This has to be a simple picture post, as I am all out of energy and creative juice after a hard health week.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
New Pirate Picture
I continue to believe bankers, health insurance companies, and corporate leaders are all pirates. The gentleman of the sea dressed all in red in this picture is Black Timothy, bombastic and barely comprehensible leader of the pirates of Fantastica.
The truth is I am a bit of a cartoonist. Don’t worry. It is not a completely horrible and detestable thing to be. Not like being a pirate… or a banker… or worse, a pirate banker. It leads me to do cartoons like you will find in my vault, here…
The Atlas of Fantastica, Chapter 1
It is a basically incurable disease, and yet… I can live with it. It will not kill me like some of my other incurable diseases eventually will.
So today’s post, keeping alive an unbroken string of daily posts that now goes back 16 months, is a picture post. I hope you like it, but if you don’t, another one will come along soon enough.
Filed under artwork, cartoons, cartoony Paffooney, Paffooney, Pirates, Uncategorized
Monster Movies
I am fascinated by the darker alleyways in the city of human thought. I love monster movies, those love-story tragedies where the monster is us with one or more of our basic flaws pumped up to the absolute maximum. We are all capable of becoming a monster. There are consequences to every hurtful thing we have ever thought or ever said to other people, especially the people we love.
The monster movies I love most are the old black and whites from Universal Studios. But I can also seriously enjoy the monsters of Hammer Films, and even the more recent remakes of Frankenstein, The Mummy, and their silly sequels. I am fascinated by the Creature from the Black Lagoon because it is the story of a total outsider who is so different he can’t really communicate with the others he meets. All he can do is grab the one that attracts him and strike out at those who cause him pain. It occurs to me that I am him when having an argument with my wife. Sometimes I am too intelligent and culturally different to talk to her and be understood. She gets mad at me and lashes out at me because when I am trying to make peace she thinks I am somehow making fun of her. How do you convince someone of anything if they always think your heartfelt apology is actually sarcasm? How do you share what’s in your heart if they are always looking for double meaning in everything you say?
But other people can change into monsters too. I am not the only one. People who are bitter about how their life seems to have turned out can strike out at others like the Mummy. Wrapped in restrictive wrappings of what they think should have been, and denied the eternal rest of satisfaction over the way the past treated them, they attack with intent to injure, even just with hurtful words, because their past sins have animated them with a need to change the past, though the time is long past when they should’ve let their bitterness simply die away.
And we might all of us fall into the trap of Victor Frankenstein’s monster, who never asked to be made. He finds life to be an unmanageable nightmare with others constantly assaulting him with the pitchforks and torches of their fear and rejection.
But the thing about monster movies… at least the good ones, is that you can watch it to the end and see the monster defeated. We realize in the end that the monster never really wins. He can defeat the monstrous qualities within himself and stop himself. Or the antidote to what ails him is discovered (as Luke did with Darth Vader). Or we can see him put to his justifiable end and remember that if we should see those qualities within ourselves, we should do something about it so that we do not suffer the same fate. Or, better yet, we can learn to laugh at the monstrosity that is every-day life. Humor is a panacea for most of life’s ills.
A bust of Herman Munster
Filed under autobiography, humor, monsters, satire, surrealism, Uncategorized
The Toy Tiger
I have a certain mania about hoarding old toys. My toys. My children’s toys. Other toys like abandoned toys from Goodwill and ReSale stores and liquidation toys from the bargain bins in Walmart and Toys-R-Us.
You see, the dependence on the importance in my life of people who are not real began with my own perceptions when the lights first went on in my little attic. Yes, my parents and my grandparents were real people. And I sometimes admitted, when forced, that my little sister was too. But so was Tagger, my own stuffed toy tiger.
I definitely treated him as my best friend and greatest confidant. I told him my troubles, and he protected me from monsters in bed at night. He often was included when I played with my sisters and their dolls. He was wise and brave and caring, and he talked with a voice that sounded very much like mine. In fact, I often think he was such a part of me that, when I no longer needed him in bed with me to help me sleep, I internalized him and he became a part of me. He did not meet his physical end until my parents had to leave Iowa and move to Texas while I was in grad school. What my sister did with his physical form, I really never wanted her to tell me. The house had to be cleaned out, and stuffed toys from the attic did not fair well.
I had almost given up ever being married and having a family when, at the age of 37, I finally fell in love, and then had a family, first of two, and then of three by the end of 1995. On the day my oldest son was born, as the doctor had told me to go home and get some sleep, I went to Walmart and bought a toy tiger. He was not orange like my Tagger, but white. He was about the same size as Tagger, and significantly larger than my infant son. Truthfully, neither number one son or number two son actually played with him. They slept with him and used him as a pillow, but they never even gave him a name. It was my daughter, my youngest child, who took him over and made him into a her. She named her Baby Tiger, loved her, talked to her, carried her around everywhere, and miraculously never loved her to pieces to the point that we don’t still have her 24 years later. The photos of her prove the miracle.
I am not Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes fame. But I do understand the importance of toy tigers. They help to make you who you are. And while they are technically not real people, technically you could argue, “Yes, they are too real!” and argue it very loudly. Of course, people will think you are a crazy fool if you do. But I doubt that changes anybody’s mind about Mickey.
Filed under Uncategorized
Falling Down
Yesterday the ice and snow began to melt. Then during the night the temperature dropped and things refroze. So, this morning, while walking the dog, I found a slippery invisible patch in the alleyway and both my feet and my cane shot out from under me. I landed flat on my back. I have to catch my breath again just from remembering it. I expected to be stiffer than I am. But I didn’t get up unhurt completely.
I seem to be falling down a lot lately… in more ways than one.
I recently had my book, The Wizard in his Keep up for review on the Pubby review exchange. Disturbingly, it got a two-star review from somebody who was supposed to be a recommended reader, someone who supposedly likes this kind of science-fiction story. Now, I can certainly withstand bad reviews. I know my writing is not perfect for every reader in the world. But, for some reason, Amazon never approved that low-rating review, so I never got to find out what was so bad about my story. I don’t crave bad reviews. But I do want to know why it went so wrong for one reader. There are really only a few reasons why the Amazon review-approver might’ve nixed it. It may have been such an insulting rant that it violated the politeness policy. Or it may be the same reviewer that tanked my novel The Baby Werewolf. In that case, why has this person formed a vendetta against my writing?
Without a doubt I need to take a bit of Stoic advice from Marcus Aurelius. I can’t let the downturns color my life in dark, ugly hues. I need to be more positive and think more uplifting thoughts. I should focus more on some of the things that are rising in my life. I published novel #21 this last week.
I really enjoyed the writing of the humorous fantasy adventure story about the little people who use magic to fool us into thinking better of our lives, our loves, and our laughter.
I have also gotten myself cleared of my debts and paid off my bankruptcy. It’s official. I even got back $380 that I overpaid. I am out of debt now and feeling good about that.
So, I fell down. I got slightly hurt. But the point is, got up, and I am still going.
Filed under angry rant, Uncategorized
Faery Tails
Not all my Paffoonies are completely sane. The never-ending struggle of darkness and light can color things funny in a world of swiftly swirling imaginings. Lyrical joy opposed to malignant menace, devouring worlds in the palm of my hand.
February 5, 2022 · 4:48 pm
Comic Book Heroes – A is for Aquaman
Today’s Paffooney is a tribute to a childhood hero, Aquaman. I drew the picture from a comic book inspiration source coming from DC Comics in the 1960’s. Aquaman is a B-level superhero with not nearly so many fans as the big three, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. He was, however, my second favorite after Spiderman. He was more important to me than the Avengers. And this was strange, because I only had the chance to read the sacred comic books in the old barbershop in uptown Rowan. I only remember about two different issues that I was able to read during the long wait for a haircut. (Haircuts on Saturday took forever, because all the bald and crew-cut farmers would take forever getting their hair cut. And they hardly had any hair! I think the barber cut each hair individually.)
Aquaman and Aqualad would journey together in an incredible undersea world of sea monsters, giant fish, scuba divers, villains like Black Manta, and Mera, a real hot underwater babe. Topo the octopus could play comic relief by playing musical instruments or getting drunk on old lost kegs of pirate rum. I became a part of the adventure. I’m not sure whether I imagined myself more as Aquaman himself, or Aqualad. Aqualand was dressed all in red and blue, my favorite colors. I liked his blue swim-trunks. I myself could never wear swim trunks without a fatal case of embarrassment over my knobby knees and hairy legs. I admired Aqualad’s smooth and muscled boy-legs, though not without some shame and embarrassment. Some suggest that the relationship between Aquaman and Aqualad was a homo-erotic thing just like Batman and Robin. But, hey… NO IT WASN’T! It was a hero and sidekick that mirrored the complex relationship between a father and son. My father and I could never talk at any deeper level than Aquaman talked to Aqualad. Yet my father had super-powers for solving my problems and helping me do things and make things. Yes, I think I loved Aquaman because he reminded me of my own father in his quiet competence.
And I had a Captain Action Aquaman costume, a Christmas present and wonderful treasure. I played with it so much that only the broken trident, mask, and swim fins remain. The rest was all broken and unraveled and disintegrated from being played with. The Aquaman in my Captain Action collection has replacement parts in it to make it more complete. Yes, I spent time and money putting that toy back together so that I might play with it yet again.
So why is the super-powered King of the Sea so important to me? After all, his super powers are to breathe underwater and telepathically talk to fish. I think, reading back over this stupid little essay, that the most important theme is the father-son thing. I never owned a single Aquaman comic book as a kid, but I watched him on Saturday morning TV. He was one of the Superfriends. And my father had been in the Navy on Aircraft Carriers. Yes, Aquaman is my favorite because Aquaman is secretly my father.
Filed under Uncategorized
Paffoonies By The Numbers
So, here is one secret recipe for baking a Paffooney with some humor in the process.
Step 1 : First you have to get a stupid idea and draw a witless drawing of it on a nice fresh piece of paper. Here the Princess is holding step one, a portrait of what I believe Valerie Clarke, the main character of Snow Babies might look like. She is supposed to be the most beautiful little girl who ever lived in Norwall, a small Iowa farm town.
Step 2 : Then you must get a good digital picture of it. Here I used the Princess as a makeshift picture stand and took the picture in sunlight muted by clouds.
Step 3 : I must then remove all clutter and background from the image using the big old eraser thingy on the Microsoft computer paint program. sometimes I need to erase pixel by pixel until I am thoroughly pixelated.
Step 4 : This gets me ready to use my handy-dandy cheap-o photo program (I always wanted to use both handy-dandy and cheap-o photo in the same sentence! Item 128 on my bucket list.) I can layer the image over any of a number of stolen and parolin’ background photos.
And so, I thus become a pretend world-renowned unknown clown artist with a penchant for multiple uses of internal rhymes as well as multiple uses of the same boring, wretched sketches.
Filed under Uncategorized
Cartooney Paffooney
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.
Filed under Uncategorized
Sleeping Beauty (a silly poem of love and illusion)
Sleeping Beauty
In the dark and in the light
In candle flame and purple night
The beauty sleeps and fails to heed
The young man’s life of lust and need
What happens next is often sad
The want, the hope, the love so bad
And fluttering faery wings of light
Carry life and love and fuel the sight
With never a thought to what could be
If only love would call to thee
And wake the sleeper from her dream
To make the two but one to seem.
Love poetry is basically nonsense. Fueled by hormones and lust, dreams and assumptions, it is never real. It is only a vision, an apparition, and fools you into believing what could never be real. So why write it? Because it is in our nature, in our stars, to love. Just because something is foolish, or impossible to pin down, there is no reason to give up on it. That’s what the Paffooney faeries are for. They cast faery light on what you should never believe, but always, always do.
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