My old laptop is not happy…
It’s seen much better days,
It growls and grumbles, snorts and fumbles…
And gets revenge in many ways.
Now it thinks a tiny font…
Is funny next to this
And zooms the screen five-hundred percent
To make the next rhyme miss!
And hopefully, I can afford//#%& a new c om pu ter soon
Because this one is veery weiiird
And totally out of tune.
Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself, goofiness, humor, photo paffoonies, poetry
Stuck in the house all day with no outside activities to distract me, and limited socialization with the other denizens imprisoned in the house with me is more-or-less the perfect thing for a fiction writer with cancer of the imagination glands.
I have plenty of people to talk to, since , in this situation, imaginary people count too. And there is no end to the things I can talk about since ideas keep welling up in my head, even if many of them are totally silly ideas, and the rest are probably evil.
It helps to have a talking dog. Though my kids would argue that Jade isn’t really talking, that I am, instead, merely interpreting things I think she should be saying as if it were real speech. She does talk an awful lot about different kinds of meat and the moral imperatives of allowing your dog to eat people food. But I think it is only proper to commit to writing those things she says when we’re alone together, because, after all… a possible talking dog?
But imagination is one of those things that sets people… I mean, human people, apart from all other life forms that we know. Imagination makes the man. What would we have made of ourselves and our world if we didn’t have it? Would we have invented the wheel? Fire? Term life insurance? I think not.
I may, in fact, be going a little stir crazy in the old hovel while trying like heck to avoid death by Coronavirus. I am easily as frayed around the edges as any hopeless hobo, with even my beard-trimming growing wildly erratic. Soon I may have to tell the imaginary people who surround me and question everything about me that it is not a beard any more. Rather, it is either a crocheted hippie neck-warmer rather than a beard, or maybe it has become a furred, frilly collar on my shirt like Shakespeare probably wore for the premiere of King Lear.
No, I am not going stir-crazy, or even a little bit insane. I am just letting the words unwind as they fill me up and demand to be unreeled in order to prevent an explosion in the brain.
Filed under being alone, goofiness, humor, photo paffoonies, surrealism
I was an aficionado of HO model trains as a kid. I continued that horrendous fixation with 1/78th scale worlds long into my extended juvenile immaturity (I was an unmarried teacher of middle school students until 1995.) Even after I was married, my wife allowed me, to a very limited degree, to continue to be a train man.
I spent a good deal of time over the years building building plastic model kits of buildings, painting and repainting plaster model buildings, and collecting engines, rolling stock, and trackside details. Painting little 1/78th scale people is definitely an exercise for steady hands and a zen-like, highly focused mind.
But that all reached an impasse when we moved to the Dallas area. I had to tear down my train layout, box up my trains, and put everything on hold until I had another place to build and create my HO model-train world. So, while it was all boxed up and transported to first, a house that we rented from my brother-in-law, and then a house that we bought, it got shifted around and stacked inappropriately, and grandma put some really heavy items on top to crush and mangle my treasures. It also spent a night outside in the rain when my brother-in-law’s water heater had to be replaced in the garage where everything was stored. I was not a happy camper for a while.
Now, a decade later, I am still taking the tiny items and trying to glue the pieces back together. I have basically given up trying to get the trains to run again. But I can use the bits and pieces of Toonerville to make pictures like these. It makes the art-parts of my psyche and soul a little happier.
Old number 99 had to have the front part where the headlamp is located reattached and restored. It gave me something to do this weekend while I was down with a bad back and breathing difficulties. It would be neat to put the train table back together and get things set up once again, but there is no space, and no unlimited funds, and less and less time. So for now, the train man comes back to me to rebuild in photographs and in my imagination.
Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains
As a rabid Dungeons and Dragons player, I have labored for years to build up my collection of miniature figures. Now, like the action figures and the dolls, the collection is growing so fast it may eat the house. So, in order to play with them and get some use out of them, I built a cardboard castle, complete with grid for playing D & D. It is a scene that can be used to play the game, but it is also a place to display my collection.
Toy companies have recently started putting out collectible miniatures in an almost D & D scale. They only cost about a dollar apiece. That makes them cheaper than candy bars. And I am diabetic, so I can’t buy candy bars.
I like to position them in my D & D background and take pictures of them, even though DC Superheroes are not D & D figures. I can work them into the story of the next RPG sessions. Batman is a paladin. Aquaman is a sea-based druid. Wonder Woman is an Amazon.
Adam West Batman is really, really cool. Wham! Pow! Sock!
Killing a dragon is a big event in a D & D campaign. And I can do that now with miniatures.
The Flash can rescue Jessica Rabbit from a mad goblin in the Skull Plaza.
So, I reached a point in setting the scene for the game that it has become almost cinematic. And I like taking pictures of it as I continue to play with all of it. Forgive me. I will forever be twelve years old in my head.
Yes, among my most disturbing artistical habits is my obsession with handcrafting paper dolls out of images that were not meant to be paper dolls. And if you look carefully you can see at least three that look like they were taken from one of those cardboard books of antique paper dolls that you used to be able to buy from Dover Press. But, in truth, I took those three (Actually four, but one got knocked on the floor and stepped on in the night) from a digital ad online, blew them up, modified the images with colored pencil and scissors, and then used both the scanner and my printer to turn them into paper dolls put together with scissors, cardboard, and glue.
There are also three in the back row, Annette with mouse ears, the boy on the bicycle, and the fairy-faun thing, which I made with my own original drawings. There’s also cowgirl Annette made from scans from a vintage Cheerios box and a little anthropomorphic puppy-boy thing that was made from a scrapbook piece that my mother cut out of one of my beginning reader books from the 1950s.
These three that were in front in the previous picture were images stolen from a fellow artist on Instagram whose name forgetful me lost in the creation of the paper dolls. I swear I meant to give her proper credit, and I will add her to the comments here when I can find her again on Instagram or Twitter. In the meantime, I contend I am not violating her copyright because I make no money from my blog, and the art project they are a part of will never be sold. When I die, my wife will either give them away or destroy them. She doesn’t tend to value my artwork. The paper dolls especially. The nudist ones especially specially.
I admit that the paper doll thing is only a part of my greater doll-collecting mania. They have taken over the upstairs of the house. And that is a large part of why my wife hates them, although she enjoyed about a decade’s worth of collecting Barbie dolls before our daughter was old enough to dismember and eat so many of them.
But I also have plans to make more. Truly evil plans.
Filed under artwork, doll collecting, humor, photo paffoonies
There was an old man who lived in a shoe.
He had so many expenses, he didn’t know what to do.
Of course, I am not complaining.
Even though it’s a tennis shoe and not a cowboy boot.
I have got an ice cream truck outside. Sponsored by Hot Wheels.
And now that I have a substitute teaching job, I almost have more money than bills… well, some months… maybe.
But I still can’t afford ice cream. Or insulin.
But my neighbor lives in a house made of eggshell. And he has cancer. But he gets visits from the Partridge Family in their funky school bus. It is better to live on a shoe-string budget than an eggshell budget. But we all have our troubles. Which Aetna will never willingly pay for.
Except for the rich guy who lives on Mel Gibson Hill. He has no troubles.
He has plenty of money.
And he is the reason the rest of us are poor.
Because he pays for politicians to give him tax breaks on all that money that never trickles down the hill.
But life is good in Toonerville Town.
Unless that shoestring comes undone.
And then it takes lots more hard work to tie it up again.
Filed under commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, photo paffoonies, satire
I had been promising my daughter for a while that we would build the gingerbread train. I was looking forward to it as an art project. She was impatient to eat it. So, on December 27th, I was finally feeling well enough to do the deed.
So, we prepared the work space on the kitchen table. We laid out the items that we could use for assembly. I made my daughter promise to stop eating elements of the train before we could actually put it together.
I started decorating the Christmas trees that go into the baggage car. My daughter ate several of the sugar-ball decorations.
The baggage car was assembled first. I call it the baggage car because even though it is in the tender position for a steam train if we called it that, that would mean that the engine burned Christmas trees instead of coal. My daughter snuck a few more decorations as we argued about that.
It was encouraging that the first part came together without looking too incredibly terrible.
My daughter decorated a majority of the engine and only ate a few more of the decorations while doing it. This was no small thing given how much she loves to eat gumdrops.
It ended up looking vaguely like the picture on the box. We had a great deal of fun making it. And the last time I checked, portions of it still were uneaten… something I am confident won’t be the case for much longer.
Filed under artwork, family, homely art, Paffooney, photo paffoonies
Life, like a good Dungeons and Dragons game, is basically controlled by rolling the dice of random encounters. Even if there is a great over-arching plan for this reality in the brain of the Great Dungeon Master in the Sky, it is constantly altered by the roll of celestial dice and ultimate random chance.
Thusly, I managed a D & D encounter in the middle of the night last night.
I generally have a sleeping skill of only +1. That means, that if sleeping is a simple skill, I can add my +1 to the roll and only have to get a 6 or higher on a twenty-sided dice. At 3:10 a.m. I rolled a 3. I had to get up and wander bleary-eyed to the bathroom, a -2 for terrain effects to successfully to make it to the bathroom and pee through a prostate that is swollen to the size of a grapefruit, most often a difficult task, requiring a 15 on a twenty-sided dice. I got lucky. I rolled a 19. Then, on the way back to bed, the dog rolled a natural 20 on her get-the-master’s-attention roll and let me know she had to go to the bathroom too.
I have to tell you at this point, that since I am trying to be more of a nudist, I seriously considered taking her out naked (by which I mean me, not her). Dressing up in the middle of the night can be daunting. And no one was going to see in the dark of the park at 3:15 a.m. But I thought it probably wasn’t a good idea to go adventuring without armor in the darkness, so I at least put on shoes and a magic +4 bathrobe.
So, we went out to let the dog poop in the park, a thing she can do profusely on a roll of 3 or higher. We got it accomplished with little fuss. Oh, there was some complaining and growling, but the dog managed to ignore me when I did it. Then we had to find our way safely back to the house, and bed…. but we had a random encounter roll that didn’t go in our favor. I am always on the lookout in the dark for aliens or black-eyed children or even the onset of the zombie apocalypse. But what I got was the monster from under the bridge.
One of the denizens of the city suburbs that most enjoys the nightlife in the city and thrives even though it isn’t human is the horrorific creature known as a raccoon. She’s a sow that I have seen a number of times before at night. She lives under the bridge in the park and often has three or four cubs trailing behind her in the spring. And she has nothing but contempt for humans with dogs. She immediately launched into her fear-based hiss attack. And coming from a possibly seven-foot tall monster sitting atop the pool fence and hissing in the night, it seized the initiative with a very effective attack. She rolled an 18. The attack succeeded.
I tried the ever-popular pee-your-pants defense, but failed, rolling a 2. The reservoir was previously emptied, and I wasn’t wearing pants. The dog bolted for the kitchen door and dragged me with her. Her magic bark attack wasn’t even tried. We were in the house before my heart skipped its third beat.
Surviving the encounter in this way is probably good for the heart. It beat really hard for a bit and got thoroughly exercised. But I went back to bed and reflected on the fact that random encounters like that are entirely dependent on the roll of the dice.
Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, horror movie, monsters, Paffooney, photo paffoonies
I admit it. Even though I collect pictures of sunrises to glory in the fact that I still have another day of life in this world, I rarely snap a picture of the cloudless sunrise. It is very possible that this has something to do with what ultimately gives life value and makes it worthwhile to live one more day.
If there is no pattern, no color-changes, no contrast, no variation… then why bother? And this doesn’t only apply to living your life. It applies to taking pictures of the sky too. Solid blue or solid yellow are about as interesting as a minimalist painting. (Have you ever seen the big beige squares and red squares that fill entire walls of the Dallas Art Museum? Like a picture of a polar bear in a fierce blizzard or an extreme close-up of the side of a tomato.)
Yes, sunshine and happiness are all well and good… but you don’t get a satisfactory skyscape without some clouds in it. In fact, rain clouds provide the most fascinating patterns and colors. What would the picture be without a little drama splashed here and there to make a center of interest or a counterpoint to the happy ending? They say that variety is the spice of life. And when they say that they probably mean cayenne pepper rather parsley or oregano. If that’s not what they mean, then why the hell did we bring food into the discussion?
So, I am thinking, there have to be clouds. (Notice, I said “clouds”, not “clowns”, because… according to the song, there “ought to be clowns”, not “have to be clowns”.)
It is true that clouds can mean sadness… that the rain is coming, that your vision is obscured, that something has come between you and God’s eye. But without clouds, the sky would be plain and boring. Better to burn bright and explode in a short amount of time than to linger over a plain pale blue.
Filed under clowns, commentary, foolishness, humor, photo paffoonies
Catch a Falling Star 
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.
Leave a comment
Filed under artwork, autobiography, collage, commentary, humor, illustrations, imagination, Paffooney, photo paffoonies
Tagged as Saturday Art Day