Masta Shake, with hands, sketch...

As if he wasn't gross to begin with...

Sirach

a poison, a sickness

an infection

enters through the wound, and swelling red, all it touches
dives to the heart

to kill all it finds.

Technorati made me do it.

So.... here's a new one. I am fascinated by all these folks, this internet generation Y or Z or whatever the hell they are called these days, these wacky kids that scare old people like me because old people like me who are old are... well... old... fascinated by the interlinked linked togetherness and other fancy science fiction futuristic terminology and other such words that describe the collective society, nay, community which they comprise.

At any rate, I've experimented in a tiny amount with del.icio.us tagging to think that it's the wave of the future, and is so far ahead of it's time that most people I talk to just don't get it. Basically, I can share my bookmarks with you, or anyone. I can have access to those bookmarks anywhere and anytime I'm on the 'net. And so can you. I can also 'tag' anything, anywhere, at anytime (I'm on the 'net) and it then becomes available to me and all of you. ALL of you... BUT! tagging is also weighted and you can see what tags are getting action, what others are looking at or for, and what is similar and related... And more. It's all very sweet and you will all see in the future how freaking kick ass it is.

As an aside, Flickr uses tagging in the same way, if you are familiar with searching pictures on Flickr then you've got a good idea on what is to come. I like Flickr. I'm a Google guy myself, but they dropped the ball on the photo thing... sorry Google, you know I love you...

And so, here's the thing:

Technorati Profile

that Technorati told me to put in here... oh yeah, I didn't make that point. So yeah, I guess I can use tagging on del.icio.us and it can show up over on Technorati, which I'm also still just figuring out.

Yeah, basically I have no idea what I'm doing, but all the kids are doing it, and I want to stay hip and what not... be 'with it'.

And it's fun... you know, totally rad.

Hey ! Kevin !!!

I miss you.

cup's of coffee, redux!

ah HA!

So, as I proclaimed I was no connoisseur of coffee cups, I come across this little gem. Perhaps I should reclassify myself as no collector of coffee cups, collecting anything requires money, mostly, and I have a hard time spending money to have a lot of one thing that will get used very little. I am not opposed to collecting a few here and there over time and eventually ending up with a lot. And perhaps that is what collecting is. I guess I'm contradicting myself. What I'm trying to say is, I do not go out of my way to find great coffee cups, I only hope that, every now and again, perhaps I will run across one that kicks ass.

Well, out of ye ol' blue, I get hit with this beauty. This cup hails from the 1960's. I found two of them, but only bought one. They were not expensive, in fact less so than some novelty coffee cups. This one was a slight bit more beat up than it's brother, which is the reason I chose it. More rustic or something...



And as you can see, this wonderful cup works both left handed and right handed. This is gratifying considering how disturbing I find cups with graphics printed only for lefties...



...those inbred bastards...

a taste, a squeeze and some loathe

Well, I've been thinking about this for awhile. I have another blog just for my art, but I find this blog and that blog crossing paths every now and again. I suppose I could play that up and create some excitement, but hey, that's too complicated and I'm too lazy. So I think I'm going to squeeze all those posts into their appropriate locations in time and space in this blog. That'll make this one twice as busy and harder to look at, or easier if you don't like to read.

I've been really pissy in my last couple posts. This past week I must be doing that male hormone cycle we get like girls get with their PMS. Bunch a hogwash if you ask me. I don't have time for that froo froo shit. This is the loathe paragraph, I don't feel like constructing something special in such a way that it would dawn on you about 3/4's the way through reading it.

And finally, in case old man wasn't enough, here's Squeaky Beaker, so named by Ethan (I'd point you to his kick ass stopmo site, but it appears defunct at the moment). Some more of these will show up at various points in this blog's past, due to their timestamp when they come over. Enjoy.

This guy is obviously unfinished. I think I drew him at work, and had to, well, get back to work. I think there is something special in his legs missing. Wouldn't you like to know what his legs look like? I do. I don't think you and I will ever find out...

The old man and the airport

Oh my goodness.

I love the airport. You know, the mall or other densely populated human gathering locale can be so rich in opportunities for observed human behavior, but the airport occupies a niche market.

Airports are not casual. People go shopping to relax, to acquire goods, perhaps to obtain sustenance with which to bog their gullets... Not so at the airport. Here, everyone is in a rush, they are concerned, they are concentrating, they are more than anything, upset.

Okay, I'll concede shopping may or may not be relaxing for some, and often shoppers do, or are in a, rush. But if you are a reasonable reader, and I know you are, you get the point. I know I can ramble on and on ad nauseam, but that is over important details for you to see, feel and taste the experience. So don't be a dullard. Keep up.

(I'll take this moment to point out that this blog also contains material which could be filed into the 'Overheard #xx' category, just as the previous entry. Alas, perhaps I was rash in my judgment that Overheard's days were finished. Too late now I suppose... funny how judgment is spelled without the 'e' after the 'g' and yet the word still has a hard 'g' sound...)

First up, we have the dumb family with the poor pre-teen daughter being molded into an idiot herself. I'm standing in the (rather) long line at LAX to get through security, and this couple is standing behind me chattering away.

Another pause. Perhaps there is a more elegant way to setup a story than what I do here, with all my starts and stops. By the way, since I used the word 'story', I'd like to point out that, with the rare exception that should be obvious to you in that it stands out rather starkly from the rest, most of these entries into this blog are quite true and I try not to embellish much if at all. Of course I may craft it in such a way as to hope to at least keep you entertained... I am aware of the mundaneness of some of these posts... I'm mean... *coffee cup imagery* ?! What the F is that all about? Only here folks. Well, and probably a hundred thousand other blogs on the 'net...

But I wasn't pausing to tell you all that crap, I just spewed that out in a moment of unforgivable honesty...

So I hope that you, reader, are not offended by what follows because it contains some convoluted personal judgments (without an 'e'). Alright, the first thing I overhear from dad is, "...even if you're attacked, your chances are still pretty good. The odds of you being blown up in a plane are still very low." I'll take this moment to give him the nod towards his statistical assumption, however unscientifically he may have arrived at it... His wife chimes in that she agrees, and complains about the security measures. She says she would rather security remained as it were before the 9/11 attacks. "I'd rather take my chances," she says. Well, thank you fucking idiot lady, but the *other* ONE HUNDRED TWENTY people may NOT want to gamble their lives, no matter the odds.

Of course, while I personally think your *odds* of going down in a plane due to accident is most likely higher than you dying as a result of sabotage, I'd like to point out that accidents do not choose to happen, as opposed to terrorist attacks against a civilian target where humans can and do actively choose to make these things happen. You cannot perform a security checkpoint to discern the likelihood of a mechanical disaster. Likewise you can perform 'maintenance' (note the root of the word, 'maintain', taken literally would mean to do nothing more than you are already doing, it's an abstract thought that I want to get across to you, since most of America is reading at the 2nd grade level these days...) and hope to prevent a bombing.

We have seen it all over the world. Car bombings are a daily occurrence. Perhaps there should be a lengthy security check before you can drive your car...

But all of that aside, what really offended me, was, regardless of the talk about odds and what not, was the brash selfishness. It's typical of Los Angeles, but I personally still find in inexcusable. The security line would be a HELL of a lot shorter if these three were the only ones on Earth. But then they wouldn't NEED security because there would be no one around to attack them, and, Hell!, there'd be no one to fly the God damned plane so they could get wherever the fuck they were in such a hurry to get to.

That was just the cake. The icing was the out loud proclamation by daddy, "They should just do racial profiling, anyone with a turban should be automatically investigated."

I had two responses to this. First was, shut your fucking mouth. As the saying goes, it's one thing to be an idiot, it's quite another to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I myself have ridden in a plane with turban wearing folk, and I'll admit to having emotions about this. But I was quick to slap myself (metaphysically) for such a blanket judgment (without an 'e') of a society, a religion, a race, a whatever. All Americans are gun loving cowboys, right? I know I am. Thanks to the rest of the world for judging me (with no 'e') thusly. Hypocrites. So it really bothers me to see Americans do it. And the reasonably intelligent people (are there really so few of us?) are caught in the fray between these knee-jerk, overly-emotional, fear driven cattle called the human race.

For fuck sake.

Basically, daddy, you're just a fucking moron.

Secondly, do you think they don't already do that? How naive do you have to be? So far nearly 100% of the folks that have crashed our own airplanes into our own buildings have been of Arabic decent. I'm sorry. It upsets my stomach to say it because I simply don't want to group a bunch of people in with a handful of bad apples. It seems terribly wrong. But as the saying goes, call a spade a spade. This is a hot button topic and personally, I really hate the way it's polarized, but shit, it's all fucked up any which way you slice it. Daddy is still a buffoon.

The worst part is the pre-teen daughter who is going to grow up a shining product of their parenting.

But enough of that. Onward Starbuck's !

I get some coffee at Starbuck's after suffering through the whole TEN MINUTES of the security check (dear God, a travesty!) and I want to be bold and get the Peppermint Mocha, which is seasonal in case that wasn't offensively obvious. Yes, I know good coffee, yes, Starbuck's isn't the best in the world, it does just fine though, so you lovers and haters go hash it out somewhere else... McDonald's Sausage McMuffin ain't no gourmet breakfast but damn that shit tastes good every now and again... I can't shake my white-trash roots...

I sit down and pull out my M7 (I love this thing), so I can store some thoughts real fast before they fade (including the family unit which I have so unjustly sat in judgment on with no 'e') and I get this from an older couple sitting next to me: "This tastes one hundred percent better!" Well I suppose it does. One hundred percent better than what? Gold? Poop? Burger King? I think it was in regards to a Starbuck's sandwich. I don't imagine that is some kind of food for the gods, but I *am* sure it is better than many things that can be had for your stomach.

It struck me as an odd thing, taken literally. As English speakers, and especially as Americans, we communicate a great deal with metaphors. Sometimes it is rather entertaining to sit back for a minute and listen to what is being said, taken in it's literal form. I am really curious what exactly is one hundred percent worse (which is absolutely worse, using 'absolute' literally) than a Starbuck's sandwich and more importantly, how one arrives at such a mathematical conclusion.

I also wrote myself a note about "hating shit that reminds you of other shit that you hate." I don't remember what that was about now, but it sounds frustrating, whatever it is...

Well, my flight was delayed by about an hour and a half, so out comes the M7 again and I start up a doodle to pass the time. I scratched out this picture, inspired by an old man who had walked up and sat down a little ways across from me along side his wife.

The picture is terribly unfair, he was a pleasant and normal looking person, so I am misrepresenting him here almost in his entirety. Except the socks. The black socks are dead accurate.



And now, it's Jerry Springer time...

Damn that was a rant and a half. I hate putting that up there at the top, about terrorism, because there just isn't much to laugh about. Most of it is very very sad. Sad because of the hatred. Sad because of the death. Sad because this is the current state of human affairs. We *choose* to do this to each other. Are we not brothers and sisters after all? We fight and kill each other for 'things'.

A very wise man once said to me, (this man is the closest person to a 'guru' I have ever met in my life, and this is just one of many many things he said to me, astounding in it's simplicity, and beautiful in it's honesty).

We're still apes, fighting over bananas...

Think about that. Like one of those trick questions where the answer is so obvious that you almost never see it. There is so much in that sentence that you aren't getting, because the message looks so obvious.

This man said these things to me in a context I cannot relate in such an eloquent manner as he, the best I can do is tell you to try and figure it out, and say, trust me, it's in there. I am only a student of life myself, not a teacher, but I have met some teachers, and we could certainly use a lot more of them in the world...

The evolution of mankind.

Okay, so. You've got coffee cups, right? And many many times they have something clever or wonderful printed on them, a picture of a beloved hound dog, or an advertisement for the local printing shop, or a cartoon about a couple having sex before having this cup of coffee...

That is all fine and dandy, but I've noticed (not that I am some kind of coffee cup connoisseur, but I do take pleasure in a fine example of that species of beverage transport...) that most of these cups with some sort of graphical image or message on them only have the image on one side. And that side is the one that points out when holding the cup in your left hand and inwards when holding the cup in your right hand.

Now you are saying to yourself, "Self, what the hell is he on about?" (which is the way a Brit might put it.) Or, "Self, do you give a shit, 'cause I don't!" (which is the way most Americans might put it.)

Regardless of which you are, or whether you are something else altogether the point remains the same. The graphic is outward in the left hand and inwards in the right hand.

I don't know about you, but I am, and so are 70 to 90 percent of all human beings, right handed. If you are left handed then I feel bad for you. Evolution has decided that, because you are prone to paranoia, alcoholism, Crohn's disease, accidents and dying young, that you will (in Darwinian fashion) not be selected to continue down the future path of our species. As I like to say, too bad for you. Shoulda been right handed...

So even thought right handers are the outright majority, and we are also superiour to our cave dwelling, left handed ancestors... most coffee cups still have to be held in the left hand in order for the graphic printed on the cup to be seen by anyone other than your belly button.

If I hold the cup I am drinking coffee from right now, a nice example of a retro coffee cup printed with the label of the ol' A. H. Perfect & Co.'s Perfect Coffee Brand coffee (how's that for 1950's advertising redundancy? I love that shit.), in my left hand, which I am doing now because I am typing and so I use my 'back up' hand to do the menial work of lifting so my right hand can be free to hover over the keyboard as I consider my next run on sentence, I cannot myself see the graphic. But I am not looking at the graphic. I am drinking from the cup, so I cannot see the sides of the cup at all, and if I can, I've probably spilled the coffee all over my lap and laptop. In which case you won't get to read this, (unless I use the 'recover option' to finish it off and post it, you may never know which has happened!!!).

Here's the sticking point... if I should lift the cup with my right hand, then the graphic is facing inward, and as I just pointed out (stay with me, I know the science of coffee cup imagery orientation is quite obtuse...) I can't see the sides, and so I can't see the graphic... but neither can anyone else, because when I'm drinking the picture is pointing at my crotch.

So to sum up where we are at this long winded moment, in the left hand, the image is out for others to see, in the right, the image is in for the crotch to see.

But wait. "Hey, run-on-sentence-dude," you're saying, I can hear you ya know, "but you said that when you're typing you use your inferior hand to lift the coffee." Your point being that the picture is operating correctly and effectively.

This is true, and it is quite effective when used thusly. But think about it. If I am working and the left handed is lifting in an absent minded way, I am most likely to not have somebody standing (or sitting) in front of me admiring my awesome coffee cup. On the other hand ('other hand' get it? oh ha. I really didn't mean that intentionally, it just happened, sorry.), if the cup is sitting so that I lift it with my right hand, utterly stopping any work or thought process, then I, myself can view and appreciate the image. For a split second before my nethers get to see the image they've seen dozens of times already if hafting ye ol' coffee mug with the right hand.

So in a lonely situation, having the graphic oriented for the left hand simply serves no purpose other than to prevent you, the very user of this coffee cup, from enjoying the image in any fashion, unless you hold it to your face with your right hand prior to chugging. I don't do that, maybe you do, but then I'm guessing you're left handed...

But if I am in a situation, socially, and I am right handed, like so many of us are, then science dictates an extremely large probability that my cup will be in my right hand. And the image will be pointing at my belly. Maybe pondering the fate of the cup's contents, if it could ponder, which it cannot since it is a lifeless object.

And now I have illustrated to you the conundrum of imagery printed on coffee cups. I am of the opinion that perhaps the Society of Coffee Cup Imagery Location has some kind of left handed Illuminati type hold at upper echelon of it's committee. Or maybe it's an anachronism from a time when left handers roamed the earth.

Either way, it bugs me out. I want to use my right hand the way God intended it. And I do not want to deny people watching me drink coffee the pure pleasure of my cup's totally sweet picture. Or clever phrase. Or brand marque. Or whatever else you stick to the side of one of those...

Stengah!

So I pull up to 7-11, just because, and I head on in. Well, these two fine looking young women and I meet up at the door at the same time. (what timing eh?) On the way to the door I hear the two of them talking...

Now this would normally fall into the "Overheard #xx" category, but I haven't done one of those in like 6 months, and this is more than just two chowderheads blowing bubbles into the wind. Besides, I think the whole "Overheard #xx" idea is about defunct. It has some merit but it hasn't stood the test of time... who knows... maybe in the future... probably not...

Anyway.

As we approach each other, the short, blonde haired, high heeled in jeans with a black jacket on young 'lady' says, "Do they have Thanksgiving in Africa?"

Now hold it right there. I know we haven't even gotten very far into tonight's experience to really justify putting this one on pause, but I want you to savour this moment. As I did at that moment.

You really need to appreciate this, a chilly Monday night, around 11 pm, in Hollywood, walking up to a 7-11, the dark of night shattered by the surgery room blast of light from inside the store, two good looking girls (I almost typed 'women' but.... but.... oh HAHAHAHA! sure they 'looked' good, but... posters look good, but they're pretty flat... and they sit there and do nothing... overall they really contribute nothing, except to make a room more interesting to look at... kind of like a house plant...)

Anyway.

So, you get the image in your head right? Cold, dark, bright, orange and green. We come to the door at the same time, I get a bit of a sideways glance from one of them, the second and taller of the two, while the first one, the shorter one, asks, "Do they have Thanksgiving in Africa?"

Being the gentleman that I am, I reach for the door and open it for them. As you can predict with L.A. women I think I got a glance and nothing for holding the door. Well, I'd do it anyway, it's just the way I am made, but that doesn't mean they aren't uppity bitches. I think they were driving a Honda Accord or something similar (which is the appropriate Los Angeles method of judging somebody's inherit value as a human...) Poor things. I hope they find a sugar daddy soon, or they might have to resort to sexual favours for... oh, well, I suppose they already do that... it *is* L.A. afterall...

I mean, there's no law against being NICE. You know, I'd really like to meet their parents... the people that raised them...

Anyway.

So I open, the door, and they head in, and I take this question, "Do they have thanksgiving in Africa?" with a measure of shock. I'm cool on the outside, but on the inside I'm totally like, woah, omigod wtf byob mia afk bbq !?!

And I crack a smile. A smirk really, because I tried to stifle it but it went up on one side...

The second girl, the taller one, says, "Oh yeah, I'm sure they have mashed potatoes and gravy and..." I can't remember all the details, but she was being sarcastic, saying that she was sure that Africans (in general? there is a lot of them, and many different types...) were waaaayyyy into Thanksgiving.

They headed right on into the 7-11 and I came around the door slowly, you know, with a little style, mostly just to buy myself some time to crack up a tiny bit before getting into the store... Once inside I looked over at them, I think the taller one looked at me, not at the same time, but the way you can see someone look at you out of the corner of your eye, the way you just looked at them out of the corner of your own eye, as if, like in olden tymes, when two people, untrusting, suspicious of each other would "eye" one another...

But enough run on sentences...

So we did the subconscious eying of each other, and for a moment I wondered if they were fucking with me, because the conversation was so completely absurd. If they were, kudos to them, because I think they're idiots *and* I got a great laugh out of it. If they weren't, well, then I think they're idiots *and* I got a great laugh out of it.

Anyway.

While standing in line, I was behind an orthodox Jew, and he had a drink cup, you know, one of those big plastic jobbers with the top on them so you can put a straw in them... like the ones you find at Jack in The Box, or 7-11, but (And I am completely not shitting you) this thing was HUGE. It was as tall as a usual plastic novelty drink cup, but it was twice as wide. I'm guessing (And I am completely not shitting you) it will hold 2 liters of whatever... you know... an entire bottle of Coke, or something...

But that's not the point. The cup had a graphic on it, as most do, and this one was of "American Chopper", the show on Discovery or The Learning Channel or whatever about the bike builders, Orange County Choppers, where you get to watch Teutul Sr. and Teutul Jr. bitch and moan at each other for a whole hour while they (Teutul Jr. really, Mr. Teutul Sr. please don't kill me, I'm just being honest...) build a bike from mostly scratch...

I know I'm all wordy and shit, but the short of it is, I'm standing there behind an orthodox Jew, in 7-11, and he's weilding this fucking GIANT cup of soda advertising a show about hard core bikers... Only in L.A., right?

Anyway.

As I'm leaving I get to the door, the tall and short bimbos are still over in the corner get cash out of ye olde cash machine, I reach to push the door open, and in the corner of the window, the corner in the middle where the doors meet, just above the door handle pushing thingy there is a sign, I think it was a "now hiring" sign, and of course the sign was facing outside so the blank white backside of the sign was facing inwards towards the inside of the store...

I push the door open as I'm walking out, and notice, scratched onto the blank backside of the sign, were the words "help me out".

A message from the past, from a desperate person... an artifact from a moment unknown to you or I... a moment... help *who* out? It reminded me of the scribbled signs like "watch for the walkin dude" that Roland and company came across before meeting Father Callahan in the Wolves of the Calla.

It was a fitting end to my 7-11 adventure, because I certainly needed help out of that place... There are a few other funny things that happened while inside, but this is enough for you.

Anyway.

I'm watching Family Guy while writing this and Brian just ordered a 'Stinger, with a whiskey back' and I actually know what that is... sophisticated... and far older skool than Schlitz Malt Liquor...

... it's also the name of a kickass Meshuggah tune...

Lionel Richie... a Chia pet?

Get your very own...

I was watching Futurama on Adult Swim tonight and saw this Chia commercial. I'd actually seen this commercial last year sometime and we remarked how much this Chia resembled Lionel Richie. I'd forgotten about it until it popped up tonight...

Thank God for tivo...

I am a ghost

I float through walls. I fall through the floor.

Seeking hands reach to pull me down, but they can't grasp me.

I send clouds of birds into sudden flight.

I follow you into dark hallways. I move over you in the night.

I pass through your flesh.

I stumble unseen.

Draw a straight line for me.

Grace, a hammer, has crushed my bones.
My back, bent, broken now.

Shattered, and nothing holds me up.

My heart flies to where my body cannot enter.
My eyes are blackened from the brightest, the brightest I have ever seen.

My hands burn still, from the softest of touches.
I cannot even twist away.

This is grace.

Chicken Pot Pie

My cat, Chicken. He has a sister and she'll probably find her way onto this page sometime. They're a blast to photograph...

Both taken with my Nikon D70 w/ a Tamron 90mm 1:1 macro lens (which is a great lens, btw).

angst, itunes and radioactive warfare

Well, first off, I finally got my answer to where the nukes were on BSG. Although I'm not real sure why Galactica did not use them in Exodus where it looked like it was the end for her and the entire human race. Seems like when you're backed into a corner and all is lost that would be a good time to pull out the nukes. But what do I know of strategics of space warfare against an aggressive robotic race of war machines?

It also appears that Galactica took possession of Pegasus's nukes at some point considering she now carries a lot more than the 3 she was left with in season 2. This makes sense if she took them for the assault to rescue the humans from New Caprica, but that only makes the non-use of them in that episode all the more perplexing. Oh well, she's got 'em now...

itunes 7 has gapless playback for albums such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, so that the songs flow into one another as intended instead of being chopped up. iTunes users the world over rejoiced. It's probably the most significant improvement to the software since it was born. Can't believe they missed that one... Oh well, we've got it now...

And angst? What would a blog of mine be without angst? Not really sure... happy? I just threw in angst to sweeten the deal a little bit, sorry if I mislead you... too bad for you...

Unitard!

Look, I *know* it's not nice. But everyone laughs at it. Well, everyone I've showed so far. I have shit in my past that hurts, but you have to be able to laugh, if you don't, then what's the point of living. (you'll notice no question mark there, it's not a question dummy, get with the program already.)

That's just a statement of my position because I am, for myself, sensitive to the situation. That said, it's not an apology. It's a fuck you if you can't take a joke. Because this world has gotten to the point were it takes everything personally. Shit, I should be writing this rant in my other blog.

Besides, he's a cyclops... show me a God damn cyclops and then I'll consider feeling bad...

Aqua Teen Hunger Sketch

Doodling about on my M7, watching ATHF... maybe I'll pump out a few more of these...

Creepy magic Homer

I suppose if Homer had human hands... was some kind of wizard... and was mixing some kind of magical dust to perform some kind of magic... he might look like this... As the title suggests I find it rather creepy in a way. I think I actually drew the hands first, and in a fit of jack-ass-ed-ness added Homer's head onto the shoulders... I can guarantee you'll see more of that kind of crap from me...

Motherlode !!!

I never really understood that word. I know what it means, I just never looked up it's etymology. This is the best example of what I came up with when searching for information on this word; basically, from 1800's and 1900's a woman's worth as a wife was measured by her proficiency at or abundance of weaving or sewing. Yeah, sexist right? Well, I suppose it's good that we moved them into the kitchen over time. Rugs and sweaters don't taste very good and are rather chewy.

Here's an old picture that I scanned recently for archival purposes. I did some minor cleanup on it. You can see (or maybe you can't since the image is so small) the top is a little blurry from the scan for some reason. Oh well.



And this is the meaning for that title and sideways discussion on it's origin. I found when looking over the image full size on the monitor how totally cool some of the ink word is, and figured I'd post a whole shitload of full sized examples...

This picture was done with a quill and ink. Pretty sweet eh? So the results is some very excellent ink lines and interaction with wet ink on ink. Kinky.

The following images are how the scans appear when viewing them at 100% in photoshop.



That one, leaves from a rose vine, shows what I was speaking of in a previous post about different artists' impact on me in terms of their line technique. I haven't read the book in a while, but that image reminds me of Frank Miller's Ronin. I'm not sure what tools he used, but the inky-ness of that book is extremely cool.



Not quite as 'clever' looking as the image before it, this one shows how I work. Usually quite fast and sort of 'scratchy'. Personally I don't care for the quality of this area, but it's still fun to look at.



Looks like some kind of mutated giant tropical tree. I imagine Flash Gordon would find this kind of leafy creature in one of his adventures.





And these two are from the thorny bits. Again, up close they remind me of some threatening alien world a space adventurer from the 1950's might encounter...

Friends

Well these two obviously don't have a very honest relationship, or at the very least, it is a rather one sided honest relationship. I don't know about you, but I think that one guy looks like a real jerk.

I really enjoy little bits of sketches like these where you see something happening, but you don't know what it is specifically. One could spend a considerable amount of time conjecturing just what is happening between these two. Lots of fun. Yep.

Here's a full sized image of some of the detailed area as scanned on the flatbed. There is some real nice ink action going on. I'm going to guess this was done with on of those famous black (in this case, blue) pens with the five or six notches at the end of the cap, with blue ink (of course!). Those pens are legend... ah! found 'em. They are the uni-ball Rollerball. Simple. Elegant. Love those things...

You're going to see a lot of line quality detail images in this blog. I love that. I used to imitate my favorite artists, not so much the style, but the way the linework itself looked... maybe that is some kind of fetish?

getting nowhere...

The whole point of that 'circles of hell' post was that, I had a moment where I felt like I had been continually banging my head against something... I won't go into the details... and had a sudden association with the level in Hell where those particular damned are sentenced to pulling and pushing heavy stones around. The actual thought I'd had was of someone continually rolling a stone uphill. I was relating to that in particular at that time.

But, as it turns out, the fourth level of Hell (the one concerned with weights) in fact contains two groups of damned who crash giant weights against each other, over and over again, in some kind of tug-of-war in reverse, until such time as their final judgment comes, and this punishment is levied against those who are consumed with material acquisitions... not what I had in mind. I was thinking more of an existential kind of block-headedness so I was pretty far off the mark there...

I know there is a reference to eternally rolling a stone uphill as some form of punishment or self-punishment, but I am unable to recall where that seed in my mind was planted... somebody out there knows...

Anyway... I sort of digressed in that post about my dream and never really got to the point.

Interestingly enough, when I looked up the punishment with the stones, I came across a reference to snakes, whereby thieves are continually bitten by snakes as their damnation, interred all the way down (get ready for some participial phrases!)in the 8th level of Hell, in the 7th ditch in the City of Dis. I find interest in the relationship between those in level 4 who are materialists, and those in the 7th ditch, thieves, who it could be argued are also concerned with material possesions...

Sucks for them...

The circles of Hell...

I just remembered this.

I had a dream the other night.

Long time readers are sighing to themselves. Crap, not another blog about his damn dreams they say.

Well, as Kevin reminded me today, and as Dirty Harry used to say... "Cool it, hammerhead!" to which I'd like to add my new founded word 'hurtlock.'

So to you whiny recounted-dream-blog haters out there, I say, "Cool it, you hammerheads, or I'll put you in a hurtlock !!!"

Now that I've threatened you all with physical violence to stifle your moans of pain and anguish...

All I can really recall from the dream is... there were two snakes. Yeah, it's a snake dream. But these thing were strange. They were very short, two feet long at the most. Well, that's not that short by snake standards, but these things had a diameter of about 4 inches. Imagine a two foot snake with a body as thick around as your fist. Strange, I told you. Now add to that the head. It was not a snake head. I don't really know what it was. More like a rodent or something. And the teeth! These teeth were not snake teeth, they were not fangs. More like a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, much like a shark, or a piranha. And their bodies were colored bone white, and I think their eyes were white or bluish, and they weren't reptile or cat's eyes, the pupils were round more like a human's eye. Trust me, these things were fully creepy, unnatural, as something spawned from the sixth dimension...

So, yeah, these two snakes were bent on doing some kind of harm, a kind of evil. Pretty standard. And since it was my dream, I was the central reluctant hero. All very usual. I remember one I grabbed below it's head, and with a knife I had (it was some kind of serrated pocket knife, not really long enough for this kind of physical combat, but you make do with what you have at hand in dire circumstances...), I severed it's head from it's body. The blood was red, and sort of thick, not thick like human blood, but kind of gluey, like it was some kind of automobile lubricant. And there wasn't enough of it, the thing just didn't have enough blood in it's body compared to it's size, as if it simply didn't need the blood to run it's biological mechanism.

The second one I got ahold of, I had the intention of doing him in the same as his twin. I went to work on what would be the neck, but this one, perhaps because of my overconfidence due to my previous success, was quite a bit more difficult. Where the first put up little resistance due to losing his head in a rapid manner, the second writhed about violently, and was extremely difficult to hold with only one hand, especially considering I could barely get one hand around it's thick, squirming body. The knife didn't go cleanly through in one go, and he made a violent thrashing. I had to try several more times to finally do him in, resorting to sawing at the neck with the short knife. I never was able to cut through the body completely, but I finished the job nonetheless. It was like sawing through some kind of thick, ropey leather.

The exciting part of all of this, was my fearful resignation to the whole event. Certainly, an encounter of this type is rather unsettling, considering the violence, and adding to that the otherworldly creatures attacking me. It is interesting to me how little, or almost no panic I felt, as if I was operating on some kind of auto pilot, some other voice or force guiding my actions. "Grab the neck" and I did, "Sever the head" and I did. It was not a matter of fear, reluctance, or furry. No emotion can I clearly recall. There was a part, far back in my mind that was thoroughly freaked out at how entirely bizarre the whole thing was, but the front of my mind was operating like a robot performing a function without a passion of any kind.

I suppose the striking points in the dream are these personal observations. I don't have any kind of usual clever twist ending to this blog, I was mostly entranced by the funky and spooky monsters, and the strange, vacant way I dispatched them.

I guess I found myself almost as otherworldly as the monsters themselves...

vooting

Well, I did some research on vooting and came up with nothing. So bear with me. The only solid reference to 'voot' I found at urbandictionary.com, but that describes 'voot' as a variant of 'woot' mostly used by girls, for reasons I didn't really understand.

Now, 'vooting' describes the sound, or act of creating the sound of your upper teeth vibrating on your lower lip. It makes a kind of 'vvvvvvvv' sound. Some people can intuitively make this sound, probably even at this moment as you read this. Others, sadly will only show their teeth, and say "vvvvvvv". You see, the voot sound isn't produced with the throat at all. In fact it feels more like you're sending air through your nose and vibrating your upper palette. Perhaps someday, a government subsidiary will fund a scientific research project into the mechanics of vooting... until then these humble illustrations will have to suffice.



That is some random dude vooting. He appears quite good at it...



And this is a self-portrait of myself, vooting. I couldn't really tell you why I look so surprised, I can actually voot quite well.

I couldn't really work it into my fancy paragraphs up there, but I must credit Mr. Ethan Marak as responsible for coining, or at least, relaying the terms 'voot' and 'vooting'. He is also quite good at vooting, if memory serves... I'd link you to his sweet stop motion site, but I can't seem to locate it anymore. Bummer.

photos, two

I take pictures with a camera also. There's a couple of pics of people that I like a lot. The first one is straight out of the camera with only a slight exposure adjustment, and the second has no alterations at all. I do like to play with photoshop, but most of the pictures I take that strike me like these two generally require very little fiddling. And I prefer to keep 'fiddling' to a minimum when presenting images as 'photos' as opposed to 'artwork'. Just a personal quirk.




Most pictures I take that I have much interest in are usually macro pics of flowers. They don't move around much and you don't have to talk to them and tell them how to pose. People are far more complicated...

three dudes

These three dudes are up to no good, you can just tell by the looks on their faces, although one of them is less sure of his involvement in what the other two have planned. The one guy seems to be aware of this, and the other appears consumed by his own thoughts of chicanery.

Either that or they are about to go into a bar, and that one guy needs to get home to his wife...

bacon-face

I used sit down at the computer, sometimes on break at work, sometimes at home or a friends machine, and paint or draw stuff just to distract my mind. If you happen to read my other blog I'm sure you'd understand that I basically think about everything too much, as long as it pertains to my own existance, and the complications thereof.

This is one of those. I sat down with Painter 5 probably and just started painting. One of those you never know what you'll end up with kind of sessions. This is what I got after a little while of screwing around. It never ended up becoming anything, I just went back to work and it just lingered around.

A friend of mine saw it afterwards and pointed out to me that it looked similar to Francis Bacon's style of painting. I didn't think of it at the moment, but after considering, it does kinda look like something he might do. Which is pretty flattering since I like Bacon's work alot.

How's this?

First, I hope I don't leave anything out, this is really important, and I've been writing this post in my head already and usually the words and thoughts float out as fast as they float in. It's a rough life blogging things.

Okay, so let's try something new.

I'm a wordy sonofabitch. I started out thinking about an email I'm going to write, and it starts out simple enough and before I know it, it's a paragraph long and what I'm doing is writing a page just to explain the one sentence. It's like I can't just say the one thing. I have to make sure that every angle as to why I'm saying it is covered so there is no misunderstanding, or some kind of special insight into why I've been motivated to say the thing in the first place. It's like the impetus is more important than the thing itself.

I don't know. I'm weird.

I slept late today. I don't feel that good.

I posted a blog before this one.

I posted to my opialympia blog, which I keep for my artwork. That thing is picking up steam since I started it just a couple months ago. That makes me happy. The link is over there -> if you're at all interested.

I did some stuff on the computer afterwards. Some photo and art stuff.

I kinda did nothing for a little bit.

I've been feeling anxious today. Like having energy without focus.

No, like being aware time is passing and not doing enough with it. That's bugging me. Which is interesting because I was motivated to make myself a list of goals that I'd like to meet in the coming year. Not really a New Years resolution come early or anything, I just want to be more than I am right now.

I go to work, and that gives me purpose. I used to be married, and that gave me purpose. In the last year of the marriage all I was really focused on was getting us together, and starting a family. I don't have that anymore, and I'm not really sure what to do with myself. So I'm trying to get back to my creative stuff.

I discovered something about myself, something that was missing in my marriage, and I don't know how to describe it. I think... I know now how it is supposed to feel, how it is supposed to work, and now I see how I've been doing it all wrong. Well, wrong for me at any rate. I know without a doubt what I want or need in my relationship, should I ever be so lucky as to find it... There's more to this, but I'm not sure what to think of some of it. It has me confused, although it's not bad, there are just some contradictions that I have trouble wrapping my brain around. I know that it'll come clear in time. But I'm an impatient bastard, in truth.

It's like this: back when I first was separated, I had to by some new furniture. And I didn't want to buy cheap junk, I wanted stuff that would last a long time. Something substantial, something mine. One of the most important pieces of furniture, to me, is the coffee table. This is the center of a room, and it sets the character of a home, in my opinion. Anyhow, I knew what I wanted. I knew that when I saw it, I would know without a doubt that would be the coffee table for me. I turned into this high maintenance picky asshole. Angie took me around to I don't know how many furniture stores across L.A. and eventually she got frustrated with me. I think to the point that she didn't really want to help me look for one anymore. The process took a couple months, but I did find the thing.

One day I was walking down to the improv studio which is just a 5 minute walk from my apartment and literally 30 yards from my place, there was a furniture store, a little boutique place (it's not there anymore, not sure if it closed or just moved) and I just looked in casually and there it was. My coffee table. I walked in and bought it. And now it sits right here next to me. (I'm typing this on the floor on my 8 billion year old laptop, which I call a slaptop, because I have it plugged into my mixer which I use as a stereo receiver, so I can use it as an internet radio receiver. Pretty cool huh? Yeah, but my neck is starting to hurt and my right foot fell asleep.)

The point is, what I want in a relationship is that coffee table. I know it when I see it. I am terribly aware of that now, where as before I just wanted to find somebody to plug into that place in my life. Well, I realize now that won't work.

See how long winded that was? That's what I'm talking about. It's like some kind of mental vomit. I could actually go on more, but I feel like I've got it about 80% covered, and I just have to let the OCD take a break for a few minutes. It's hard to do sometimes.

And now I've forgotten a few of those things...

I dropped a small metal basket on my two toes next to the pinky toe on my left foot. I cracked the bones. What's funny is, when I walk around the house barefoot, they hurt all the time. I'm currently getting a slight shooting pain up the bottom of my foot. Great. But when I wear shoes they hurt much less. Strange.

This post (and the aforementioned email) started stampeding through my head as I was finishing up my shower here at 4 in the afternoon.

I took a 40 minute shower. I turned it on hat and sat down. I just sat there for awhile as my brain chattered on and on.

Now I'm going to run up to Whole Foods and by some food that's good for me, but which is a bit expensive... ah well.

But I think I'll also stop by Carl's Jr. and get a delicious hamburger. Man I'm craving one of those right now in a bad way.

I haven't eaten all day.

I'm staying home tonight. Alone. Maybe I'll watch a movie, or read my book. I'm reading Olympus, the second book to Illium, written by Dan Simmons. I'm quite a fan of his stories. This one is ridiculously complicated. Also, and I think I noticed this before but, Dan must have forgotten more classical literature than I've ever contemplated reading. That man has got to be one well read son of a gun.

Son of a gun. Now there's a phrase you never hear anymore.

I saw Demolition Man last night after Battlestar Galactica. 'Hurtlock' is a word that has joined my lexicon. Although they don't explain it in the movie, nor do we actually see one used, 'hurtlock' appears to be some kind of fighting move, such as a lock or hold in wrestling, designed to do nothing other than hurt the person receiving this lock. Too bad for them. They got put in a hurtlock.

Also, I really liked this phrase. I'm going to put it in random places from now on.

"You're the guy that was standing outside Taco Bell"

That's good stuff.

So there is a retardly long post that was really meant to be just a dumb list of diary like events from my day.

Cool words used in this post:

aforementioned
lexicon
hurtlock

the One, number 2

...but I can't remember if this one was the actual #2 out of the handful of these sketches I've done, although I suppose it doesn't matter... This is a good example of what I like about giving an impression of detail rather than explicitly drawing it in.

He seems rather resigned that he is the one...

This drawing only exists as a digital file now and it got corrupted someplace and it was thouroughly wacked out. I had a couple different versions of it, each messed up in a different way. I fixed it awhile back in Photoshop, although I can't remember exactly what I did. I know I used the red version and processed it to remove the red and clean up a few edges, but I didn't do much else to it. I decided to leave it alone and there are still quite a few problems with it, namely line edges, where you seen a lot of white surrounding the strokes. If I ever use it for anything important I'd clean up and make it look like something, but for now this is the way it exists... poor thing...

And I just realized I lost his hair in the cleanup.

Crap.

sometimes I DO get it right.

I realized that life is different than school.

In school you take tests, and if you get the answer right, you pass the test.

In life, you can get the answer right, and still fail the test.

I'm what? 33 years old? ...and I just now figured this out. I'm guessing you thought, from the sound of the title that this post would end a bit more upbeat...

4th down addendum

Seattle went for the first down on fourth, not once, but twice in Monday's game.

Hell yes. That's why they're my team.

Proof that sometimes, sometimes you just gotta hang your balls out there and go for it all... and it'll be worth it...

the one, one...

Well, this goes way back, about 8 years I believe. I'm not going to start in on how this began, but I have many of these things that say 'I'm the one' on them. I guess I'll upload them all eventually.

This is the first one I drew. I made it in Painter 5 I think on one of those old timey giant Wacom tablet that were like 8 feet across...

bubbles

When a bubble forms, it pushes everything around it out and away from the center. Inside there is a place that is untouched by what is beyond the bubble. Often times, with most bubbles it's just air inside. And the bubble's surface tension holds it together until whatever stuff the surface is made of collects in one area more than another across it's surface, then the bubble bursts as air slips between the molecules.

Now, while it is a generally accepted notion that people suffocate when their oxygen runs out, this is actually not true. What happens when trapped in a space, like a bubble let's say, where there is no means of ventilation, the body expels high concentrations of carbon dioxide, and will die of carbon dioxide poisoning as opposed to asphyxiating. Asphyxiation is the deprivation of oxygen altogether, which typically occurs when no air can be taken into the lungs whatsoever.

My horoscope today told me I'm not satisfied with the way things appear on the surface, that I have a deeper vision of what love should be, and I want to 'manifest' it in my life. If I fail to achieve this, I may slip into fantasies to make it appear real in my imagination.

Great.

I suppose the case can be made that a bubble bursting may actually save your life...

hair-face and anime-boy

These two go together only because they found their way onto the flatbed in the same go. I draw stuff like this in a space about the size of your hand, not really that big, but I guess about average. I'd say I tend towards the small size in terms of my drawings. The fun part about that is you generally use the texture of your line work to give the impression of details, rather than explicity drawing the details itself. It makes for some fascinating line quality. That is something you can expect me to make many posts about in the future....

4th down

It's 4th down, and I'm not kicking. I never bought that strategy.

Kicking on 4th just says, 'yeah, we suck, we f'd up, here's the ball, we quit'

I don't care what you may think of that. I understand the strategy of containing the enemy, limiting his gains and all that, but you don't win if you don't gamble. And I'm just one of those unfortunate souls who refuses to give in way past the point of any common sense and cleverness, who refuses to let control go out of his hands. I guess that's right what it comes down to.

So, yes, I am a stubborn dumbass, and have been bitten by my strategy of not kicking on 4th when anyone half as smart as me would.

In fact more times than not I have had my teeth kicked because of my view on this.

And I can't stand admitting it, but life has been teaching me to kick on 4th.

I hate it.

It feels like bending my elbows backwards.

The end zone is conviction and nothing is standing my way, even if I end up mulched against an iron wall... which is the case, more often than not.

It's an ugly truth.

the trouble with war

Aftermath.

Ghosts that haunt dark places, unexpectedly touching your shoulder as you pass by.

Scattered remains, charred; an assualt on the memories.

The smell, dry like charcoal.

Panic and fear are still dark waters at the bottom of your body, they are heavy stones dragging down your soul.

The place where your eye falls upon the broken landscape, searching.

For the defiant beauty, to peirce the dark veil, like a knife in reverse:

the wound of life across death's cheek.


*****

You know, it's not arranged very well at, as verse, or prose, but I think you get the idea. I wrote all this shit down awhile back actually, and it has sat around for some time... I guess you readers who read this all the time remember back in the day when I spoke of the 50 plus blogs that sit around like deformed aborted children, soulless husks belched up from the sixth dimension...

I'm trying to say its just a bunch of words, incomplete thoughts, emotions hacked at by a butcher possessed of too much zeal for his work.

But I think you get the point.

the dog from hell

I can hear
a woman
down a concrete
corridor

sobbing

the ratcheting
of her cries

like fishhooks in her
lungs

or the wet slapping
of meat
on lonely cement walls

I can't get it right.

If a hammer were... something... something important, good, and useful... and the nail was... something also important... important in a way that is wholesome and good, you know... it contains some nutritional value...

It seems all I've managed to do is smash my fingers.

Entropy and the machine

I run. I'm a runner. It was really the best thing I was good at. I was fast. At my best I could pass the second fastest guy in high school, giving 110%, and could about achieve neck and neck with the number 1 guy pushing that to 120%. Damn he was fast. Somehow I felt like I was pushing myself until all my parts would just come apart and explode, like a race car will, pushed to the limit. And he never seemed as tweaked as I felt, but at least I made him work for it.

These were sprints. Long runs I wasn't much good for. I've been told by my doctor, who works to undo all the muscle damage I have now, that people usually fall into two categories, ones where the nerves fire all the muscles at once, and those were the muscles have a 'slower rate of fire' and so don't tire out so fast. I guess the trade is speed for endurance. I would've been a good receiver in football I suppose, but I'm so skinny I'd probably have been broken in half before getting to college.

At any rate, there isn't much exciting to tell here, expect that fifteen years after high school, it's not the muscles that bitch all day, it's the joints. Finally... finally they have all gotten together, organized some kind of committee and unanimously voted to go on strike. And I have to tell you, this time I better give into their demands. My ankles are bad, they've actually been swelling, which can happen with damaged ankles, and mine are hurting from the last couple runs I've gone on. I hope it's not gout at any rate, which is the other possibility... My knees are complaining equally. The right hates stairs... the left hates turning corners.

Goddamn bitches, the lot... but like public transportation, the city that is me would grind to hault if I didn't give them every benefit they ask for.

Ice seems to shut them up at least, but I need to find out what else they need. Maybe some good old fashioned deep tissue, acupressure, or myotherapy is in order... bastards...

Thank God I have them around...

meet Mr. Huxtable

Mr. Huxtable is the quintessential boy in a wooden box. I'm not sure what goes on inside that box, but I am convinced somehow that it is essential for his continued existence. The two wheels is another thing that baffles me, but somehow he remains upright. I imagine he is some sort primitive iron-and-gears 'Segway' created by dark magic.

He was christened Mr. Huxtable by Kevin, and the drawing was done on a Toshiba Tablet PC in Alias Sketchbook, provided by Jurco. I need to get me one of those someday...

Rust.

Seriously.

Okay, so what the hell has happened to Los Angeles? Daylight Savings Time has paid us a visit. Come and gone. All Souls has raised the dead and left them to rot in the past. And for the last several days, *everyone* in Los Angeles is driving like an old lady.

To be fair, many of them are, in fact, old ladies, but this isn't the point. Los Angeles has plenty of drivers to be sure, but what I've encountered is boggling my brain. They are driving slow. Real slow. Like 20 mph in 35 or 40 mph zones.

Anyone who has driven in Los Angeles knows that traffic is retarded, there's a hojillion drivers on the road every second second of the day, and gridlock can be had as readily as oxygen is acquired simply by expanding one's lungs.

Well, that explains why they drive slow, right? First off, what should be in the previous paragraph but isn't because I've already passed into this paragraph, is that, when given *any* opportunity, drivers here will stand on it.

God, I love that phrase, and I had no notion I'd use it here in this post. "Stand on it." Brilliant.

So here you have a fair understanding of Los Angeles traffic. Too many drivers who all want to go fast, right now. I'm sure you understand that this equation produces assholes. Let me explain.

((too many drivers)^2 * speed) / time = assholes

You see that science can predict what happens in large industrialized areas without futuristic public transportation. But that isn't the point. What science *cannot* predict, is the random periods of time when LA drivers drive ridiculously slow. As I stated five paragraphs ago, drivers having been driving at an unusually slow speed recently.

What you might expect to explain this is the aforementioned gridlock, however, I have observed no unusual increase in the volume of traffic. In fact, in one example I can give, there were four cars ahead of me traveling 10 mph under the posted speed limit. These four cars occupied up to a quarter mile. A QUARTER MILE. FOUR CARS. There is obviously plenty of space for four cars in a quarter mile to attain a speed matching a moderate amount of speed, up to and including 35 mph. But this isn't happening. Allow science to explain.

((too many drivers)^2) * (traffic volume + gridlock) / time = assholes * WTF?

The conundrum is that for inexplicable reasons people are driving too slow to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.

And the result is that I am pissed off. I have places to go. You see, I too, am a LA driver. So get out of my Goddamn way. Now.



The point to all of this is, I haven't written a blog in nearly three weeks. I wasn't sure I'd remember how.

doing the robot...

I was, in fact, standing in the kitchen doing the robot, but as exciting as it is depicted in this drawing, I was alone, pop-locking and concerned my neighbors would see me, considering my front door was open.

Where are the nukes ?

Okay, so I usually blog about self centric existential whiny baloney, but today we're straying from the path. You say to yourself "oh Christ, finally!" I know, I know, this is the moment you've been waiting for through the nearly one hundred posts I've made to this blog. I'm sure you're going to be thrilled...

I am a huge fan of the television show, Battlestar Galactica. I'm sure many of you are. Some aren't because it's Science Fiction, and any right thinking mature adult would never watch Science Fiction, but they are above such childish nonsense. Or maybe they're just insecure. But enough insults for the neophytes...

The show has just began it's third season, and is better than ever. This is, in my opinion, the boldest television show I've ever seen. I'd liken it to the Soprano's when they arrived on the television scene. The human drama in BSG picks up where Soprano's left off. While Soprano's dealt with very personal details in a few people's lives, BSG does the same and adds to that the larger struggle of an entire society uprooted through a holocaust, trying to find order out of chaos, fighting fear of the unknown and fleeing before certain destruction at the cold metal hands of the Cylons.

The writing on this show is at the top of it's field. The writers never shy from making hard choices in their writing, many times having to face serious situations they've painted themselves into, killing a major characters, forcing these people to make hard choices they never thought they'd face, becoming idealists or murders under situations that leave them little choice, and we get to see them struggle with the dark consequences...

Alright, so I can't say enough to build this show up upon some Babylonian pedestal, but the big point I need to make in this blog is...

(This is spoiler material if you haven't seen the show up to the 4th episode of the 3rd season, so if you don't want to be spoiled, get the fuck out. Now.)

Where the hell are the nukes ?

At the start of season one, we learn that the Battlestar Galactica is carrying five nuclear warheads, and that Adama is concerned for the small number of nukes he has at his disposal, assuming that with the destruction of the Colonials entire civilization there are no more nukes to be had, so these nukes will need to be pressed into service only under the most dire of circumstances.

Adama first gives Baltar one nuclear warhead so that Baltar can use the radioactive material as a component in his 'Cylon detector'. Adama uses a second warhead against a Cylon Basestar at the conclusion of season one.

We go all of season two without seeing any of the remaining three nukes used. In addition, the fleet picks up a second Battlestar, the Pegasus, and we can only assume she also carries nukes, although we are never told such.

As far as I can tell, we start season three with at least three nukes, and we find the Colonials trapped on a planet in captivity where the Cylons have in effect created a concentration camp type scenario.

Adama takes the Galactica into battle against four Basestars, and we get the impression there is no way for the Galactica to stave off the onslaught of this many Basestars. The Colonials are rescued but the Galactica is crippled and in the fatal grip of the Cylons. It's at this time the Pegasus appears and drives off the Cylons long enough for the Galactic to escape, although she is lost in the battle.

But seriously, where the hell are the nukes? If Adama seriously thought the Galactica was about to be destroyed at the hands of the Cylons, and the fate of over 40 thousand Colonials was hanging in the balance, wouldn't he pull a couple of those bad boys out?

The topic is never broached. We as viewers have no idea what the status of these warhead is. This is the only major glaring point I have with the series at this point. I know its a silly little thing, but come on. Baltar gave the warhead he acquired for his detector to a Cylon agent and it was used at the end of season two to destroy the Cloud Nine. So it's not as if nukes just don't exist anymore.

Okay, I'm rambling now. But I'd really like to know what is up with this, because the rescue of the Colonials in the latest episode, the tactics used by Adama, these were outrageous and wholly unexpected. Beyond bold. I stood up out of my chair when I saw what was happening. The writers of this show gave to me the most amazing moment in my television viewing experience that I can remember.

But they must have forgotten they had a couple nukes to help them out. I'm curious to see if this is addressed in the show or not...

It's all about the pie...

God gave everyone a piehole, but some of us use it more appropriately than others.


Today is pie day at work. I love pie. Pie loves me. This blog reads at the 3rd grade level.

Last night I went by Jack in the Box and bought a Pumpkin Pie Shake.

Today I had pumpkin pie for Pie Day at work.

I love pie.

You should too.

not altogether together

I'm hungover, but not in the sense that I am in pain, just tired and a little slow.

Actually that's only partially true. A long time ago, I was swimming in the ocean off the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It was... 1993 and a hurricane had come through the week before, so there was a lot of chop in the water. The waves were coming in diagonally across the beach. Not that it matters I suppose.

I was standing in the water about waste deep facing the beach saying something to my girlfriend of the time, can't remember what, and I didn't notice this right away, but, the water started draining out to sea very fast, until the water level had gone down to my ankles. I looked down to my feet, wondered what this was all about, and turned around to see where the water was going. When I turned around my eyes followed the water from my feet, all the way to the top of the wave that was about twice as tall as me. Before I could react the wave picked me and drove me head first toward the ground. I was facing chest down, underwater, and the power of the wave was trying me bend me backwards, my legs over my back, over my head.

If you have ever snapped a branch across the shin of your leg, you know the feeling of the wood the moment just before it gives way and breaks in two.

That is how my spine felt at that moment. Spooky.

I fought as hard as I could, not to break, not to drown and as fast as it came the water left. I lifted myself out of the water disoriented and my right arm hung useless at my side. It wasn't broken, but it had been dislocated at the shoulder. Only for a moment thank God, but what a fucking strange pain that is. My arm slowly recovered but for awhile afterwards I had spams in the muscles, and in certain positions my arm would get weak and couldn't hold its own weight. I never experienced a dislocated shoulder before, and I really wouldn't recommend it. It's not the worst thing I've ever felt, but it is strange feeling...

So I wake up this morning and try to lift myself up out of bed and damn if that arm didn't feel exactly like the time it was dislocated. I remember all of the night as far as I can tell, so I'm not really sure what I did to screw up my shoulder in such a way... maybe it will always be a mystery.

Also, there was a sharpie pen in my bed and a business card duct taped to my shirt.

It was a good night.

Wait for it....

My eyes hurt from 12 hours at work.

I got a thing on my neck. like a nerve thing. I think it's like the one Homer had before he turned into the Incredible Homer.

My cat went nuts and I gave him the evil eye then we got into a staring match for like a full two minutes. FTW

My left hand fingers are now dumb from too much work. I can't type. They just sort of spasm when I try to move them. I wish I was joking here.

For the first time the other day, I actually HAD to wear my glasses to see what I was doing... *sigh*

My mouse scroll wheel seems to be set to scrolling an entire page at a time. That's a pain. I'll have to fix that at some point when I'm not lazy. Probably never.

I'm tired.

I think that's about it.

Oh wait.


The good news is, I'm having a shitload of friends over for a party on Friday the 13th. I am going through tons and tons of photos and art for opialympia (I am very happy about this, although it is a load of work...) and uh... I'm healthy. Oh, and work is really cool right now.

Things are generally good. It's just that nobody jumps out of their skin when it's good, we usually just complain when things are bad.

It was a lot easier to type the gripes up top, but I had to work at the happy stuff. Although I'm glad I did now...

Spare me your words

Unbridled anger.

You. You coaxed me. You lured me. I trusted you. Fuck you. Fuck you so very much.

Then you. You. You were full of lies. To cover your shame. But that didn't stop you. Your shame was more important than your words reassuring. Fuck you.

You too. Of the many many things you didn't want me to see, hiding all this with your words. How much more do you keep under cover, in the shadows, wanting none to see? Deceit. Fuck you.

And you. With your candy coated shit. It has no nutritional value for me. It has only rotted in my stomach. Flattery gets you to the 8th level of hell, only one level above the frozen throne of Satan himself. Fuck you too.

You over there, somewhere. You have no words. Where are your words at all? Where are *you* for that matter? You said something once. Your words should be so important, more important than most others. Where are you? Well you get one too. Fuck you.



I always knew what 'unbridled anger' meant, but I never before today picked up on the metaphor. What was, for me, a simple way of expressing anger above anger, is now an elegant manner of relating the unstoppable fury, the reptilian, mindless rage. Beast set free.

Some days are just darker than others.

Veritas Vos Liberabit

precipitation

After watching Constantine the other day, and posting that nonsense about cats and God and baptism and Dave Brubeck, I grabbed up my said Dave Brubeck and jammed it all the way into the freaking CD player. Yeah, I still gots a CD player, but I had to hook it up. So I hooked it all the way up and blasted that. Man I love that album.

Alright.

So afterwards I put in Charles Mingus. Excellent.

Then it happened.

I have a Technics 5 disc changer from 800 billion years ago. It is the kind with the huge tray and the 5 disc carousel that goes around in a circle. Fairly primitive as far as CD changers go, but I sort of have a romantic draw to those things. Something about it's limited capacity and the fact that it spins around in a circle in such an inefficient manner...

Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um wrapped up and the changer changed (as it is wont to do, being a changer after all, changing is it's primary function, second only to the actual playing of CD's... can you have a secondary primary function? Is that some kind of paradox?) and it returned to Brubeck's Time Out! as those were the only two CD's in the machine...

I let Time Out! go for a little bit since I started the album at Take Five, the actual song played in Constantine, because, having my memory tickled in just such a way, I needed to hear exactly that. But as Take Five approached, I decided it was time to move on to another CD, and I contemplated for a moment.

Now I know I'm going on and on like I am some sort of jazz guru, or aficionado, or enthusiast, or some other adjective, but I'm not. I don't know all the specifics of who did what, who wrote this or that and all the stats of the different players... I just like jazz. Not that noodly new age crap. But real jazz. I like old jazz from 100 years ago. I like the modern improv jazz. I like Count Basie, Monk, Miles, Coltrane. That shit rubs all over me like some kind of hot oily feminine hands caressing my body into some warm sleepy state where I can no longer tell the time, and I forgot how I got there...

But really I don't know a lot about jazz, or all the great musicians and singers. I fall into the category of "I know what I like". And I know it when I hear it. I guess that's the best way to know about anything, really. I've heard a ton that I don't know what it was, or how to ever find it again... but that's how things go sometimes.

Now that I've branched off so far you forgot what the hell I was talking about, Mingus finished off, the quaint roundy CD changer returned to Brubeck (and who can blame it, really?), I figured it was time to move on to the third disc of the night. So I went through my (not) extensive jazz collection and said "wow" and pulled out Sun Ra's Space Is The Place. Man, what a nutty piece of music. It is a beautiful assault on sanity, coaxing circles out of squares. And it struck me just then.

I am a huge fan of the Swedish band, Meshuggah.

Deep breath here. I have no idea what the hell you, reader, are about, but Meshuggah is one of the heaviest (death) metal bands ever to torture the audio spectrum. I will not attempt to convey here what they sound like. Words will fail. I assure you.

My first experience with Meshuggah was in 1998. On a fluke I bought Meshuggah's Chaoshpere, put it in the (quaint 5 disc roundy roundy changing) CD player and thought to myself, "Self, what the hell is this shit?" I couldn't make out what was going on, heads or tails, I couldn't find the rhythm, I didn't hear the melody. It was noise. Just like all those stodgy old parents had been telling kids for the last thirty plus years...

I took it out, put it in it's (jewel, love that term) case, and there it sat, like a festering seed, for six months.

Then one day... for some unknown reason, much like the time I actually bought the CD, I took it out and jammed it into the CD player. I figured I bought the damn thing, don't know why, but, I'd give it another go. The ol' college try, whatever the fuck that is.

And...

BAM! It hit me over the head. It was like the mirror shattered and now I saw past the world reflected back at me. I know that sounds deep and transcendental and whatever the hell kind of experiential crap you want to call it... but musically I was floored. Suddenly I heard what they were doing. I heard the drums, like some kind of seven armed, lumbering elegant beast, falling and catching itself, the massive guitars grinding, crashing and then flying, the two meeting together in accord with one another and falling back again. I don't mean to, but I think of Mozart, and I am no master of music theory, but just in regards to his complexity, how he was able to take so many varied melodies and have them compliment and dance with each other...

In a very different way, Meshuggah accomplishes the same effect. Do they sound like Mozart? No. Definitely not. If you like classical music will you like Meshuggah? I highly doubt it. Seriously. Am I a nut job? Yes, but my point is still valid. There are a few of you out there, who's minds and musical tastes are so freaking open and broad that you will listen past pounding drums, or tender flutes or jackhammer guitars, or ferocious pipe organs, and hear the music, hear the pattern, the rhythms inside rhythms, and the melodies flirting around them, and you'll be satisfied like the eater of a fine banquet.

What does this have to do with Dave Brubeck? Very little. When I listened to Sun Ra's Space Is The Place it sounds just like a horn and vocal version of what Meshuggah plays. They are so close together... and yet the instrumentation keeps them polarized. Kind of sad that the timbre of grindy guitars or gentle horns carry more weight for most people than the music itself.

Either I am highly evolved, musically, or I have really lost perspective. I don't know which. All I can say is, I know what I like when I hear it, and both of these strike the same chord in me...

Fundamentally astounding.

Crosswalks are not babysitters.

I cannot recount how many times I've seen this lately in Los Angeles. This place has the most brainless fucks of any place I've lived. I *can* tell you that stupid people are everywhere, but this just takes the cake...

Women who push their babies in a stroller out in front of a moving car, REGARDLESS that the light is red and that they have the crosswalk sign and the right of way, WITHOUT LOOKING at the car to check that it is actually stopping, let alone taking notice of them, are FUCKING STUPID. God gave you a neck you stupid bitch, use it. IT IS YOUR CHILD'S LIFE! Stop pushing it out in front of a moving car without first checking that it's safe. For fuck sake.

So many people in the world aren't worth the carbon they're made of.

Finally!

You know, the great advancement in men's rings has been the inner contour. If you do not know about this grand invention I'm guessing you've never been married. It's a nice little bevel on the inside edge of the ring that improves it's comfort. My wedding ring had this, wherever that thing went to...

Mankind has been beveling things for ages, but only recently have we begun to bevel rings in an effort to make the lives of men the world over such a gentler experience.

I have owned, for probably 6 or 7 years, a ring, which has been the reverse of this comfort contour. It is a rounded dome shaped exterior, with a flat inner surface. This results in an edge on the ring which points directly at the finger. It is quite sharp and rather *un*comfortable. I cannot tell you exactly why I bought the damn thing in the first place. It also had a design cut into the top that looked vaguely like some sort of celtic batman symbol.

This ring has done nothing more that turn my finger green, snag my jeans or anything else it would come in contact with, stab my finger with that silly carved out design that is a copy of nothing that exists in the world, and generally cause trouble wherever it would go. Nevermind that everyone who saw it would coo over it, telling me how cool it looked.

Looked.

I hated that little bastard.

Well, as luck would have it, I was in a hurry to put on my rings this past Saturday as I was about to go onstage, and wouldn't you know it, as I pulled all five rings of mine out of my pocket, there goes one of them spinning across the floor, behind some ladders and assorted debris, under a rickety wooden step and off into some magical land I cannot enter.

Of course you know the ring I'm talking about is that pointy edged little fuck I've been toting around like a dumbass for half a decade.

For a second I thought to myself, oh shit, I lost one of my rings. And as I resigned myself that it was just gone and to accept the situation, I realized it was the most hated of my rings. I suddenly understood this was a good thing, something that should have happened a very long time ago.

Goodbye you little fucker. I hope nobody finds you.

News Of The World !

Again, this was written some time ago. I was reluctant to post it. But by popular demand, here it is. Have fun.

****

I was happy today. Then I cried. But I had a good reason. And I'm not going to tell you what it is. But then I was happy again.

I ate two peaches. You have no freaking idea how difficult it has been for me to learn how to properly let a peach ripen. Somehow I manage to always make them stay hard, and then they immediately rot. Don't ask how, I don't know, it's just a fortunate trait I seem to possess. And so I had two peaches turn out great. Soft. Juicy. Actually very juicy. I made a delicious mess. At work on my desk. Oh well. I also ate an apple.

I had coffee. A bunch. Well, a bunch for me. I really haven't been much of a coffee drinker as I've gotten older. Lately I've made a swing back. I think it's the proliferation of fancy coffee joints, like Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Tully's, Peets, et al. in the last ten years that has brought me around. I used to just drink black regular coffee. Pretty harsh by today's standards. Sort of like back in the day when the only martini you could get was a gin martini, and not good gin at any rate. I think fluid intake for pleasure has reached an all time high in its paletteability in recent times. I just made up a word.

Today is Saturday and I'm at work, but I got a moment to write. I write a lot these days. In fact, I think I'm also writing a book. I haven't written in years. A book would be a nice accomplishment in this life, whether or not it were to be published. I can't really imagine being published. I have no point of reference for that sort of thing.

Sometimes I feel like Carrie from Sex and the City. I mean, I'm a guy but she's got all those shoes. But that's not it. I come to a time in my day, alone, and mulling over myself, my life, events in my day or week, in my friend's lives around me, you know, *everything* and sometimes something grows from whatever seed has been planted through those times. It's really nice. I haven't written much in a *very* long time, and although I'm exceedingly rusty, I am starting to feel some of the cobwebs coming loose. Very cool when you see progress, especially when it's back towards something you once had. Like getting back into shape. That is something I've done over the past two years. I went from being the heaviest I've ever been in my life, to almost the weight and physical condition I was in during high school. Of course the cardiovascular system is lagging the most, I'm still pushing it a bit. When I'm not working overtime and sitting at a desk. In the dark. Turning into a blob.

Man that paragraph rambled.

So, back to Carrie. I get to this moment, sometimes everyday, sometimes only occasionally during the week and I am compelled to right this self aware thoughtful whatever. Honestly I think I am closely examining my life. I used to write fantasy stories, horror or scifi, or horror-scifi. Now I am more interested in writing what reflects real life, real people and real experiences. Or something close to that. It's actually pretty satisfying. As if I am now swimming with the tide, instead of fighting my way against it.

I don't know. I have been tending to write stuff like this and it feels strange because it's new to me, never having kept a journal or diary or anything like that. Keeping a journal always seemed laborious to me. And silly. Today I ate a peach. Today I talked to my mother on the phone. Today I fell on my head. Strange. But that's pretty much what I'm doing right here. I find myself in a strange place that I don't recognize and I'm looking around wondering how I got here and I have no map of the terrain.

I wear my great-grandfather's ring on my wedding-ring finger. To keep girls away. It's just a ring he had, not his wedding ring. It is strange I know, but I need to be alone in that department. Things have changed for me regarding women. There is one out there, maybe, and that's how it's going to happen. I'm done screwing up that part of my life. However long it takes. It's just how my guts feel. It's an odd feeling, I've never experienced it before, and it isn't unwelcome. Like the change as I get older, peaches or apples taste better than candy did when I was young. They're better for you and that's what has to happen in my life. Something a bit more healthy. If I can't have something good for me I'd rather go without. I guess that's quite a bit different than, almost everybody I know. Except for one man. He is a friend of mine I don't see often, but he a *great* human being. I look up to him in many regards. I don't think he even knows this... that's pretty cool.

I'm becoming rather self absorbed. Well, for me it seems self absorbed. I've always been pretty modest. I never cut up in class. I always kept to myself when I was young and drew pictures or wrote stories. The older I get, the more of a jackass I've become. I do things to piss people off, but only if it makes them laugh in the end. I drive my co-workers nuts. I seem to be a late bloomer class clown of some kind. I think it's just an attention thing. I never wanted attention before, and now I do. Self-absorbed. For some time (about 6 years now) I've been having pictures taken of me toasting with my coffee mug. I have no idea what that's about, I just do it. But it's all about me really. Maybe I'm on some voyage of self discovery as they call it. I guess we all are in a way. I just never figured it out until recently. Better late than never.

I have a touch of bronchitis right now. I guess I had some sort of lung thing after I was born. Oxygen tent and that whole bit. Now I get bronchitis on occasion, but usually only if I get run down. Stress and drink will bring it on, two things that attack your immune system. Seems reasonable, right?

I use gmail to write my blogs. I think that's weird. Actually it's not. Gmail is accessible where ever I go, so it makes sense. I have FOURTEEN blogs at one stage or another right now in my drafts folder.

I dress nice. The nicest I've ever dressed. I like it. Hell, I used to think suits were for slaves, and now I'd wear one everyday, because they kick so much ass. I never realized before how rich the world is and how much it has to offer. I was always so busy going against the grain. I never listened to 'radio'. I didn't even own a TV until 6 years ago, and at that never really watched it. And I *definitely* didn't watch anything popular. Except Simpsons. But I didn't like them until season 3 or 4 anyway, because everybody else *did* like them. I just couldn't ever be like anybody else. I still think I'm not like anybody else, but now I've pulled my head out of my ass and I've realized I don't have to try so hard out of fear of being mistaken for a MTV or GQ clone, to be different, to just be myself.

I'm growing a beard. For no good reason. We'll see how long this lasts. I look quite a lot like my father with it. Which actually startled me in one photograph I saw. The resemblence was freakish. I don't think I look that great with a beard. I mean, I can carry it off just fine, but, personally, I think I am more handsome when shaved. Which is how I prefer my face. Clean shaven is the way to go lately. I guess the beard is like a time out in the facial hair grooming department. I think this goes with the ring wearing I mentioned above. Chicks in general don't dig beards. Maybe I should just stop showering. Or even putting on clothes...

I was onstage tonight. I perform improv. Not stand-up. I have no desire or talent for stand-up. But improv with a group, creating scenes and stories out of nothing, live. It is a crazy rush. As much as playing any sport I've tried. It can be a bit physical, I was thrown around a bit tonight, you know, being stabbed, punched, hit in the face with a door, falling down an escalator. Of course all those things are make-believe, but you're still falling and rolling for real on the stage. I've come off stage with a few scrapes and bruises. One torn tendon and a twisted knee once. That's really rare though, and certainly nothing near what could ever happen for you in a football or soccer game. But it's not even that, although it's fun to be energetic and create this worlds that become very real physically, it's the psychological rush. You have to pay a lot of mental attention, to what your teammates are creating, what they are saying, what story is evolving, who their character or personality is. And then you have to make appropriate choices, and grab random accidents that happen and explore them and bring life to them. All these things in a split second. It really is quite a rush when it is going well. I'm so happy to be involved in this. And the people I have around me here in this are some great people.

*Addition to the improv injury list: I got backhanded in a big way this past weekend by a girl. Damn. I tasted blood. My gums are black and blue. Heheheh. She got a good one in on me... accidentally right?*

Life is good. For all of it's crazy unexpected twists and turns.

Something snapped in me recently. Something in my brain. It's been straining for a long while I think and finally... finally it gave up. It couldn't resist any longer. And you know what? It's sort of like a spinal adjustment, or cracking your knuckles. It actually feels good, although I'm not sure how to navigate it just yet. Like that first time you ride a bicycle. It sure is fun and exciting, but you haven't quite figured out how to work with the machine, so the two of you can get along down the road without one of you messing up the other. I'm taking a few spills, but I'm also experiencing a new joy I don't think I've felt since... in a long damn time. And now with the added perspective of experience. Like having some lifetime of knowledge and also getting back a bit of that childlike naivety or wonder.

That is the current state of affairs, this second weekend of September '06. Whether or not you care is trivial. I suppose if you've read this far I must hold some sort of fascination, whatever that may be.

It's interesting to put my day into perspective and see what is going on in my life. How many of us actually take a moment to look at this stuff, things that we choose and things that happen everyday that are forgotten as soon as they pass? And something that I find fascinating, is just how much stuff I am missing in this. There has to be five times as much stuff that swims past my conscious mind while trying to capture these few moments, than what is actually here in writing.

For the record I am rather uncomfortable with writing out my life like this.