Tag Archives: photo

April 14, 2014 · 1:03 am

Role Reversal

Image

Being a collector of stuffed animals and all manner of twelve-inch dolls and action figures, I often find myself staring into painted eyes.  What do they see when they look back at me? 

I am kind and caring when I deal with dolls.  I handle them carefully because wear and tear reduce their value.  I am guilty, however, of all kinds of crimes of fashion visited on defenseless Barbie dolls and G.I. Joes.  I have a pile of naked Goodwill Barbies, some missing limbs, some missing heads… I use them all for replacement parts.  I dress figures in anything and everything that I have available.  It results in some very embarrassing costumes.

Image

What would happen if they were given a chance to do to me what I have done with them?   Such thoughts led me to the somewhat creepy Paffooney that I’m posting today.  I certain some dolls would very much like to decide how to use my arms, or put a dress with big red hearts on it upon me whether it fits or not.  Of course, I used a girl who might play with dolls as the subject of the picture.  You wouldn’t want to see a partially naked fat old man with white beard and lots of hair.  Believe me, you wouldn’t.

3 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

April 11, 2014 · 12:05 am

Sadly, Madly, Badly… Ending

Image

Yep, the last round-up is in sight for the silly old Cowboy Mickey…  The time has finally come, and I submitted my resignation to the principal,  Twenty three years I was a Cowboy in Cotulla, teaching English to mostly seventh graders.  I spent a lot of time polishing the heads of eighth graders too.  One year as a Wildcat at Creek Valley Middle School, a Lewisville School, working for the Wicked Witch of Creek Valley… seven more years in Garland teaching high school, one as a Garland Owl, and six as a Naaman Forest Ranger.  This year it all ends.  My heart is now sick and sad, and from where the sun now stands… I will teach no more forever.

Don’t weep for me.  Old English teachers never die.  They just slowly lose their class.  I will carry forward as a writer, an artist, and a wacky-bird cartoonist.  Not that I haven’t been those things all along.  I am still a dungeon master.  I am still father to Dorin, Henry, and the Princess.  I am still secretly the Knight of the White Rose.  Some day soon… but no, a fool knows for sure… but if a wizard is wise, there will always be room for doubt, and new horizons to conquer.  Did I pile the hoo-haw and self-pity high enough?  Not yet.  I still have a few more teacher stories to tell.

4 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

Image

Cool Bird

Cool Bird

I found Chilly Willy at a yard sale for 50 cents. He was a perfect rare find for our family stuffed animal collection. He has good taste in reading material too. He had a few bugs nesting in the straw somebody used for stuffing when they refilled him. A little work de-bugged the cool bird. Now he can skate like a pro again. (I’m a St. Louis Blues’ hockey fan, but Chilly predicts the Pittsburgh Penguins will win every year. Since Sidney Crosby showed up, he is very nearly right.)

Leave a comment

April 9, 2014 · 12:45 am
Image

Scooby Says…

Scooby Says...

Yes, I collect stuffed animals. I spent some time buying used ones, fixing them up, and reselling them on E-bay. So while I was doing that, Scooby Doo went to Mexico (for the burritos and chalupas), and while he was there, he saw UFOs near Mexico City. Honestly. He had to buy and read a copy of Catch a Falling Star so his mind would be at ease about alien invasions. He liked the book, but it dis-convinced him that UFOs are serious and not funny.

4 Comments

April 6, 2014 · 4:43 pm
Image

Window On The Past

Window On The Past

This is a photo of Clan Mickey as it was, not as it is. I’m the porky blue one wearing the beat up old cowboy hat. The Filipina next to me is my lovely wife. Dorin on my right… Henry leaning on Mom… and The Princess with her head on my shoulder. They are all much bigger and scarier now than they were then. I posted this most likely because this photo was lost, but I found it while I was at home sick yet again with a painful malady.

Leave a comment

March 25, 2014 · 12:24 am
Image

Captain Action, Space Hero

Captain Action, Space Hero

One of the things I find so fascinating about Captain Action is the way he portrays space heroes from comic strips that were created long before I was born. Here you see Flash Gordon (the mask is from 1967, the rest of the costume comes from Playing Mantis in 2003.)
Buck Rogers from the 25th Century (everything here is either a recreation by hobbyists or a replacement part) stands next to him.

DSCN4794

Leave a comment

March 7, 2014 · 2:46 am
Image

Captain Action, Mighty Hero

Captain Action, Mighty Hero

I was a child of the 1960’s. I was 10 in 1966. In 1967 I received a Captain Action action figure for my birthday. Neither of these figures are the original one, since he is now resting in pieces. (I do have all the pieces.) The Spiderman suit is part of a Christmas gift from 1968, though not the mask and the boots. Superman was a rare find as a collector in about 2003. His boots are held together with tape and rubber bands, but the rest of the costume is in very good shape. The Lost in Space Robot came from E-Bay, and I got him for only four dollars. Needless to say, these things are priceless to the child who still lives inside me. I play with them often.

Leave a comment

March 6, 2014 · 2:01 am
March 5, 2014 · 2:42 am

The Harshest Critic

Image

 

“If you want to be a successful writer, you need to listen to me.  I am a reader.  You have to please me.”

“Yes, but, you are telling me to cut sixty per cent of everything.”

“Well, it isn’t any good, is it?”

“I like it.”

“That’s why you have to cut it.  These philosophies you write about… I don’t agree with those.  They are just wrong.”

“Not philosophies… themes, ideas, theories.”

“Still, they have to go.  What you are writing about is horse poop.”

“Couldn’t you find anything to like in my entire story?”

“What does it mean to like something?  If you just do what I tell you, people will like what you write.  You don’t need all these stupid metaphors and allusions.  Write simple things.  Acknowledge the hand of God as the creator of everything.”

“People already like what I write.  Not everyone wants to hear religious rants all the time.”

“I’m not saying all the time.  Just enough to be good for people… to be instructive and up-building.”

“I’d rather tell stories just for fun.  I want to write stories that I’d like to read myself.”

“If you do that, then you will be the only one who reads your stories.”

“So you don’t think my story is any good?”

“It’s horse poop.”

“Well, I’m going to write it anyway… the way I want.  If it isn’t any good, then maybe I’m no good.”

“I’m not saying that?  Why do you have to take it that way?”

“Horse poop is a complement?”

“No, but you have to hear constructive criticism and change it.”

“Sixty per cent isn’t constructive.  It’s destructive.”

“Whatever… why did you ask me to read it, anyway?  You never listen to me.”

“You are actually part of me.  Your opinion is supposed to matter. “

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

February 21, 2014 · 3:46 am

Paffoonies By The Numbers

Image

 

So, here is one secret recipe for baking a Paffooney with some humor in the process.

Step 1 : First you have to get a stupid idea and draw a witless drawing of it on a nice fresh piece of paper.  Here the Princess is holding step one, a portrait of what I believe Valerie Clarke, the main character of Snow Babies might look like.  She is supposed to be the most beautiful little girl who ever lived in Norwall, a small Iowa farm town.  

Step 2 : Then you must get a good digital picture of it.  Here I used the Princess as a makeshift picture stand and took the picture in sunlight muted by clouds.

Step 3 : I must then remove all clutter and background from the image using the big old eraser thingy on the Microsoft computer paint program.  sometimes I need to erase pixel by pixel until I am thoroughly pixelated.

Image

 

Step 4 : This gets me ready to use my handy-dandy cheap-o photo program (I always wanted to use both handy-dandy and cheap-o photo in the same sentence!  Item 128 on my bucket list.)  I can layer the image over any of a number of stolen and parolin’ background photos.

Image

Image

Image

And so, I thus become a pretend world-renowned unknown clown artist with a penchant for multiple uses of internal rhymes as well as multiple uses of the same boring, wretched sketches.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

Image

Self Portrait

Self Portrait

For those of you who thought that my Gravatar picture was the real me, here’s what I looked like on February 15th. I am older than in my previous pictures. I am grayer and hairier and wrinklier. I am also a little more bonkers than I ever used to be. I am an ESL Teacher (English as a Second Language. I write science fiction and fantasy. I was a Cowboy for 23 years, a Wildcat for one year, and have been a Ranger for the last seven years.

2 Comments

February 16, 2014 · 9:53 pm