Category Archives: Paffooney

Day After Day

Posting every day keeps the imaginary writing muscles toned and renews my basic energy levels. But it also becomes a chore on certain days. Like today. The weather has got me down with arthritis woes. Typing like this is it not as easy as it should be. And when I have to labor at it to make the paragraphs flow, sometimes I just turn it all into rambling babbling. I spin my mental wheels and get nowhere.

I can use this post to tell you, however, that I have now started a new work-in-progress. I have already pounded out the first four thousand words of The Wizard in His Keep.

This is the final story in the arc of the character Milt Morgan. This story has been gestating in my brain since 1995. Though, if I am honest, it began with fantasies I had back in fifth grade. The main character, Milt Morgan, is half me and half the other Mike from our gang back in Rowan in the 1960’s. Back when Mike and Michael were sometimes good friends and sometimes the brains behind evil plans and terrible tricks. He supplied the devious know-how, and I provided the creative spark that lit the schemes on fire.

But this story is advanced to the computer age.

Milt Morgan is 50% me and 50% my best nemesis, Mike Bridges

In 1996, Milt Morgan was a 34-year-old video game designer living a double life in a high-tech, state-of-the-art computer lab. It is then that he mysteriously kidnaps the three children of his child-hood friend’s sister and takes them away to a magical world that only two people in the entire world have the keys to. Milt is the Wizard. The other Key-Master is Daniel Quilp, the Necromancer. A battle for the soul of the world must take place, and Daisy, Johnny, and Mortie Brown are a part of it.

Anyway, the words are beginning to pile up again. And again I have made something out of nothing.

Johnny Brown in Purple Glammis (the Magical Kingdom)

The book I am talking about in this 3-year-old post is now available on Amazon.

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Filed under humor, magic, new projects, novel, novel plans, novel writing, Paffooney

Art Unseen in a While

WordPress has put in a new feature for finding old photos from Posts Past.

This allows me to pull from past years much more easily than the scroll-down feature I have been using. Thus, art from 2017.

This is from the Star Wars Role-playing game that we stopped playing in 2008.
the Murphy family (well, three of them anyway)
The disintegrator pistol from Catch a Falling Star
“The Wise Thaumaturge Visits Cymril”
Eventual cover art for Magical Miss Morgan
I painted this miniature lead wizard, as well as made the castle from cardboard and paper.
I also painted the buildings in the background, acrylic on plaster.
“Their Most Feared Offensive Player Could Beat Them By Herself”
All of these works of art are done by me, whether they are drawn, painted, or photographed.

This has been a look back at pictures posted in 2017, starting in December, and going back in time to January. There is at least one picture from every month.

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, old art, Paffooney

The Secret Gallery in Grandma’s Closet

After years of being stored away, I discovered that my mother had hidden a hoard of my old artworks in the upstairs closet in Grandma Aldrich’s house (now my parents’ house).

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This oil painting was done on an old saw blade at the request of my Grandpa Aldrich.  He wanted a farm painting on it, like the one he’d seen in a restaurant during a fishing trip in Minnesota.  I chose as the subject Sally the pig.  Sally was a hairlip piglet that had to be bottle fed and raised in a box by the stove until later in life she became a favorite pet.  Believe it or not, pigs are smarter than the family dog.  She became a pig you could ride.  And Grandma had taken a precious old photo of my mother and Uncle Larry riding the pig.  I used that photo to make this painting.  It was also the painting I wanted to find on this trip to Iowa.  Searching for it led to finding all the others.

These two are among the earliest paintings I did.  They were both done on canvases that I stretched over the frame myself in high school art class.  The purple one is a scene from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The blue one doesn’t have a title, but you can see what it is.  It is an ancient shibboleth water monster lurking under a dock, fishing for young boys to eat.

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This drawing was done on the front porch in the house in Rowan.  It would be years before mom framed it.  It is another example of what I could do as a high school kid.  In fact, I composed it from art-class sketches I did my senior year in school.

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The Boy in the Barn was painted on the remains of an old chalkboard that my sisters, brother, and I had used in grade school.

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Grandma Aldrich asked for this picture to hang over the sofa in the farmhouse living room.  It stayed there for many years.

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Great Grandma Hinckley passed away in 1980.  I created this portrait from a combination of photos and memory.  It was too good.  It was never hung anywhere because it always made her daughter, my Grandma Aldrich, tear up.

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This pencil drawing won a blue ribbon at the Wright County Fair in the late 70’s.

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This picture is called First Years are Hard Years.  It was painted in 1982 after my first year of teaching at the junior high school in Cotulla, Texas.   I painted mostly the good kids.  The girl on the lower right would later go on to become a teacher for our school district.  I can’t claim to be the one who inspired her, but she did make straight A’s in my class.

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This is called Beauty.  It is done in oil crayon on canvas.  I did it for my mother to hang in the hallway in the house in Taylor, Texas.

So, it turns out, I unearthed art treasures by searching for the one painting.

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Filed under artwork, colored pencil, homely art, humor, oil painting, old art, Paffooney

Wizards on Ice

I need a quick and cold post for today, so I will turn to the ice wizards of Talislanta.

Ice Alchemist

Viktor, the ice-alchemist, and his son Zoran-viktor are Mirin, a sort of ice-elves who live in the frozen ice-world of the far north.  Viktor’s people are cold-resistant enough to wear bikinis in freezing weather (but smart enough not to).   So Viktor managed to become the Mirins’ most powerful user of the magic of chemistry by developing hot stuff. In the picture he is brewing a bit of the really, really hot explodie stuff that melts a Mirin bad guy.

Juan Ruy

Juan Ruy, the Mirin prince,  built many ice castles out of his magical substance known as iron-ice.  It was far harder to pierce than steel and impossible to melt with fires less hot than dragon’s breath.  With it he built frozen castles vertically to the highest heights.  And they still stand, primarily because I haven’t played that particular D & D game for more than two decades.

But this is what I love most about the Dungeons and Dragons game.  It is a never-ending game played in worlds of shared imagination where every person at the table adds something to the story.  It is interactive, and it retains the unique twists and turns created by the players.  I created the scenario.  The player behind the character Juan Ruy created the idea of iron-ice that completely changed the story.

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Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, foolishness, humor, Paffooney

Writing in My Head

I am reposting this old post from 2015 because I am in the same situation of not being able to write 500 words today.

Okay, I am justifying and vilifying today because yesterday I didn’t write 500 words… the first time in 2015… not in my blog, not in my novels, not even counting text messages.   I had extenuating circumstances.  I went to a movie, Disney’s Inside Out which made me laugh and made me cry like any good Disney/Pixar movie always does.  Then I got a message that one of my children went into the hospital in Florida.  And I have been down and out with a bad back, so I missed the Florida trip all together… (the child is fine, by the way, thanks for asking that in your head while reading this).  But all of that stuff and nonsense is really just an excuse for a dastardly act of cowardice.  I didn’t write a full 500 words.  How dare I?   This writing thing has now become my sacred mission from God.  After all, I retired from the first sacred mission because poor health was God’s way of telling me, “MICKEY, IT IS TIME TO BE A WRITER.”  Really!  He talks to me in all capital letters just like that.

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And you have probably noticed already that I am doing stream-of-consciousness writing for today’s post, a useful form of pre-writing that is known for producing lots of garbage to go along with the gemstones-in-the-rough.  My mind is still boiling with emotional turmoil and upset and less-than-critical thinking…  The reasons for that are understandable… I am guessing. …  But I think the point is (if points are possible in this no-win game I am playing, and losing, called Old Age) that I am never really not writing.  I have two novels in rough drafting at the same time.  Both When the Captain Came Calling and Stardusters and Space Lizards are both on my task bar at this very moment.  I add new inspirations for the next canto every time a new light bulb clicks on over my little furry head.

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So the ideas are already there for several pieces of writing that I simply have to sit down and knock out on the keyboard.  Potentially I have way more than a mere 500 words waiting to blossom and unfold like flowers into paragraphs of purple paisley prose.  (Since this is as close as a writer can come to showing how he actually thinks, I guess I have also answered a question that many who try to read my writing have been wondering about… I really do think in loopty-loops with streamers attached and a knot in the tail.)  Writing is not something I can ever be accused of not doing because writing and thinking are the same thing… the only difference between the 500 per day and the leventie-leven trillion in my head is your access to it in a form that is written down and edited (well, at least re-read for typos… I kinda like leaving the stuff and nonsense… and moldy bananas… in the final product because I can pass that particular form of goofiness off as humor).  (And, yes, it just helped me pass 500 for today.)

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Drawing Girls for Art Day

As a boy, drawing girls was always important to me. I didn’t understand them. I couldn’t control them other than to make them dislike me. I couldn’t get away from them… but I could draw them. I could completely control what the picture looked like. And I could make them be whatever I wanted.

Lines and shapes and contours… a smirk on the lips… a twinkle in the eye.

Mysterious… inscrutable… attractive… weird….

Infuriating… beautiful… sassy… and rude.

Sugar and spice, they say…

With everything nice, they say…

Yet still with the power to kill and to eat me.

Cute girls and sweet girls…

The proper and neat girls….

Girls with no clothes on…

And girls I’m afraid of.

I have to draw girls just to understand me.

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Filed under artwork, drawing, Paffooney, poem, poetry

Story-Telling for Art Day

One never knows what mysteries can be uncovered inside the bird house.
The plot of the story depends on what happens next in the picture.
Details make the real story clear.
Pictures tell a story even if the story-teller falls asleep in the process.
A picture can spin a fairy-tale even if it doesn’t show a plot.
Pictures easily establish a setting.
Pictures can allude to many, many other things.

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Filed under artwork, drawing, humor, illustrations, imagination, Paffooney

Aeroquest Art So Far

These are the pieces of art and illustrations that are going into the re-writing project of my novel Aeroquest.

I decided to totally rework the novel and illustrate it more fully because it was always supposed to be a science-fiction satire and parody that was more cartoonish than literary.

It is a story about a teacher conquering a space empire. It arose from a science-fiction role-playing game that filled my days in the 1980’s and early 90’s.

It parodies Star Wars, Star Trek, Flash Gordon, Buck Rodgers, Dune, and much more besides. And it includes many of my own wacky inventions about what the future might hold in store.

Here is the original teacher in space and some of his first class of students.

Many of the main characters are based on the actual role-playing characters made up by the boys and young men who played the game with me. Many had to be re-named, however, because, like Tron Blastarr above, they often had movie-character names.

This important character was a parody of Professor X of the X-men, from the comic books and well before the movies.

It was a simple matter to give him psionic powers and transfer him into outer space. Oh, and get him out of the wheel chair too.

The character’s creator was the son of the local high school science teacher.

Ninja powers were a thing with teenage boys in the 80’s.

Combat is an important part of the role-playing game.

We became well-versed on weapons and tactics… and how to manipulate the rolls of the dice… by cheating if necessary.

How else do heroes overcome impossible odds?

Two more player characters that play a critical role in the novels.

Again with the parody characters that came from player-character ideas stolen from TV and the movies.

Aliens are necessary to this kind of story.

I am near to completing this third novel in the series.

The Nebulon aliens, though very human-like, are blue of skin. That is not easy to depict in a black-and-white drawing.

The initial idea for the fourth novel’s cover.

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Filed under aliens, artwork, heroes, humor, illustrations, imagination, novel, novel plans, Paffooney

The Doorway Straight Ahead

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I just finished watching the last episode of the ABC dramatic television series, Lost.  I watched every single episode of every single season they ever made of that show.  And here’s a major spoiler.  Everybody dies.  Yes.  No one gets through that TV series, or through life itself, without facing death at least once.  And everybody has a last encounter with it where they don’t win.  Except they do.

In my Paffooney above, the door straight ahead is the doorway home.  This Paffooney oil painting is called Poppa Comes Home.  I am hoping that is how it will be for me.  I painted this picture before I had a wife and three kids.  So how did I know?  Or did I simply make it come true?  Is that what the final doorway is all about?  You make it be the doorway you want it to be?  The truth is, I will probably find out before long.  I retired from teaching in rather spectacularly poor health.  I’m not sure I really expected to last this long.  And I may live another twenty years.  But probably not.  The thing is, when the door is finally directly in front of me, I will fear not.  I will simply open it and pass through.  I am at peace.  I have lived a good life.  I was a teacher.  I touched more than 2000 separate lives through my various classrooms over the course of 31 years.  I succeeded some, I failed some, I cried some, and I laughed a lot.  It all means a lot to me.

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As I write this now, I have spent most of the day sealed up in my room, on my bed with my laptop, suffering quite a lot with arthritis pain.  Most of my days since retirement have been very much the same.  My body, especially my joints, is wearing out.  But endurance brings wisdom.  Overcoming pain and the depression caused by pain provides me a deep, abiding faith and confidence in myself.  I don’t know if I believe in Heaven, but I am sure there is no hell.  God does not punish for a life completed, no matter how badly you may have lived it.  And if I die, if the human race goes extinct, if our planet is destroyed, even if our entire galaxy winks out in the never-ending darkness of eternity, we have all accomplished a miracle just by the fact of our existence.  The final doorway is the door home.  I have no doubt.

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Filed under autobiography, Paffooney, philosophy

Stuff That Works

What makes people visit your blog and maybe even click “like”?  I should tell you up front, I have no idea how best to navigate the crazy internet.  I want to.  I have a book to promote.  I have ideas and experiences to share.  I am a writer and I would like to make something more than excessive heartache out of being one.  But how you actually go about it is still a mystery.

Ima mickey

I know what I surf the internet for.  I like artwork, especially original artwork.  That is why I try to post as much of my own stuff as I can.  I am an amateur artist, self-taught with a little bit of college art classes, contact with real artists, and a lot of TV Bob Ross.  I surf to find other artists whose stuff catches my eye.  I post about artists like Loish, Maxfield Parrish, Paul Detlafsen, and Norman Rockwell.  I go to sites like DeviantArt (Example at this link) and follow artists like James Brown and Shannon Maer on Facebook.  I help promote their work by sharing as often as I can.  Do I worry about copyright violation with my artwork?  No.  I am long past the point of making a profitable career as an artist.  I like having people see my work and if someone decides to claim they are the artist instead of me, I have the real originals and even some pictures of work in progress.  The Big Eyes thing will not happen to me.

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So sharing pictures seems to matter.  I got lots of hits from the monster picture post because I used a lot of monster-movie images that people normally search for on the internet.  Pictures of pretty girls work too.  It doesn’t seem to matter if I drew them or if they are a picture of a relative, those pictures pull people in too.

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Pictures of photogenic nieces aid my blogging popularity in a rather noticeable way.

Yes, I do believe I have just intimated that Minnie Mouse is my niece, a daughter of my sister-in-law.  Lying is part of blogging.  You have to put spin on things and make people understand the things they want to understand more than you need them to see what is really true in the empirical sense.

Jungle Girl

Being able to put the words “nude” or “naked” in titles or in the tags brings in more views too.  Those words get lots of hits on search engines and some of the people who visit my blog looking for that actually read what’s posted.  Just because an idea is a little bit naughty, it doesn’t mean only perverts and bad people respond to it.

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This is a picture of Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean. It is NOT a picture of me.

And it doesn’t hurt to be a little funny now and then.  Humor is something I look for in the posts of others.  I try to be funny in my posts too… though whether they are hah-hah funny or merely eeuw! funny is debatable.  Much of my humor is only intended to raise a smirk or half a smile.  I am most satisfied when I make you think, “heh, that’s right, isn’t it.”

Millis

This is Millis, not me. He was an actual rabbit that was turned humanoid by a scientist’s experiment with alien technology.

So why is this post called Stuff That Works if, as I am claiming, I really don’t know anything about how blogging works?  I may have been a little less than truthful when I made claims.  Or maybe I was claiming with a little bit of “tongue in cheek”?  I hope I have demonstrated that I do know how.  The thing I have yet to wrestle with is WHY.  So now I have to get busy and work on that.

 

 

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Filed under artwork, autobiography, blog posting, commentary, humor, nudes, Paffooney, surrealism