I like taking pictures of my doll collection. Those pictures are then qualified for Art Day posting. So, here are random pictures of dolls, most of which are from the doll shelf in my bedroom.
Not all of my dolls are on the doll shelf.
Chilly Willy here is a carnival prize that was probably won in a basketball-toss game at Six Flags and purchased by me for five dollars in a garage sale. He is technically not a doll. He is a stuffed animal.
So, let’s get back to dolls.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, Disney, doll collecting, humor, Paffooney, photo paffoonies
Here is a collage that represents one of my hoarding-disorder collecting diseases enabled by the internet. The rules for this collection are basically;
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.
I was a school teacher for thirty-one years, and in spite of the immense amount of brain damage that builds up over time, especially as a middle-school teacher, I think I know what we’ve been doing wrong.
We need to take a look at an education system where things are working better than they are here.
Now, I know you probably didn’t click on the boring video about school. Heck, you probably aren’t even reading this sentence. But I can summarize it and put it in easy-to-understand words. Finland does not have to educate as many poor and disadvantaged kids as this country does. The video gives five ways that Finland does it better, but all of them boil down to the basic notion that the country is more homogeneous and uniformly middle-class than ours is. Still, we can learn things from them.
The first of the five ways that Finland does it better is a difference in government. While U.S. governmental safety-net programs blame people who need food stamps for being lazy (even though some of them work 40-hour work weeks in minimum-wage jobs), Finland gives a huge package to parents of everything they might need as soon as their child is born. As long as the child is in school, the government does many things to support the family’s efforts to educate them. Imagine what we could accomplish here if we invested some of the vast fortune we give to corporations in subsidies into educating poor black and Hispanic children instead. Children have a hard time learning in school when they come to school hungry. If we could only feed them better, the way the Fins do, we would revolutionize our classrooms.
The second point the video makes is the biggest suds-maker every time I get on my teacher’s soap box. They don’t give kids homework and they only give them one standardized test when they leave high school. I have recently covered this topic more thoroughly in a post in which I was able to ridicule Florida governor Rick “Skeletor” Scott. (Boy, did I enjoy doing that.) But I won’t go into all of that again here.
The third thing is respecting teachers. In Finland they treat teachers with the kind of respect that they give to doctors and lawyers. How cool is that? In Texas, calling someone a teacher is an epithet. If a teacher is liked or even loved by their students, administrators are encouraged to keep a closer eye on them to figure out what’s wrong. Students are supposed to hate their teachers and sit all day filling out mind-numbing test-preparation worksheets. Imagine what it could be like if teachers weren’t the scum of the earth. They might actually have students convinced that learning goes on in their classrooms.
The fourth point is that Finland does not try to cram more and more memorized details into young brains so they can spit it all back out on a test. They take students thoroughly into the subject of study, and at a slower, easier pace. They dive deep into the river of learning instead of wade through the wide and shallow parts. All questions get answered. And by that, I mean, student questions, not teacher questions. The learning is student-centered.
Finally, the video states that Finland simply has fewer social ills in their country to get in the way of good quality education. But even though the work is harder in this country, the potential is really there to go far beyond what Finland is capable of. We have a natural resource that is totally untapped in this nation. We don’t develop the minds of a majority of our children in any meaningful way. And I can tell you from having done it, you can teach a poor or disadvantaged child to think. You can give them the tools for academic, economic, and personal success. You can make them into valuable human beings. But you should never forget, they are already precious beyond measure. We just ignore and trash that inherent value. So, the information is out there about how to do a better job of educating our children. We need to follow through.
Here endeth the lesson.
Filed under angry rant, commentary, education, humor, insight, teaching
Canto 143 – Morning Aboard the Starship Aboard the Starship
I couldn’t help but fixate on the things Admiral Tang had bragged about knowing from the future during his villain speech in a previous episode. Apparently, he had outwitted and killed a Time Knight at some point, and he had specifically told us that I was going to survive this adventure while poor Ham Aero was doomed to die in the upcoming battle for the planet Outpost.
I was sipping on my cup of designer coffee, my own special concoction called Isaac Newton’s Favorite Cup of Joe. And I was staring out of the front viewport of the Leaping Shadowcat at the guards in the cavernous docking bay of Admiral Tang’s flagship, Bregohelma. The Lupin child who served as cabin boy came out of the crews’ quarters completely naked and rubbing at his doglike eyes. Of course, the boy’s shameless nudity didn’t bother me since Lupins are covered in wolf-fur and don’t really need clothing to cover up relentlessly white, pock-marked skin and rolls of fat the way I do.
“Professor Marou, do you think the Imperials will just execute me or toss me out into space?” Sahleck asked.
“Well, if they are frugal, they will toss you out into space. It costs less.”
“Oh.”
The destroyed look on his puppylike face reminded me that maybe a strictly logical answer to the question wasn’t the kind of answer he needed to hear.
“But don’t go planning on dying yet. Time is a relative dimension in space and, as such is totally malleable.”
He looked at me as if he wanted to ask another question, but didn’t really understand what I had just told him.
“You know that there are Time Knights constantly meddling with what they think happened in the past to correct the outcome to some sort of plan created in the distant future…”
“Oh, yes…” Sahleck stammered.
“And since Tang says he killed one of those Time Knights, we know for certain that somebody is out there working on solutions to the problems we are now facing.”
“So, maybe they won’t kill everybody but you?”
“Oh, you all are probably going to die. Tang seems to know what will happen with information gleaned from the Time Knights themselves. But nothing is ever certain. Maybe I get killed too.”
That didn’t seem to help much.
Ham Aero wandered in drinking his own morning beverage, probably potent liquor of some sort.
“Sahleck? You are out of uniform, boy. You know that the job of steward aboard a starship is critical to staying alive in space.”
“Yes, Ham. I know I am supposed to scrub floors, maintain the air quality, and do whatever the cook asks me to do, but we are almost all going to die. So, what’s the point?”
“We are not giving up, my boy. What we are blessed with is lots of time, and the freedom to plan without worrying about being overheard. Tang doesn’t know it, but this ship is shielded from telepaths. Ged had me do that back when he was first dealing with becoming a Psion. So, we don’t have to just sit back and wait for death. We can plan and carry out our own rescue and escape. And I am not ready to die myself, knowing now that I am going to be a father for the first time.”
That made Sahleck smile.
“So, you have an idea about how to do it?” I asked.
“Not yet. But we have more collective smarts than they do. How many of their crew are rot warriors? Skeletons with robotic life? Nearly mindless undead things?”
“Mechanoids and reanimated dead folks make up at least 75 percent of all Imperial Navy personnel. You know this well, Ham.”
“Sure, but my point is… We have you. You are one of the smartest living humans in the entire Orion Spur of the Milky Way.”
Now, I know, of course, when I am being flattered in order to manipulate me. But he was not wrong. Duke Ferrari was on board, and he carried considerable political significance, and potentially leadership ability. And Ham’s young Nebulon wife knew a lot of secrets only formerly enslaved aliens really knew about. Ham himself was a canny strategist and ship-board leader. He knew how to solve the problems of living mostly in space aboard a starship. And he was not wrong about me being smarter than practically everyone else in the universe. (Not bragging, just an irrefutable fact.)
“Yes, you are right, Ham. We are not helpless. We do have an intelligence advantage over our enemies. And we will think of some way out of this situation.”
Filed under aliens, humor, novel, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney, science fiction
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.)
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.
Filed under autobiography, baseball, baseball fan, commentary, conspiracy theory, foolishness, humor
We are learning more and more about the universe every single day. There is a space probe orbiting Jupiter right now that is learning things with its magnetometer about the Jovian magnetosphere that we never even suspected could be true. We may have found an earthlike planet with intelligent life circling the secondary star in the Alpha Centauri binary system, our closest neighbor among the stars. The Chinese have a robot on the moon that has successfully planted and grown a seed on the surface of the moon (inside an artificial environment, of course.) And the Democrats may be about to pass the biggest climate-change-combatting bill that has ever yet been passed, making it possible that the corporation-corrupted Republican Party won’t kill us all for short-term profits after all.
I have been finding dancing children and singing children and ventriloquists and artists and face-painters and cartoonists on Tik Tok that fascinate me and keep me from my writing by entertaining me until my batteries are almost dead.
My tongue hangs out to the floor at the shere beauty of the creativity of ordinary people on an art-intensive social media site.
I have definitely been searching for reasons not to be depressed and give up on life as it gets too incredibly hot and politically entirely too wrong-headed and crazy to allow us to individually thrive.
But life finds a way. We are not alone. And we are not without our own inner resources.
Filed under battling depression, commentary, humor
I spent a good deal of my time as a game master for the Star Wars role-playing game in creating alien characters that fit the movies, the books I read in the Star Wars series, and the game materials. In this post, I will give you a mini-gallery of the aliens I drew for the game.
Chee Mobok was a space trader who had a problem with his own ego. He believed that he was a genius at language and could speak any language he had heard a handful of words from.
The Galactic Common speakers were always laughing at the things he said.
Huttese speakers like Jabba the Hutt were always trying to kill him for say precisely the wrong thing.
Hethiss was the Jedi Master when my son’s Jedi character was still a padawan learner.
He was wise, but unable to keep his student from doing things in violent ways when a diplomatic solution was called for.
Merv was a potential terrorist and a suspect in a series of murders on a water planet. He was, however, the good badguy character. You know, the villain who has a heart of gold and whose actions redeem him in the end… As opposed to a bad goodguy who seems to be a hero and ends up betraying everyone.
Fisonna was a street kid from the same planet and same race as Hethiss the Jedi master. He had the potential to become a padawan learner. But he also used his Force skills to pull pranks on serious adults.
Odo-Ki was a Gotal with the ultra-sensitive cones on his head. He had a limited ability to see behind walls and predict the near future.
Nadin Paal was an actual pirate and terrorist with no redeeming qualities at all. The best thing about him was, that when the time came, he blew up really nicely. A colorful fireball.
Kehlor was a Herglic, one of the whale people who required specially built extra-large space ships and accommodations. He was also a gifted pilot. You can see that he wears the uniform of the Trade Authority.
And finally, Klis Joo was a Duro and a Jedi, a gray alien with considerable Force powers.
There were many more drawings like this as well. But these are some of the best ones.
Filed under aliens, Dungeons and Dragons, humor, Paffooney
Lately I have been having problems with passing out during low blood-sugar moments in the middle morning, early afternoon, and shortly after supper, usually when I have already had a snack and my sugars haven’t balanced yet. When I pass out, perchance… I dream. Vivid dreams. So, for art day, I will post images I have made based on dreams I have had.
This one has shadows on everything. I exhausted three pens drawing shadows. Yet, there are no shadows on the child-figures. In the dream, they were glowing white ghosts.
Snowboy is one of the main villains in The Bicycle-wheel Genius. But the boy-robot made entirely of snow, ice, and circuitry first appeared in a 1978 dream that happened while I had a fever from the flu.
This dream is a mental-disturber caused again by fever. Here the two gigantic toys play with the little girl. I was not actually in this dream. I was an observer floating above. I think the bear was inspired by a Care-Bear.
This picture has all the elements of the actual dream, the candle, the line of glowing pixies, the sleeping princess, and Prince Charming. But nothing here looks like it did in the dream. The prince and the princess were both young teens that I did not know in real life. The fairies were larger and a lot more obviously nude.
I actually passed out while writing this post. It happened right here, before I could post this dream of living colors. All the colors were in motion in the dream, something I couldn’t really represent here.
I knew when I dreamed this dream that the Bambi-kin in this dream were members of my family, but at the time I dreamt it I had not met my wife yet, let alone had three kids of my own. Yet I knew that it was not my family at the time of the dream because one of my sisters was not there.
This is from a dream I had in college at Iowa City. I made an entire cartoon out of it called Babysitters Hate My House, It is about a babysitter having a horrible time with my two sons as she loses control when they show her the man in the basement that, “Daddy built out of a kit.”
And, finally, this dream featured not only the spirit stag and the medicine man, but the bolt of lightning in the background. The Dakotah people say having a dream with lightning in it makes you a “lightning dreamer”, a magic man, or a shaman. So, I guess that qualifies me to be one.
You wonder how they do it, these corrupt and evil men.
They fight for their own interests and act like clowns every now and then.
And still, retain their power while holding the bloody knife
They used to stab constituents in the back and take their pain-filled life.
No deed done for a dollar has consequences when they’re judged,
And every good in bills they kill is evilly begrudged.
They seek to lead this nation through insurrection and conflagration,
And they raise their fists of power, yet run and hide within the hour.
And when you finally defeat them and undo their evil schemes,
They break whatever things they can and pee on all your dreams.
Filed under angry rant, clowns, conspiracy theory, feeling sorry for myself, grumpiness, humor, insight, Liberal ideas, poem, poetry, politics
Catch a Falling Star 
Don’t Give Up!
Yes, I am philosophically a pessimist. I expect always that the worst outcome is the one I will have to live with. Hence, I was not as devastated by Donald Trump’s election as some who were too confident that Hilkary would win. And the climate crisis seems to be good reason to prepare for the worst that can happen. Some of it is already happening, already here.
But you really should listen to what this career futurist has to say about it.
The near future is, as documented with evidence in the video, far worse than we think it is. “Just doom, nothing else,” as Robin Williams declares. But too much pessimism at this point is the death of us. We have to keep trying. We can’t just give up.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not the right person to be elected head cheerleader on this issue. I have given in to despair and weeping on more than one occasion already. Since the election of Trump, the conservative pillaging of the Supreme Court, the roll-back of EPA guidelines and restrictions, the erosion of fundamental voting rights (soon to be followed by other rights,) the mismanagement of the economy, the Covid crisis, wildfires in the West, the insurrection after the election of Joe Biden, and more and more things that signal doom and possible Armaggedon, we have to battle the urge to lie down and die.
Here is where the optimism of the Reverand Peale is critical.
If we stop trying, our loss and subsequent death is insured. It is only by continuing to fight that we will have a chance to save ourselves. And this is beginning to happen everywhere.
In 2020 we turned out against the Evil-Clown President in record numbers. We wrested the control of the government out of the hands of the corrupt elephants and put it back in the hands of the hard-working but mostly stupid jackasses. Biden’s donkey-like devotion to following through on the work that needs to be done got us through the rest of the pandemic, getting ourselves vaccinated and acclimated to life with the reality of the new deadly virus.
We have tried hard and kept at it to achieve much-needed climate-control legislation. The fossil-fuel industry has made it difficult, and we nearly gave up on the Build Back Better program, but it seems through perseverance that we may have finally gotten a critical piece of that over the hurdles after all.
One thing definitely indicated is that we will need to turn out to vote in the midterm elections again this year. If we don’t, the elitist elefantiasis party will take away all our gains and punish us again, playing their golden fiddles while the world burns.
But despair is still not warranted here. We know what we can do to solve the problems that face us. We have done similar things before, with the Cold War, World War II, and the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980s. What’s more we have the tools we need already, and what we don’t have is quickly being developed. There are plans in the works for mountain-sized storage batteries, massive solar-power arrays, and wind farms (many of which are already built and operating.) We can rebuild and upgrade the entire power grid, not just in the USA, but for the whole world. It needs, of course, to all be weather-proofed, meteor-proofed, solar-storm-proofed, and, hopefully, greedy-Republican-idiot-proofed.
We are not beaten if we don’t give up.
And as the futurist tells us in the video you didn’t watch, pessimists prepare us for disaster, but only the optimist can make us successful in living through it to a brighter future beyond.
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Filed under angry rant, battling depression, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, healing, health, humor, insight, inspiration, Liberal ideas, magic, Paffooney, pessimism, philosophy, politics, strange and wonderful ideas about life