Monthly Archives: July 2021

July 19, 2021 · 7:24 pm

Birdwalking Made Easy

Birdwalking in an essay is when you drift off topic and begin to meander like a bird from one spot, place, or idea to another, never quite pulling everything together into one whole thing. More like a bird eyeballing the ground as it goes by, hoping against hope that a worm will simply present itself.

The first stop, spot, place in the essay, or idea is a Paffooney, one of those pictures that goes with a story of its own.

This one is a picture of Grandpa Butch Niland from the the story, Horatio T. Dogg, Super-Sleuth. a story that takes place on the farm place next to my maternal grandparents’ farm place. I drew him while in Iowa.

But instead of lingering on the story of how I drew that picture based on the face of Jazz musician Duke Ellington and the personality of my Mom’s cousin and her literal nearest living relative… He lives alone now on a farm not a quarter of a mile south of my Mom’s house… I added this picture of a little lap dog and his nudist girl in front of a giant chocolate cookie in the shape of a heart which I added red and pink frosting to just today.

Why the heck did I do that, you ask?

Because I am making plans to use my AANR membership sometime in the near future to go to a nudist park and meet some other nudists that I have never yet met before.

And of course I had to add a black-and-white version of my anime portrait of an anime-loving nerd just because I saw it among pictures I could upload when I was sorting through drawings to use for a birdwalking post.

And then there’s this picture I found of the Wizard Pippin, two of his many apprentices, and his son Prinz Flute. I will admit to drawing that one a long time ago. It is not a photograph. But you may notice that Flute is a lot younger in this picture than the more recent ones he posed for.

And there’s my recently re-scanned portrait of Dr. Wilton Dogwiggle, Chemist, and his new invention, Happiness-Plus Potion. I promise that it is not merely warmed-up dog pee, although I understand that Wilton loves that odor. At least, that’s what he promised me when he had me smell-test it. It didn’t smell like pee, but it didn’t make me very happy either.

I will end this birdwalk with a photo to the nearest thing this old bird could find to a worm. I bought myself a toy for the first time since the middle of 2019. It is a Marvin the Martian PVC doll from the movie Space Jam with LeBron James. I couldn’t resist.

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Filed under action figures, artwork, birds, cartoons, humor, Paffooney, toystore quests

July 19, 2021 · 5:31 pm

Naked Innocence

So the time came to make the planned return trip to the nudist park in Alvord, Texas.  I was going to finally get to make my second visit to the place for the Labor Day holiday weekend.  But once again it was not to be.  My daughter caught a virus during her first week of school.  She gave it to me and her brother.  Of course, neither of them were planning to go along, and their mother would sooner find another husband than be naked in a place where other people would see.  They all think I am nuts for wanting to go spend time with other naturists gadding about naked in the hot Texas sunshine.  My wife wants me to get my head examined.  She thinks all the stories about aliens from outer space may have gotten my head artificially replaced by the Men in Black.

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And she may be totally correct in her assessment.  She is a school teacher, after all.  I, probably just like you, was carefully taught to never be seen naked in public because it is probably a sin, and it is definitely against the law, and it is very likely something only crazy people do on purpose.  Never-the-less, I did it once as a writing assignment for a nudist website that told me the review was wonderful and they were definitely going to publish it, and as of this writing, over a year later, they still haven’t done so (though a rival website reblogged one of my nudist posts from this blog).

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I have come to the idiotic conclusion, though, that nudism isn’t sinful if practiced around like-minded people who are also comfortably nude.  I met and talked to nudists last year who were .very easy to get to know.  They were likable and no prettier in the buff than I am myself (and with my psoriasis pink leopard spots I am pretty horrible to look at naked.)  And the nudist park is not a place for sexual goings-on and sinful behavior.  It is a family environment where some people bring their naked kids.

I remember enjoying being naked as a kid even though I had been taught that Jesus is ashamed by seeing my nudity even though he is always watching over me, even when I am in the bathtub.  I remember one time when I was a pre-teen that I took my bicycle to the Bingham Park woods and rode it up and down the trails there completely naked.  And even though I had been carefully taught how evil that was, the cool wind on my skin felt good, and it was glorious to listen to the birds sing in a green wood almost as if it were the Garden of Eden and I was Adam, the first man.  (Hence the illustration of the bare bike boy.)

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It seems to me, now that I am old, retired, and probably at least a little bit senile, that nakedness is really a form of innocence.  I can tell you for a fact from being a parent and having, at one point, worked in a daycare center for ages five and below, that it is actually far easier to get a kid to go completely starkers than it is to get them to put on and comfortably wear clothes.  Nakedness is natural.  And if God had really wanted us to be naked all the time, then we wouldn’t have been born with a full suit of clothes on… er, wait… what?  Nakedness is innocent.  Anything bad that comes from it happens because of the things we have been taught about it as children.  A more enlightened society would probably be naked more than we are, especially inside temperature-controlled sealed environments… like houses, cars, and even spaceships.  Ah, yes, back to the Men in Black and possible head-switching again.  Aliens in their saucers are apparently often naked.  I wonder if Jesus is ashamed by their nudity too?

Anyway, I once again have failed to manage the planned nakedness I had been looking forward to.  I have to settle for the indoor, sealed-environment form of nudity as I am too sick to get to the nudist park, and would promptly be arrested if I tried to walk around the neighborhood like that.  But the failed evil plan did give me something to write about that at least makes me laugh.  And it is an innocent laugh, not an evil one.

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Filed under aliens, goofy thoughts, health, humor, nudes, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life

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July 18, 2021 · 7:51 pm

150 Days and Counting

The WordPress Notices have been telling me I am on a posting streak of everyday posts for 51 straight days now. It started with day 99. I guess that is a worthy thing to pursue and extend. I have more-or-less relentlessly been writing 500 words a day on something, somewhere for a very long time now. That workmanlike dedication to the slavery part of the writing life began back in the 1990’s before I got married. Back to the time when I switched from writing Walden-style journals to the present work-in-progress manuscript mill. I have written 26 novels, books of essays, and autobiographies since then, and I have actually published 20 of them.

One fascinating thing about my writing habit is how it has impacted and altered the course of my life. I used to keep all my secrets very closely guarded and very near. There was a time when I didn’t admit being a victim of sexual assault even to myself. I couldn’t bear to give or receive hugs, or touch people in ways that were closer than a handshake. I only kissed a girl on the lips once when I was nine (and got hit pretty soundly on the cheek for it) and again after the age of 35, after I was regularly writing every day. I still hesitate. Even with my wife and mother. I wet my pants once in school because I couldn’t stand to be alone in the boys’ bathroom where another boy might come in. That all gradually eased and became less of a thing because I wrote about it. Writing actually recovered my repressed memory when I was in college because I could write about it and keep the knowledge on paper where I could reread it. Writing helped me examine my life. Everything. And it took away the fear and self-loathing that filled my life like two thousand pounds of wet sand.

Writing gave me freedom. It allowed me to take my life back from the darkness and the shadows.

In truth, I became an excellent writing teacher because I wrote and shared some of my writing with students, just as I required them to share their writing with me and with their peers.

In Truth, the whole belatedly becoming a nudist thing is a part of how writing about life has really changed my life. I never used to wear shorts or go shirtless, even when swimming, because of the sexual insecurity caused by that childhood assault. I was imprisoned within my clothing by fear and self-loathing. All of that is probably also the cause of my fascination with drawing child nudes. And nude women as well.

Writing about things brings clarity and removes the iron bars of the invisible cages we all build around ourselves to protect ourselves from the things we fear most. So, my passion for today is plainly exhibited in consecutive post-day number 150. I do also intend to write more.

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Filed under autobiography, Paffooney, writing, writing teacher

July 18, 2021 · 6:44 pm

About Bruce Timm

“Today I thought I would tell you about Bruce Timm.”

“Bruce Timm?  Who the heck is he?”

“You know. That artist with that style… you know, the Batman guy.”

“You mean he played Batman?”

“No.  He designed Batman; The Animated Series.”

“Oh, that guy… the guy who draws girls really good.”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

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“He gave all the DC heroes their modern, animated look… their style and flair.  He made them angular, immediately identifiable, and powerful.”

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“Yeah, I think he not only did the Batman cartoon, all film noir and retro-cool, but the Superman series that followed it, the Justice League, and all the cartoon series and movies that went along with those.”

“But that’s not all he did, either, is it?”

“No, there’s more.  He wanted to be a comic book artist, but before he got into animation, Marvel and DC turned him down.”

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“I heard he worked at Filmation for a while.”

“Yes, he got a chance to draw and design characters for Blackstar, Flash Gordon, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra; Princess of Power, and the Lone Ranger.”

“Dang!  He was busy.  But only superhero stuff?”

“In 1989 he went to work for Warner Brothers.  He worked on Tiny Toon Adventures.”

“That Spielberg/Bugs Bunny thing?  The one with Buster and Babs Bunny?”

“Yeah, that one, believe it or not.”

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“Tell me more about the girls.  I want to hear about him drawing girls.  Wonder Woman in Justice League was hot.”

“Showing you is probably better than telling you.  Be prepared to cover your eyes, though.  He liked to draw the female figure nude and semi-naked.”

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Betty and Veronica from the Archie comics.

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“I like how he draws pretty girls.”

“You would.”

“He’s the artist you wish you could be, isn’t he?”

“Pretty much.  He’s about four years younger than me.  If I had gone the comic-book artist route instead of becoming a public school teacher, our careers might’ve been parallel.”

“Except he has talent.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

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July 17, 2021 · 7:01 pm

Chuckles and Tears

Looking at old photos from another century that were in Mom’s photo box was an unexpected kick in the feels. You know how photos were back then, more than a half century ago, mostly birthday parties, Christmas, and Summer vacations taken on an old Browning box camera with Kodak film.

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This photo makes me chuckle. It was an unwritten rule. Lincoln Logs, Tinker Toys, Construction Sets…. Dad got to play with them first. We always had to build the picture on the box or tube first before I could chew on or lose any of the critical pieces.

Birthday parties were always in pairs. Every child shared the party with cousins born that month. Diane (in the high chair) and I both celebrated in the November party. Nancy. in front, appears to be ready to toss the cake on the floor. I don’t believe she was trying to get even for anything I did during her September party… at least nothing I will admit to here.

Here’s a triple portrait from when there were only three of us. Nancy, Mary (the littlest one) and Me. No David then. But a 60’s space-age design on the curtains.

Mary was one of the triplets all born the same year. Jeanette and Janice were our twin cousins. The three of them celebrated their birthdays together.

Here is the situation the stork dropped down the chimney when I was eight. David was my little brother that is now taller than me, and he weighs more too.

Three of us on Halloween. We were very scary. Especially the evil little demon dressed like a princess. My kids like to make fun of this picture.

Here’s the one that made me cry. Patty was the second cousin whom the Berillas (On my mother’s side of the family) put in charge of me when we went all the way to Cleveland to visit. She was three years older than me, and she kept me out of trouble when we visited the Cleveland Zoo. As we were looking at these pictures, Mom told me that Patty came out of retirement last winter to work as a nurse again during the pandemic nursing shortage. For her trouble, she contracted Covid and died in December. I’m devastated still.

And here’s the last one for today (though not the last one I copied to share with my poor phone-camera skills.)

This is not the Cleveland Zoo. This is the Deer Farm Zoo in Mason City, Iowa. We could feed the deer by hand then with corn and little green “deer-food” pellets. There are still deer in East Park in Mason City half a century later. But they are fended off from people now. They still don’t bite… the deer, I mean. But they have to be out of the reach of people now so they don’t get hurt or get fed something that will kill them (even if it is considered food by crazy people.)

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Filed under autobiography, nostalgia, photos

July 17, 2021 · 2:39 pm

Random Art, the Art of Picking at Random

Angry Duck Eyes –

Anatidaephobia (pronounced anna-tidy-phobia) is a pervasive and irrational fear that you are being watched by a duck. A person with this rare phobia fears that somehow, somewhere a duck is watching their every move.

I know, that’s pretty random, right?

But that’s how this Art Day post works. I had no idea what the first picture would be until I searched for it. This post began not with an idea, but a title; Random Art, the Art of Picking at Random.

Most of my art posts are exactly that. Pictures picked at random simply by going back through my media gallery and picking them. I usually pick up a theme along the way, sensing how the pictures are connected and deciding what that reveals about the artist and how that should be put into words.

I am aware that by relying on my library of already-used images, I am bound to be putting up something that you may have seen before. But I do have a large supply of already-downloaded pictures, and I find that I deeply love seeing some of these over and over again. However, they are all original artworks done by me. (Yes, I know I didn’t make any of the Pez dispensers or anything in the above photo. But I made the arrangement and took the photo. That makes it as much my art as Campbell Soup cans can be Andy Warhol’s work.) And I have seen them far more often than you have, and I haven’t tired of them.

Many of these pictures are actually self portraits. And that’s because an artist can only come up with whatever is actually inside him at the time.

I am not myself in this picture, but it is never-the-less very much about me and who I am inside.

You might be able to spot the connections between this picture and the last one if you are observant of small details.

Boz, the Bard, Diz, and Poe

This picture seems awfully random until you start to see them as Mr. Dickens, Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Disney, and Mr. Poe.

So, there it is, Random Art for Saturday Art Day. Picked totally at random. And yet, at the end it seems somehow organized. That is a sort of small miracle, and probably proof that God exists… at least in some random way.

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July 16, 2021 · 2:18 am

Mother’s Box of Photos

Having returned to my mother’s house for a week, I got the added benefit of being able to see and copy old photos from the late 50’s and 60’s

This first one is a picture of my sister, two years younger than me.

This is my Grandfather, Ray Aldrich, holding Jiggs. the Boston terrier.
And this is a picture of Nancy and Me with Great Grandpa Milo Raymond.

I copied more than 40 pictures that I can make into posts when I have time.

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July 15, 2021 · 5:27 pm

Comic-Book Variety

One of the benefits of being home in Iowa is that, here, I am not the only comic-book and fantasy-story lover in the family, Here other family members care about Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and the Marvel Universe. Here the sister I didn’t get to see bought the Black Widow movie and lets anybody at Mom’s house access her Disney+ account.

I got to watch Black Widow, the last episode of Loki, and the next episode of Star Wars: Bad Batch in spite of tornadoes in Iowa, loss of internet connection, and Mom’s trips to the Emergency Room.

I have now seen all the Marvel Movies and all the Marvel TV series that have been produced by now, including WandaVision, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and Loki.

But this is not any sort of movie or TV review. I wouldn’t want to risk spoiling anything.

No, I want to talk about the importance of variety to good story-telling.

You see, I think that is the key to the MCU being so superior to all other superhero movies. And I want to show how that can apply to my own storytelling.

WandaVision was unique because it was a magical mystery story embedded in a series of old TV sitcoms. It used elements of the Dick Van Dyke Show, the Brady Bunch, Bewitched, Malcolm in the Middle, and Modern Family. A grieving witch gifted with chaos magic is living in a world she recreated from her childhood obsession with sitcom DVDs.

Black Widow is an action/adventure spy movie that mimics classic James Bond films. It has artfully been fitted in between Captain America; Civil War and Avengers; Infinity War.

And Falcon and the Winter Soldier is a classic buddy-cop movie where both the detectives, the military police, and the villains have super-soldier-serum-derived super-powers.

And, of course, Loki is like a Doctor Who adventure that travels back and forth through time and space.. altering reality as it goes.

So, the MCU is using a format of interconnecting stories with varied formats, themes, and strategies. This I am trying to do with my own novels. For instance, the central metaphor of Snow Babies is a quilt where each canto is a mini-story quilt block, and all of them are stitched together to make a warm blanket of a tale about a blizzard. The Baby Werewolf is a comedy-horror story told by three first-person narrators. Sing Sad Songs is also a story told by three narrators, but some of the narrative occurs while characters are dreaming. And shared dreamscapes and dream-stories help determine the outcome of the tale. All of my stories share characters, settings, and events.

So, I firmly believe the story-telling experience is greatly enhanced by interconnected variety in the stories themselves.

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July 15, 2021 · 12:58 pm

Coca-Cola Mind Control

If you’ve read very much of my goofy little blog, you’ve probably run across the fact that I am something of a conspiracy theorist and strange-twist believer… sometimes referred to as a tinfoil-hat-wearer, or that old uncle you don’t want your kids sitting next to at the Thanksgiving dinner table.  And I’ve got another one for you.  I discovered while obsessing about nostalgia and old ads in the Saturday Evening Post, that the Coca-Cola company is probably  responsible for warping my mind as a child.

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My plan in revealing this hideous conspiracy is to take a look at ads and illustrations that I saw as a kid addicted to reading Saturday Evening Post every week at Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich’s farm.  I will scour them for hidden meanings and try to reveal to you the insidious plot underlying these mind-altering illustrations.  Keep in mind that you should probably take everything I say in this article with a grain of salt.  No, really, salt can protect you from subtle mind-control messages.

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And, yes, I realize that not all the messages are that subtle.  Sometimes they shout at you, “Drink Coke and you will have more sex!”  And you have to remember we are trying to avoid that kind of mind control.  We have to fight every instance of ad companies trying to take control over us by exploiting our baser animal urges.

So, let me take a momentary interlude, a break if you will.  I have this big glass of Diet Coke I just bought at QT, and…

Well, that was good!

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Coca-Cola has been at this for a while.  This ad from the  1940’s is apparently attempting to win World War II through choice of soft drinks.  Look at this feisty brew the soldier is about to quaff.  It is actually struggling in the cup to get out and go bite some German soldier’s face off.  Any American soldier who can choke this stuff down is tough enough to take on the Axis powers, Napoleon after Hitler dug him up and used Frankenstein’s scientific breakthroughs to re-animate him, and even several countries we weren’t actually at war with.  Even Rush Limbaugh and his weird lesbian-farmer-subsidies theory can’t compete with Coke on this level of propaganda wars.

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I also think Coca-Cola ads may have something to do with why I became a Cardinals fan when I lived in a place full of Cubs and Twins fans.  I admit, I added the dialogue and the commentary, but I used to do the same thing in my head when I was eight and the Cardinals went to the World Series… and the Cubs could not win it all even with Ernie Banks on their team.  The Cardinals beat the Yankees in 7 games!

I blame Coca-Cola.  Especially their ad department.  Cause the generic manager is telling the generic Oubs player to “Relax… take it easy.”  But the Cardinals won because Bob Gibson had that laser-intensity stare that bored holes through Mickey Mantle’s bat!  (It is Oubs, not Cubs, by the way.  Look at the big “O” on his jersey.)

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And you can’t tell me that the Coca-Cola ad seen here, the one with the white-haired goblin child casting a spell on you with his crazy eyes and pointing at your dark, delicious master isn’t seriously trying to mess with children’s minds.  There used to be a big five-foot-tall metal sign with this very picture on it in the one and only alley in Meservey, Iowa.  The one time I went to the barber there to get my hair cut I had to sit in that barber chair and stare at this evil thing staring back at me from the alley across the street.  It warped me.  For one thing, I never went back to that barber shop again… at least until I was in college and the sign was gone.

So, I seriously believe Coca-Cola was messing with my mind as a child.  They did it through subversive ad illustrations in Saturday Evening Post Magazine.  And if I’m completely crazy now, I blame them.  You don’t see that kind of thing going on today, do you?  Well, I mean, we should be very worried.  Because it probably means they have gotten better at it.

 

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July 14, 2021 · 11:20 am

The Magic Window

This is the portal through which every adventure begins. The front porch window at Grandma’s house.

As a boy, it was a doorway. A window for seeing daydreams. Looking at longings. And future plans. I left through the porch for college. And the journey to Texas. What my life would become.

Now it is the portal that welcomes my return. Welcome back to family, to sanctuary, and rest.

I am tired at 64.

Retired.

But also satisfied.

And finally home again.

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