Follow-Ups
Remember this picture that I said was unfinished? It was supposed to be a picture called The Stag in Snow. But I was always reluctant to dab the snowflakes on over top of the picture I basically felt was good the way it was. So, I have experimented with art editing programs to the point of putting snow flakes into the picture without risking spoiling the original with blobs of white paint.
I successfully added snowflakes to the blue background. I couldn’t help but feel like it is a starry night in the background rather than snowfall. And so I saved this product separately before continuing to experiment.
The final product faithfully carried out my original plan. And it does look like a rather mechanical snowfall. But I don’t like it as much as I like the starry background step. It makes me truly glad that I did not put white paint on the original. I would be happy to have your opinion in the comments. Of course that is also a tricky way to make you reveal whether you are actually reading the words of this post or just looking at the pictures.
There is a link above to a book of essays that takes some pains to describe life as a writer, artist, and all-around far-too-creative idiot.
Filed under art editing, artwork, humor, illustrations, oil painting, old art, Paffooney
Imaginary People
It pretty much goes without saying that, since I am an author of fiction, determined to be a storyteller, I spend most of my time talking to people who exist only inside my goofy old head. Sure, most of the imaginary people I create to keep me company are at least loosely based on real people that I either once knew, or still know. You can tell that about Millis, the rabbit-man, pictured here on the right, can’t you? Sure. I had a New Zealand White pet rabbit that I raised as a 4-H project. His name was Ember-eyes… because, well, yeah… red eyes. It just happens that my goofy old memory transformed him into an evolution-enhanced science experiment in my unpublished novel, The Bicycle-Wheel Genius. But he was a real person once… ’cause rabbits are people too, right?
Anita Jones, a character from my unpublished novel, Superchicken, is based on a real person too. I admit, there was a girl in my class from grades K through 6 that I secretly adored and would’ve done anything to be near, though every significant event I remember from my life that involved an encounter with her, involved red-faced embarrassment for me. That’s why I remember her as having auburn-colored hair. Charley Brown’s Little Red-Haired Girl… duh! I would’ve died sooner than tell her how I really felt, even now, but by making her into one of a multitude of imaginary people who inhabit my life, I can be so close to her that sometimes I am actually inside her mind. There’s a sort of creepy voyeurism-squared sort of thing.
Dorin Dobbs, the main human character of my published novel, Catch a Falling Star, is an imaginary character based mostly on my eldest son, though, in fact, I started writing that novel five years before he was born. Like most of the imaginary people in my life, I talk to Dorin repeatedly even when the real Dorin is half a world away in the Marine Corps. And even though the Dorin I am talking to is not the real Dorin, he is still constantly using language that is extra-salty far beyond his years, and is often defiant of my fatherly wisdom, and always argues for the exact opposite of any opinion I express. That’s just how it is to be the father of an imaginary son.
Realistically, I have to admit that even the flesh-and-blood people in my life are imaginary. No one ever actually inhabits another person’s head except through the magic of imagination. Even though I am talking to you at this moment, you are only an imaginary person to me. I don’t even know your name as I write this. And I am the same to you. You may have read my writing enough to think you know something about me… but you really only know the Mickey in your mind that I have worked at putting there with my words. And I really have no idea what that imaginary Mickey you have in your head is like. He is probably really the opposite of who I think I am.
I am, after all, married to this girl panda, Mandy Panda from the Pandalore Islands, and my three children are all Halfasian part-panda-people. Yes, this is the imaginary person who is my real-life wife. The secret is, we only ever know the imaginary people we have in our goofy little heads. We don’t know the real person behind anyone in our lives, because it is simply not possible to really know how anybody else thinks or feels, even if they write out their lengthy treatise about how all people are imaginary people. That stuff is just too goofy-dippy to be real.
Castle Carrot Complete
Sir Buttonweed Bunny, a wall guard for Castle Carrot, is proud to be on the job.
Beladonna Bunny is a signal flag girl from Tower Three. It is her job to signal orders to soldiers guarding the city and reading the messages they send back. The blue triangle flag means the day is sunny with a blue sky and no visible foxes or wolves.
Filed under Uncategorized
Castle Carrot (Work in Progress)
Whichever rabbit I continue with, he is going to be wearing a suit of armor when I am actually done.
Filed under Uncategorized
Portraits in Pen and Ink
Simple, clean lines and basic, well-defined shapes go together in black and white. They are in the basic nature of being a cartoonist. You translate what you see into line drawings where a few simple lines become a complex and meaningful image.
My one-legged Batman is an exercise in foreshortening and trying to burst through the two-dimensional confines of the page to grab the viewer. I learned this trick from comic book artist Jim Lee.
His sidekick is rendered as a static portrait where the computer monitor in front of him lights up Robin’s intense and thoughtful face.
She was an excellent teacher and former nun… she was a mentor to me, taught me a lot about life and love and great beauty. How do you adequately portray the wisdom and the patience in those highly magnified eyes? I drew from memory only. She never considered herself beautiful. But she was. And it hurts not to be able to capture it correctly.
Not every portrait is literal. Sometimes you exaggerate facial characteristics and behavioral quirks are emphasized to create humor in the portrait.
When I was first married I did a double portrait of us as a knight and his lady fair. I know, I know… it is so sickeningly sweet that it punches me right in the diabetes. But, hey, it doesn’t really look like me anyway. It is more of a portrait of Porky Pig in glasses and hair.
There is an art to pen and ink that cuts right to the heart of who you are and who you want to be. Simple lines in black and white… there is no more incisive tool for putting my goofy old mind down on paper.
Filed under artwork, cartoons, goofy thoughts, humor, pen and ink
Tiger Traps of Humor, Part 2
Magic Words That Can Make You Disappear
Yesterday I managed to make a ridiculous post about the dangers of using humor in the classroom. I managed to leave out one of the dangers that daily annoys every teacher of middle schoolers who has ever been even remotely dedicated to the notion that you must at least try to follow the school rules if you wish to remain employed and outside of the prison system. That tiger trap is the important societal rule against certain magic words. You know the ones. Those words that, if you dare to say them out loud in the classroom as a student, make you instantly disappear… and learn hard words like the word “consequences”, and “eternal detention”, and “Would you like fries with that?” And if you are a teacher, those words lead to other hard words like “special school board meeting” and “disciplinary action”, and though they take longer to work their magic, eventually also “Would you like fries with that?”
These magic words are a serious danger and roadblock to teaching young minds because they so easily begin flowing out of young mouths. When you become a teacher infamous for using humor in the classroom, those young minds who don’t really have the big word of “inhibitions” wired into their circuitry yet will think license to laugh in the classroom is the same as license for dropping the magic F-word, or the magic S-word, or the combo-magic M-F-word. And those words invariably make somebody disappear completely… sometimes even permanently.
Being a Texas teacher, I have experience with the ridiculously harsh notion of Zero Tolerance Policies. Yes, in Texas we give the death penalty for swearing at the teacher. Well, maybe only a trip to court in front of an unfriendly judge who will levy a fifty dollar fine for the sin and then forbid the parents to pay it, making the child choose between paying it himself or spending a night in jail. So it is definitely in the students’ best interests if the teacher navigates around magic words in the laughing classroom environment.
You do this primarily through modeling. I never use even remotely offensive words in conversations with students. I sometimes even correct myself out loud for using interjections when I am mad like “Oofahdoo!” or “Fabulous French Frick-a-see-see!” because, as I point out to them, we all know what magic words they are filling in for. Context can often say for us the word we are not supposed to say. I have also been known to fake getting mad at them for saying “Criminnittly!” or “Hang-dang it!” in imitation of me because the teacher getting mad over the use of certain words is an absolute guarantee that the word will come out of the student the next time he or she needs to express inappropriate sentiment in the classroom. A teacher’s job, then, becomes the putting of lipstick on the pig. Because we are burdened with rules that absolutely prevent the use of George Carlin words in the classroom, and when the powers that be see the lipstick on the pig, they will think “Marilyn Monroe”, and their absolutes will be satisfied. Of course, I am begging you… please don’t tell them that it is really still a pig.
Avoiding the Tiger Traps of a Humorous Life
In point of fact, using humor in the classroom is one of the easiest ways I know to become a beloved and effective teacher. But it requires skill. It is like dancing barefoot in a mine field that is littered with pit traps for trapping tigers. See how I linked the title to my opening paragraph there? Kids in the classroom don’t… unless you make it funny. Sometimes they want you to fall in the tiger trap on purpose even though there are punji sticks at the bottom. They want to see what the consequences of the mistake really are so they are not surprised when they immediately make that same mistake.
So, let me tell you about a few of those tiger traps and how to navigate through them.
Poo-Poo Jokes
Yes, one of the unfortunate truths about humor in the classroom is that nothing is funnier to middle school and high school kids than references to sticky brown stuff. (If that last statement made you snicker, then you know that it even goes beyond school.) And it can be a devastating thing on fragile, fledgling egos in a school environment where boys will invariably stick a half-eaten chocolate bar in a back pocket on a hot day even though they are wearing khaki-colored jeans. Over-reacting to a sudden fragrance from one of a number of volatile digestive systems packed into the same small classroom can completely empty the room and imperil the teacher’s job. (Principals don’t appreciate unauthorized leaving of the classroom… so teachers need to quickly learn how to calm-and-continue in an unusually gassy environment.) Of course, the girl leading the lemming rush out of the classroom under gas attack is usually the one who dealt it. But you can’t point that out without crushing some young flower’s petals of self-image. It is necessary to lay down fences of regulation at the beginning of the school year to regulate exactly how brown and sticky a bathroom joke can actually be before it traps you in eternal detention.
Hurt-y Humor
There is the kind of humor that numerous comedians use as their fall-back style, that Don Rickles-esque “Your mama’s so fat that satellites can see her from space”sort of humor. It is also a highly tiger-trappy sort of humor to use in the classroom. Students don’t perform well after being the butt of slappy-face-style put-downs. You don’t want to remind the kid in the back row of how he mixed up the words “pied” and “peed” in last week’s read-aloud right before taking the State science test that will determine his educational future and your next evaluation. So how do you resist the urge to tell the snooty little cheerleader that just told you her mom is going to get you fired that she’s got a tail of toilet paper hanging down from the back of her skirt… when she actually does… and the football player she most idolizes is watching every move she makes with that big, tart and trippy tongue of hers? You take pity on them, and remember that if you break them down into tears in front of their peers you are doing the same thing to them that Bully Bob Beegshout did to you back in high school. Self-deprecating humor is far more effective at defusing a confrontation. You get them to laugh at themselves by making them see themselves in the story you just told on yourself. You can often make them laugh themselves right out of the bad behavior that way. (Oh, and I didn’t point out the toilet paper, but you can wait until someone else inevitably does and karma can balance the universe in that way.)
So, now that I have rolled well past the 500-word goal and still haven’t used up the whole list of tiger traps, I suppose it is time to reveal there will be a follow-up to this post.
Catch a Falling Star 
Aunty Entropy Moves In
Mother Nature’s sister is one of those rich relatives you don’t really like, but have to endure. She tends to take charge of everything and ruin all your plans. Yes, we do not throw a party when Aunt Entropy comes to visit. Well, at least not the happy kind of party where everybody has fun. Aunt Entropy has come to stay for a while and take things apart.
One thing Aunt Entropy likes about Texas is its utter dedication to fracking and oil money. High profit motives have continued to force oil companies to pump toxic liquids into the underground to break apart shale and push out the oil. We have fracking to thank for lower gas prices and Fox News talking points about no longer being dependent on evil ookie-icky foreign oil. We also have it to thank for the current condition of the foundation of my little house. Alternating years of flooding and drought have expanded and contracted the small hill the house sits on so much that the front end of the house has all but cracked off. The frequent Dallas area earthquakes have no doubt helped this process. Auntie Entropy clucks her tongue at it. “Insurance doesn’t have to pay for this because you should have invested in foundation repair long ago. It isn’t earthquake damage, it is neglect!” Of course, my healthcare costs over the last decade have completely prevented any notion of paying out for foundation repair. No one would loan a deadbeat former teacher money for household repairs just because he is old and broke and decrepit. Lovely caring woman, that Aunt Entropy.
The fracking related sinkhole under Wink, Texas… those lines around it are roads and highways.
The Grandbury, Texas parking lot sinkhole which formed after heavy rain and a long history of fracking.
Aunt Entropy is, after all the personification of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in the science of physics. To put it simply, Entropy is a process by which matter and energy progress from a beginning state all the way to a final state. In the case of our universe, the process goes from the Big Bang of creation to the final star winking out at the end of the universe as we now know it. Entropy means the progress we are making towards the ultimate ends of death and decay. Every action we take leads to a consequence and a further action until we are dead. Not just me. Not even just you and me. But all of us, everywhere in the universe. This is why the little things where our lives break down make Auntie Entropy smile when nothing else will.
Here are some things that make Auntie Entropy smile;
The Orange King with golden crown and tiny hands may be our next president.
The hatred and self-aggrandizement that he campaigns on have taken root in the fertile soil of fear and hatred that Fox News and conservative leaders have tilled and toiled over for so long. They are beginning to bud with flowers… if you can call weeds flowers. And they are bound to produce poisonous fruits.
Mickey’s car is breaking down again because of heat. After paying over a thousand dollars to get pot-hole damage to the front tire and rim repaired, the coolant pump gave out and had to be replaced. Now the overheating warning light comes on daily and we are forecast to have dangerous levels of heat in Texas weather for the next few days. I am going to have to decide whether to spring for more car repair, or go see the doctor about the pain in my extremities. I won’t be able to afford both. Oh, my aching bank account!
My wife is overseas in the Philippines spending a month with her family after the death of her father. But she left her green card here. I had to express mail it to her for a large amount of postage cost and risk losing it along the way in the mail. She might never be able to return to this country. Well, I do see that as a bad thing, after all.
So while Aunt Entropy is visiting… or rather living here permanently, and feeding us her bad-luck salad made with equal parts misery, misfortune, and mayonnaise, we must learn to endure her wicked sense of humor and micro-managing ways.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney, pessimism, self pity
Tagged as complaints, Entropy, humor, naked and nude, paffooney, physics, rants, science, thermodynamics