my nose is bif… I mean big enough to hit the wrong key sometimes.  So I have to edif caretully and ofren.

My family does a lot of funny stuff I can tell about.  Like how they pee.  They go in my extra drinking places.  You know, the white things with the extra funky tasting water.  Why are you not laughing about that?  Don’t you get it?  The house is full of carpets where they could pee and mark their territory with their scents.  But they would rather just pee where I drink.  I don’t get it.  And why is Mickey yelling at me that I can’t write about that?  I just did, didn’t I?

But besides that I can tell you about my Momma.  Mickey is my Momma.  Why do I say that even though Mickey is a man?  Well, when I was a wee little puppy and my family found me in the street, Mickey was the first one to pick me up and hold me.  He was the first one to feed me.  He says I must have “imprinted” on him as baby animals sometimes do.  And that’s why he’s my Momma.  I love him best.  Even when he is grumpy and mad at me.  I chew up a lot of his stuff because it smells like him and I love him so very much.

I am writing this today because Mickey is busy shaving off his face fur.  He found some old pictures of himself for yesterday’s post, and it made him wonder if he could look anything like that again.  I tried to chew the old pictures so I could love them even better, but he just got mad at me and swatted me on the ears.  He said I could show you the old pictures, and not eat them.  So here they are before the temptation gets to me;

20151016_133320

Wasn’t he a goofy-looking kid?  I like him better with glasses.  I tasted his glasses once, but not the ones in the picture, the ones he is wearing now.  His face doesn’t look anything like the third grade pictures any more.  I would very much like to lick that little-boy face with the same tongue I use to lick my own butt, but Mickey says he’s glad I can’t because that kid was dumb enough to let a dog lick his face.  Apparently when people get older, you just can’t lick them as much.  It just makes them grumpy.

Leave a comment

Filed under family dog, humor, Paffooney

Tagged as , , , , , ,

August 20, 2025 · 12:08 am

Being Old Enough to Know Better…

I am the man from the Setting Sun,

Come to the future to deliver the past.

What does that even mean, that silly little two-line poem I wrote twenty years ago?  Am I not old enough to know better than to create a snippet loaded with goofy contradictions?  Apparently not.  But I am old enough to deliver the past.  I have been around long enough that I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated.  I saw Neil Armstrong take that “small step for man” on the surface of the moon.  I have learned a number of lessons from the past.  And as a writer, I can deliver those lessons in the form of stories.  I was born in a different century.  I have been around for more than half of one… approaching two thirds.  I have collected all kinds of wonderful things in my goofy old brain.  And make no doubt about it, with six incurable diseases and being a cancer survivor since 1983, my Sun is about the set.  So, I have a mission, to open the eyes of people who are too foolish to avoid listening to what I have to say, or to read what I have written.

I saw The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews in the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa in 1965 when I was not yet ten years old.  I heard the song My Favorite Things for the very first time on the old black and white Motorola TV set in the clip I posted at the start of this post.  Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was a puppet show I never missed on Saturdays if I could help it.  In a world before video games and computers and even color TV, kids still had priorities.  And my world was definitely a world of imagination.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

                                                                              So, what kind of knucklehead must I be to think younger folks would want to know about any of this stuff from the time of dinosaurs and black-and-white TV?  I write books that are basically genre-breakers and about way too many different things to make sense to adults.  As a result, I classify myself as a Young Adult novelist, a writer for children… but not the beginning reader kind, or the early chapter-book kind… the kind like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Light in the Forest, or Dicey’s Song.  I write books about what it was like to be a kid in the past… the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s… last century.  And I have some knowledge and expertise in this area because I was one of those teachers during that time period that got to know the kids in my classes.  I made the horrifying mistake of actually talking to kids, asking them about their lives, and listening to their answers.  I talked about all manner of things with all manner of kids… brilliant things and stupid things… with dumb kids, smart kids, smelly kids, charming kids, and the kids everybody else hated.  You know… I did all the stupid mistakes that teachers who have no earthly idea how to do discipline would do, and got those kids to learn to behave at least halfway like human beings by being somebody they trusted and respected and… on rare occasions… believed.  Right now I am working on Snow Babies.  It is set in 1984.  And I hope to be good enough of a Sunset Man to be able to deliver it to the future.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, oldies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 18, 2025 · 12:17 am

Mickey Mouse Club Music

Today’s essay was inspired by Annette Funicello’s Facebook page.  I was marveling at how a teen idol and Disney child star could have such a large following and leave such large footprints on social media when she is not only all grown out of her child-stardom, but is actually quite dead.   I, however, who am technically still alive, work very very hard at this author-self-promotion-thingy, and I hardly make any headway at all in the ocean of the internet.  So, I did what I always do when faced with the imponderables of this writing life.  I drew a picture.  I drew Annette naked.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate either.  I put clothes on her because, well, young-adult-genre authors don’t always have to think like a teenager.

annette

You see, I am not mad at Annette.  And my hormones no longer control the other things that once made me deeply regret the fact that Disney never let Annette appear in movies in a bikini, even in the movies that were not Disney movies.  When you’re twelve, there are different priorities than when you are 68.  Hormones don’t do all of my thinking any more… at least, that’s what I tell my wife.

And part of what I still love most about Annette is the music.  The Mickey Mouse Club was always about talented kids.  They could sing and dance and play the drums, and they were as easily professional quality as many of the adults… and cuter to boot.  Talented children have been a significant portion of my life.  As an English teacher in middle school, I taught kids that were Annette’s MMC age.  I taught them how to write and how to read, and occasionally I had to find other talents to promote and help those kids become winners in the great game of life.  And, it may be cruel to say it bluntly, but some kids are downright ugly.  Not merely ugly in terms of what they looked like, but how they acted and how they thought and how they felt about things.  Racism runs deeply through children who’ve been taught thoroughly by parents before the teacher even meets them.  Sometimes you have to dig around really deeply in the black pits of their personalities to find something bright and shiny enough to put the spotlight on.   But it is always worth it.  ALL CHILDREN HAVE TREASURE BURIED INSIDE THEM.  And it deeply hurts that too many adults in every community can’t be bothered to dig for it.

Annette in DLandn

I grafted a background on my picture of Annette to stress the fact that she is not naked in my picture.  She was a very public figure and a good portion of her personal treasure was that screen personality that showed through and sparkled in every role.  My favorite Annette piece is the movie Babes in Toyland, which I saw for the first time at Grandma Beyer’s house in Mason City on her color TV.  The songs from that movie still play in my dreams.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, teaching

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 13, 2025 · 12:19 am

The Happy Pessimist

“I’d rather be a pessimist because then I can only be pleasantly surprised.”

― Benjamin Franklin

289513

Truthfully, I have always expected the worst out of life.  That expectation has never let me down.  In fact, it has made me a much happier person.  “How is that possible, you dim-witted dolt?” you ask.  Well, just as Franklin said it.  I am never taken unpleasantly by surprise.  In 1983, when I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma, skin cancer, I prepared myself to die at 27.  But I was pleasantly surprised.  I not only survived, but it was completely eradicated by surgery.  No chemotherapy.  No recurrence.  No more cancer worries (beyond assuming each and every mole I had removed after that point in my life was melanoma revisited).  I can now celebrate 42 years of being cancer-free.

pessimist

Watching politics as a humorous hobby benefits greatly from a pessimistic outlook.  I just assumed that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz would win the Presidency in 2016, and I prepared for that dismal dip into depressing gloom.  If Rodeo Clown Bush the Sequel had been elected, or Scott Walker got the nod, the more likely scenarios, I would have been pleasantly relieved and surprised, even though I would still have been expecting the ultimate heat-death of the planet to come from those administrations.  If Marco Rubio got the nod, better still.  He’s kinda young for a senator and stupid, but he’s demonstrated that he does care at least a little bit about the common man, and he doesn’t really want us all to die.  He’s even demonstrated the ability to learn from mistakes.  And if a Democrat had won, especially Bernie Sanders, that would have been a repeat of the marvelous surprise we all got in 2008 from the election of Professor Obama, man of the people. Of course, the worst happened, and the evil Pumpkinhead won in both 2016 and 2024. I will be preparing for the world to end after this next election, but there is actually a higher percentage chance of survival and limited suffering.  After all, people, even the mega-polluters in China and India, have recognized the need to try to repair the planet.

20150826_072148

I was, honestly, as a pessimist, expecting to be dead before the new school year started in 2015.  So I was pleasantly surprised to be able to start a new collection of morning-dog-walk sunrise pictures.  I am prepared and at peace with the world because I always expect the worst to happen.  Looking at everything from the dark side is ironically the way to find the light and hope in the new day dawning directly ahead.

Leave a comment

Filed under humor, Paffooney, pessimism

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,