Category Archives: photo paffoonies

Inside Toonerville

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The Toonerville Post Office and Bert Buchanan’s Toy Store.

Toonerville is not only a wonderful cartoon place created by Fontaine Fox in the 1930’s, but the name of the town that inhabited my HO Train Layout when I lived in South Texas and had the Trolley actually running nearly on time.  The train layout has not been restored to working condition for over a decade now.  The buildings which I mostly built from kits or bought as plaster or ceramic sculptures and repainted have been sitting on bookshelves in all that time.  I still have delusions of rebuilding the train set in the garage, but it is becoming increasingly less and less likely as time goes on and my working parts continue to stiffen up and stop working.  So, what will I do with Toonerville?

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Wilma Wortle waits on the station platform for her train at the Toonerville Train station. I built this kit in the 1970’s, hence the accumulations of dust bunnies.

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Loew’s Theater has been awaiting the start of The African Queen for more than twenty years.

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Main Street Toonerville at 2:25 in the afternoon. Or is it three? The courthouse clock is often slow.

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Grandma Wortle who controls all the money in the family likes to park her car near the eggplant house when she visit’s Al’s General Store.

But I may yet have found a way to put Toonerville back together through computer-assisted artsy craftsy endeavors.

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A two-shot of Bill Freen’s house and Slappy Coogan’s place on the photo set to start production.

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Bill Freen’s house lit up with newfangled electricical. (and I do believe that is the way Bill spells it all good and proper.)

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Bill Freen’s house cut out in the paint program.

So I can make composite pictures of Toonerville with realistic photo-shopped backgrounds.  Now, I know only goofy old artsy fartsy geeks like me get excited about doofy little things like this, but my flabber is completely gasted with the possibilities.

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Bill Freen’s house at sunset… (but I don’t get why there’s snow on the roof when the grass is so green?)

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Filed under art editing, artwork, autobiography, farm boy, foolishness, humor, illustrations, photo paffoonies, Toonerville

Mapping the Road Ahead

I have been doing this insane post-every-day thing for a solid year and a half since the start of this month.  That isn’t a sane thing to do if you are committed, like I am, to not posting pictures of the food you eat and blathering on about nothing.

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Braum’s chili… mmm… food of the gods!

Hmm?  Oh, no… that picture is an accident.  I didn’t put that there.  It’s not even a good picture.  Look at all that garbage in the background.  How did this picture get here?

But planning a daily blog can be difficult.  You keep having to make a map of the road you are planning to travel before you get there to see the lay of the land.  It gets tricky.  Almost as tricky as following the oxymoronic joke I tried to use as a title for this post.

Things happen all the time that make for good posts.  Yesterday was the result of my trip to the DMV.  If government offices don’t want to be the butt of satire, they shouldn’t make writers sit and stew in the heat for three hours and then not give them what they were waiting for.  But they apparently do want to be the butt of satire… or there wouldn’t be so much butt-ness to be found there.

I am a former teacher, having taught for 31 years.  I could’ve done this point about the recent education news in Texas.  Larissa Martinez , the Valedictorian of McKinney Boyd High School, used her graduation speech to come out of the closet as an undocumented immigrant.  It is an important issue.  This is a girl who will be nothing but an asset to this country.  She fled Mexico to escape an abusive father.  Her mother brought her to this country where she enrolled in school and quickly adapted to a new language and a new culture to achieve a 4.95 GPA in a well-funded Texas high school.  Her family immediately applied for citizenship in 2010.  As she gave her speech, her application had still not been processed.  I could write a number of posts about the immigration laws in this country being the real criminals.  Well, except laws aren’t actually people.  Okay, maybe I am not the best person to take up this vital issue.  But other people are reporting about this.  You can read more at this link;  Click Here!

So, maybe, I should just write more posts about Donald Trump becoming the next president of the U.S.  There is great opportunity  for humor there.  I am looking forward to Lonesome George W. Bush levels of comedy gold.

What then will I write about for today?  I am torn between a post for the fantasy book I just read and the movie Zootopia we saw last weekend.  But, somehow I have already reached my word-length goal for today.

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The milkshakes we had at Steak n” Shake after watching the movie Zootopia.

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Filed under autobiography, blog posting, goofiness, goofy thoughts, humor, photo paffoonies, writing humor

Learning Photographically

Being all artistical and everything, I struggle a bit with being able to reproduce my artwork on this blog.  Sometimes I can get a good picture, and sometimes I simply can’t.  The biggest problem I have encountered is the problem of light.  I can lose so much quality in the color and the detail because of bad photography that it bothers me to the point that I seriously consider whacking myself on the side of my own coconut with a brick (with the intent of knocking some color back into my eyeballs).  Of course, I am smart enough to realize that probably wouldn’t work, so I haven’t actually tried it yet.  Do you see the difference in the two pictures of my painting above?  Do you fixate on all the yellow-gray mud in the second picture the way I do?

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I found a light fixture that I could put a 300 watt bulb in, and I managed to set the whole thing up for under ten dollars.  It helps a lot.  It was able to put some of the color back into my work.  Now, I have to clean up my studio/bedroom a bit so it doesn’t look quite so junky.   I need to find that old bottle of cleaning fluid that I rubbed last time and discovered Clean Gene the Cleaning Genie.  I have found that cleaning stuff up requires magic.  It also makes me realize that I have just revealed one of my magician’s tricks as far as posting artwork.  A magician is never supposed to reveal his secrets…  Oopsie!  Never mind.  Pretend you didn’t read today’s post.

 

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Filed under art editing, artwork, cleaning genii, humor, photo paffoonies, photos

The Green World

It has been shown in a new study that there are actually more green leaves out there now as a result of industrial emissions of CO2.  The world is becoming greener.  This is not just Mickey telling stories.  You can find a corroborating article from the BBC Here!  So my war to keep my wife’s love of flowering plants from eating our house is not all in my head… mostly, but not ALL.

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This rake-eating wisteria had climbed, entwined, and imprisoned one of our rakes. I rescued it from being eaten when the other rake broke during my endless battles with live oak leaves.

Texas weather in the month of May has been almost exclusively water from the sky.  It has rained more days than it has been sunny.   In fact, rainy days have been more than half the days in May.  This is a distinct change from the year-after-year drought pattern that we experienced every year we have lived in North Texas up until two years ago.

The ground under our house after shriveling up with drought for eight years is now swelling and moving with the flow of mud and clay.  That means the pool is cracked and unusable.  The foundation is also cracked and shifting.  If the plants don’t eat the house, the wet ground and the fracking earthquakes are going to knock it down.

The greening of our world is not entirely a good thing.  It is true that plants turn the carbon dioxide into breathable air.  And flowers are wonderful, even though the pollen they produce often makes my COPD chest pains ache and makes it harder to draw breath.  But it is also evidence that the whole pollute-for-profit thing that industrialists do without conscience, is destroying our world and making it possible for the planet to pull down our structures and buildings with storms and erosion and earthquakes and general entropy.

Being an Iowa farm boy, I am in favor or the world being green.  Even though, as Kermit always sings to us, it ain’t easy being green, if we can do it properly, being green will make our lives better.  But we need to do it intentionally.  We should not simply rely on the good graces of industrialists who make higher profits from not having regulations about how much green-house gas they can pump into the atmosphere per hour.  Let’s see if we can make green a good thing.

 

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Filed under autobiography, conspiracy theory, flowers, foolishness, goofy thoughts, photo paffoonies, Uncategorized

Mickey and the Really Cool Car

As a former public school teacher, I have always driven a sensible car.  I was owner of a long line of Ford Tempos, Ford Escorts, and Ford Fiestas.  Cars on a teacher’s budget.  I was lucky to be at least one step above Hondas and AMC Gremlins, though Ford, as we all know, is the acronym for “Fix Or Repair Daily”.  Well, this week I have encountered a Really Cool Car for the first time in my life.  Oh, I have ridden in them before… had show-off-y friends who owned them and rich relatives.  (Did you know I’m related to Nelson Rockefeller?  It’s through the Aldrich part of his family, his mother’s side.  But distant enough to be totally out of the inheritance lottery.)  But never before have I driven one.

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The latest daily repair which involved hitting a pothole in my new Fiesta and destroying a front wheel, required a rental car.  But thanks to recent hail in the DFW area, Enterprise Rent-a-Car had no cheap ones available that the insurance would completely pay for.  Instead, I had to settle for a 2015 Dodge Challenger, a $95 a day expense that would’ve bankrupted me two months ago.  As it is, the cost is taking a big bite out of my newly restored credit standing.  But… hey!  A sports car!

Of course, the threat of more hail has been looming, and though my car insurance would cover the damage (minus the $500 deductible) I would have to continue to pay rent on it each day it spent in the shop… and that could take months.  It gives me pause because I do not have any place to shelter it beyond one live oak tree that spreads her mighty greens out over the street where my previous Fiesta was killed in a drive-by.  But… hey again!  A sports car!

It drives like a dream.  I never imagined a car could handle so easily and have so much potential power under the hood.  The rental people told me there was no mileage limit at this price level.  A weekend in Vegas?  Tempting, but I am a former school teacher.  The level of trouble I could get into as the country mouse in the big city is too scary to contemplate.  I would be some cat’s dinner for sure.  I have dared to drive the thing to pick up kids at school, and driving to Walmart where there are evil decorative rocks lurking everywhere.  But that is the limit of the daring side of me.  I might take my family to a movie at Cinemark later.  But that’s about as wild-side as I ever walk.

Will I ever drive a sports car like this again?  A sleek black Batmobile-looking thing that makes me feel powerful and potentially wild?  Of course not!  It’s Mickey we are talking about here.

 

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Filed under autobiography, humor, Mickey, photo paffoonies

April Showers

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I have always believed the point of April showers was to bring May flowers.  But the showers this April are merely making the flowers wet, since they are already here.

Last night was like that.  Drippy rain followed by thundershowers… quaking in safety as the world gets wet.

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I worry about global warming and the possible end of life on Earth.  But flowers each spring are a hopeful sign.  The world is renewing itself after the winter of our discontent.  In fact, a couple of years ago, the daffodils came out in February and got frozen to death in the week following their bold attempt to bloom early.  It just goes to prove that daffodils are the dumbest of all flowers.  I drew a portrait of one of them.  Daffy O’Dill posed for this shortly before his fateful encounter with the weed whacker.

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But pictures of the flowers in our yard are like the pictures of sunrises that I collect.  As I get older and enter the late winter months of my little life, they give me hope and consolation.  I hate to think that when my life ends the rest of humanity will soon follow.  Pessimists like me have good reason to think such things might be the case.  But there is also reason for hope.  Flowers are a sign of hope.  Flowers are a sign that life renews itself.  Flowers bloom, and the bees come, and seeds develop, and everything continues to grow.  Flowers make God smile.

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So, the rain came down, and in spite of possible hail and thunderstorms, wind and possible tornadoes, there are flowers.  In fact, look at this humongous rose growing in our neighbor’s tree.  If it actually came from outer space, it may be very well looking to eat us… eat our evil dentist at the very least.  And I found a novel way to get another good post out of my flower pictures.

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Filed under flowers, goofiness, humor, Paffooney, photo paffoonies, roses

Star Wars Collecting : Episode IV

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The danger presented by Star Wars collectibles lies in the fact that there are so @#$%! many of them.  If you try to collect one of everything, you will will be in the poor house for seven generations.  (Yes, I intend to leave my collection to my children to do with as they please.  I don’t expect the curse to go along with it.  My kids are smarter than me.)

But this is only the beginning of the Star Wars crap that I have to share when blogging about collectibles.  These are the Luke, Han, and Leia dolls that I have collected over time  My Kenner Luke and Leia are not pictured here.  Being the oldest 12-inch dolls in my collection, from 1978, they don’t look quite as good as the rest despite my repairs and rehabilitations.   So I actually have five Lukes, two Hans, and four Leias.  I threw in R2D2 because he and slave girl Leia were a set.

It is my intention to show you this soul-crushing collection bit by bit because it can be daunting otherwise.  Stay tuned for further episodes… or be on the look out if you really desire to avoid them.  I do realize that old men who play with dolls are a little off and likely have toxic cooties.

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Filed under collecting, doll collecting, photo paffoonies, Star Wars

Novel Problems

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It was a simple plan, really.  I paid a review company to review my book and post the result on their website.  It was affordable, and research showed that their services were not a mere waste of money.  How could anything go wrong?

Well, it’s me, of course.  The fact is, my book is not the only book with that same title.  I sent them the link to my book on Amazon.  They had all the right info to pick the right book.  They, of course, picked the wrong book to read and review.

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Naturally, they can’t tell the difference between my YA science fiction novel about an abandoned alien boy being adopted by a childless Earth couple and a Hollywood romance between sun-soaked beautiful people.

Oh, well, it would be funny if I weren’t running out of time for making waves with my novel and getting some notice.  I can’t seem to get another novel published and everyone is ignoring my little bookie thingy.  Serves me right for thinking I have a good reason to write stuff and nonsense.

And of course, it is not my only unique and novel problem.  I am currently trying to get essential yard work done before the leaves kill the grass on our yard.

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I raked for half an hour with a bad back stinging me constantly, and all I got accomplished was one bag of leaves!

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I really need trees that are more housebroken than this.  If I drop dead doing yard work, I will die an unknown novelist that nobody ever reads.  I am sure several people who have read my work would think that’s actually a good thing, but I’m inclined to disagree with them.

And leaf and novel problems have exacerbated my doll-collecting mania.  The third day of April and I have already bought two more dolls after vowing to quit the habit cold turkey.  But these are Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck dolls.  How can any doll collector with hoarding disorder resist?  At least, two dolls (and their horse) completes the collection…. until they get around to making more of these sweet little things.

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So, I have different problems than most people do.  But they are still problems.  I need to get busy and come up with some novel solutions.

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Filed under collecting, humor, NOVEL WRITING, pessimism, photo paffoonies, work in progress, writing humor

Spring is Sproinging

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The flowers have begun to bloom in Texas.  The leaves are budding on all the trees who aren’t live oaks.  The live oaks are shedding their winter coats, and there-in lies my divided feelings about the end of winter.  I am allergic to tree pollen, mold spores, and the grungy green gungus that goes with re-awakening life.  This weekend I raked live oak leaves and cut the grass in the yard.  So today, I am paying the price.  I have an arthritic back-ache.  I have an allergic-reaction headache.  I hurt a lot and I can’t breathe.  But I got to see the fresh blooms of another growing season.  A little pain… and then renewal.

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Filed under autobiography, feeling sorry for myself, humor, illness, photo paffoonies

Skyscape

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It is difficult to look at the sky and not feel that the power of Heaven is real.  As I approach the halfway point of my sixtieth year, and the darkness of the future draws ever nearer, I am forced to think about what I really believe.  Being smarter than the average bear has its drawbacks.  I understand why most of the writers I most admire were atheists, and all of the philosophers I have read and found agreement with are decidedly atheist.   Science, rationality, and reason all suggest that there is nothing beyond the physical realm.  Should that matter?  Faith, according to Mark Twain, is fervently believing in your heart what your mind tells you ain’t so.  In fact, Hebrews 11:1 says, “Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld.”  Even the Bible is saying you have to believe it even though you shouldn’t believe it.

So, will I go to Heaven when I die?  For me, the question is meaningless.  I look up at the miracle of a blue sky on a partly cloudy day and see the life-giving sun.  I am alive… here and now… and nothing else is really relevant.  I am a part of the great, vast universe of reality.  My existence is real and cannot be unmade… even by God, if He were inclined to do such a thing.  I am a small, insignificant part of reality, and I can be gone in the next instant like a puff of smoke in the wind.  But I am here and I am alive and I took the Paffooney picture that I used to illustrate this post.  And I face whatever comes with a smile on my face.  I am alive… and life is good.

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Filed under insight, inspiration, philosophy, photo paffoonies, Uncategorized