The Art of

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The Art of

Thunderer, the Daisy Wheel Printer

Not very good with images.

Old computer hardware…

RS Daisy Wheel II printer

I had the wide-carriage pinfeed-paper attachment, numerous wheels, pica, elite, italics. Different color ribbons.

And the ribbon re-inker. (My accountant had the same, until he spilled a bottle of ink on an expensive oriental carpet, after which he calculated just buying fresh ribbons was more economical. Heh Good times.)

Ribbon re-inker, inky

1200 precious 1980 dollars, a real hearty investment even when I was well-off.

Bought fanfold paper by the case. Still have half a case of wide-carriage green-bar fanfold, if anyone needs some.

The one thing I never sprang for was the sound-insulated clamshell box for it. My neighbors didn't complain. But, then, I was the landlord....

Yes, I do still have it in the museum.




The Art of

Doodles Weaver

Professor Feitlebaum need are you now that we where you?

Just one of those one-thing-led-to-another things.

Not to go too far back, let's start with, I was looking at the cast list for It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

W in palms
c/o iMDB

Just to read the cast list is a slice of culture, a fog of of nostalgia, and a (mad^4) world of memories of a million smiles and laughs they gave us.

I was only (counts on fingers and toe) eleven years old when the film came out. At the time, it was the most hilarious thing I'd ever seen. Come to think of it, it may still be. I never understood "rolling in the aisles" until I did during that movie.

At my age, a lot of those comedians were far more of my parents' generation than of mine, but at age eleven in the 1950s and early 1960s, you still got your parents' culture. And, if you were lucky, your grandparents'. So I knew most of them well enough, some of them less so. Lots of "wow!" of recognition, with much "where do I know him from?"

Down the cast list I came to the fellow who played the hardware store clerk. I remember, at the time, recognizing him. "Where do I...?" Not by name or remembered roles, but just as one of those great characters I know from all over. Didn't he do something with Disney? In IaMMMMW, his was a small part, but I was amused by his having the role, as with so much of the rest of the star-laden cast, major role or cameo.

Spike Jones and Doodles Weaver

According to MatineeClassics.com, the mother who saddled him with the given name Winstead Sheffield Glenndenning Dixon Weaver rescued him with the nickname Doodlebug. Weaver started in radio in the late 1930's, developed his famous character Professor Feedelbaum with Spike Jones, In film, his career spanned from an uncredited cowhand role in My American Wife (1936) to a SF comedy Earthbound (1981), and through those decades, besides his many roles, he also created color silent comedy films for television in the 1960s and a spoof on the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby.

Weaver's "Matinee Classics" bio says that Weaver's "final film was 'Under the Rainbow' (1981)." However, their own filmography below the article, and Weaver's filmography at iMDB say his final film was Earthbound, and he wasn't in Under the Rainbow.

To a kid, he was a funny-faced guy who was funny. In his unfortunate real life, I read, after four failed marriages, he took his own life at age 71, in 1983. Born, lived, and died in L.A. So happened that the day I looked him up was the day before his birthday, May 11.

Quote (1972):

I don't miss being a star. I don't miss anything because I live in the now.

Quote (1981):

Nothing means anything when you're in pain. I have a nice house and an income but not a thing to live for.

And as if that wasn't enough of a downer to end on, I discovered on iMDB an entry for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad MAD World: The Sequel (2015).

Right.

Well, here's what he was all about, a somewhat uneven playlist from YouTube, ending on a Spike Jones bit that doesn't feature Weaver, but I figured I'd include it anyway. "Inspirationally related."




The Art of

Poetic License to Kill

Just a tiny apostrophe short of success.

Webster: That's not funny.
A rhyme is
what I
really want.

But Webster
says these
two lines can't.




The Art of

Eighteen Years of Mindful Webworks

Happy Copyright Free Birthday Song Goes Here

Besides being Green Beer Day, March 17 was also the 18th anniversary of the day I first put a page up on the web.

My goodness, how our little web has grown in 18 years. And so has my website.

I didn't know what to do with a website at first. I started by advertising (semi-seriously) my 25c print mini-comics.

Tippin' the noggin'Then I put a "sample" comic up. Then the light bulb went off.! Unlike my blurry, xerographed, monochrome print mini-comics, the cartoon on-line was sharp (as much as monitors of the day permitted), and wow! sixteen whole colors! Four times as many as print!

It took me a few days, but that's when I realized Print is Finally Dead. I've been loading comics, opinions (of course), VR worlds, songs, noises, vids, and all kinds of nonsense and drivel onto my website ever since.

MW

Money comes in where?I'd published the mini-comics for years under "Little Mindless Publications," but the website became "Mindful Webworks," just to go upscale. I was getting old. At first I didn't have a domain; my site was on that spin-off of CompuServe known as Sprynet. Something like home.sprynet.com/~mindful, IIRC. Sprynet got eaten by MindSpring. MindSpring got eaten by EarthLink. The Sprynet site was good all the way through, until the EarthLink account eventually got dropped. By that time, the site was just pages that forwarded to the domain. But, History lost.

I can't even remember getting the domain name, but apparently I did.

Now, there's about five hundred webworks under several topical albums, some derived from nearly seven hundred random doodles, and just for fun a giant Blog Heap o' Links that I maintained for many years and lately have been trying to revive… Also many Playlists of media found around the web and scads of comments made elsewhere.

MW

A couple of years ago, I moved from "static" to "dynamic" website. I've spent the past several years trying to figure out how that works, and how to make my site take best advantage of it.

Among other things, with a dynamic site, I can finally have comments mostly without spam. I've opened a few pages to comments, and actually received one. (Imagine, 18 years on the web and 1 comment. Why I call it the web's best-kept secret.)

Mage & Capt MarvelI haven't opened up most pages to comments, though. The site was originally just my portfolio of eclectic nonsense. The webpage is a frame. You don't hang a work of art on the wall, carefully framed and lighted, then leave a Sharpie hanging on a string so folks can write their opinions on the wall all around the art.

Or would you? People like interactivity. Sure, there's trolls, and spam, and h8rs, but look at any well-run online community. Take an "art" site I really like, The Lost Issues — all the comments discuss the guy's work and make suggestions and it's nice. I could name several others.

So, I've wondered about opening up my site more for comments. I watched a lot of SysOps in action, especially back on CompuServe. Had a brief but exciting tour of duty as sub SysOp myself. From BBS to Blogs, it can get weird, but it's a new and interactive age. I might do more comments-opening on pages, but I'd hate to get into that, then find it such a burden, consuming time I could be creating, or, worst of all, dealing with tsunamis of off-topic comments or flamewars that lead to closing out comments altogether.

MW

I've spent the past couple of weeks tinkering with the website behind-the-scenes stuff, adjusting the pulleys and levers that make the website work, trying to give it a bit of housecleaning and facelift for the anniversary, wishing I was creating content instead.

However, you know the saying, "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans?" I had some things I really wanted to do before this anniversary. Instead, these past few days were spent dealing necessarily with Real Life Drama (however manufactured or unnecessary such usually is).

Good thing hitting my website goals doesn't matter to anyone but me.

MW

A very brief run of online daily comic strip about creating an online comic strip, from 1997: Mind Fuel

An MP3 audio promo for Mindful Webworks from 2002.

A reminder: Mindful Webworks works for peanuts, or other remuneration, which may be sent by post to 74005-1215 USA. Donations may be made by credit card at PayPal (see buttons on this page). For the non-donating types, there are commercial products in the Mindful Webworks Marketplace at CafePress. Those are ways you can pay for the free Mindful Webworks lunch buffet. Honor system.




The Art of

It's All Fun and Games... Until...

It's all in the delivery.

Having my jokes misunderstood is one of the banes of my bane-laden life.

Self face-punchApparently my wit is too dry, my sardonic jests too inscrutable or overly complicated, or my delivery too deadpan. This has been my experience in print as well as face to face.

You think you're among people who know where you're coming from, and then you find out, not so much.

Anyone can send up a lead balloon now and then, come a clunker, blow a punch line, or just plain be completely misunderstood. When it seems to happen too frequently, combined with a self-consciousness about being mis-taken in a bad way, I begin to wonder if there's something intrinsically wrong with me.

So I figure, what can I do? And I joke about it. Hope you get it.




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