I have added another page to the ongoing story of the fairy folk of the Hidden Kingdom of Tellosia. I will append it here to the whole of Chapter Two as it exists so far;
So, there you have it. What will happen next? Will Zam be killed? Will the Mouse rescue her? Will Captain Pomegranate fly off into the sunset? I tell you what, I really wish I knew.
Filed under artwork, comic book heroes, fairies, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink, Uncategorized
Sometimes as a writer you find yourself ripping your heart out of your chest and taking a look at it up close. Of course, you don’t literally do that. I’m a writer. I use metaphors. But it still doesn’t hurt any less.
I did that for yesterday’s post. It left me devastated and completely out of energy. Which leads to today’s post. I am only posting this because I need to let the molten parts of my brain cool (a metaphor again) while, at the same time, continuing my unfortunate obsession with posting every day.
So, now I am done. My brain needs to cool.
Filed under autobiography, Paffooney
I recently revealed the existence of a new superhero in Dallas, the Magnificent Muck Man, master of muck and mud and maddening stench. Remember, his superpower is the ability to produce smells so awful they paralyze, neutralize, and even euthanize every opponent.
Now, every superhero needs his secret lair. Batman has the Batcave. Superman has the Fortress of Solitude. The Avengers have Avenger’s Mansion… oh, uh, maybe they’re not all secret. But, anyway, Muck Man has the Muck Cave. Yes, it is based on my house. I am old. I have six incurable diseases. So cleaning is difficult. And I don’t always smell that good myself. But I am not trying to claim I am Muck Man’s secret identity. The fool almost revealed his secret identity by smelling bad in an elevator… so I have to be more careful not to out him.
Anyway, the Muck Cave is Muck Man’s secret lair and base of operations. It is a normal-looking residential suburban house, on the outside. Inside, it is a hideous maze of garbage piles, discarded soiled laundry, random dog poo from Muck Dog, and a layer of wetness from incessantly overflowing toilets. Okay, there is another secret out. Muck Man has kids at home. How else do you explain how an ordinary house becomes an unnatural flowing fountain of filth?
Muck Man is not alone in his fight against evil. He has a couple of sidekicks that haven’t left the Muck Cave in disgust yet. They are teenage swashbuckling Mucklets that aspire to one day become Teen Titans. In fact, Muck Woman has a huge crush on Robin, such a huge crush that she refused to take the name that Dad… uh, Muck Man… suggested. She did not want to be called Muck GIRL. She did not particularly want to hang out with trained muck-rats either, but for a chance to hang out with Boy Wonders on weekends, well…
Muck Lad, however, likes his name… almost as much as he likes living in the Muck Cave. Teenage boys and filth-laden rooms in the Muck Cave are simply made for each other. And Muck Lad can’t wait to use his patented stink-saber on evil. It’s like a Star Wars light saber, except it creates a blade of solid stink that can cut through anything.
As the new superhero team prepares to get into crime fighting, I have it on good authority that they plan to go see the new Marvel movie Captain America: Civil War tonight. I believe they plan to take notes on how it all works.
I love Marvel Comics, and, as a result, I am also falling in love with the Marvel Superhero movies. I spent this morning drooling over the Flash TV series which has that wonderful comic book wiseacre flavor. And I decided that Dallas needs its own superhero.
So, using the toxic pollution in the city air and the natural ability of the human body to adapt to anything, Muck Man is born. Yes, Muck Man, the toxic hero who smells so bad that bad guys don’t have a chance. Severe odor is his super power. He can remove his shoes and take down a regiment of evil villain minions with a wave of foot-fungus incredo-stink. He can radiate infected ear-wax smells through the earwax antennas on his helmet. And, of course, he can go fully nuclear with a Muck Man power fart.
The Magnificent Muck Man has a secret identity too. He is a mild-mannered retired school teacher by day, pursuing a mundane and forgettable career as a writer until the city is threatened by a super villain. And he is coming.
Behold, the Angry Orange King. He is tramping toward us in Angry Tramp Boots looking to tramp all over the basic human rights of people he doesn’t like. Especially poor people he doesn’t like. He gives rude finger gestures to the masses with the fingers of his tiny, tiny hands. And he likes to build gigantic things and make other people pay for them. He has recently defeated the homegrown lizard-man super villain that represents our state. He used his super villain power to hang insulting nicknames on people, and we all know that nicknames can be fatal, especially to lizard-people. Many would argue that the Angry Orange King hasn’t won total victory yet. He still has to defeat one more opponent before the frightened nation turns the keys to the kingdom over to him. But there is no guarantee that he will be beaten, as no other contender has beaten him yet, despite everything the wise monkeys claim to be true.
So the confrontation is set to happen. Blow-hard insult master against the world’s greatest source of stinky justice. Who will win? Nobody knows for sure. But for me, I tend to side with goodness over evil.
Filed under Avengers, cartoons, characters, comic book heroes, conspiracy theory, humor, Paffooney, satire
Oh, the grimacing grin of old Grandma Green
Is the scariest smile that you’ve ever seen!
She bunches up wrinkles and shows yellow teeth
And makes a boy worry ’bout what lies underneath.
But when she is smiling, she gives cookies and milk
And speaks in a voice full of honey and silk.
So maybe it’s not the worst smile ever seen,
That grimacing grin of old Grandma Green.
****This poem was added to the silly poems in my vault to be found here;****
Filed under art criticism, artwork, humor, insight, Paffooney, philosophy, surrealism, Uncategorized
I have been working on my graphic novel, Hidden Kingdom. It is a fairy tale about the struggles in the fairy kingdom that shares the world with us. You can find everything I have done on this project in my vault Visiting Tellosia, the Hidden Kingdom.
Here is Chapter Two;
And here is the page I finished yesterday;
There is still a lot of work to do on this, but I am making progress!
Filed under cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, fairies, Hidden Kingdom, humor, Paffooney, pen and ink
Last night brought second-hand victories to Mickeyworld. I am definitely NOT a Republican, but the Indiana Primary results put a smile on my face. Not, of course, because the Orangutan Man with a pocket-full of wall plans won and will probably be the GOP nominee. Rather, because the evil space lizard who wants to put an end to everything good that comes from government finally dropped out of the race for President. Yes, Ted Cruz has put his world domination ambitions on hold until some future election or military or political coup. And Trump against any candidate the Democrats put forward will probably lose… unless Americans all have lobotomies before November.
The NHL playoff game last night also yielded good news. The St. Louis Blues, after having beaten last year’s Stanley Cup champion, beat the Dallas Stars 6 goals to 1 in the third game of round two. They totally dominated the division champions and took the lead in the series in a way that makes it seem that going to roll over them.
I am certainly not fool enough to imagine the good times will last. Good things happen one day, only to evaporate into nothingness the next. But I tend to believe that I have every right to enjoy the good things while they happen. Boo-hoos for tomorrow. Yippee-kai-yays for today.
Filed under Celebration, hockey, humor, Paffooney, politics, Uncategorized
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
Tagged as artwork, blogging, goofiness, humor, nudes, paffooney, philosophy