Sometimes you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for every-day posting ideas. But, luckily, I stumbled across a computer file of artwork I had thought I lost when I upgraded to Windows 10. Sometimes bad things turn out well, and sometimes good things go bad. So, I figured I would share some of the inexplicable things I found in the lost file. Why would I do such a thing? Because I am not entirely lazy and out of ideas. No, of course I am not.
Filed under artwork, cartoons, humor, Paffooney, Uncategorized
One of the best things about Dungeons and Dragons is that, in order to play the game, you have to play “let’s pretend” a lot. You start with the notion that you have to pretend to be somebody else besides who you really are. Possibly you can pretend to be someone who is impossible and could never be real. You can be an elf, or an orc, or a dwarf… but if you decide to be a hobbit, you can’t call yourself a hobbit because that name is the intellectual property of the Tolkein family… but you can be a halfling… and somehow that gets you by. And if you are, like me, the “Dungeon Master”, it becomes your responsibility to become the voices for all the NPC’s or non-player characters. You get to be a multitude of people who are really not you. And you get to do things that the real-life you would never do… either because it is simply not possible, or you haven’t finished studying magic in the real world, or because you are really not such a terrible person in real life… or not such a good and wonderful person in real life as the elf paladin you play in D&D.
My eldest son’s character, the leader of the adventuring party.
Ditty Bytcha was my son’s first D&D character, rolled up with dice to be a human fighter and an artificer (a maker of useful mechanical and magical devices). His name was a bit of a joke. His back story included a father named Willy Bytcha and a mother who was a paladin of the god Aureon (the blue dragon god of wisdom and knowledge) named Gunna Bytcha. His grandpa was named Gummy Bytcha. But as time went on, he acquired a sword named Stormgaar. It was a magic sword, imbued with the intelligence and memories of the secret agent from Breland that gave the sword to him. It served as his conscience. It kept him from stealing from the poor and murdering women and children. It guided him through moral dilemmas like what to do with a captured enemy. And it gave him a way to add to his power to defeat evil. By playing this game of goblins and dire wolves, dragons and surly dwarves, my son learned to negotiate his problems. He learned that every problem does not lend itself to being solved by hitting it with something heavy or something sharp. It gave him leadership skills that I truly believe have influenced him as a present day U.S. Marine, and may have led to the leadership responsibilities he has taken on there.
My number two son’s character is Gandy Rumspot, the halfling rogue and builder of sailing ships.
My number two son decided to take over an existing character, the halfling rogue Gandy Rumspot. This character was a hard-drinking, charismatic, and thoroughly outgoing little hobbit… er, I mean halfling. He was really the opposite of my son in almost every way. My son is shy and over-cautious to a fault. Gandy, however, took to the sea and took to the air. He turned himself into a designer and builder of ocean-going ships. And when they encountered other halflings who rode on trained pterodactyls, he had to have one. They captured and tamed one, and he learned to glide through the air on the saddled back of a pterosaur. He has learned to take risks and try the things that might seem scary. When he wanted to get a job, without prompting, he went up to the manager of a tea-seller’s booth in the H-Mart Asian market and asked for an application. They immediately gave him an interview and hired him. He has already earned enough money to buy himself an electric guitar which he has taught himself to play very, very well.
My daughter the Princess chose as her character Mira Mirkestasia, a soul-gem wearing Kalashtar (a form of mind-reading sorceress).
Mira is my daughter’s character. It took a while to convince the other two that their icky little sister should be allowed to play the game too. They were worried that she wouldn’t be smart enough to keep up with what they wanted to do, wouldn’t be resourceful enough to help them overcome evil, and would be too squeamish to kill stuff and kill guys when it needed to happen. So, she became a cerebral Kalashtar, one of those ESP brainiac characters who can do mind-reading and telekinesis because they share their body and soul with a bizarre creature who fled oppression in another dimension entirely. In one adventure, she took possession of a mystically powered intelligent throwing knife named Xulo-Mira that would always hit the target (assuming she could make the dice roll) and would always return to her hand. She became a reader of magic scrolls, a lover of magic books, and, in real life, she fell in love with reading, particularly the Percy Jackson novels of Rick Riordan. Her grades in school improved. She has become inventive, creative, and artistic… enough so that she was accepted into the special METSA program for high school next year where she will be able to get college engineering credits and do the things she loves to do while getting her high school diploma.
The clay dragon the Princess made in art class and wowed the art teacher into blubbering incoherence with.
I cannot claim with a straight face that playing the D&D role-playing game allowed me to train my three kids into wonderful people. That is just an opinion from a doting father who gets off on playing god in an imaginary universe. But I have found role-playing to be a useful way to teach things. Over the years I played a lot of RPG’s in the classroom and at home. I used role-playing exercises on kids whose behavior needed a lot of molding and modeling. It can be done in real life, and I am not merely a D&D nerd who only lives in a fantasy world of his own making. I am a D&D nerd teacher who teaches through a fantasy world of my own making.
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
Yesterday we went to the DMV to make a second attempt to get Henry a learner’s permit and make him into a driver of cars. We had already been once, but this is Texas. You need multiple forms of ID to get an ID. After all, we might be trying commit voter fraud like those other eight people somewhere in the U.S.A. (Former Governor Perry assures us they exist and are a major threat to the Constitution and our FREEDOM.) So we brought a folder full of potential proof that my son exists and is currently present in this State, not including DNA evidence, but realizing we would probably need it.
I have been there before. I do realize what kind of an alternate universe the DMV actually is. They pack in 3,ooo people, including children, babies, Tia Carmen from Honduras, and random homeless people that the DMV applicants needed to provide moral support. Then they tell you that everyone needs to take a seat because of fire codes, and they provide a generous twelve chairs for that purpose. You have to be given a number to proceed. But they don’t call those numbers in order. And the time you first enter the infinite waiting room has no bearing on the time they finally call you out either.
So, a wait of three hours gave me plenty of time to observe, well… not stupid people exactly… but people displaying much of the basic and endearingly non-smart simplicity of the species.
Like the guy who pulled up in his sports car while we were still part of the 35-minute outside wait line still waiting to get in the door to be told by the officer guarding the twelve chairs that everybody had to take a seat because of the fire code.
This simple citizen asked us, “Is this the line you have to stand in just to get in through the front door?”
Somebody gave him the more-polite version of, “No, Duh!”
“Oh,” he said, “Frog that!” Or possibly the less-polite version of that… and proceeded to back his car out again, nearly running over the young Asian lady being dropped off behind his car. He roared out of the parking lot, apparently not needing a renewed license anyway, because white guys are obviously Republican enough that voter ID laws don’t really apply to them. (I have wondered if a “heart Trump!” button would be enough ID to get you in to vote in Texas in the upcoming elections?)
Of course, there was also the lady with the five… or possibly seven… or thirty-two kids in tow who put her baby stuff on seven of the twelve chairs as she took her horde of non-license-getting little ones to the restroom and drinking fountain. They have the lovely side-effect of extinguishing all nostalgic feelings for when my three kids were that small… or did I have thirty-two of them back then too?
And of course there were numerous random wandering folks who didn’t bother to read signs, or listen to the angry officer tell them where to go or what to do next, or even understand a word of English, because they all thought that even though they had no earthly idea what was going on, they were going to be given a driver’s license in Texas, and they were probably next at the counter.
After almost three hours of this we finally got to the counter. There the exhausted and impatient lady that was working the desk took all of three minutes to discover the two things we still didn’t have to qualify. It turns out you have to enroll in the driving school before you get the learner’s permit. The opposite of the way it was five years ago when we got my older son his permit. But possibly because last time we asked the driving school first. So, I ended the very exhausting day at the DMV secure in the knowledge that I would have to do it all over again the next time I work up the courage to tackle the whole issue.
This is Poppy
Poppy is happy
But Poppy is also sloppy
So he is a sloppy happy Poppy
And being sloppy can make him droppy
So he is a sloppy droppy happy Poppy
And Poppy calls his baseball bat a boppy
And he dropped the boppy on his foot
So sloppy droppy happy Poppy became hoppy
He was a sloppy droppy happy but hoppy Poppy because of the boppy.
And his hat is becoming floppy… er, what’s that disgusted look on your face?
Okay, maybe I better stoppy.
I’ll say it again while my tongue is not loose,
I did learn to read from the good Doctor Seuss!
Yes, this writer I have chosen to talk about today, this wunderful wubble of werfinsky cartoons and sniggly sayer of savantish snapoons, is, perhaps, the most important literary influence on my life. Back in the early 1960’s my parents bought a subscription to Dr. Seuss books that were written in simple, easy words… but the secret was always in the pictures and the sounds. Yes, the sounds. It’s the sounds that you see which will bollox the ear, and sear into your memory for many a year. Oh, and the rhymes… the rhymes make a memory for many old times. See if you can get that out of your head. I bet you can’t. The rhythm will make you remember instead.
The secret is how with picture and word the old master teaches you painlessly how to read. I loved Dr. Seuss as a child. I loved him even more when I was a teacher who often had to teach middle school and high school students belatedly how to read. I can’t tell you how many times I read Dr. Seuss books out loud while students looked at the words. I can’t tell you because it is such a big number that my old teacher-brain swells with the effort to remember and count. And it is not merely the reading skill you learn from this, especially the reading a book like Fox in Socks. Some time in the future when I regain a bit of health, I’ll have to show you on YouTube the tantalizing tongue training I went through with Fox in Socks.
You learn life lessons from Dr. Seuss. He not only made me a reader, he helped shape the sort of man I am.
The Lorax taught us about conservation of resources. The Sneetches teach us not to have foolish prejudices based on surface differences. He inspires us to be better than we are.
So here is the thing that I want to say,
If you read Dr. Seuss, there’s no better way,
To learn about life, and learn how to play,
And be the best you for all of your days.
In the quiet but creepy back-street, dark-alley parts of Fantastica there is a creepy house known as Monster Mansion. Yes, it is a cartoon house in a cartoon fantasy land. But it is creepy. Well, maybe creepy in a funny, cartoonish sort of way. Okay… so it isn’t really creepy. But Dr. Pinkenstein (pictured above with his monster Elroy) does live there, so it has to at least qualify as weird.
In the sub-basement (where there are no submarines… that we know of) there is an underground river. That is where the resident gill-man lives. Known as Swampie, he takes care of the rats, the cockroaches, and the fish… mostly by eating them. In the portrait above, he is being visited by Lonny the Wolf-boy and the Monster Mansion resident vampire, Count Stinkula. Both of them are often asked by the Mansion’s residents to spend time in the sub-basement, Lonny because he howls too much, and the Count because he smells really, really rotten.
If you ever make the mistake of visiting Monster Mansion (and that would be a really, really big mistake), you will be greeted at the door by Monster Mansion’s butler, Doofy the Pumpkinhead. He is a very nice and welcoming scarecrow sort of dude, but he’s a little hard to hold a conversation with. If the candle in his head goes out, there is nothing going on in the gourd at all. In the picture above, Doofy is pictured with the Phantom. Mr. P is in charge of mood music in Monster Mansion. He plays the pipe organ, but it has been relegated to the basement because the clinker notes have a tendency to break the windows upstairs.
So, that’s everything you didn’t want to know about Monster Mansion. Sorry I had to break it to you this way. But cartoonists can be like that. Not creepy, really… more like a little bit weird.
There is a major drawback to being so smart that you can perceive the edges of infinity. It makes you bedbug crazy. I love the science fiction that populated the paperback shelves in the 50’s and 60’s when I was a boy. I love the work of Philip K. Dick. But it leads you to contemplate what is real… what is imaginary… and what is the nature of what will be.
the robot Philip K. Dick who appeared at Comic Con and answered questions
There are numerous ways to investigate life. But it is in the nature of imaginary people to try to find ways to make themselves real. When the replicants in Bladerunner try to make themselves into real people, they must try to create memories that didn’t exist. They try to mirror human life to the extent that they can actually fool the bladerunner into letting them live. Of course, it doesn’t work. They are not real. (Bladerunner is the movie name of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep).
It is like that for me as well. Being an imaginary person is difficult. You have to constantly invent yourself and re-invent yourself. By the time you finally get to know yourself, you have to change again so that the anti-android factions don’t destroy you. Although, I think I may not actually be an android.
Does that sound a bit crazy? Well Philip K. Dick’s life story may in fact have led him down the path to really crazy. In 1971 he broke up with his wife, Nancy Hackett. She moved out of his life, and an amphetamine-abuse bender moved in. In 1972, ironically the year I began reading Dick’s work, he fell in love at the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention. That was immediately followed by erratic behavior, a break-up, and an attempted suicide overdosing on the sedative potassium bromide. This, of course, led directly to his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly.
The story is about a police detective who is corrupted by a dangerous addictive drug that takes him down the rabbit hole of paranoia, and being assaulted by the perception of multiple realities simultaneously. His novel Ubik from 1969 is a story of psychics trying to battle groups of other psychics even after they are killed by a bomb. The crazy seems to have been building for a while.
In 1974 he had a transcendental experience when a lady delivering medicine to his door wore a fish-shaped pendant which he said shot a pink beam into his head. He came to believe the beam imparted wisdom and clairvoyance, and also believed it to be intelligent. He would later admit to believing he had been reincarnated as the prophet Elijah.
Imagination has its dangers. It is a powerful thing able to transform reality. Science fiction writers often use their imagination to shape what the future will actually make come into being. But it can also turn your mind inside out. A great science fiction writer like Philip K. Dick can contemplate the nature of reality and turn his own reality inside out. It is a lesson for me, a lesson for all of us. Wait, is that a pink beam of light I see? No, I just imagined it.
“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
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
