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.
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.
Buckminster Fuller is an intellectual hero of mine. As he said in the video, if you bothered to watch it, “I was told I had to get a job and make money, but would you rather be making money, or making sense?” Bucky was always a little bit to the left of center, and basically in the farthest corner of the outfield. That’s why we depend so much on him in times like these when the ball is being hit to the warning track. (I know the world doesn’t really work on baseball metaphors any more, but my life has always been about metaphors from 1964 with the St. Louis Cardinals playing and beating the New York Yankees. Mantle was on their side, but Maris was playing for us.) You have to live in the world that fits into your own mental map of reality. And if you’ve been whacked on the side of the head one too many times… it changes the way you think. You begin to think differently.
If you don’t know who Bucky is, as you probably don’t because he revolutionized the world in the 60’s and died in the 1980’s, Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor. He is credited with the invention of the Geodesic Dome. But he was so much more than that. He wanted to build things that made better sense, in a practical sort of way, than the way we actually do them. He built geodesic homes because he felt a home should maximize space and use of materials and minimize costs and amounts of materials as well as environmental impacts. He is the one who popularized the notion of “Spaceship Earth”. He wrote and published more than thirty books, and gave us a variety of truly wise insights. He promoted the concept of synergy. He said, “Don’t fight forces, use them.” He also pointed out, “Ninety per cent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.” He was a man full of quotes useful for internet memes.
So, lets consider an example from the mixed up mind of Mickey;
Here are three dolls from the Planet of the Apes part of my doll collection. (Two different movies are represented here, the 1968 original, and the Tim Burton 2001 remake.)
The world we now live in is increasingly like the movie, The Planet of the Apes. In that film the world the astronauts set down upon is ruled by talking apes. The human beings in that film are relegated to the fields and forests where they are no more than speechless animals. Much like the Republican Party and the wealthy ruling elite of this day and age, the apes control everything and, led by Dr. Zaius (seen on the far right) reject science and evidence as a way to explain things. They rely on the rules set down by the Lawgiver in much the same way that modern day Republicans swear by the U.S. Constitution to determine the truth of all things.
Here we see the apes capturing and enslaving Marky Mark… er… Mark Wahlberg rather than Chuck Heston from the original movie.
In the original set of movies, Charleton Heston, playing the astronaut Taylor, discovers that through hatred and warring, the human beings of Earth have bombed themselves back into the stone age and enabled the evolved apes to take over. How does Mr. Heston deal with that problem? He discovers an old doomsday device and blows up the world. Chuck Heston has always approved Second Amendment solutions to modern problems, so it is no wonder that he lays waste to everything, the good and the bad. I think we can see that old orangutan-man, Donald Trump doing exactly the same things now as he runs for President, or Great Ape, or whatever…
In both the previous series, and the current remake, salvation from the rule of the monkey people comes in the form of a leader among the apes. Caesar, whether he be played by Roddy MacDowell or by Andy Serkis, is able to solve the problems of apes and men by reaching out to those of the other species, assigning them value, and ultimately doing what helps everyone to survive and live together. Diversity is power and provides a workable solution through cooperation. The forces of hatred and fear are the things that must be overcome and threaten the existence of everyone. Donald Trump needs to learn from the lesson of The Planet of the Apes, and be less like General Ursus. We need Bernie Sanders to embrace the role of Caesar and show us how we can get along with our Muslim brothers… after all, they are more like us than the apes are, and Caesar builds bridges between apes and men.
So, there you have it, my attempt to build a new model based on an old movie… or on the remake… whichever you prefer. And if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always…
Collecting dolls and action figures can overwhelm someone like me with hoarding disorder (and a Grandmother and Great Aunt who hardly had room to walk around their homes because of piles of collected stuff that they simply could not part with). There have to be rules and limits to save me from myself. I try hard to keep Disney Princesses from flooding my home and drowning me in a sea of plastic. The toymakers are constantly updating and modifying their designs to entice fools like me to keep buying.
A round of new designs with glittered-up clothes and new faces. Can I resist buying them all? Well, not the first four times.
I have to stop and take stock of where I’m at. I rounded up all the Disney dolls I have that are not mint in boxes for collecting purposes and potential resale in the collectibles market. Here they are;
There are several ways that I can go about trying to limit and prune this massive obsession. First and foremost, I can break this gigantic feeding frenzy up into smaller bites and pick and choose how long I chew. This part of my collection, is based on the Tinkerbell movies and is limited to only one edition of these dolls. It took over a year to buy all four;
There are just four dolls in this set. I chose only the size consistent with the 12-inch figures I always choose. No little ones. No second editions. No doll costing more than $20.
Some of the dolls are rescue dolls, either bought naked at Goodwill or another thrift store, taken home to be cleaned, repaired, restored, and dressed (like the Ariel doll I posted first in this post). These are probably my most valuable acquisitions, because they are previously loved and played with. (The Jasmine doll in the middle belonged to my daughter, who had a tendency to mangle and experiment on dolls as well as strip them permanently naked. This doll’s survival is a minor miracle.)
The rescued dolls include two Snow Whites, a Jasmine that belonged to my daughter, and Mulan… mostly dressed in Barbie clothes.
The remainder of these collected dolls are recent edition Disney Princesses that I waited for some time to acquire so that they would come down in price. A couple of these, like Tiana and Repunzel, and all the Frozen Dolls are not also represented in my collection by mint in box dolls. I do have Belle and Aurora and even Tarzan’s Jane, but boxed only, so they are not pictured here.
So you can see what a trippy-type trial it has become to keep a collection like this from taking over the house. I have to impose limits on myself so I don’t become a weird old man living in cardboard box under a bridge with hundreds of dolls and action figures.
Cleaning in the library led me to rediscover an old project. Roy Rogers and Trigger had been sitting next to the TV in the library. I found them both on the floor between the TV and a book stack. Time to pick them up and put them back in shape.
The doll is a random military action figure rescued naked from a thrift store. I thought the face looked enough like Roy Rogers to turn him into that particular hero. The horse is from Mattel, and probably is part of a Barbie play-set. It was given to me by a relative. I dressed Roy in a Lone Ranger Captain Action uniform with a Tonto gun belt, both created by Playing Mantis Toy Company in the late 1990’s. The hat is actually from a Cowgirl Barbie because I wanted a Roy Rogers-style almost-white hat. The Lone Ranger hat is too flat-brimmed to look right and way too large to fit on Roy’s smaller head, and the only other cowboy hat I have for it is a Johnny West hat from Marx Toys in the 1960’s, and that is dark brown.
Everything Johnny West that I still have was salvaged from the house where I grew up back in the 1980’s. They belonged to my little brother, but ended up in my collection because he outgrew dolls and action figures long before I did. I wish I still had the doll himself, but I think Dabney blew him up with a firecracker when he was a teenager.
So, I have to be happy with only having Roy and Cowgirl Barbie to play with.
Being a doll collector with an advanced case of hoarding disorder, I am always finding new stuff to buy. And my mother made the mistake of giving me a gift card for Christmas. Well, after-Christmas sales are started. Toys that were mauled by Christmas shoppers are set out for clearance prices in slightly damaged boxes. The opportunities are endless.
I had thought my MLP collection was complete when I bought Fluttershy (on the left). But I found Lemon Zest (the pink horse-girl with lemon-yellow eyes) for less than ten dollars. Walmart is apparently trying to clear the shelves of the scourge of My Little Pony dolls that has infested them for about four years now.
Kristoff from Frozen and Deerla from the Netflix thing called Happily Ever-After High School were both clearance items for slightly more than five dollars.
Kristoff completes a Frozen set. I can die happy now.
But maybe not just yet…
I also found a twelve-inch PVC figure of Finn from the new Star Wars movie. Is that the beginning of a new collection? I guess I can’t die just yet. And I am still happy.
Yes, having hoarding disorder can be a pain. I channel it into collecting, especially things like 12-inch action figures and Barbie Dolls. But it becomes such a mania that even the rules don’t contain it. These mint-in-box dolls with mutant big heads and bean bodies are part of a wacky collection that has caught hold of me with about the same ferocity as the flu. They are Monster High dolls to go along with the TV cartoons and direct-to-video movies used primarily to sell these ultra-weird toys to little girls. Supposedly each of the girls in the series is the daughter of a movie monster. Operetta above is the daughter of the Phantom of the Opera. Isi Dawndancer claims to be the daughter of a deer-spirit… a Native-American-style monster thingy. I suppose there is a benign rationalization behind these things other than trying to get little girls to identify with and emulate monsters. Believe me, from my years as a teacher, no little girl really needs encouragement to embrace the monster within. And that sort of thing has negative consequences.
Yes, the picture immediately above is of my Monster High collection as it stood a year ago. I have now added to it. And am admitting as reasonably as I can that it is probably evidence of looming insanity. Let me show you the new acquisitions from the current collecting year;
Besides Operetta and Isi, I have added the daughter of the Loch Ness Monster, the daughter of the rat king, and, apparently, the daughter of the man-eating plant from the movie Little Shop of Horrors. What is even worse, there are more dolls out there and available to this collection. I have followed the rules and limited my spending, but I wasted birthday and Christmas money from my mother on this stuff… and probably will do so again. I suppose it is because I don’t spend my toy-money on more manly things like guns and political donations to Donald Trump. But I have to satisfy my lurking doubts with the notion that the most impressive collections of things like this in museums are probably put together by fools like me with raging hoarding disorder.
I am busy reinventing myself. There are things that have to get done. I have to raise my finances phoenix-like from the abyss I found myself in three years ago after five hospital trips in five years devastated my bank accounts and credit rating at the same time I was forced to retire from my teaching career by health problems. I went through a debt-reduction program with the advice of a law firm in California that has helped me reconcile 35,000 dollars worth of credit card debt. I am nearing the end of that painful belt-tightening process, which can be likened to putting a pumpkin in a vice and cranking the handle tighter than you ever believed was possible, and I did not pop the pumpkin.
Health matters are better too. I am farther away from doom’s ultimate doorway than I was when I retired. No longer teaching has kept me from getting the four cases of the flu yearly that I had become accustomed to when I was in the germ-filled giant Petri dish commonly known as a public school classroom. Lovely Aetna health insurance people decided they would no longer pay for my maintenance medications for diabetes, depression, blood pressure, and cholesterol, so I was forced to cut down and cut out medications. Ironically, the less I take the meds, the better I feel. Maybe… just maybe… I am not going to drop dead tomorrow.
I am stuck indoors quite a lot, because COPD and not using an inhaler and sensitivity to every allergen in Texas makes for a less than wonderful outdoor experience. So I have taken to reorganizing my library and various vast collections of junk. I am rereading old and beloved books. I am playing with my toys more than ever. I am winning computer baseball games. I just pitched another perfect game.
I have been painting the house too, when the weather allows, making the outside of things look a little better too. The football Cardinals have been winning. And the Iowa Hawkeyes were perfect up until the narrow loss to Michigan State. 12-1 is still the best they have ever done.
I have recently been able to shave and look a little less Santa-like, though psoriasis is trying to peel my lower face away again, so I will probably be growing my author’s beard and Gandalf hair back again. And I have completed collections and written up a storm. My work is not yet complete on this Earth, and there needs to be a new Mickey in town to clean up this cowboy-infested heck-hole where I live my life.
I know this has been a rather goopy-goose of a post, but I am feeling good for a change, and it is hard to do humor about everything going too well.
The day I am having today is not one of my best. Ill health, bad traffic, doctor visits, headaches, unexpected expenses, all make a real Monster Mash our of the daily dance of life. But I am happy with recent posts, even though my wife gave me a major eye-roll and huffing sound for posting about girls who fell in love with me. Still, I can’t figure out why my blog traffic is so up and down during times when I feel like my writing is really good. Some of my best posts seem to get the fewest readers, and some of my most embarrassing messes are insanely popular. Ah, life! You are such a Scooby-Doo and the Haunted Roller-Coaster Mystery. But I can write a short post and get away with it today because I have been writing thousand word posts and my 500-word average is in no danger.So, I offer this silly Paffooney picture for you to look at and wonder about. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? And why is Frankenberry looking at Pinky Pie with an expression like that?
I have had a monumentally horrible week. And one of the hardest things about it, is that I cannot tell you about most of it and make fun of it for the sake of healing by humor because, after all, real mental health issues are a very private thing. So, I am left with a mish-mash of free-associations and brainstorming to fill up a page with random and unthinkable thoughts. (When I brainstorm, sometimes it is more like a brain-hurricane.)
Under the general heading of; Things a relatively sane older man who is battling hoarding disorder should probably not do is the new collection I started of Sparkling Disney Princesses. As you can see above, I unfortunately acquired some of the more recent Disney Princesses in sparkle form within the rules for collecting (not costing more than $20 and not spending more than $50 in any one month). I even added a rule to slow down the collecting mania. (No buying sparkle princesses of characters I already have in my Disney Princess collection.) Tiana, Merida, and Elsa add up to only $30 over the last three months.
This is actually Cowboy Mickey in the middle of the bedroom he shares with about 500 dolls and action figures, 1000 books, and the fairy in the foreground who is real.
The thing about the relentless doll collecting is more the space it fills than the money it burns. A few years back I completed a five year stint of buying, selling, and trading action figures in which I learned how to make the obsessive-compulsive-disorder part of it turn out to be profitable. I ran a used-toy and collectible E-Bay store that helped me pay for my mental health issue. Of course, I did not get ahead, as all the profits are tied up in the dolls, action figures, and stuffed toys that I have kept. Still, I learned how to do the thing effectively enough to believe I can effectively do that again if I need to, in spite of the fact that E-Bay got wise and raised their fees to make a $5 and $10 business far less profitable.
I should note that I gave up toy-selling on E-Bay after an irate Barbie collector teed off on me in the comments section over a misidentified 80’s Barbie. (Heck, how was I to know that the date on her neck was a copyright date only and not an indicator that she was sold in the 1970’s?) Lady Godiva Barbie on the wingless Pegasus from the Goodwill store is a new project I put on the project table. There is at least a month’s worth of hair-combing necessary and clearly visible in the picture. Mane and tail alone will take weeks.
And I am not yet done with the notion of collecting beautiful sunrises. The recent rains and cloudiness of Texas wild weather have provided some interesting color and variety to the skyline of the park next to our house. It all helps to keep my mind off of troubling issues that developed from dental pain and attendance woes. This has been a very rough week, but the sunrises keep coming, and I look forward to a new day.
Catch a Falling Star 