Nerds and Dragons
I have been a D&D nerd since the early 1980’s. I have played the game with brothers and sisters, kids I taught from middle school and high school, and my own three kids. It was a chance to be a story-teller as the game master, the plotter of plots, the maker of tales. It gave me a focus for things to draw and books to buy. Then, I got old, and my kids grew up and didn’t have time to play any more. So, I end up a sad old nerd with a vast collection of game books and D&D drawings. So what do I do? I use them for posts on my blog, naturally.
Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, feeling sorry for myself, humor, Paffooney
Swallowed by a Whale
It’s a Pinocchio thing. Bad things happen, and then worse things happen, and it is all because you act detestably and have no remorse. In Collodi’s version of karma, you have to eventually die to make amends for your life of being rude, stupid, and bad. There is no redemption for the wicked… not even the slightly wicked… even if you’re made of wood.
The blue boy inside the whale in the first Paffooney of this post is a Nebulon, meaning he lives inside a gargantuan space whale. The Nebulons use living creatures for technology and space whales as starships contain entire functioning ecosystems on their insides, living mainly off the sunlight of the suns they visit and the various gases of the living things they shelter inside themselves. So, being inside a whale changes their relationship to the universe, but they don’t necessarily suffer the bad karma of a wooden-headed child like Pinocchio. Still, stuck inside a whale for life. No redemption. No return on penitence.
I am obsessing about space in these Paffooneys because my stupid head is generating another CIssy Moonskipper story.
My own personal time in the belly of a whale began when my wife destroyed her car by impaling the grill in the front of the car on the trailer hitch of a quick-stopping truck in front of her. Then we had a tornado twist its way overhead and damage every tree in the neighborhood and a few of the houses as well. My wife and daughter went then on a planned vacation to the Virgin Islands leaving me at home with the dog who is dying of doggy breast cancer. Then belated complications caused the electricity to go out for the better part of four straight days. During that time I had an accident in my own car as well. Bummer. Bad is followed by worse… and then terrible.
I am still alive at this point in time. And the dog is still alive… though definitely dying. But of course, there is more badness to come. The dog is dying… and I probably am too. And Donald Trump seems to be winning the presidency again. Global warming is going to try to kill us again this summer. And MAGA Republicans will probably kill us all in the fall whether they win the election or not. The world is ending. In the belly of a whale. And we must pray for the Disney version where Pinocchio becomes a real boy.
I guess I never realized I was quite so rude and stupid and bad.
Filed under Uncategorized
School’s Out…
“School’s out for summer
School’s out forever
School’s been blown to pieces
No more pencils
No more books
No more teacher’s dirty looks
Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can’t even think of a word that rhymes”
-Alice Cooper
Once again it is that day that every kid prays for… The last day of school.
My daughter doesn’t really get it, though. She doesn’t really understand the sentiment of the poor misguided school girl named Alice Cooper. Kids are supposed to hate school. Their teachers are supposed to be witches and warlocks who live for creating misery in the lives of their students. My daughter should know that already, since her mother and I are both teachers. (I am retired now, actually… and I do miss making kids’ lives total misery.) She is actually going to miss her middle school and all her middle school teachers.
She was up late last night using air-dried clay to make dragon sculptures to give to each of her teachers. Her art teacher was recently telling me about how wonderful she is at art and how wonderful she is as a student during a recent scholastic awards dinner. In fact, most of her teachers only have good things to say about her work in middle school. And teachers are supposed to hate kids and hate teaching, right? They are supposed to only be in teaching for the paycheck, marking time until they retire, living lives full of bitterness and revengeful interactions with children.
O, I am guessing that I am actually the problem here. I never felt the way teachers are supposed to feel about kids. In fact, I… like kids. Oh, no! The secret is out. I miss being a teacher. I miss the kind of devotion you get from the kind of students who stay up late making clay dragons for you as a goodbye gift.
While I was a teacher, we were not allowed to be Facebook friends with students. Society frowns on teachers getting too close to students. But now that I will never teach again, or be in the same room with any of them again, I have been saying yes to students’ friend requests. So, I am now going to share with you pictures of former students that they have shared with me. Of course, I won’t tell you their names. I don’t want to embarrass them by revealing that they don’t hate all of their teachers the way they should.
So, there’s photographic proof that once I actually was a teacher. And I know that it probably also proves I didn’t do a very good job of making their lives miserable and making them hate me the way I should have done. But I miss it terribly. And I would work harder at being bitter and crabby if only I could go back and do it some more.
Filed under autobiography, education, high school, humor, kids, teaching
Pictures of a Young Lady
The Girl at the Street Dance
Now We Are Dancing
The Next Morning
Filed under Uncategorized
Mennyms (A Book Review)
This is the book I have really read, though I intend to acquire the rest.
Sylvia Waugh is a British writer of children’s books who has a lot in common with me. She spent her career as a teacher of grammar. In her late fifties she became a published author. Her book series of the Mennyma is a charming fantasy adventure about dolls so loved by their owner, they actually come to life… and survive her…. and then have to make their way in a world that would be horrified by them and might easily seek to destroy them.
Hopefully none of my dolls come to life after I croak. After years of collecting, they nearly outnumber humanity.
But rest assured, the dolls in this sweet-natured children’s book series would never prove evil. The books are more fantasy-comedy than horror story. In fact, they are impossibly far away from horror.
The original book.
Joshua Mennym is the head of a family of life-size rag dolls. He pretends to be a middle-aged man. He generally keeps his distance from the general public, because, up close, his basic rag-doll-ness would stand revealed. Rag dolls are not supposed to walk and talk, let alone have families and live in a home of their own. His wife is Vinetta Mennym, also a rag doll. Together they are parents to the ten-year old twins, Poopie, the boy, and Wimpey, the girl.
The teenage twins are Pilbeam and Soobie. Pilbeam is the girl and constant companion of the elder teenage sister, Appleby. Soobie is the boy and blue. Why their former owner, Kate Penshaw, made him with a blue head and blue feet and blue hands is a mystery both to the Mennyyms and to me. It causes him to be the one most likely to cause exposure of the family secret because even at a distance he does not look like a “real people” person.
Baby Googles is the smallest of the family, constantly cared for by the nanny, Miss Quigley, who is also considered a Mennym because she is also a doll.
Grandpa Magnus Mennym lives in the attic with Grandma and takes care of the household bills. He writes scholarly works on the English Civil War and publishes them for a modest income which comes through the mail. Granny Tulip is also relied upon for her wisdom and experience whenever a problem with keeping the family secret comes up.
Each book in the series contains a different adventure revolving around the realistic comedy generated by impossible people trying so hard to be real. I absolutely love the adventures, even the ones I haven’t read yet. And I know that the only way you could possibly love these books too is if you share my loony love of the fantastically impossible that turns out to be real. After reading these books, I fully intend to keep a very close eye on my own doll collection.
Filed under artists I admire, book review, doll collecting, good books, humor, imagination, old books
Inside Toonerville
The Toonerville Post Office and Bert Buchanan’s Toy Store.
Toonerville is not only a wonderful cartoon place created by Fontaine Fox in the 1930’s, but the name of the town that inhabited my HO Train Layout when I lived in South Texas and had the Trolley actually running nearly on time. The train layout has not been restored to working condition for over a decade now. The buildings which I mostly built from kits or bought as plaster or ceramic sculptures and repainted have been sitting on bookshelves in all that time. I still have delusions of rebuilding the train set in the garage, but it is becoming increasingly less and less likely as time goes on and my working parts continue to stiffen up and stop working. So, what will I do with Toonerville?
Wilma Wortle waits on the station platform for her train at the Toonerville Train station. I built this kit in the 1970’s, hence the accumulations of dust bunnies.
Loew’s Theater has been awaiting the start of The African Queen for more than twenty years.
Main Street Toonerville at 2:25 in the afternoon. Or is it three? The courthouse clock is often slow.
Grandma Wortle who controls all the money in the family likes to park her car near the eggplant house when she visit’s Al’s General Store.
But I may yet have found a way to put Toonerville back together through computer-assisted artsy craftsy endeavors.
A two-shot of Bill Freen’s house and Slappy Coogan’s place on the photo set to start production.
Bill Freen’s house lit up with newfangled electricical. (and I do believe that is the way Bill spells it all good and proper.)
Bill Freen’s house cut out in the paint program.
So I can make composite pictures of Toonerville with realistic photo-shopped backgrounds. Now, I know only goofy old artsy fartsy geeks like me get excited about doofy little things like this, but my flabber is completely gasted with the possibilities.
Bill Freen’s house at sunset… (but I don’t get why there’s snow on the roof when the grass is so green?)
Filed under art editing, artwork, autobiography, farm boy, foolishness, humor, illustrations, photo paffoonies, Toonerville
AI at the Game
The cheerleader in this picture was drawn and run through the AI Mirror program to make her semi-realistic in an anime style… enough to let Instagram force me to label this as made with AI. The smart-background tool in the Picsart AI Photo Editor program provided the background. So I double-dipped this picture idea in the vast vat of AI soup.
Filed under Uncategorized
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