She’s a cutie who posed in this picture on Instagram. I couldn’t help but draw her picture, though as with all my portraits, it doesn’t really look like her. Well, I got the legs right. But why did I give her one Alfred E. Neuman ear?
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Le Fleur Petit
Another picture with flowers, butterflies, and a pretty girl… just because I can.
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Happier Times?
She smiles and I feel a bit happier, a bit less abused. But the Trump thing could become President again in November. My body fails me regularly. I pass out. I fall down. I have unexplained pains in every part of me, even my hair.
But I got an email from a literary agent. Maybe my writing will get an advocate.
And she smiles. She wears skin-tight bathing suits. And I feel a bit more… happy.
But for those who think an old coot like me shouldn’t get that kind of happiness anymore… well, she lives in Australia and I only know her through Instagram. And I have nothing left to menace her with even if I had the intention and opportunity.
I just look at what she posts. And it makes me smile… until the next wince of pain.
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Google “PAFFOONEY”
One of the most important things about my blog has been that I can share my artwork. I have always been capable of a reasonably high level of drawing ability. I can also paint and create artistically original photographs. I have that artist’s eye that sees creatively. If you follow directions in this first Paffooney, you will see a wider variety of the kind of Paffoonies I post than I will post here. This will be, however, a picture post. I intend to share a bunch of my artwork here, both old and new. Take a gander. (And while you hold on to that male goose, look at some of my pictures, too.)
You have to admit that I am clearly not an artist like Van Gogh or Picasso… certainly nothing like Andrew Wyeth or Winslow Homer. I am more of an illustrator, or … worse, a cartoonist.
So, this is at least partially about sharing artwork. I am not a professional artist. I have made no money from drawing, even though my artwork has been published before. I have been given this talent by God not to be famous and wealthy, but to be a better teacher and a better storyteller.
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This and That… Comme ci, comme ca (en Francais)
I have reached a time in life when I wonder if I truly want to keep on, or just softly mark time until the end comes and I lose that chess game with the Grim Reaper. I don’t have anything left to prove. Most of what I have left to give to society is in my twenty-some books somewhere. And it is not my fault that nobody has, with a few important exceptions, chosen to read my work. Reading is less of a thing in the internet age of Marvel movies and podcasts. So, I am already fading away to nothing while still technically being alive.
I find myself drawing more than writing as digital art tools and AI picture editors let me combine drawings and photos and designs that my hands can no longer make without help and colors blended now that my increasingly colorblind eyes cannot see correctly without help. I have spent a decade fighting to draw what I wanted in the way that I wanted, and now it is all simple with digital help.
And I do have more stories to tell, if I have time. But all the most important ones like Sing Sad Songs, The Baby Werewolf, Snow Babies, Catch a Falling Star, and The Bicycle-Wheel Genius that I have labored over since the 1970s are now complete and published. I have added some other really good ones like Recipes for Gingerbread Children and Magical Miss Morgan along the way. So, my most important work is done.
Am I ready to die, then? Oh, Hell NO!
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Still Enjoying Playing With Digital Art Tools
This is made from a picture of the flowers blooming early in our yard and a drawing of a fairy that I did on top of the original photo before knitting it all together with the AI Mirror program that digitally turns everything into a uniform painting.
This is done from an old yearbook photo of a former student and the alley cat that often prowls our backyard looking over her shoulder. Viviana will never recognize herself here, either because it wasn’t her picture I chose to draw, or because I am pretty bad at doing portraits that look like the person. I won’t tell you which, if any, is true.
Years ago the green-eyed girl on the cover of National Geographic Magazine became a well-known and well-loved iconic image. Here I have turned her into a blue-eyed girl who looks nothing like the original. Well, I got the clothing to look very similar.
This is an anime-style picture of a girl who was singing on Instagram. When you use the AI program to edit it, you have to often go back and re-edit it to correct things like where the AI fails to interpret the hands the way you originally drew them. I actually went back and fixed the fingers on her left hand, but then I made the mistake of downloading the previous version, retaining the AI finger flubs. She still has her cat claws. The shadow on the thumb still looks wrong even in my corrected version.
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Pushing Through the Weeds
I am in the last years of my life. There is no question about that. Ten more years of life is probably out of reach. I had another passing-out episode in the car today… after parking. I probably fell asleep again rather than having a stroke or succumbing to Parkinson’s or something. But in the super-vivid dream I had, I was somebody else rather than me. A past life? A future life? It seemed like so much more than a dream. It does comfort me, though. I don’t believe in receiving the resurrection in return for chanting the right nonsense for Christ just to make Yahweh happy. Allah-Jehovah-Zeus is a dyspeptic. selfish, and needlessly angry god, and so, is probably not real. But the universe is alive. Existence, once established, is not erased by death. I will go on. As a part of everything. Not still as me. But Mickey exists and always will. Time, space, and energy are all relative. Mickey will always be real.
I won’t have to live too much longer to finish my poetry book. It will be a good thing, even though it will be lost in a veritable sea of books and published things that vaguely resemble actual books. Publishers now don’t publish and promote books. They charge the foolish masses to print books and take the majority of the money for any books that are sold. They are willing to take an author’s money for things like incompetent editing, lame promotional efforts, setting up websites, and talking a lot. They are not willing to actually help authors, even good ones, without first drinking the blood of the people who really create the stories. Here’s my backhanded praise for Amazon KDP. At least it’s free if you are willing to do all the work yourself. But I have 23 books already out there. Soon 24. And the accomplishment is in making the story come to life on the printed page, or the e-book. I am a real author. Nothing else matters. My stories are told, and occasionally read.
And telling stories based on actual life experiences… even though they are filled with fantasy images and jokes, is a matter of running naked through the old neighborhood, letting all the old church ladies and former teachers and friends see all your darkest secrets revealed. It’s all a revelation. It even helps you to see what you yourself mean in the big picture of the universe. Nothing can stop you but death.
Don’t think of this as a lament. It is definitely not that. Instead, I am pushing through the final weeds at the edge of the jungle, about to enter the Savannah of Solace and dance naked in the sunshine.
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D&D Under The Sea
One of the fascinating features of a table-top role-playing game is the freedom it gives you to go where you could never go in real life. In Dungeons and Dragons we have taken the campaign under the waves among the water-breathers.
Of course, it is a little daunting to venture into a place where you cannot even breathe. But this is fantasy we are talking about. So, the solution is… magic. A feet-to-fins spell can make you into a mer-person. You can not only swim with the fish, you can be one.
Nemo the water-breathing sea-elf is modeling how fantasy technology can aid with the adventure. Unable to breathe out of the water, Nemo has been able to adventure in the surface world by wearing a sealed sea helmet that provides the water he needs to breathe and keep him properly hydrated. Such a helmet, with an air-producing spell inside it instead of water-making can be used for air-breathers under the sea.
Under the sea things are different in fundamental ways. You don’t walk or tun, you swim. You don’t ride a horse, you are pulled through the water by a hippocanthus. You are not stuck to a two-dimensional plane. You can move easily through the water up and down as well as right and left, forward and back.
Sea captain Elora Bynam, gnome aquamancer, can take air-breathers where they want to go in her submarine. She knows the undersea kingdoms as well as any air-breather in all of the lands.
And, of course, there have to be villains. The arch-lich Orco is a good example (that is, good example of something evil).
This former Mer-king has been infested with dark magic since his death and re-animation. He holds sway now in the evil kingdom of Black Reef. Elora can take you there for a price.
But we had fun playing underwater campaigns in D & D. We spent weeks searching drowned ruins. We even found a sea ghost. Charlotte is a little girl drowned by evil pirates and changed into a ghost. She is bound to a magic jar and can serve as a guide through places where no living being dares go alone.
So we have spent all this game time in the depths of exotic seas. And the ironic thing is, we didn’t even get a little bit wet.
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Twenty-Four Years in the Monkey House
Believe me when I say that the teaching-life’s okay.
I survived it many days because I brought bananas to the fray.
I taught within the monkey house and now’s my time to grouse.
Sixth graders are the little monkeys
Small and fast and full of funkies
Seventh-grade are chimpanzees
Who grab and eat whatever they sees
And the eighth, well, they are the gorillas
Who throw their poop and make school thrillers.
And though it makes you crazy and mean
And you feel like life is full of beans
You learn to love the monkey house
Even the bully and the louse
Entertaining them with stories and tasks
Which makes them smile and drop their masks
You trick them into a little learning
And maybe keep the school from burning
And long years end with coos from doves…
They have become your little loves.
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Because I am Nobody
There is no doubt about it
As a writer, as a poet, as an author
I am absolutely nobody
I will never be famous
I will never be wealthy
Only a tiny, precious few
Will ever read me, ever know me
But that is entirely okay
That was never what my life was for
In fact, I am satisfied
Because you read this
And now you understand.
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Catch a Falling Star 