On Valentine's Day, Mr. Whitey had his life taken away from him. He was a great pussycat for two decades, and the last surviving link to my past. The last time I wrote about him was somewhere on my old blog, at www.ducksoup.me. As he got older, he was plagued by chronic Tummy Trouble (not the scientific term, obviously, but my brain has gotten even more scattered than normal these past couple of weeks) requiring almost daily medication. I had to work hard to keep him going these last few years. But sometime between Sunday night and Monday noon, his left eye ruptured. I don't know the cause, but I do know that that eye was irritating him recently, and...
A long-term project is finally nearing the finish line -- at least in part. I've been working on LE TAROT DES ANIMALERIES (or, The Tarot of Pet Shops) for the better part of two years. With the Major Arcana now completed, the opportunity to do an early-issue Majors Only deck was there, but I took some time to think about what I could do to make such a release really special. First, it will be an extremely Limited Edition, meaning only as many copies as are actually ordered by customers and collectors will be produced. Second, it will only be available (for reasons that will become evident below) in a striking giant-sized 3.5" x 5.75" deck. I know that some...
A big THANK YOU to everyone who made the first Edition of our TRICK OR TAROT Halloween-themed Tarot pack a sell-out! The Second Edition is on the way, and instead of changing the designs of a few of the card faces, we decided to make this new edition unique by offering huge selection of variant card backs for you to choose from. We've created SIXTEEN all-new designs for the card backs, with a heavy emphasis on Costuming, which is why we've decided to call this the Halloween Costume Edition. Only as many copies of each variant will be printed as are actually sold, making this TRICK OR TAROT every bit as collectible as the First Edition. The new edition will be standard...
If you go down to the woods today, you’ll get a big surprise! In the beginning there was our Old Bear Oracle, a 52-card, personality-driven pack with a multitude of uses — it can even be used to play your favorite traditional card games! Now the bears have banded together to form a complete traditional Tarot deck, with all of Tarot’s deep symbolism intact. Having strong links to the classic Rider/Waite/Smith pack, and occasional crafty allusions to Crowley’s Thoth, this fully-evolved tarot is ready to become your hardest-working and most congenial deck. Old Bear Tarot is a full 78-card pack, featuring 42 completely new designs, including 22 original Major Arcana cards. Of the Minor Arcana, 20 images are brand-new, while...
Oh, the things I could have done in my mis-spent youth if I had had access to the kind of software and tools I have at my fingertips today! This little comical endorsement from a favorite fictional friend took seconds to knock out, but it would have been impossible in the '80s before the advent of the home computer. The same company that makes the software that allows me to create my tarot decks also creates audio and video editing software that brings professional=level tools into millions of households. And I used them recently to correct Peter Jackson's grievous exploding of J.R.R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT. Much as I loved Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS films, I thought that what he...
