Song of the Day, Jan 5th.

I should have posted the other day, because this is exciting. I reported in one of those retarded surveys on mySpace that I had the Mexican Hat Dance song in my head for most of the day. Normally that would drive me bonkers, but that's a pretty cool song.

Today it's "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. It was there in my pre-waking dreams. Couldn't tell you why. It's still there, and bugging me out. I'm not the biggest Journey fan...

Where does this shit come from?

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?