This blue wizard, Viktor of Frozencastle, has a penchant for making fire magic, even though it will ultimately melt his house. His son Davion tries hard to put out the fires and keep his father from drinking too much evil ale, but when dealing with an icy eccentric who loves a good fire, you have to expect a burst of the worst (or is that spelled “wurst”?)
Mickey now has 1001 likes on his WordPress posts. Whooda thunk thet Gooof wood git so dang far?
As cartoonists go, I am rather a failure and a flop. I have not made a single dollar on my cartoon art. Instead it has all gone into lessons at school, charity programs, and various role-playing games with geeky boys. Still, I have brilliant insights into what would make good adventure fiction, especially for geeky boys. You take outer-space teenage travelers, turn them into ninjas with ninjitsu powers, and then give them special mutant mind powers like telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and clairvoyance. Little Mutant Space Ninjas I call them. And, yes, I know how lame and goofy that all is, but I love it. I think others will love it too.
These are a few of my Aeroquest mutant space ninjas. (Left to right; Taffy King, Billy Iowa, Gyro the Nebulon, Sara Smith, Sensei Ged Aero, Ham Aero Junior (an adopted Nebulon), Shu Kwai, Jadalaqstbr, and Alec Songh.)
Kids identify with child heroes. They also like action, adventure, and wild Sci-Fi special effects.
This it Tiki Astro, the artificial boy. He’s an ultra high tech metaloid (robot) who is made to be practically indistinguishable from a real boy. He was built by his “father”, a metaloid nanny-bot that was infected with Ancient technology and adopted the pseudonym Happy Jack.
Space ninjas have to be really cool and really really destructive to capture the interests and imagination of today’s young boys. This ninja boy is Sejii Killer, the son of the space pirate King Killer. He can single-handedly mow down whole armies of minions and deadly Nathir plant men. He can seriously alter the populations of whole worlds. That’s the kind of killer kid I need to put into space ninja cartoons.
So look out, World! My cartoon ninja kids from outer space are on their way to invade your sci-fi dreams and adolescent fantasies.
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For those of you who thought that my Gravatar picture was the real me, here’s what I looked like on February 15th. I am older than in my previous pictures. I am grayer and hairier and wrinklier. I am also a little more bonkers than I ever used to be. I am an ESL Teacher (English as a Second Language. I write science fiction and fantasy. I was a Cowboy for 23 years, a Wildcat for one year, and have been a Ranger for the last seven years.
A particularly pulse-pounding part of a post-able Paffooney is the Looney-Tooney side of cartoonies.
A good Paffooney, a wise Paffooney, a particularly Buffooney Paffooney…
Requires a certain something… an attention to detail
Scraggles here demonstrably demonsters, er demonstrates, the detail in the devil, er, devil in the details…
With inexplicable and despicable gloves on hands we never see…
And Looney eyes that at once appear wise and simultaneously devise the kind of satirical reprise that can surprise and infinitely infantilize…
He’s sorta creepy with eyes that aren’t sleepy and expressions not so deepy…
And his smile will spread a mile and is also infantile…
And the rat that he has caught has a shape that’s overwrought and full of little thought,
But never will he kill it and fill it full of millet,
Cause a mouse can be a friend to the bitter better end.
And so this poem don’t rhyme… or does it? And it has no theme or prime… or was it?
Just silly nonsense words on a canvas all unfurled in Paffooney Looney Language with each sentence stitched and curled.
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If you Google the word Paffooney, most of what you get in the results is me. Do an image search for the word and you get a gallery of my artwork. By making up a word for my picture posts, I have created an interesting hold on Google searches that I hope can prove useful for advertising my work. Try it out.
My son Henry (not his real name, in fact, the name of his great great uncle) went into the hospital yesterday. Today I learned the diagnosis. He is going to be all right. The hardest part is past. My son Dorin (not his real name either) and I got back from the hospital in Denton where we visited Henry for as long as the doctors would allow. Serious, but not about to beat us. Sad, but not going to make me cry, at least… not any more… well, at least,,, not tomorrow.
We will be strong in the future. We will grow and be great.
We will not break in the strong wind. But we will bend to make it happen.
William Shakespeare was not William Shakespeare. An odd truth to speak, I know, but true never-the-less. I didn’t really believe it until the second time I read my favorite play, The Tempest. He says it himself in the Epilogue;
Prospero.
Now my charms are all overthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint: now, ’tis true,
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardon’d the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands (10)
With the help of your good hands:
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon’d be, (20)
Let your indulgence set me free.
William Shakespeare. W. G. Clark. W. Aldis Wright. The Globe Shakespeare. New York. Nelson Doubleday, Inc.
First of all, the entire plot of the play involves Prospero trying to win back his rightful Dukedom from the usurper, his brother. His rightful Dukedom? His body of work? The usurper, his brother? The man who signed his name to the writer’s plays, and also a man of the theater. The Bard has, at the end of his career, come to terms with that usurper, “pardon’d the deceiver”, forgiven the man whose fame and fortune depended on stealing the work of the Bard himself. If his project is to succeed, it depends no longer on his magical arts and charms. It depends on “the help of your good hands”, the applause and approbation of the audience. It is up to us as readers to fill this project or make it fail, because his true identity is not to be revealed. His reward is in the mere satisfaction that his brilliant works have fulfilled his purpose, entertained us, and filled us with a sense of that tremendous and overwhelming truth that fills his every fiction. The Tempest is the last play. The man we know as Shakespeare falls silent afterward. He feels the need to be forgiven his faults and be freed by our willing suspension of disbelief, because in no other way will his pride in authorship ever be satisfied. I have to say, the clever conclusion to this play is the evidence that convinced me that Edward DeVere is the true Prospero, not the weaselly little bald man pictured only twice that we have come to know as William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon.
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I came to believe that William Shakespeare was a made-up character pretty much by the same means as the world first noticed the inconsistencies. In 1848, a young religious scholar named Samuel Mosheim Schmucker, put forward a parody of arguments against the physical existence of a historical Jesus Christ. The fact that no written works by Jesus own hand had ever been seen or discussed in historical documents was used to claim that Jesus was very possibly a made up character created by the Apostles Paul, Peter, and John. No physical evidence of his existence remained that wasn’t tainted by the fervor for relics, even fabricated ones, that ruled the Middle Ages. He posited, as a joke, that in the same way Shakespeare hadn’t written his own plays. After all, here was an unlikely person, an actor who had never been far from the city of his birth who became famous for writing stories from other lands, stories that had the ring of truth, as if the bard had walked the streets of Venice and Verona himself, as if he had spent time in royal courts among courtiers whom he portrayed with unfailing accuracy, and as if he had a deep personal knowledge of literature, including literature that had never been translated into English. Wait a minnit! Why does this comic parody sound so logical and profoundly obvious?
I didn’t believe at first. How could that story I had always heard about the greatest writer who ever lived be anything less than gospel truth?
Yet, inconsistencies were glaring in front of my eyes. The physically real William Shakespeare was a mere actor, not even a lead actor, a bit player who specialized in old men and jesters. His father was illiterate. The man apparently couldn’t even spell his own name correctly. He had spelt it at least three different ways in places that, with difficulty, could be verified as coming from his own hand. The likelihood that this little, insignificant man was the worldly author with a wisdom for the ages grew further and further away from the obvious truth.
Even Mark Twain, whom I revere as a role model and one of the greatest writers I have ever read, doubted that Shakespeare wrote plays. In his essay, “Is Shakespeare Dead?” Twain wrote, “So far as anybody actually knows and can prove, Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon never wrote a play in his life.”
Do I actually believe that someone else wrote Shakespeare’s plays? I was not willing to even consider it until the right candidate came along. Francis Bacon? No. Christopher Marlowe? Marlowe would’ve had to write some of the best plays after he was dead. No way! So did the right candidate appear? Most assuredly, thou addle-pated reader. Hold your breath and wait for the reveal in part two. Er, maybe you shouldn’t literally hold your breath.
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Catch a Falling Star 