The world is not all black and white… at least, not since the late 1960s.
But many among us would rather have it that way. In fact, they think life would be simpler if white was always right and black was always wrong. The good guys wear white hats. The bad guys wear black. The good guys shoot the guns out of the villain’s hand. The villain ties the lady up on the railroad tracks, and then he explains in detail his evil plan, whilst the guy in the white hat unties the lady… or stops the train.
Then in the 1970s, everything started to be in living color on the television. Children and their teachers began to think the world was full of vivid color. Many shades of both the primary colors and the secondary colors differentiated red-headed Ronald MacDonald from blond Farrah Fawcett and blues-singing Diana Ross.
Luke Skywalker starts out Star Wars looking at the twin suns wearing white clothes, and Darth Vader wore only black. But the Storm Troopers all wore white and they shot poorly like bad guys while Luke was wearing black by the third movie and Darth Vader was saved from the Dark Side by the end of the trilogy.
It seems to me it is really up to us… each of us… to make our own color in life. We can limit ourselves to easy black-and-white living, or we can reach for the yellow stars, red hearts, green clovers, and blue horseshoes… if the Leprechaun doesn’t try to hoard the Lucky Charms for himself.
Part of the joy I find in the family Dungeons and Dragons game is in making Paffoonies, the story-based pictures that illustrate and elucidate the characters and other things that enter spontaneously into the game.
I don’t invent every part of the image and concept myself. Some inspiration comes from the game books and published adventures, while others come directly from the players and the way their imaginations shape characters and events.
Many of the Dungeons and Dragons Paffoonies began life as character sheets. That’s why there are numbers, strength numbers, intelligence numbers, character levels, dexterity, skill sets, and magic items listed all around the character image. They more or less morphed over time into illustrations done in colored pencil on colored paper.
I enjoy drawing wizards and apprentices, warriors in action, castles, and dragons. I have used the game as an extended excuse to draw vast quantities of them. And now I have a resource to mine for Paffoonies to lace my blog with. They provide a sort of sugary spice that I love the taste of, and I will continue to share them until the end, even if they disagree with you and give you reading indigestion.
I am working on a new piece that is D & D Paffooney- related. I will keep you apprised of the the progress here until it is finished or until you get fed up with it. Whichever comes first.
Paffoonies are my own thing… pictures and stories melted together… loony, cartoony, balloony, pink baboon buffoons brewed together in a big pot. And I will continue to use them for acts of Dungeons and Dragons nonsense.
Outpost was abuzz with activity. The airless world had only limited defense from attack. The primary protection had always been the secret of its location. As an airless world, the surface could easily be lasered or bombarded with no atmosphere to interfere with the destructive force. Tron had ordered the mirror fields raised, hoping that some laser fire could be reflected into the surrounding darkness. He knew, however, that the only hope he had was in his fleet. If they could somehow use the dinosaur-shaped starships made with Ancient technology to destroy enough of Admiral Tang’s fleet to make him feel the losses were no longer worthwhile, then maybe the ground-side installations could survive intact.
There were still very talented corsairs able to fly fighting ships. Elvis the Cruel and Apache Scout were both peerless star warriors. But Tron had to believe that Admiral Tang had a few potent killers left to his name too. There was every chance that the situation was hopeless and would end in a massacre.
Still, there were a few unknowns on Tron Blastarr’s side. The crazy alien starship known as the Megadeath was the most agile killing machine that Tron had ever seen. The goofball rock-and-roll crew that flew it for Trav Dalgoda was now very adept at handling the alien thing, and Tron had kept them to help in his mad last stand. They were not smart enough to be scared of the upcoming battle. He was able to send his son onward to Don’t Go Here, the planet where the newly formed New Star League gathered its forces. So, hopefully, Artran would be safe and carry on the Blastarr name long after Tron and Maggie’s bones littered the airless sands of Outpost.
“Boss,” said Hassan the Elf, breaking Tron’s train of thought, “I have made something that I think might be of help.”
Tron looked at the child-like Peri and the invention he was now holding up. “A suit of armor?”
“Yes, boss. A special kind of suit of armor. It is made up of nanites.”
“What? Nanites?”
“Yes, microscopic robots that share a command pulse and can reform themselves into any sort of armor that might be needed.”
Tron looked quizzically at the bluish suit of nanite armor. “How do you make it work?”
“Well… for instance, if you want it to form an anti-grav pack on the back, you just say, “FLIGHTPACK.” The suit rearranged itself at Hassan’s command and an anti-gravity flight pack instantly took shape on the back side of the armor’s breastplate.
“Does it have weapons?”
“FUSIONGUN!” said the elf with a grin. A man-portable fusion generator and discharge barrel formed on the pauldron.
“That’s really good, Elf. That will help. But one isn’t going to be enough to save us.” He grinned sadly at the small Peri Space Elf originally from the planet Djinnistan.
“Oh, that’s the best part,” said the Peri. “Nanites can replicate themselves from raw metal ore. Since the planet is mostly metal and crystal, we can set them to making a million copies of themselves in an hour. You have to specify the number, though. We wouldn’t want the little buggers transforming the entire planet.”
“Amazing,” sighed Tron. “If only I had a million commandos to fill them with.”
At that moment Maggie came trotting up to him with a handheld communicator. “The call is for you,” she said, looking grim. “Arkin Cloudstalker has finally found his way back to this system. And that Lazerstone rock-guy is with him. Admiral Tang is sure to follow.”
“Yes. Sure to follow,” said Tron automatically, still gazing at the grinning elf and his newest invention.
Sometimes the US Government does actual good things.
Of course, it helped the process along that we voted out the mutant orangutan covered in Cheeto dust that somehow chose the White House as its unnatural habitat. That was a long four years totally misspent until the last gasp of the Republic in peril.
But now that we have actual governing professionals somewhat in charge of both houses of Congress, we actually got some good things passed in a reconciliation bill. There are over 360 billion dollars for combatting the climate crisis in the bill. Solar power, wind power, air scrubbers, and carbon-sequestration methods got a huge boost and may help mitigate the worst of what’s coming.
Of course, the stupid people who are guided by shape-shifting lizard men who tell them comforting lies on Fox News, still think Biden is destroying the economy and wants a socialist country instead of a patriotic one that knows better than to believe phony science from liberals about climate catastrophe, and never mind about the record heatwaves all across the country, that’s just a coincidence. Republican paradise which was granted to us by the orangutan can only be restored by, at the very least, not allowing a cap on insulin costs to protect pharmaceutical profits from diabetics who keep scheming to stay alive without pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. (That one thing was the only Republican priority that was voted in by Republicans, who voted, “No!” on everything else in the bill. They had to get something. So, economic pain or death for diabetics was a real Republican win.)
And it wasn’t just a climate-crisis win for the good guys (or somewhat good guys.)
The ability to give Medicare the control to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies is also in the bill. As are tax increases for corporations (especially the ones who pay nothing in taxes on billions of dollars.) Good things were wrested out of the hands of lizardmen who work for the supposedly-ruling 1%.
But the Republicans still plan on winning back both houses in the midterms. Then the Hunter Biden trials will begin with lizardman fervor and cold-blooded profit policies will again rule the day.
It’s nice, however, to at least win one before the end of the world.
I wish I could be more efficient in my old age, especially with writing things for this blog, continuing to write good books, and doing all the things around the house that need to be done just to make my way from one week into the next. But now that I have to lug baskets of clothing to the washateria to get my clothes clean, and I have to pick my clothes up off the floor of the bedroom to put them in baskets, and my arthritis says “NO!” rather painfully every time I need to do these things, I get discouraged and have to be a nudist more or accept being a rather smelly individual.
I have also found that being in pain and having the volcano-hot weather make the pain worse slows me down when it comes to getting good ideas for the daily blog. This blog is a good example of what I am talking about.
The one thing that has gotten easier, ironically, is going to the toilet. Zip, splash, zoom! And I am done with something many people my age take a half hour or more with the assistance of a newspaper, I-phone, or a good book to accomplish. Dang! Eating lots of fiber does pay off.
Imagination is always the place I go in times of trouble. I have a part of my silly old brain devoted to dancing the cartoon dance of the dundering doofus. It has to be there that I flee to and hide because problems and mistakes and guilt and pessimism are constantly building un-funny tiger-traps of gloom for me to rot at the bottom of. You combat the darkness with bright light. You combat hatred with love. You combat unhappiness with silly cartoonish imaginings. Well… maybe you don’t. But I do.
When reading the Sunday funnies in the newspaper on lazy Sunday afternoons, I spent years admiring Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes for its artistry and imaginative humor, believing it was about a kid who actually had a pet talking tiger. I didn’t get the notion that Hobbes was actually a toy tiger for the longest time. That’s because it was basically the story of my own boyhood. I had a stuffed tiger when I was small. He talked. He went on adventures with me. And he talked me into breaking stuff and getting into trouble with Mom and Dad. It was absolutely realistic to me.
I have always lived in my imagination. Few people see the world the way I view it. I have at least four imaginary children to go along with the three that everybody insists are real. There’s Radasha, the boy faun, my novel characters Tim Kellogg and Valerie Clarke, and the ghost dog that lurks around the house, especially at night. That plus Dorin, Henry, and the Princess (the three fake names that I use in this blog for my three real children).
Have you noticed how Watterson’s water-color backgrounds fade into white nothingness the way daydreams do? Calvin and Hobbes were always a cartoon about turning the unreal into the real, turning ideas upside down and looking at them through the filter-glasses of Spaceman Spiff.
Unique and wonderful solutions to life’s problems can come about that way. I mean, I can’t actually use a bloggular raygun to vaporize city pool inspectors, but I can put ideas together in unusual ways to overcome challenges. I almost got the pool running again by problem-solving and repairing cracks myself.
So, I am now facing the tasks of working out a chapter 13 bankruptcy and having a swimming pool removed. The Princess will need to be driven to and from school each day. I will need to help Henry find another after-school job. And the cool thing is, my imaginary friends will all be along for the ride. Thank you, Calvin. Thank you, Hobbes. You made it all possible. So, please, keep dancing the dance of the dundering doofus.
I like taking pictures of my doll collection. Those pictures are then qualified for Art Day posting. So, here are random pictures of dolls, most of which are from the doll shelf in my bedroom.
Not all of my dolls are on the doll shelf.
Chilly Willy here is a carnival prize that was probably won in a basketball-toss game at Six Flags and purchased by me for five dollars in a garage sale. He is technically not a doll. He is a stuffed animal.
So, let’s get back to dolls.
More stuffed animals, as well as ponies and paper dolls to add to this immense doll collection.Creepy Captain Action lurks behind mint=in-box Emma Watson as Belle while he looks for his lost hat. But Bo Peep and Wonder Woman are keeping an eye on him.I had to stop here as the caveman Minion had to go and start a fight with Peter Rabbit. Leave it to a mindless Minion… “Oobah Dee?” “Sorry, boss.”
(This is a post from 2017, before the swimming pool had to be removed, before it caused my heart trouble, and before I had to declare Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.)
Being retired for health reasons and unable to work, I would be dead already without my writing and art endeavors to fill my time and keep me sane. I can do some work, as proven by my attempts to patch and repair the swimming pool this summer. But my limitations drive me crazy, as proven by the fact that I did about half of the work on the pool wearing only sunscreen and a hat. My kids are not married yet, and two of them are still in high school, but they are not much interested in toys any more. And I don’t yet have grandkids to spoil. So when I go the Resale Store or Goodwill to shop for old toys, I am basically buying them for myself.
The Princess of the Korean Court Barbie was lying on the bargain shelf for $3.49. I bought the ceramic wishing well behind her for $5.00. So the bargain-hunting gene I inherited from Scotch ancestors was duly satisfied. But I had to do more with things like these than merely own them. Toys are for playing. And what does a 60-year-old man do with dolls when he is playing? Besides being a bit creepy, I mean? Well, this photo is the answer. I use my toys to create pictures and artwork.
Here’s a creation using the ceramic wishing well again. It is apparently, on closer inspection, actually a candle holder. But it serves to make my Walmart Clearance Sale Disney toys happy. Here you see the pony-brushing party held by Minnie Mouse with Daisy Duck and the gay snowman from Frozen.
Here you see the metal miniatures I got in a pack from Walmart as they visit the cardboard castle. Two of the lead figures on the ground are hand painted by me in days long ago. The entire cardboard castle was printed and glued on cardboard, cut out and put together entirely by me. Mickey, Minnie, Alice, Stitch, and Kermit are the metal miniatures not painted by me.
So, my days have not been overwhelmed by boredom and frustration and problems with city pool inspectors (he doesn’t even know about doing the repair work in the nude, so he can’t give me a ticket for that.) I have been filling my time with toys and creative play. I have been mostly a good boy… err… old man.
Catch a Falling Star 
When You Don’t Have Enough Color in Your Soul…
The world is not all black and white… at least, not since the late 1960s.
But many among us would rather have it that way. In fact, they think life would be simpler if white was always right and black was always wrong. The good guys wear white hats. The bad guys wear black. The good guys shoot the guns out of the villain’s hand. The villain ties the lady up on the railroad tracks, and then he explains in detail his evil plan, whilst the guy in the white hat unties the lady… or stops the train.
Then in the 1970s, everything started to be in living color on the television. Children and their teachers began to think the world was full of vivid color. Many shades of both the primary colors and the secondary colors differentiated red-headed Ronald MacDonald from blond Farrah Fawcett and blues-singing Diana Ross.
Luke Skywalker starts out Star Wars looking at the twin suns wearing white clothes, and Darth Vader wore only black. But the Storm Troopers all wore white and they shot poorly like bad guys while Luke was wearing black by the third movie and Darth Vader was saved from the Dark Side by the end of the trilogy.
It seems to me it is really up to us… each of us… to make our own color in life. We can limit ourselves to easy black-and-white living, or we can reach for the yellow stars, red hearts, green clovers, and blue horseshoes… if the Leprechaun doesn’t try to hoard the Lucky Charms for himself.
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