Category Archives: photo paffoonies

September 4, 2015 · 1:49 pm

H.P. Lovecraft, The Master of Madness

When I was but a young teacher, unmarried, and using what free time I had to play role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller with students and former students and fatherless boys, I came across a game that really creeped me out. And it was quite popular with the kids who relied on me to fill their Saturday afternoons with adventure. It led me on a journey through the darkness to find a fascination with the gruesome, the macabre, and the monstrous. The Call of Cthulhu game brought me to the doorsteps of Miskatonic University and the perilous portals of the infected fishing village of Innsmouth. It introduced me to the nightmare world of Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

“H. P. Lovecraft, June 1934” by Lucius B. Truesdell

Old H.P. is as fascinating a character as any of the people who inhabit his deeply disturbing horror tales. He was a loner and a “nightbird” but with little social contact in the real world. He lived a reclusive life that included a rather unsuccessful “contract” marriage to an older woman and supporting himself mostly by burning through his modest inheritance. As a writer, he got his start by so irritating pulp fiction publishers with his letters-page rants that he was challenged to write something for a contest article, and won a job as a regular contributor to “Weird Tales” pulp magazine. He was so good that he was offered the editorship of the magazine, but true to form, he turned it down. He resembled most the dreamer characters who accessed the Dreamlands in various ways, but let their mortal lives wither as they explored unknown continents in the Dreamlands and the Mountains of the Moon. He created a detailed mythos in his stories about Cthulhu and Deep Ones and the Elder Gods. He died a pauper, well before his stories received the acclaim they have today.

I have to say that I was so enamored of his stories that I had to read them as fast as I could acquire them from bookstores and libraries all over Texas. My favorites include, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and At the Mountains of Madness. But reading these stories lost me hour upon hour of sleep, and developed in me a habit of sleeping with the lights on. In Lovecraft’s fiction, sins of your ancestors hang like thunderheads over your life, and we are punished for original sin. A man’s fate can be determined before he is born, and events hurl him along towards his appointed doom. H.P. makes you feel guilty about being alive, and he shakes you to the core with unease about the greater universe we live in, a cold, unfeeling universe that has no love for mankind, and offers no shelter from the horrors of what really goes on beyond the knowing of mortal men.

Loving the stories of H.P. Lovecraft is about deeper things than just loving a good scare. If you are looking for that in a book, read something by Stephen King. H.P. will twist the corners of your soul, and make you think deep thoughts to keep your head above water in deep pools of insanity. I know some of his books belong in yesterday’s post, but we are not talking about happy craziness today. This is the insanity of catharsis and redemption.

Cooking More Futzbatter

“What’s this with the made up words thing? You can’t just make up words!”

“Why not? I’m an English teacher. Who better to make up words?”

“But you are making up nonsense words, and using them to make fun of Iowegians! That’s, like, racist or something!”

“Iowegians is a made up word. It is a play on Norway, Ioway, and Norwegian… and because a lot of white people in Iowa are of Scandahoovian descent.”

“See what I mean? Racist! Scandahoovian makes fun of people of Norse descent. That is totally unacceptable!”

“I don’t see it that way. I think we Iowegians should own it. You know, like the way Texas rednecks are proud to be called rednecks. I think that’s far more racist than saying Iowegian or Scandahoovian.”

“Why are we even talking about this? Why couldn’t you have just posted more about your goofy flowers? You have a lot more flower pictures you could use.”

“Yesterday was just a scrapbook sort of entry. I wanted to post a variety of different things to fill space and waste time. My writing goals were already completed for the day yesterday. My novel is at 39,565 words right now.”

“But why did you have to make up gibberish words? Don’t you know enough real words?”

“My Uncle Everett used to use Foobah when he was around the womenfolk so he didn’t say the word he was really thinking and offend Grandma Beyer. That kinda makes it a real word. And you’ve heard me say Futzbatter before. It is a word like Paffooney… something I have used enough that you know what it means without even asking.”

“But what gives you the right to make up words?”

“What gave William Shakespeare the right? Or Lewis Carroll? Remember Jabberwocky?”

“But they were famous writers. They probably earned that right.”

“I’m a writer too. Are you saying I shouldn’t do what great writers do?”

“But your not a great… Republican… yes, I meant to say Republican.”

“I’m not a Republican at all. I’m an independent liberal. I’m a progressive. I believe we need to change things to make the world a better place for all of us. Using new words and changing the language can’t be that bad a thing, can it?”

“We aren’t talking about politics! We’re talking about you making up weird-sounding goofus-doofus words and using them like they actually mean something! You can’t love the language and change it at the same time!”

“Why not? You just did.”

“I did? How?”

“What does goofus-doofus mean?”

“OH! Darn it! Don’t you see what you are doing to me with all your nonsense? You’re making me talk funny too!”

“Speaking of funny talking, do you want to see the new Minions movie with me this afternoon? It is playing at 3:25 at the Webb-Chapel Cinemark 17. There’s a lot of funny talking in that.”

“Dang it! You just posted the time and place you are planning to be. What if that lunatic Winchuk boy decides he wants to use the information to get even with you for his entire seventh-grade year?”

“No chance of that. He can’t read… or tell time. He had me for a teacher.”

At that point the logical left side of my brain doubled up both of his fists and belted the creative right side of my brain in the chin as hard as he could. Of course, that didn’t hurt at all, because both of his fists are metaphorical. What a futzing foobah!

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Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, wordplay

Tagged as dialogue, goofiness, humor, language, made-up words, Minions, photo Paffooney, words and their meanings

July 27, 2015 · 3:11 pm

Stooges

borrowed from Wikipedia

Life is like a Three Stooges movie where I get to be Moe. Yes, you heard me right. I am the “smartest Stooge”. And although a lot of the wacky plans my family carries out are my plans originally, I get more than my share of eye-pokes and head-slaps.

Financially I get more than my fair share of head-slaps. My income has now been frozen in retirement mode for the remainder of my life. I have to live three more years to get back all the money I paid into the pension plan for Texas teachers. It is a better pension than teachers can earn now, but it is set up with standards from over two decades ago. And, well, it is rather a difficult budget to manage when income is frozen and expenses are free to rise at will. I just paid $45 for groceries at Walmart and got four sacks of edibles. Seven cans of cheap-meal servings of chili and pork-n-beans (creating an alarming natural gas potential at our house), two cans of Pringles, 24 sodas in cans, two gallons of milk, Oscar Mayer salami, and some shampoo (hopefully we don’t have to eat the shampoo to avoid starving to death. I remember a time when a similar stash for the pantry cost a mere $10.) The point is, Walmart is treating us like Stooges, in the same way Mr. Dimsell treats his Stooges while working in Dimsell’s Drug Store in the movie, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.

The biggest point I am trying to make, I guess, is that I am at the bottom of Poop Mountain when it comes to the matter of finance and wealth. (And poop not only rolls down hill, it avalanches down mountainsides.) Right now the games that rich people and the Mr. Dimsells of the world play with money give us all sorts of head-slaps and eye-pokes. Being able to own the whole drugstore is an unfair advantage. Now that Dimsell is the only drugstore operator in the area, he can set prices as high as he pleases without worrying about losing Stooge business to other stores. And he doesn’t have to treat his Stooges well, either. He can be mean. He can cut salaries and pensions in the secure knowledge that his Stooges will still have to come to him to spend their money no matter what. More and more of the wealth goes into Dimsell’s pocket, and none comes out. He is not compelled to share. He doesn’t pay anything to fix the potholes in the streets outside his store. He is, in fact given tax incentives just to be there and take our money. So when my car needs repair because the pothole wheel-kicked my car to the point of needing repair, I will be forced to pay Dimsell to fix a problem that he allowed to poke me in the eye financially. It is a real dumb deal, Porcupine. (And yes, I know that drugstores don’t normally sell or repair tires, but Dimsell is a metaphor for Walmart, if you hadn’t figured it out by now.)

So, the only answer is to accidentally send myself back to the days of Hercules with a homemade time machine invented in the basement under the drugstore. It will bring Dimsell to his knees and give him his just comeuppance. And it will thoroughly prove I can carry metaphors and analogies way too far.

Minions are another form of Stooge… and I now have Kevin, Bob, and Stuart.

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Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, Three Stooges

Tagged as humor, Minions, Moe, photo Paffooney, politics, Stooges, Three Stooges, Walmart

July 20, 2015 · 12:44 pm

The Magic of Pez

In 1927 in the mythical land of Austria, where they seem to know how to make candy… a condensed form of peppermint was created in a lozenge form and then placed into a plastic toy dispenser. The spells that were cast to make this magical item probably had nothing to do with toad warts and bat wings and eye of newt. It has more to do with Mickey Mouse, then Katzenjammer Kids, and Marvel Super Heroes. I have been caught under the spells of a PEZ fixation since childhood. I remember begging for a Bugs Bunny dispenser in Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines when I was probably six years old. My parents wisely said no hundreds of times when I was a kid. Who wanted to spend a nickel on a penny’s worth of candy? Just for a Pez dispenser. If they ever caved to my begging, even once, I don’t still have the dispenser. But now I am supposedly a responsible adult. I have money. Well, I used to have money before I spent it on collecting PEZ dispensers. I can’t even eat the the stupid candy. I have diabetes. So I feed the candy to my kids and risk giving them diabetes.

Here, my minion Stuart is showing off my Avengers collection. It took him nearly thirty minutes to line these six dispensers up so that they were all standing at once. The Hulk kept falling on him repeatedly.

I am proud of my Toy Story collection. I had to go to some lengths to find some of these (particularly Slinky Dog and Rex).

Disney Princesses were easy. Both at Walmart and Toys R Us they were all grouped together on the Disney hooks.

The Muppets were also grouped together with the Disney Pez.

Winnie the Pooh is Disney, too. I got some of these on discount at Toys R Us. I still need Piglet and Owl… and Christopher Robin. I don’t have an unbroken Minnie Mouse either. I had small children when I first started collecting these, and now I have fat children and a lot of empty Pez dispensers.

My Star Wars collection seems to be evil Pez dispensers and Yoda.

And poor Stuart is getting tired of standing up Pez dispensers, so I will end here without having shown you all of my PEZ dispensers. Besides, I have reason to keep the newest dispensers a secret from my minion.

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Filed under collecting, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as humor, Minions, Pez, photo Paffooney

July 18, 2015 · 3:53 pm

My Own Minions

You know by now, if you have been reading my posts and not just looking at the pictures, that I am a doll… er, action figure… er, toy collector with a raging case of hoarding disorder. So, after finishing the My Little Pony/ Equestria Girl collection, I went on to work on a Monster High collection. I still need at least Draculaura to complete that set. But I stumbled into Minions. I couldn’t resist. “Oh toot jour, Pappagaina!” Stuart said from the shelf. So I had to buy him.

You know how dangerous it is to have Minions. Just look in the background at what happened to the Red Baron when I bought Stuart. Minions can have a bad effect, as well as a funny effect, on the outcome of an evil genius’ evil plots for doing evil-ness. So I started thinking of the dangers. The Minions only cost $8.85 apiece… but of the three main movie Minions, Stuart, Kevin, and Bob… there were already at least three different versions of each. Besides the “bored silly” set, there was a pirate set and a beachwear set. And what if they start issuing all the other minions? You know, Dave and Charlie and all the boys? I could be financially doomed by my need to collect.

And what am I investing in? Here is a close-up of Stuart after taking him out of his mint-in-box to play with him, posing in the cardboard castle atop Mount Blue Blankie where I have built my secret evil genius’ lair. Please don’t tell any would-be heroes or rival despicable villains that my lair is located in my bedroom.

And it turns out that Stuart is fully pose-able. That is going to be even harder to resist. Let me prove he is pose-able.

And after I made the horrific mistake of buying fully pose-able Stuart, I discovered he was not my only Minion. I also found out today that my novel Snow Babies has been assigned to an editor finally. Jessie Cornwell of PDMI LLC was assigned to edit my novel back on June 28th. Of course, I didn’t know about it until today because the email informing me went straight to the spam folder in typical Minion fashion. So now I feel fully ready to face the evil world and try to steal the moon, while actually accomplishing something completely different that I don’t expect. That’s what having Minions means.

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Tagged as doll collecting, humor, Minions, novel writing, photo Paffooney

July 16, 2015 · 3:16 pm

An Anatomy of an Angry Argument (The Stars ‘n’ Bars Controversy)

I get a little tired of friends, family, and especially online acquaintances calling me a liberal and meaning it as a severe antonym of a compliment. They are basically conservative by nature and they are trying to hurt my feelings by calling me liberal. (Or “libtard” or “libturd” or “liberaloon”) They don’t like my fact-based arguments and strike out at me from the deepest depths of their deeply-held-and-so-long-stored-in-the-same-barrel-that-it-fermented set of conservative beliefs. Often they pull potentially intoxicating talking points out of the well of watching Fox News and expect me to drink it… even though I know it has intentionally been laced with poison.

I am not offended by the Confederate flag. It was a part of the Civil War that fascinates me and still stands for the brave regiments of Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg who marched into a hail of cannonball-laced death to prove once and for all that an entire way of life can be destroyed on the battlefield. It was a terrible tragedy and those men paid the ultimate price for being on the wrong side of that argument. I believe we should honor them and reconcile ourselves with what remains of them. They are indeed still out there. But we do not have to honor the thing they were fighting for and ended up losing. Slavery is inherently unjust and evil. And the racism that is its aftertaste is just as despicable. It is understandable that in that long gone culture it was normal to view black skin as the sign of an inferior creature. They treated slaves as working farm animals, like oxen or donkeys. It is the way they thought of those… actually people… whom they failed to accept as fellow human beings.

I am not offended by the Confederate flag. But I am upset at the most common uses of it. Klansmen use it as a symbol of their race-hatred. They fly it at their protest marches along with the Nazi swastika. The flag at the South Carolina capitol building went up during the equal rights struggles of the 50’s and 60’s as a defiance of the entire movement. I am not offended by the flag, but I do not like when it is used as a symbol of redneck America believing they’re better than blacks and Hispanics because their skin is white, and that their conservative white values are superior to the values of Jews, liberals, and intellectuals. I don’t like being told that their heart-felt hate trumps my nerd-boy thinking-too-much. I don’t like the way they believe they win the argument by shouting at me in a louder voice than I am capable of shouting back. (Watch Bill O’Reilly on Fox News and see if he doesn’t do exactly that.) I don’t like the way they don’t listen to me in the same way that I try hard to listen to them.

People I care about and even love in Iowa are posting things on Facebook about liberals attacking the Confederate flag, and how terrible it is that liberals are trying to take away “our heritage”. But wait a minute… At the Battle of Shiloh in Missouri, the 5th Iowa Infantry Regiment and the Iowa 13th were embroiled in the Hornets’ Nest, the intense fight all along the “sunken road” that ultimately tipped the horrible battle in favor of the Union. Iowans were shooting at the Confederate flag. Many of them were killed by it. How can that flag possibly be “our heritage“?

I believe the rebel flag is not an appropriate symbol to be used in government buildings or 4th of July parades. It is a symbol of more than one thing… and some of those things are terrible things. I am not advocating making the flag illegal in the U.S. But, consider, the Nazi flag is illegal in Germany. It is the flag of a defeated rebellion against our government, fought for the purpose of defending the institution of slavery. Why are my conservative Iowegian friends supporting such a flag?

And I refuse to be insulted by being called a liberal. Conservative doesn’t mean “good” while liberal means “bad”. Conservative means wanting to preserve the good things about the past and not change them without good reason. Liberal means wanting to change things for the better. I used to be a conservative. I am only comfortable being a liberal now because conservative powers are trying to protect things that have to change because they are hurting us. I love all people in general… and I don’t want to see them hurt by their government or their society. So, if you feel the need to argue in the comments… or if you feel you have to call me a libturd… feel free to do so. But please don’t call me a libturd in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS!!!

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Filed under humor, photo paffoonies, politics

Tagged as Confederate flag controversy, humor, Iowans, philosophy, photo Paffooney, politics, symbolism

July 9, 2015 · 2:38 pm

More Texas Airport Follies

I would post a picture of my son the Marine in his uniform, but I have promised him never to use his real name, or pictures of him in his military persona, or even reveal destinations where he was going for the armed forces. He is not going on secret missions, but he likes to play like it is so, and is capable of getting very, very mad about it. So you will have to be satisfied with the harrowing tale of delivering him to the airport, putting him on a plane to… somewhere… and finding out first hand what the term SNAFU is all about as it relates to the military and deployment.

You may remember that I posted about collecting him from Love Field and what a wondrous, lovely adventure that was, at the start of his leave for the holiday. (Texas Airport Adventures) Well, unfortunately, we didn’t have the same easy time of it on the butt end of his journey home. We had to go to DFW… The Texas-Sized airport that makes you appreciate how loud and braggart-y and smug and foul-tempered Texas is as a whole. Practically nothing went as planned.

I used this scene to represent the airport and blurred it on purpose (yeah, right!) to protect the identities of the random airport denizens I was photographing because I obtained a release from no one and no faces can be actually visible. (I also thought the pretty little Asian girl dressed in blue was particularly cute, but wanted no part in taking some sort of weird stalker photo.) To use this photo to imagine what the airport is really like, you have to realize that this is one of thirty-five-something waiting areas in only one of the Terminals A, B, C, D, and E that litter this monster airport. You have to take this particular photo times one-hundred-seventy-five-something to get an idea of how labyrinthine and utterly foul and soul-munching this cesspit of Texan humanity and lurking random monsters truly is. And we didn’t even have the misfortune of finding the Minotaur in the middle of the maze.

We started our quest at Terminal C, not quite sure which of the many, many American Airlines spots we were supposed to find out of all the x-marks-the-spots x-es that were to be found on the GPS and Google Maps. We checked his bags and asked about boarding, and if we could get passes to eat dinner at one of the terminal restaurants with our boy before he winged off somewhere into the military world far, far away. Helpful little lady in the official red jacket said we had to go to Terminal B to the USO office and get passes because he was military and that was a USO responsibility. Then she said we should hustle onward to Terminal A to catch his plane. So we went to terminal B. The nice lady at the USO said she had no earthly idea what red-jacket-supposedly-expert lady was talking about. We needed to get our passes from security at the Terminal where we were actually putting him on the plane. So by now, we didn’t trust anything that red-jacket-lady had told us and checked the ticket to see if she had given us the wrong terminal as well. Sure enough, the ticket said we were to put him on a plane at gate D20. There is, of course, no such gate in Terminal A. So we went to Terminal D. There we tried to get passes. The ticket agent that was helping us said we had to go to the special customer services desk at the other end of the free-world side of Terminal D. So, armed with my cane and two aching knees (from arthritis pressed into walking too far already) we stumped and slogged and slithered down to the far end of Terminal D. On the way (during one of my frequent puffing and panting and gasping stops) I checked the departure board for number one son’s flight and saw, to my shock and dismay, that his flight was leaving not out of Terminal D, but out of Terminal A, from gate A11.

The red-jacket-supposedly-expert lady from the far end of Terminal D apologized profusely that we had been misdirected by red-jacket-but-know-nothing lady and recommended that we get our passes from the special customer services desk that was now within fifty feet of where we stood. We went there and lucked out with a quietly competent special-customer-services guy who quietly and competently issued us each of the four passes we sought. (The poor Asian gentleman arguing with the next ticket agent over had already missed his plane because he had been waiting in long airport lines through boarding and take-off. I was so glad not to be in his shoes that I overlooked the fact that smoke was already rolling out of the soles of my shuffling shoes.) From that point on, we got what we wanted. We went to Terminal A and got in through security without being strip-searched… completely (only my feet were actually bare). We found a nice, expensive airport restaurant and consumed enough carbohydrates that it should have killed diabetic little me. The waitress was even a bit smitten with number one son, although the boy did not even notice her big brown calf’s eyes. And then we got him on his plane. And he was gone. Of course, the SNAFU (Situation Normal, All-French-worded-Up) was not completely done with number one son. He reached the place where he was supposed to go from American Airlines to the military transport flight, and was promptly grounded for a couple of days as there was a huge, nasty weather event across the ocean at his destination.

So, there you have it… the abridged to less than one-thousand-one-hundred-words version, anyway. More airport follies to tickle your glee-and-giggles center in your brain. And I may live long enough to go through similar stuff a number of times more. Such is the life of a military parent. But when we got home, just like the last time, the flower wagon had another surprise for us… just before the thunderstorm.

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Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies

Tagged as airports, autobiography, humor, metaphor, military travel, photo Paffooney, Texas

July 8, 2015 · 2:20 pm

Monster Collecting

Okay, it has been a while since I bought a new doll and was going through a bit of hoarding-disorder withdrawal. Plus a little windfall of cash finally came through. So, I added to the Monster High collection. Here is the new purchase still in the package; (Mint in package- can I resist the urge to take it out and play with it? Probably not.)

This is Lorna McNessie, daughter of the Loch Ness Monster. I am not sure how an aquatic plesiosaur who has managed to live from the Jurassic until the present by hiding in a lake and apparently only eating people no one would ever miss can father a daughter that looks like a scaly blue human girl with a big head, but apparently he did it. Here is a picture of Dad so you can compare and figure it out for yourself.

http://www.dinosaurjungle.com/prehistoric_animals_plesiosaurs.php

This purchase is within the rules of collecting. At $19.95 she comes in at a nickel under the maximum allowable price. She is also the first and only collectible purchased in July. So now I am closer to my goal of collecting all the daughters of famous movie monsters who fill the bizarro surrealist realm know as Monster High cartoons. Here is a look at where the collection now stands (or sits… displayed on the corner of my bedroom dresser next to the drawing table with all the Barbie parts and Goodwill reclamation dolls.);

As you have probably noticed, I have added Frankie Stein as well in the recent past, the daughter of Frankenstein’s Monster. She has surgical seams on arms and legs and neck, along with neck bolts, so one has to question why she is technically the daughter of the Frankenstein’s Monster if she is made of dead girl-parts, sewn together in a laboratory, and re-animated. Wouldn’t that indicate she’s Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster? Oh, well.

I still hope to acquire Dracula’s daughter, Draculaura, and possibly Venus McFlytrap, the daughter of the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. I am also pretty sure there is a daughter of some ghost-guy or other and the daughter of an evil genii. I don’t know what all is pertinent to this collection. They are somewhat oddball in nature, and I have not watched the animated cartoon (nor am I sure I can stomach it… there is no guarantee it will be a pleasant surprise like My Little Pony).

Here is what they look like naked. This is not intended to prove I am a pervert when I play with my dolls, but this does show the problems I face if I buy Goodwill rescue dolls that need repair or clothing (as most Goodwill dolls do) because their limbs and torsos are unique. You have to have character-specific replacement arms and legs, or be willing to paint the parts. The bean-shaped torsos are a bugbear for making your own clothing. Standard Barbie patterns don’t even come close to fitting, and you have to accommodate things like tails and fins and neck bolts. I may have to buy cheap ones so I can take their dresses apart for patterns. This is why I have never been tempted to collect Bratz dolls. Oh, well, the troubles unique to doll collectors, you know… And besides… I am well past 500 words for today.

Mason City in Pictures

We went to Mason City, Iowa on July 6th to see the new statues in the downtown business area. This is a post shortened by the need for travel, but because a picture is worth a thousand words, this must be a nine thousand-word essay.

Beloved Books

While visiting home in Iowa, I re-connected with an old family friend. It was in the farmhouse upstairs bedroom where I was being quartered as a visitor. It was an it, not a him… a book, not a man. It was a very old book, published in 1938.

Yes, the Ittle Red H is a child’s picture-book. Of course the first time I saw it, it was titled The Little Red Hen . It was in much better shape then. I was a beginning reader back then. My mother and my two uncles were the first beginning readers who began reading this book. It was in very good shape after it passed on to my generation at grandpa and grandma’s house. Does that mean it was my fault that it got all child-chewed and doggedy-eared? There was, after all, my cousins’ kids, and my cousins’ grandkids in between there looking at the book and possibly eating it too.

Members of my family learned valuable lessons from this old book. We learned that you can tape pages back together as long as you retrieve the page-parts from the child’s mouth before they actually get swallowed and digested. We also learned that a Red Hen can still bake bread even though the top of her head has been removed.

Alternating pages were printed in black and white and pink ink. I can remember studying these pages for a long time and wondering why sometimes the duck and the goose were pink, and other times yellow, and other times black and white. I think that may have taught me that color doesn’t matter… it’s the character of the character that can be recognized in spite of pink ink. A very profound realization I do believe.

I also learned that ducks and geese are richer than chickens, as determined by the fine clothing and the fact that their noses are held high in the air. Monocles in duck’s eyes mean that ducks are supposed to be smarter than chickens too. Apparently if you are smart and rich, you don’t do any of the actual work, yet expect that you are going to get to eat the bread anyway when it it is baked.

You can tell by the many tools and the grouchy face on the Red Hen that she is a chicken and expected to do all the work, even though she has kids to support and is the same pink color as the duck and goose sometimes appear.

When the Red Hen is in full color, she’s kinda brown in color. That is certainly telling too.

I love the comical comics in the illustrations of this book. I traced them and copied them many times in my misspent youth.

Perhaps I have blathered on a bit too much. Maybe I should just shut up and show you the rest of this precious old book.

As I go back and edit and re-read, I am just guessing, but it may be easily apparent that I was watching the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup while writing this loopy post. But it is, after all, mainly about using my meager photography skills to preserve this beloved old book.

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Filed under humor, old books, photo paffoonies

Tagged as antique things, humor, illustrations, old art, old books, photo Paffooney

Category Archives: photo paffoonies

H.P. Lovecraft, The Master of Madness

Cooking More Futzbatter

Stooges

The Magic of Pez

My Own Minions

An Anatomy of an Angry Argument (The Stars ‘n’ Bars Controversy)

More Texas Airport Follies

Monster Collecting

Mason City in Pictures

Beloved Books

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