This is just an extra post to make up for one little oopsie I made. You couldn’t really read the speech balloons in the previous post because I made them too small for the post size. So I took a tiny bit of dynamite and blew them up. Besides, I need to test my computer security system as it keeps saying someone is stealing my WordPress posts.
Filed under doll collecting, humor, Uncategorized
The danger presented by Star Wars collectibles lies in the fact that there are so @#$%! many of them. If you try to collect one of everything, you will will be in the poor house for seven generations. (Yes, I intend to leave my collection to my children to do with as they please. I don’t expect the curse to go along with it. My kids are smarter than me.)
But this is only the beginning of the Star Wars crap that I have to share when blogging about collectibles. These are the Luke, Han, and Leia dolls that I have collected over time My Kenner Luke and Leia are not pictured here. Being the oldest 12-inch dolls in my collection, from 1978, they don’t look quite as good as the rest despite my repairs and rehabilitations. So I actually have five Lukes, two Hans, and four Leias. I threw in R2D2 because he and slave girl Leia were a set.
It is my intention to show you this soul-crushing collection bit by bit because it can be daunting otherwise. Stay tuned for further episodes… or be on the look out if you really desire to avoid them. I do realize that old men who play with dolls are a little off and likely have toxic cooties.
Filed under collecting, doll collecting, photo paffoonies, Star Wars
There are certain things that keep me going when my connection to the mortal coil begins to chafe and itch. Apple blossoms are one of those things. The apple blossoms have bloomed in our two Texas apple trees in April of 2016. As I was raking endless live oak leaves out of my yard, making it harder for myself to breathe and continue living because I am allergic to live oak… and most of the rest of Texas to boot, I saw that the apple blossoms had burst forth from their buds. Between coughs and gasps for breathe, it made me smile. I ended the raking of endless live oak leaves after only thirty minutes and one sack of leaves. I am laboring in the face of impending doom, but I am not stupid. I needed to live to rake another day. Otherwise I’ll never get it done.
But apple blossoms are worth the heartache and pain and toil of life. They are not only something to remind me why I keep going. They are a reason for being. So I used my phone camera to take a picture of an open blossom. Then I photo-shopped in a picture of my novel character, Valerie Clarke, the character I created as an amalgam of my lovely daughter and the pretty little girl in my third grade class that I fell madly in love with when I was a little boy. Like most artists, I am quite capable of slapping beautiful things and ideas together haphazardly to make something that is either a huge pile of kitschy crap, or even more beautiful. And like most artists, I am entirely too close to the feelings and memories and realities that make up this work of art to ever know for sure which of the two things it really is. Forgive me if I chose the opposite one that you did. I try not to offend with my Paffoonies. I try not to be a creep or a bore or a Philistine… but those things are not always possible to avoid. But there are apple blossoms, and sunrises, and a number of other things as well that, in the end, balance out the equations quite nicely.
Okay, I hooked you in with a title that sounds like I actually know something and somehow have some expertise to share beyond the usual brain-drippings of a noodling writer-type idiot. Unfortunately I don’t. I am a practicing creative person. But do I know how it works? I do not.
I suspect that it has something to do with my actual life experiences. I am not God. When I get a creative idea, it is made from known things. I don’t snap my fingers and make a snerflkuppie, the first one that ever existed, and give it actual substance and reality. Okay, metaphorically I did just make the first snerflkuppie… It is about three feet tall, has glossy purple fur and three legs. Four puppy-like eyes, a wide mouth, and no nose… I dare you not to try and picture it in your mind’s eye. But there isn’t one skipping about in this universe. I can only take known things and recombine them in unique and surprising ways. My novels are about kids doing kid stuff… you know, like time travel, being kidnapped by aliens, uncovering werewolf plots, and making magical cookie people. Stuff that really happened. And I am a former teacher, so I have experience knowing real kids.
If you think kids you see depicted on television and in the movies are realistic, you have never played a video game with a real kid. You have never had them tell you what they are really afraid of. You have never come to the conclusion that they actually know a whole lot more about sex than you do. And kids are not afraid to try something new for the first time (unless, of course, the thing they are going to try is what their parents want them to try for the first time). You take liquid one and mix it with powder two, watch it fizz, and then drink it. You don’t know if it will taste good, turn you into a muscle-bound Mr. Hyde-type monster, or blow you up like a firecracker. But you made it yourself and you are going to try. We generally think of kids as being creative and undisciplined. We expect time and experience to take the unruliness, as well as the creativity, out of them. It is the thing we refer to as, “growing up”. But I think being creative is, to some degree, remaining a child. I am a child because I continue to hold play-time in high regard, and do it as often as I can. Writing words on paper, or on my laptop, is playing to me. Drawing pictures with pen and ink and colored pencils is also playing to me. Fortunately mixing chemicals from the cupboard like a mad scientist and testing them on my sister is no longer playing to me. (And that, Nancy, is just a joke… I never actually did that… I think… I hope…)
The metaphorical car chase of life… with an old dog behind the wheel.
So, there you have it. The ultimate answer. Where does creativity come from? I do not know.
Recently I went through my store of old books in the library. As a collector with hoarding disorder, I do have books I haven’t read, but also old books that I have read before… but really old editions… which makes me feel like King Midas with a golden touch and a room full of collected treasure of pure gold. I have haunted Half-Price Books for over a decade. I buy old library discards, books from Goodwill, and old family-owned books at yard sales.
Some of these treasures are rare and very special. Tom Sawyer Abroad is a very hard book to find in print. As one of Mark Twain’s lesser known works it doesn’t often appear in book stores, and it has never been a best-seller list. The edition I have was published in 1965 by Grosset and Dunlap. It was illustrated by Gerald McCann. It is the kind of book that might’ve been on an elementary school library shelf in 1966 when I was ten.
Nelson Doubleday, Inc. produced the Best in Children’s Books series in the 60’s and my parents bought the four of us a subscription so that these books came in the mail every other month. I still have one from my childhood, but I found more at Half-Price Books. They were filled with children’s books excerpts and poems, cartoons and illustrations in color as well as black and white.
The Arabian Nights Entertainment was a very special find. I actually paid ten dollars for it. It is from 1916 with woodcut and full-color illustrations by Louis Rhead. It is filled with wonderful stories like the History of the Old Man and the Two Black Dogs, and the History of Sinbad the Sailor. I read these stories with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade playing in my head. What a wonderful old book! A century old this very year.
I can’t tell you how much joy I get from sitting in my library now that I am retired and rummaging through my book stacks looking at my treasures. I am like Scrooge McDuck swimming through his money bin when I am with my old books. I know I suffer from mental disorders that cause some of this, but I also know that I do not want to be cured.
Filed under book reports, collecting, good books, old books
My daughter started complaining of feeling ill yesterday afternoon. Her fever hit a high point of 100.3. But the doctor says it is merely a cold. A viral infection. So today’s post is short and to the point… a rare thing for me… because lives are disrupted and we have to follow a trail to recovery.
Filed under autobiography, illness, Uncategorized
It was a simple plan, really. I paid a review company to review my book and post the result on their website. It was affordable, and research showed that their services were not a mere waste of money. How could anything go wrong?
Well, it’s me, of course. The fact is, my book is not the only book with that same title. I sent them the link to my book on Amazon. They had all the right info to pick the right book. They, of course, picked the wrong book to read and review.
Naturally, they can’t tell the difference between my YA science fiction novel about an abandoned alien boy being adopted by a childless Earth couple and a Hollywood romance between sun-soaked beautiful people.
Oh, well, it would be funny if I weren’t running out of time for making waves with my novel and getting some notice. I can’t seem to get another novel published and everyone is ignoring my little bookie thingy. Serves me right for thinking I have a good reason to write stuff and nonsense.
And of course, it is not my only unique and novel problem. I am currently trying to get essential yard work done before the leaves kill the grass on our yard.
I raked for half an hour with a bad back stinging me constantly, and all I got accomplished was one bag of leaves!
I really need trees that are more housebroken than this. If I drop dead doing yard work, I will die an unknown novelist that nobody ever reads. I am sure several people who have read my work would think that’s actually a good thing, but I’m inclined to disagree with them.
And leaf and novel problems have exacerbated my doll-collecting mania. The third day of April and I have already bought two more dolls after vowing to quit the habit cold turkey. But these are Minnie Mouse and Daisy Duck dolls. How can any doll collector with hoarding disorder resist? At least, two dolls (and their horse) completes the collection…. until they get around to making more of these sweet little things.
So, I have different problems than most people do. But they are still problems. I need to get busy and come up with some novel solutions.
Filed under collecting, humor, NOVEL WRITING, pessimism, photo paffoonies, work in progress, writing humor
Here are images from the Monster Movie collection I keep as an obsessive-compulsive hoarding disorder style of thing. I thought I would present them as a collage since I am lazy today and want to save words for my novel project.
The scary thing is that people like me obsess about such nonsense, and collect so many silly, fantastic pictures of stuff and nonsense.
Filed under artwork, collage, collecting, humor, monsters, science fiction, Uncategorized
Some days I feel loony… April first comes to mind
And I can be quite cartoony… It really helps to unwind
So I’ll make some Paffooney… and draw it while blind
And grow really prunie… old wrinkles unwind
And magic up some moony… to leave all worry behind.
April Fools! from an old fool.
Filed under foolishness, goofy thoughts, humor, magic, Paffooney, poetry, Uncategorized
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
Catch a Falling Star 