The internet is a golden treasure chest with an attached bag of holding for me. In other words, a lot of the writing I do depends heavily on a resource that didn’t really exist until I was almost 40 years old. I save stuff from my eclectic surfing forays in computer files that tend to become amazingly complex garbage dumps. So today, I decided to sort one of them to go through stuff I thought might make an interesting blog post.
So, let me show you some of the treasures I have found that could become upcoming blog posts. I will go through the sorted files from July of 2018.
The Dragon Prince
This is a funny, fascinating, D&D-type adventure series from Netflix and the creators of Avatar, the Last Air Bender.
I have recently watched the entire first season, and love this show enough to write a gushing love-review.
Fresh Off the Boat
This is a show on regular TV, the ABC network. It is about an immigrant family originally from China. I think I am married to the spiritual twin of the lead female character, an obsessively controlling Asian wife who has to have her fingers in every single pie in the neighborhood.
It is chocked full of little things that are both bizarre and funny about Asian cultures being assimilated in this country. And the kids are cute and extremely talented.
Gene Colan
Gene Colan was one of my favorite comic book artists in the 70’s and 80’s. I will probably do a more in-depth biography post on him in the future because he really helped me learn to draw in pen and ink. I copied his work from Daredevil, Howard the Duck, and Tomb of Dracula. But all of the work I will show you is done not by me, but by Gene.
Miscellany
This is the stuff that didn’t need its own folder.
Twitter Nudists
This is one I might not be able to use and still maintain a mild R-rating. But I am, in fact, a member of the online nudist community.
Theodore Roethke
This one was already turned into a good blog post.
Lovely bliss quotes Theodore Roethke Quotes
PhotoLiaison.com
The Wizard of Ozz
It goes without saying, nobody can have too many Wizard of Oz pictures.
Here is a collage that represents one of my hoarding-disorder collecting diseases enabled by the internet. The rules for this collection are basically;
Only photographs.
Only human bodies, or people parts.
Only artistically created people parts made of non-people stuff.
Naked is not only allowed, but preferred.
This is a porcelain doll, not a real girl… just so you know I didn’t break any rules.
The point is, art is a depiction of us. No matter how you create it, what it visually portrays is a reflection, like the one in the bathroom mirror every morning. Beautiful, grotesque, sexy, repulsive, adorable, or disturbing… it is who we are. The point is also, it allows me to point, click, and save and create a collection that I don’t have to hide from my wife. Because, well, you know… it’s art.
Who says all the poor people are just bad hu-mans.
And he really believes it, even though he’s not dumb,
‘Cuz he thinks climbing ladders using one of his thumbs,
Is how all people manage to be worthy and good,
And lazy bad people choose to fail like soft wood.
And though he’s not seen that old ladder of mine,
Or the ladders of people with one rung in nine,
He’s thoroughly convinced that all ladders are fair,
And it’s all their own fault if they fall through the air.
Yes, people are people, no matter how wrong…
And it isn’t a good thing to argue so long.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee member Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., asserts an objection to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a Democratic sponsor of the long-stalled Keystone XL pipeline bill, as the committee met to advance the controversial project, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Sanders, who sits with the Democrats, wanted an amendment to put Congress on the record about their beliefs on climates change and whether they agree with the international scientific community that climate change is real or not. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
I have a good friend who’ll do Demos of Crats,
And screech about equity like an army of cats.
He thinks we should pay for all college and school,
And use our tax money as a leveling tool.
He thinks we can make the rich pay for our dreams
And make life all breakfast of sugars and creams.
And maybe he can and maybe he can’t…
Make sense of the subject of his long, drawn-out rant,
But they’ll never pay it and he will get Berned,
Because they never part with what they think they have earned.
As Catch a Falling Star was a science-fictiony sort of comedy, one of the questions that I have pursued in internet research is the one I have presented here in the title of this picture-and-Paffooney-filled post. Seriously, the image search of Google’s answer to that question is enough to make you snort milk through the old nostrils as you sort through them while stupidly drinking a glass of milk. The milky nose-snorts are the reason I have not sited picture sources on this post. Cleaning the computer screen took too long. I have merely randomly snatched and pirated pictures. The only picture of a Martian presented here created by me are these two;
I admit to being surprised by my actual research into the whole question of whether or not we have ever been visited by intelligent life from the stars beyond the sky. While I have not found proof that aliens exist, I have discovered there is actual proof that the government, and NASA in particular, have covered something up. And it goes beyond Area 51 defense research. But now that I have got the attention of the NSA and the Men in Black, this post is only filled with a collage of the unreal, made-up, and mostly silly.
Malevolent Martians;
Martians Who Make the Mistake of Liking Us;
Inexplicably Goofy Martians;
Cartoon alien rendered on white background. 3D model licensed from DAZ3D.
Here are images from the Monster Movie collection I keep as an obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder style of thing. I thought I would present them as a collage since I am lazy today and want to save words for my novel project.
The scary thing is that people like me obsess about such nonsense, and collect so many silly, fantastic pictures of stuff and nonsense.
In the background of several of my novels, there lurk little people with magic powers. In this modern age of science they still exist, but are reduced in size to about three inches tall for the adults. As I am now working on a book set in their world, I am therefore using today’s post to elucidate what they are and categorize them a bit.
Butterfly Children is a nickname for the winged fairies. And most fairies not only have wings, but don’t wear clothing because, not only do shirts, jackets, jerkins, and such interfere with wings, but they, like me, prefer to be nude if possible.
The Butterfly Children are not really made of flesh and blood, but rather coherent magical energy. That is the reason they rarely become spellcasters themselves, but can lend their energies to the spell-casting Sylphs; witches, wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, liches, and some Storybooks.
They refer to us as “the Slow Ones” because we are easily fooled into not seeing them for what they are. They use concealing glammers to convince us that we are seeing a bug or a bird or a glare of sunlight instead of what they actually are. They also have the ability to allow slow ones to see them if they choose to voice the necessary spells. Some rare slow ones are able to see through their glammers and view them in spite of their wishes.
Sylphs and Elves : The Man-shaped Fey
Once, long ago, the Fey Children who looked human could pass themselves off as slow ones. The Elves, of course, had pointed ears to hide. But they looked like what we would call “regular people” because they were our size. But human science developed things that stop magical energies like brass or drain magical energies like iron and copper. The Fey became smaller and smaller. Things like discarded nails and lost pennies decreased the places where they could live and build homes.
Eli Tragedy (in the middle above) is an example of both an Elf (with pointed ears) and a magic-using Sorcerer. His apprentices, Bob and Mickey, are both Sylphs. Like Butterfly Children, many Sylphs would rather not wear clothes. Magic-using Sylphs and Elves learn to wear clothes because garments can be invested with protective spells.
Mickey is different than other Sylphs in that he has been bitten by a wererat and has been infected by lycanthropy. Since he is now an uncontrolled wererat, he constantly looks like a boy with a mouse head and tail, a fur-covered boy’s body, and paws instead of feet.
Sylphs can occur in many different non-manlike forms. The Mouse from Cornucopia is a Sylph in the form of an anthropomorphic mouse. Radasha, also seen to the left, is a Faun. Pixies, Nixies, Boggarts, Gremlins, Centaurs, Minotaurs, and other magical creatures have gotten far smaller since ancient times when human beings added greatly to the magical energy loose in the world through their imaginations, faiths, fears, nightmares, and dreams.
All of those magical creatures have odd and sometimes horrific shapes. You can see that in the insect-like Pixie to the right.
Storybooks : Immortals Amongst the Fey
The other Fey Children that need a special mention are the Storybooks like Silkie pictured in the acorn beret and leaf dress to the right. These lucky Sylphs, Elves, or other Fey Children who’ve been singled out by slow ones in their slow-ones’ books and literature are made magically immortal by the power of stories told by humans, especially those preserved by print. They no longer die. They can no longer be killed or grievously wounded.
General Tuffaney Swift is another good example of a Storybook. He exists as an immortal because some of his early adventures, were overheard and written down in stories about Tom Thumb. He was instrumental in bringing Grandma Gretel and her daughter, Anneliese, into the Fey World. She is responsible through her magical baking skills for the entire races of Gingerbread Children and Cookie Monsters.
So, there’s a brief overview of the Kingdom of Tellosia and the World of the Fey Children.
The book below is free in ebook form from Friday through Tuesday starting this weekend.
It is normal for the world we live in to inspire us to draw pictures of it. But architects do the opposite. They imagine a world we could live in, and then build it.
Sometimes, like in the picture above, I draw real people in imaginary places. Other times I draw imaginary people and put them in real places.
Sometimes I put imaginary people in imaginary places. (I photo-shopped this planet myself.)
In fiction, I am re-casting my real past as something fictional, so the places I draw with words in descriptions need to be as real as my amber-colored memory can manage.
When I use photos, though, I have to deal with the fact that over time, places change. The church does not look exactly like it did in the 1980s when this drawing is set.
Drawing things I once saw, and by “drawing” I mean “making pictures,” is how I recreate myself to give my own life meaning.
When I was a kid old enough to begin to see and interact with the real world in the tragic and magical 1960s, the first comic books available to me, long before my parents would allow me to pick up and buy Spiderman and Batman and (shudder) comics with monsters in them, were the kid-friendly comics of the Harvey Brothers.
Now, you have to understand that Harvey Comics had been around since the 1940s and made their money on characters licensed first from the Brookwood Publications company that Alfred Harvey bought out in 1941 to provide the building, equipment, and publishing personnel to start producing comic books.
Robert B. Harvey and Leon Harvey joined the company to help produce titles they now owned the rights too like Black Cat, the Shield, Shock Gibson, and Captain Freedom.
…………………………………………Of course, most of those characters didn’t last very long. Black Cat was the only title still being published by Harvey in the 1950s.
They would go on to license characters from Famous Studios, the animated cartoon works of Max Fleischer and his brother Dave. That’s when the kid- friendly, parent-approved comic books of Fleischer creations like Casper the Friendly Ghost opened up the world of comic books to seven-year-old Mickey circa 1963.
Now, it is probably obvious that there are many ways that Harvey Comics influenced me as a storyteller later in life. It goes without saying that my dedication to childish humor in stories derives from this comic-book source. The cuteness of characters is another necessity of comic storytelling gleaned from these ripe fields of baby faces. And stories advanced by magical means and absurd sidetracks also come from here. But did you ever notice that Casper and the other ghosts all perform in the nude? Yes, I think my childhood longing to be a nudist began with Casper’s naked adventures. But unlike Casper, my urges along those lines were suppressed and repressed by parents and society as a whole. So watching Casper and Spooky and Pearl (Spooky’s goilfriend) romp naked through comic book hijinks were a sublimated substitution for that childhood desire. (Sure, none of them had genitals, but it wasn’t about that.)
…………………………………………….Of course, there were many other Harvey characters to enjoy that actually did wear clothes. I was particularly fond of Hot Stuff because he made such an art out of burning things and being a bad kid and roasting the backsides of fools and hypocrites with his trident. And he only ever wore a fireproof diaper, so he was almost a nudist too.
There were many other characters licensed by Harvey as well, including Felix the Cat, Little Audrey, Baby Huey, and the characters from Walter Lance Studios like Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Chilly Willy.
So, now you know the true story of how my innocent childhood was warped and woven and corrupted by the characters of Harvey Comics.
The internet is a golden treasure chest with an attached bag of holding for me. In other words, a lot of the writing I do depends heavily on a resource that didn’t really exist until I was almost 40 years old. I save stuff from my eclectic surfing forays in computer files that tend to become amazingly complex garbage dumps. So today, I decided to sort one of them to go through stuff I thought might make an interesting blog post.
So, let me show you some of the treasures I have found that could become upcoming blog posts. I will go through the sorted files from July of 2018.
The Dragon Prince
This is a funny, fascinating, D&D-type adventure series from Netflix and the creators of Avatar, the Last Air Bender.
I have recently watched the entire first season, and love this show enough to write a gushing love-review.
Fresh Off the Boat
This is a show on regular TV, the ABC network. It is about an immigrant family originally from China. I think I am married to the spiritual twin of the lead female character, an obsessively controlling Asian wife who has to have her fingers in every single pie in the neighborhood.
It is chocked full of little things that are both bizarre and funny about Asian cultures being assimilated in this country. And the kids are cute and extremely talented.
Gene Colan
Gene Colan was one of my favorite comic book artists in the 70’s and 80’s. I will probably do a more in-depth biography post on him in the future because he really helped me learn to draw in pen and ink. I copied his work from Daredevil, Howard the Duck, and Tomb of Dracula. But all of the work I will show you is done not by me, but by Gene.
Miscellany
This is the stuff that didn’t need its own folder.
Twitter Nudists
This is one I might not be able to use and still maintain a mild R-rating. But I am, in fact, a member of the online nudist community.
Theodore Roethke
This one was already turned into a good blog post.
Lovely bliss quotes Theodore Roethke Quotes
PhotoLiaison.com
The Wizard of Ozz
It goes without saying, nobody can have too many Wizard of Oz pictures.
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.
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”.
Certain puns are just so wrong in a fundamental way. That’s right. They are both fun and mental. So that’s wrong.
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.
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.
Putting this in a file my wife could find on my laptop… Yes, that was wrong.
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?
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.
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.
Living in the World I Once Drew
It is normal for the world we live in to inspire us to draw pictures of it. But architects do the opposite. They imagine a world we could live in, and then build it.
Sometimes, like in the picture above, I draw real people in imaginary places. Other times I draw imaginary people and put them in real places.
Sometimes I put imaginary people in imaginary places. (I photo-shopped this planet myself.)
In fiction, I am re-casting my real past as something fictional, so the places I draw with words in descriptions need to be as real as my amber-colored memory can manage.
When I use photos, though, I have to deal with the fact that over time, places change. The church does not look exactly like it did in the 1980s when this drawing is set.
Drawing things I once saw, and by “drawing” I mean “making pictures,” is how I recreate myself to give my own life meaning.
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Filed under artwork, autobiography, collage, commentary, humor, illustrations, imagination, Paffooney, photo paffoonies
Tagged as Saturday Art Day