Ars Inconditus

From out the clutches of vulturous time

2012-01-17T07:25:00.000-08:00

Once again, it has been quite a while. Many things have happened since my last update; I turned 30, the world turned 2012... that's about it. Nothing proceeds. Stagnation reigns. Pernicious lifehate drives me from one alcoholic stupor to the next, Sometimes I paint.

A series of 5 that sucks in parts. I like some of it.

A brief experiment with painting ink on wood, and a misguided exercise in wishful thinking. I need to try painting on different wood surfaces, I like the background.

This one is weird. The sketch was better.

At this point I got addicted to vignettes. I'm still working with this circle thing, Also arches. These altars turned out alright.

Also I've been looking at a lot of old christian iconography. I had another one of these but I ruined it.

More circles, plus the first time I've ever painted conifers. It was fun, and I need to try this more.

Circles circles circles.

This is going to be used as album art this year, I believe. At this point I got addicted to doing halos like this, and I expect to see many more in the near future.

Yep.

This is actually my favorite thing in a long time. Radical direction change about half way through turned out quite well. It impelled me to rekindle my old illustration project idea, which I am slowly working on now.

Yeah, so that's it. Scant on description, sorry. Life has a funny was of perpetually falling apart. Walking into the sea seems looks more and more appealing every day.

It's only castles burning

2011-10-25T18:42:00.000-07:00

It's officially been a long time since I posted anything new here. I've been medium busy, medium drunk. More drunk. I haven't had it in me to paint much lately. Pathetic. Here's the last two odd month's worth of garbage.

Wandering Parnassus- Experimenting with this swamp effect. Successful. Also more of these half-timbered tudor style buildings. Those are my favorite.

Blood on the Snow- I had this pot of white ink sitting around for ages. I finally decided to try something with it, and promptly became enamored with the way it can layer. I went off on a bit of a snow kick after this point.

The Wolf Throne- This is my favorite of these snow things. I like the rangy legs of the wolf. One of my favorite canids is the Maned Wolf, I think that shows a it whenever I paint a wolf of any kind. Good proportions on those beasts.

The Harvest- I consider this a failure. The proportions on everything here just hit my eye all wrong.

August Company- Next.

Unquiet Spirit- This is an idea I need to mess with a bit more. This was a 9x12" page ruined by my inability to properly conceive an image before I start splattering the place with ink. I just blacked the whole thing out and tried putting white over it. It works. I've got a few other pages that could use the cover-the-whole-fucking-thing-with-black treatment.

The Wolf Throne- I enlarged this in a fit of uninspired boredom.

The Struggler- I was starting to get bored just doing snow over and over again. It shows, because this just sucks.

Sword Bearer- I realized that I had never painted a moose. Problem solved. More swamp. General success.

All Guardian Spirits, Revolt- An incomplete scan, because the thing is too big for the scanner bed. I've got a few of these big watercolor blocks, but I very rarely put anything on them that I don't end up hacking to pieces with a sword. This is alright.

The Wild Hunt- This would be better of there wasn't ONE thing that I see which is unfixable and a ghastly disproportion. I won't point it out.

The March of the Doe Cult- This was unwittingly painted on the cardboard backing of a watercolor block. They don't intend that this cardboard be painted on, so this almost disintegrated. Luckily it did not, because I enjoy it.

Death Throes- More on the block. The complete thing looks a little better, because it's got more negative space.

The Tower and the Hydra- I picked up a small 6x6" block and I enjoy the hell out of it. It's an odd dimension, I've never really worked in a square. I've found that the size and shape of whatever I'm working on has a lot to do with how much I enjoy painting on it.

The Tower and the First Reckoning- Second in the tower triptych. This place has got all kinds of problems, obviously.

The Tower and the Onslaught from the Forces of the Earth- I was going to do a whole shitload of these. I still might. I started getting mentally fixed on it though, which smashed my ability to be creative. I've started to get a better grasp on the traps I lay for myself. I spin out volumes in my head, I rely on an idea, I stop developing it and start expecting it to do all the work. The end result is always the same, either the idea fades and I'm left with a bunch of half-complete garbage, or I keep banging away at something until I realize it's become a stagnant impulse that could go on forever. So I cut this off at three.

So there's my meager two months. It's black dog days for me, perpetually haunted by old ghosts. The bottle kills them pretty well. The creature's always been good for that. It doesn't solve any of my problems, but it sure does make them shut the fuck up for awhile so I can get some sleep.

BEHOLD!

2011-08-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a month, and I've managed to get back into form, after a few false starts, some grim failures, and some lessons learned. This will be a long one, so enjoy.

I don't rightly remember starting or finishing this. I was sleeping a lot during this period, and every so often I think I'd wake up and jot something down. Eventually this was done. It's ink, as I hadn't dusted off the watercolors yet.

This is watercolor. A self portrait, because I was accused of never doing any. Just a sketch, really, if I ever get vain enough to draw myself again I'll do a better job with this idea.

This was the first thing I'd done in ages that I actually liked. I need to do more like this. I don't have this one anymore. An old friend showed up out of nowhere one night, and we got to talking. He liked it, so I hacked it out of my sketchbook with my trusty old viking knife and gave it to him. It was supposed to be the first in a series of things involving this naked horseman, but that didn't pan out. I got out the watercolor for the first time in months and found my abilities rendered unto the void. I painted 2 or 3 pages and ended up tearing them apart because it looked like the muddied scrawlings of a mule-kicked simpleton. This ran me aground for a few more days. Then I started getting ideas again.

A little bit of a religious kick started me back off on the right foot. Olde time religion is something I love, and to me that always means flint knives and standing stones.

This was run-up to the next one. After my catastrophic return to watercolor, I decided to stick to ink for awhile. It was a good decision, I've got plenty of techniques to refine with it, and I'm working here in a much larger format. Anyhow, another olde time religion painting.

If the term "Religious crocodile sacrifice opus" has never been applied to any work before, let it be applied here first. I'm quite happy with this one. In-process, it went painfully wrong toward the end. Those light rays can be tricky. But thanks to the total opacity of black ink, no one will ever know.

I decided to to a quadtych incorporating skeletal remains in landscapes. I'd thought to do this awhile ago, but not until working on a larger scale was I able to get enough space for detail. I also used a different ink mixture for the wash on these, and will be doing a whole hell of a lot more of that in future.

The trees on these first two came out much better than I'd anticipated. The teeth on this one need work, but I'm loathe to touch it up for fear of ruining something I'm basically happy with.

This begs detail shots, because those goddam buildings took ages and are gorgeous. Half-timbered Tudor houses are now my favorite kind of buildings to paint. Aside from the background, this is entirely done with black india ink at different levels of dilution. Versatile business, that stuff.

More Tudor houses, a giant's skull with a Saxon sword jammed through it, trees. Yep. I like all of those things.

Someone from the frozen north requested warpaint. This inspired me to get some business done on the Ulf Kingraper saga I've been kicking around for a bit. I'm going to start it with stories of the future barbarian warlord's youth, here seen with some goblins who he is forcing to rob a caravan. A new method here, applying ink to light pencil sketches, then filling in lines later for definition.

And most recently this. Large portions of Ulf's adolescence was spent befriending this baby mammoth and killing unicorns. This story is bound to take ages to finish, but I've got nothing but ages to spare.

There we have it. The last month has been interesting. A couple weeks ago an old friend emerged from the woodwork. Just strolled on up while I was at work, after 2 years of total silence. The man doesn't even have an email address. He's been in China, studying international relations at Tsinghua, which is Zhongguo's equivalent to Harvard. We talked about old days and updated eachother on the present whereabouts of the old pack. Scattered to the four winds, we are, but we still manage to keep pace. Good times.

feh

2011-07-29T06:05:00.000-07:00

It has been some time indeed. It seems my stagnation extends even to pointlessly updating this repetitive waste of time. Ah, I don't mean it, baby, I'm just depressed. Anyway, BEHOLD!

I got an idea one night to do some arboreal octopi. Really, I just wanted to somehow incorporate tentacles in some way, and this gave me an excuse to also try a newer method with the trees and whatnot. I like this idea. I especially enjoy how lazy those goddam cephalopods must be.

So this starts the eight low gods. They are all emblazoned with the mark of the king of the forest, the octogram, so starting with an antlered octopus lounging in a tree seemed a natural thing. As of right now, I'm putting this ink thing on hold a bit, but once I start up again I hope to see a lot more of these bastards.

The second of the low gods, a four legged owl. Self explanatory.

I like how the proportions of this hare turned out. Of the eight, this one might me my favorite.

The bear, yelling like crazy. I'm never satisfied with the way I draw bears.

The wolf, looking hungry. I'm obviously losing interest in describing these.

Now, I had to do a deer, but there was very little I could do in the way of embellishments. I mean, it already has antlers. So instead, I just made it looking especially regal.

Ahhh, the ape. I like this one. The tongue was an experiment what turned out exactly as I imagined. Good work, me.

And this one is garbage. By this time, I just wanted to be finished with the eight low gods. And then I was! Great!

These three constitute the High Gods of the mountain. The Warlock, the Beast, and the Hermit. Here we have the hermit, sitting around. Hermits do a lot of that. I should know.

The beast, railing to the heavens. I like the idea that these three are constantly either fighting for or naturally shifting to and from the top position, thus dictating the general mood of the forest below. When they shift, the fiery brand of the mantle shifts as well. Right now, it's clearly causing this monster a great deal of what is either pleasure or discomfort. That much is unclear.

And the warlock. My favorite.

That's up to date. Lately, I have done nothing. I hadn't even picked up a pencil in weeks, until last night. And even then, it's like pulling teeth. I hope I stop being such a miserable piece of shit soon.

The Valley of the Low Gods

2011-06-19T04:24:00.000-07:00

More and more of this. I'm almost done with a second book full of these. I've painted two large panels as well, with many more of those on the way, hopefully. I've got to get myself writing. An event is planned for August that should be pretty goddam fantastic, if I can pull it off. My previous story (as yet unwritten), about fancy beasts murdering each other, is going to be put together in animatic format, with music and narration. This is going to be projected at the hostel, on a giant screen in the lobby, during an opening reception for a new art show featuring a section of the story panels framed in order. I've got to have the thing written soon, so we can finish music, sound and layout by August 1st. Trouble here being, I'm a lazy bastard without much day to day motivation to do anything but mope around being a lonely asshole. Fuck.

Anyway, onward!

Bartering with the subhumans would leave even the most stalwart confused and a little unsettled. But to track his quarry, the hunter must traffick with the untoward. His team of hunting beasts are an integral part in his greater revenge scheme.

Harried on all sides, boltshot and bleeding, the einhorn makes its mad dash. How will it turn out? Not well, I'll say that much. Once a beast gets a taste for unicorn blood, there is no turning back.

A jarring shift, but bear with me. I'd been working on this whenever I ran out of steam elsewhere. I still might add more to it, but I doubt it. It's gone through a few different permutations, and I'll probably leave it be here.

Back in action. Not much to say here. There's one less unicorn in the wood, that's for damn sure.

The King of the Wood. I'm pleased with this. It's not often I do something that I just plain like, but this is one of those cases. I'm going to reproduce it on a larger canvas soon. Good work, Mattheis.

I'm trying to approach a newer idea within this framework. I'm going to do a bunch of these taking place in the Valley of the Low Gods. Here's the entrance. More to follow, I'm sure.

I thought up this effect when I was messing up something else. It turned out alright, using two different types of ink allows for some interesting effects. I'm not sure what else I'm going to do with it, but it's another tool in the toolbox, I suppose. In any case, I do like ol' volcano wolf here.

Another experiment with the same effect as above, this time with some further messing around with masking agents. It's weird, that's all I've got to say. Using paper cement is a little to difficult on a small scale.

And this is my most recently completed large canvas. Nothing new, aside from the scale, really. I'm basically just re-working old ideas with these. I plan on having a whole bunch of them eventually, once I get the wherewithal to sit down and really work on them. As of right now, wherewithal is one thing I do not have.

The past two nights have yielded nothing. I'm not accustomed to that, and every short dry spell I have throws me off. Doing this is the only thing I've got anymore. If the ol' parnassus drifts too far afield I'll probably just walk into the ocean.

The Hunter and the Unicorn

2011-06-10T02:53:00.000-07:00

So again, working away. The busier I keep myself, the longer I can keep the black dogs at bay. But the pack grows daily, it might be time for a culling. Onward!

Despite its simplicity, this is definitely one of my favorites. The fur is hard to see in the scan, but the method I am experimenting with came out exactly as I'd hoped. This creature can be seen in the background of VIII, howling into the mists behind some prancing lambs. It turned out well.

Continuing with the fur experiment. The forest is home to many creatures we see every day. They just happen to be large enough to eat a school bus.

I had a very different idea for this initially. I wanted to barrow kings to be stark white, so I experimented with masking agents and the result was bad. So I blacked them out and rolled with it. I like the grey shimmer around them and might use it more in future.

More cover-up. This was a failed attempt at the one that follows. The light rays didn't work, the figures came out poorly, so I covered everything in trees, deciding to experiment instead with more than two layers of background depth. It worked well. The subhumans looming around the trunks are creeping me out a bit.

And success. Requiem for a Troglodyte. Light rays I really enjoy. The possibility of repeating the process. Capital. That barbarian (Ulf Kingraper again) I freehanded with ink, which was nerve-wracking. Good results.

I got a sudden unicorn impulse and decided to work in another story line here. It'll be able 7 or 8 panels long and will feature this hunter, here seen bartering with a pack of subhumans for a small pack of hunting monsters to help him. His quarry: the elusive einhorn.

Thar she blows. I like the proportions of this beast. I initially experimented with making the thing a luminescent blue, but it didn't work. It just looked like it was under water. I noted this for future, when I actually draw something what is supposed to be underwater, but in this case it wasn't appropriate. I also want to depict flora sprouting up where ever this thing's hooves fall, on account of unicorn magic. Mild success. In any case, I like it.

If we learned anything from Muybridge, it's that there is indeed a point at which a running equine has all four hooves off the ground. The hunter looks on, admiring its speed and plotting its demise. I should have included the heads of his hunting monsters back there, but the story hadn't coalesced yet. I might add them for the finished product.

I definitely enjoy how a number of things here turned out. The hunter's posture, the pool, quite successful. In total there will be seven or eight of these, three more are currently in pencil stages. I definitely think you have to kill a unicorn with arrows.

So there. Progress. The world is slowly coming together. I wish I wasn't such a lazy bastard, maybe I could actually get some writing done. I don't lack for projects that need finishing but I've become inured to many things, including the encroaching sense of things left unfinished.

Ziz Falters

2011-06-01T07:18:00.000-07:00

So I've still been doing a lot of these. My work on large panels should commence tomorrow, gods willing, but these little bastards are multiplying like unchecked guinea pigs. Every time I turn around there is another clutch of the things meeping around my backyard. Oddly, we did have an unchecked herd of those things in my backyard when I was a lad, but I digress.

I like this idea. I need to do more with it, but after doing this one all subsequent attempts at working in green failed miserably, resulting in several torn up pieces of paper, several hours of frustration, and this run-on sentence. But I'll get back to it.

After the failure of any continued use of green ink, I fell back on the old standby. There are still a lot of ideas I haven't explored here, so I went back to it. I don't regret it. This one turned out well, ad inexplicably puts me in mind of a particularly unfortunate birthday party. Stone worshiping troglodytes may have once seen a picture of a birthday cake, but this facsimile isn't going to grant any wishes, I assure you.

And then, some giants. I wanted to try my hand at more of the little trees I did in the past, and I enjoy the effect. I did three f these and I intend on doing more. These monsters look like morons. I learned at work last night that a moron is dumber than an imbecile, but not as dumb as an idiot. On a technical scale. I doubt this scale's veracity, considering it's source was a senile old man also insistent on my knowing all the counties surrounding Manhattan. Baffling days.

These three look drunk. I like them.

And this thing sort of looks like it's pooping. If I were a giant mountain beast, I would also poop up there.

The text here turned unreadable. But I didn't scrap it because I like everything else. Especially the deer on the right. Initially, the rock somewhat described what all these critters were staring at, but ah well.

Here is a lesson in what is the wrong time to apply a waterproof masking agent. SPOILER ALERT: the answer is AFTER you've completed all the water-based things you want to put under it. Feh! But still.

So that's me up to now. Lots of other ideas stewing around, including more use of the oil pastel masking trick that actually take advantage of the weird effect it creates. And giant panels. I've been very, very sick for the past few days. It's clearing up, and I'm intent on getting my ass back in gear. Things outside the scope of my own incessant scratchings aren't going so well. My relating to other people has taken a turn. Relationships and friendships are falling apart constantly. Insane things, unlikely things, baffling things, they are all rearing their myriad heads and biting the shit out of what social life I had, meager though it was already. People I know who are big into astrology tell me this is because this year is my saturn return. I generally tell these people to disembowel themselves with a flint knife (which I am told is a typical scorpio response. You can't win with these folks). But it is a strange confluence of deterioration, and at very least it's clear that the gods have decided to strike me down for my hubris. What hubris this is exactly is unclear, but that's always the way with the gods. Bastards.

Behemoth Stumbles

2011-05-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

And then I started this.

I've decided to try working a lot larger than I'm accustomed. I feel like I've got my ink method down well enough that I can risk branching out. I started with an 18x24" panel, because I had one lying around. I'd wanted to show some kind of deer-riding savage for awhile, and working on a giant panel seemed a good a time as any.

These are all just process shots I took to keep track of the thing for posterity. I won't bother pointing out the glaring defects that I see. Over all, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I found it somewhat odd that despite the fact that this is at least 6 times larger than any surface I've tried working on in the past, I was immediately out of space.

I had initially wanted to show a whole pack of things running from this guy, but there wasn't really room. Just as well, the action is clear.

Partially skeletal deer have rapidly become an old standby for me.

Space constraints led to a lack of any foreground trees. All of these pictures are terrible, but the background trees turned out alright. I'm using a house-painting brush for a lot of this, so it's fairly ham-fisted. Even still I was able to get a little bit of texture on them.

All aglow with spectral powers, as per usual.

And a final wash of diluted ink, and some more trees for good measure. All in all, I like the result. I've got another 5 slightly smaller panels I'm going to start working on today, if this fever abates. As of now, I feel like crawling under something and shuffling off this mortal coil. I'm a lot sicker than I presumed when I left the house today. I've spent the last few hours sitting on a couch nodding between fever delirium and coughing fits. There is a sign for free ice cream posted on the door here, and outside it lined up with the bottom of the "massage" parlor signage across the street in such a way as to make me think, "when did that cat house start giving away ice cream?" I looked at this conglomeration for an uneasy 5 minutes before realizing my error. Good work, super brain. I'm going back to the couch now for the last hour and a half of my shift. I hope no one wakes up early.

Leviathan Shrugs

2011-05-20T03:25:00.000-07:00

Instead of languishing in uncertain motivation and inspiration, I've decided to keep this up for as long as the drive lasts. But first, the last-

This is number thirty-six, the last page of the book I put the original group in. If you look closely at the tree, excluding from view the serpentine beast around it, it looks like a halmark card. I'd like to do more with this idea, and I may.

I did a couple of small experiments as a run-up to this modified method. I'm using a few different kinds of ink to get the tree effects, and washes for backgrounds. I'm still getting this method down, here the background is a little on the lustrous side for my taste.

I used oil pastel as a masking agent for the halos. I like the effect. More things like this in the works.

Ahhh, yes. So this began as something very different indeed. A slightly ruined house with a tree growing out of it. The Green ink I'm using here, being acrylic based, got away from me a bit and I ruined it in a most expert fashion. Luckily, india ink as black as inght and will cover up anything, so taking advantage of the one blank spot and what was recoverable from the previous attempt (the bricks and the branch) I came out with this. This also made me think about caves, which are awesome with potential.

One of my initial two experiments featured this bearded old mendicant. I revisited him on a larger sheet here.

So that's where I stand. More in the works. The grim stretch of my personal doings looked up for a minute. But Leviathan shrugs and cities fall and the petty hopes I let myself foster snuff out. How trite. How predictable. It's my own fault. I've made a hale and hearty tradition out of investing myself in a crumbling edifice. I've also built a strong faculty of walking the fuck out. But what the fuck do I care. No one gets out alive.

And evil days indeed upon us.

2011-05-10T06:41:00.000-07:00

Ahhhh, activity. Lots of that lately. Strap in, this is a long one. I'm dangerously bored and feel like writing.

I've got this thing sussed out. I'm going to get an album to put these in tomorrow, I plan on sticking them in with photo corners and pasting blocks of written text underneath. It'll be broken into 5 chapters; an introduction/wildlife survey, a chapter on the hunter and how a human lives in this place, a look at the stones, the tribes, and the troglodytes (including where they come from and a bit about how they live without dying all the time), a short account of a war between the two, and a final chapter on some of the more outlandish sights in the wood. I'm hoping to depict a slow descent into madness. I plan on calling it "This Forest is Full of Ghosts: An Account and Survey of the Northern Forests by Author Unknown (presumed deceased)" Should be fun.

This was a first attempt at depicting more of these trees than just their trunks. Worked out alright, I suppose. I also tried to vary the shade slightly between face, beard and hat brim. That wasn't successful. This guy will be fun to write about. He reminds me of home.

These monsters look like idiots. I like them.

Here's another one for the troglodytes. I plan on partially describing the text scrawled on some of the stones. The stone worshipers don't know any better, they are all baleful illiterates, but someone put it down on there for a reason.

I picked up a clear oil pastel to experiment with light rays. Previous attempts had failed, but this method worked out. Future attempts didn't, but if it can be done once...

I like this one. Semi-skeletal elk leaping through the mist are always appreciated by me. More experimentation with the oil pastel here, which you can't see. But that's the point.

These monsters look like they are mentally retarded. The two big ones. I can imagine the noise they make in my head but it's hard to paint that. Light ray failure here. It was supposed to look very different. Ah well.

This one was the first outright, complete and utter fuck up. Initially, I had a picture of a knight riding a goat here. Almost. The goat looked good to. Amazing in fact. I could say whatever I want about you, you won't know the difference. Suffice to say, it would have made Michelangelo weep. It would have made Da Vinci break his own hands with a machine he designed to that purpose. But a mishap involving a wobbly table leg and a drunk german made my hand slip and I ran a line of thick ink across the thing. Nothing for it, I covered it over with a giant monster and made due. I like the result, but no renaissance greats are going to fall on their sword about it.

After this point I had a stronger idea of how I wanted to group things together. I decided to do several I could link to the hunter. Naturally, a tree house would be required. Normal houses get crushed underfoot in this forest far too often.

The hunter again, with the freshly killed ghost of some kind of monster. I'm going to include field notes explaining the lifecycles of the various apparitions and terrible monsters in the forest. Mostly because I've already thought it out in some capacity and it would be wasted effort otherwise.

This is the thing being hunted by our esteemed gamesman. Rampaging around the place, ghosts grow furious here with age.

A little insight into the savage tribes of forest barbarians. I think the logic here is that these strange pillar monkeys never seem to leave, and they never seem to get stepped on, so it must somehow be safe to build a village around their stone columns. It seems to be working.

Barbarian religious ceremonies often involve autoecstatic conflagrations induced by skull worship. It's normal.

AX FIGHT!!! For the conflict chapter, clearly. There isn't much to explain. Ax fighting is objectively awesome. Anyone trying to refute this point is probably the owner of a shovel concern, working for the powerful shovel fighting lobby.

The barbarians heading toward their inexorable date with ax-fighting destiny. The prey fervently to the goddess of ax fighting. They'll do fine. Like the mighty sand people before them, they ride in single file to hide their numbers.

And the troglodytes march. Unlike the mighty sand people before them, they do not march in single file. They have a very tentative grasp on numerology and mathematics in general, so I don't think they are terribly concerned with people knowing how many of them are around.

Needing more bulk in the troglodyte department, I did this. The various troglodyte leaders tie antlers and horns to their heads in order to beguile the other forest inhabitants. It doesn't work, but they give them some degree of begrudging pity because it's just such a stupid idea. Right now this dog is just feeling sorry for the old boy. Despite (or because of) it's simplicity, this is one of my favorites

A hunting party indeed! Troglodytes will eat anything they can get their hands on, but sometimes some splinter faction rubs a few of their beleaguered brain cells together and hatch a hunting plan. Generally they have about a 50% casualty rate, but that just means more monster steaks for the remaining members.

And there you have it. The last one (there are 36 pages in this moleskine) is almost done. I might do some more to fill things out. I'll say more on it when I actually finish, I don't want to jinx myself. I am prone to self-jinxery.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I finish this. Maybe more. Maybe see how doing all this crap has affected my watercolor. Hopefully in a positive way, I was getting very tired of looking at anything I did with watercolor. I need to write things, both for this and my previous book project. I need to get my personal affairs in order. Those are scatter to the winds. In any case, the future looks disordered and bleak. To quote a great (though fictional man), "My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence." In this case replace cryptograms with monster skeletons, as I don't do as much code cracking in my free time as ol' Sherlock. But still. Things have been better for me in some ways. I stopped drinking, I'm getting myself ready to get back to practice. I've been reading like crazy. I've finished 5 books in the past 3 weeks, and some old classics I hadn't revisited in awhile. It feels good. I'm slowly learning my self reliance again. I'm thinking about moving to Montana.

Thoroughly haunted, indeed

2011-04-26T03:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I've reached a halfway point and subsequent stand-still on this one so I figured I'd update here and see if that didn't jar my sloth. The book I'm putting these in is 36 pages long, and I intend on filling the whole thing. From this point onward I want there to be some reoccurring themes so as to better stitch together some semblance of narrative through them. But for the past three or four days I've been sick. Personal business is in shambles, and this is probably the last you'll see of me for awhile.

I like this one. If I go the naturalist route in the text which follows, I'd like to describe some of the heathen tribes lurking in the wood.

Here I tried something new with ink I'd previously relied on watercolor for. It turned out a lot better than I expected. Aside from some personally galling errors in lines and positioning it turned out well. Part of the tribal system in the wood might revolve around animal totems of some kind. Trouble being animal totems aren't that funny.

Here I just wanted to see more stones and guard dogs. I found that I have little choice but reverting to line art doing these stones when they are near each other. Otherwise it just ends up looking like a mess.

I consider this one a concrete failure in regards to my original idea. I tried using ink and water to replicate the bark of an oak tree, but it's nearly impossible to tell that is what is going on. But fire breathing bears are nothing to scoff at. I enjoy those.

With my previous attempt a failure I did one staying on steadier ground. Plus, who doesn't like smilodon? I figure any forest populated by barbarous tribes of ax wielding brutalists has got to have some saber-tooth cats to balance things out.

This one was my attempt to turn my failed oak tree method into a successful masonry method. That worked out. It was also my first attempt to do something specific to a possible future narrative, in which I'd like to discuss the failed attempts by normal folks at habitation of the haunted wood. An environment like that is definitely going to turn your entire family into anthrophage maniacs, if not full blown mutants.

And this one failed too. Such is the nature of experimentation, I suppose. The end result isn't bad to look at, but my intention was far different than the outcome. But as always, I learned how not to do something, so that's a plus.

And so again I stuck to familiar ground. More narrative stuff here, something is starting to cement itself in my mind. There'll be a lot more graffiti in future. I have to take steps to prevent this turning into a Conrad ripoff, with the ideas I've been having, but I am sure the end result will be funnier than Heart of Darkness in any case.

There you have it. Half. I've got three more in the works, and ideas for many more besides. It's just a matter now of motivating myself. That's hard. I've been getting a non-stop stream of shitty news lately, people who never want to see me again, people who want to forget that I exist. Fair enough, I suppose, because I do often forget about the world at large. If I could hammer a screwdriver into the portion of my brain that made me miss those few people that I do, I would. People are an army of bastards.

This Forest is Full of Ghosts

2011-04-14T17:11:00.000-07:00

So recently, I've been experimenting with a new method. I had an idea a while ago which I couldn't execute. My hands were tired and everything I tried fell apart. I decided, one frustrating night at work, that my stagnation had to shift. So I put things on hold. I decided to work with ink. I've always enjoyed the hell out of seeing ink. My favorite artists and illustrators use ink almost exclusively, but I'd never really tried my hand at anything but basic line work.

And so, I put my watercolor and gouache away, telling myself I wasn't going to touch it again until I got a handle on a new medium. And this is what happened-

My first attempt. I focused on doing trees by applying ink to runnels of water. When I had done it, I realized that it needed something, so I cheated and used gouache for the eye. It turned out well, and I learned about silhouettes and how easily they look like trees.

My first attempt at covering things up. The page initially had a very terrible drawing of a cottage, some experimental lines of ink put into water, an odd cone of smeared crap. I managed to get all of these things covered and vanished and came up with a couple of trees covered in woodland folk. Also first use of red ink for eyes, allowing me to avoid gouache all together.

At one point, I had done a sketch of a horse with an owl on its back. I idly sketched the skeletons in there and forgot about it. When the page came around, I decided to try combining a bit of watercolor with this ink thing. Because my normal method here has developed in such a way that isn't conducive to watercolor (I tend to slather everything in thinned ink to create the fog, and watercolor would just dissolve), so I tried something else. I painted some fixative solution onto it, a process that ruined a brush and hurt my eyes, and it worked. In future, I plan on doing more of this, but I want to avoid the toxic eye pain that fixative induces.

I wanted to try to use red ink to depict glowing eyes. It didn't work so well, but I sort of enjoy the effect that did get produced.

And this one, I enjoy a lot. Another failed attempt at smoking red eyes. But the idea that started this one off was "evil woodcutter" (which I can't say would vary so much from normal woodcutter) carried off. I needed to make the axe clearer, so I tried to vary my water/ink mixture to vary tones, which worked.

More tone variation experiment. I am trying to stay away from the line drawing method used on the stone here, but it's alright.

Tried to do an actual wood texture for the log they are on. Also tried to show some kind of monstrous thing wandering in the mists, but failed. If you look closely you might be able to see where. But it's something I like, so I'm going to keep banging away at that one until I can do it right.

Prancing lambs. That's a first for me. The real success here for me is the roaring beast in the background, which I like quite a bit.

A further refinement of the background monsters thing, seen here as a continuation of the crowd of howling troglodytes worshiping a stone. Success in a number of areas here. I like this one.

This is the first one I consider a general fuckup. I wanted to see if I could do something that was primarily background action. I learned how not to do that. I also learned that blood splatter has to be done a certain way. I'm not sure which way that is, but it sure as hell isn't this one. I can tell that the various figures are supposed to be watching the fight behind the tree line, but I don't think anyone else can. More work is needed.

So that's the first 10. I intend on filling this entire book with forest pictures. I predict more attempts at combining watercolor and ink, more ululating stone-worshipers, more inscribed stones. I'm also thinking about fashioning some kind of narrative out of these. It could be interesting. I'm just so lazy when it comes to actually writing. I need to use some of this ridiculous vacation time to get the lead out and finish the other book project I've got on the slate.

A period of shift

2011-04-09T06:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit since I last updated here. I've been terrifically inert. Days staring at a computer screen, watching the same TV shows over and over again, staring at a blank page, somewhat more productively staring at a book. I hit upon an odd idea while looking at some of my older work. I tried to polish the rust from my hands, and it took a few failures to actually get something out that I liked a little bit. The whole thing isn't that good, but when I set about it with a pair of scissors and remove the offending portions it should be better.

The second crack at this idea turned out far better than the first, but the scan isn't too great. I need to start playing sad music so my scanner can lay down in slow motion and die. It's getting close. In any case, this-

After doing that one I realized that some of the problem had to do with a bit of a stagnant method, a bit of wrong surface to paint on, and a bit of lacking technique. So I told myself I was going to try something new. I'd always wanted to take a crack at ink beyond the dip-pen lines and plainness of what I'd grown accustomed to. Again looking at some older work, I saw an idea that could use some exploration. Putting this 'haunted by strange gods' business on hold, I'm setting about a series of things like this-

I cheated myself a bit there, resorting to gouache for the eyes, but today I picked up some proper red ink and it's fantastic. I finished 3 more things like this tonight, with pencil down for a further 3 more. I'm still treating them as ink experiments, though one of them makes use of graphite and watercolor (for which I tried a creative use of fixative solution. My eyes are still burning).

In short, I'm back to actually doing things. It's just as well. At this point in time I need a hearty distraction. Today has been a repeated kick in the fork. The consolation prize is two weeks paid vacation from work, starting Sunday. I've got nothing to do. What I anticipate is long hours in my room, alone and trying to paint and passing time. I mean, I hope for otherwise. But it appears I've got an annoying habit of hoping for too much. The gods are always thwarting best laid plans.

Continued disorder

2011-03-17T04:40:00.000-07:00

So finally, FINALLY, I finished the last panel for this book project. Behold!

Overall, I consider it a success. The next stage is to write the damn thing (then image correct, rescan, collect and bind and find someone to sell it to the good people). I've recruited a copy editor, we'll see if that helps. It's not someone I know really, which I think is a good thing. Someone who isn't as familiar with my habits will have to see what I'm actually doing without subconsciously connecting any dots. I know plenty of people who I'd trust more, but I'm interested in seeing how/if this works out. I suspect it will.

Otherwise, I haven't been painting much. Tonight I ruined something I had in the works, which soured me on the whole concept and I doubt I'll ever get around to bothering with it. Not for a long while at least. It started to feel like repetition. I did, last night, paint something I feel strangely about. It actually makes me a little uneasy. I haven't put it up in any of my normal haunts (ie flicker) because it doesn't feel quite finished. And the scan is bad. But I'll put it here, because I'm bored and trying to stave off the sleep goblins.

The idea came from someone generally awesome who has, a couple times now, sent me literary passages and requested an illustration. In this case, it came from the story "Eva is Inside Her Cat" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez-

"she could feel her vigil spreading out under her skin, into her head, pushing the fever upward toward the roots of her hair. It was as if her arteries had become peopled with hot, tiny insects who, with the approach of dawn, awoke each day and ran about on their moving feet in a rending subcutaneous adventure in that place of clay made fruit where her anatomical beauty had found its home."

As I say, the scan is poor and the work feels incomplete. But when I saw what I had rendered the morning after, I don't know. It's weird to me. Outside of the normal scope of what I paint, I guess. Not that it's a bad thing. But it makes me uneasy somehow. Once I get over it I'm going to clarify the insects in the arteries, add the dawn light effect to the horizon and try to get the scan to look as fiery as it does in person. Hopefully soon. Tomorrow I'm going to use the thing I effed up tonight for some experimentation. I have saved things in the past by outlandish experimentation (like the time I saved Tesla's brain by inserting it into the body of a basking shark, or the time I was able to revive Stalin's moustache by transplanting it onto the face of a hapless meerkat), so one can hope. In any case, things are moving. I'm glad of that much.

Personal life is still functionally a shambles. I talked to someone the other day I haven't talked to in a long while. That felt good, however brief. Things like that are always bittersweet. Echoes of things that will never be and times never to return, branching lines of causality veered away from either by agents of will or the capricious whim of strange gods, and yet always dogged by the painful hounds of hope braying for their return. I obviously need to go to sleep.

Tumult

2011-03-08T03:53:00.000-08:00

I have not been completely inert. Just mostly. I haven't finished anything in a while. Until this morning I haven't been struck by the desire to do anything. Even when I was, my ability to think just isn't there. I've got an idea at least, for when it comes back. In the mean time, here is a stream of shit I've been slowly chopping away at.

The first 4 are part of the ongoing and oft-delayed book project. Last frame there is moments from completion, waiting on only the will to bother with anything. Other things here will never see the light of day, due to some uncorrectable compositional error. There's a portrait, another one of Nebuchadnezzar looking pretty metal, miscellaneous. In any case, nothing is finished.

Another thing I've got in the works will be ongoing as well. At the city library book fair last year I picked up (among other things) a book of Manx fairy tales. It's an old paperback edition published in the fifties, with staples in the spine on rough paper. I love this book. All of the stories were "transcribed over the wireless" in colloquial Manx english, with mostly translated Manx Gaelic expressions throughout. I'm going to illustrate some of these, largely because I want to spend a lot of time drawing Bugganes and Faower and Phynodderree. Also because in an ideal world, I would be living on that island raising Manx Loaghton sheep and railing at the heavens from the turrets of an old keep. Drawing some of their monsters will have to suffice.

In other news, I had an art show recently. It went alright. Mild turnout, sold something, but generally quite a shitty evening. A couple of pictures taken during the hanging process-

The shittiness of the evening was largely due to the people I didn't see there. As a result I did become quite, quite drunk over the course of the evening, eventually culminating in a spectacular display of vomiting. I had climbed into a taxi after my initial barfings outside (and slightly inside) the bar, and the driver took me for someone he could squeeze money out of. After realizing that he was taking me for quite a longer ride than was necessary, I started to yell at him a bit, which upset them ol' guts and resulted in more barf. On the driver and inside his taxi cab. I got out and walked home. All in all, it was a very fancy event.

And that's what I've been up to. Lots of time wasting, lots of missing people, lots of reflection. These days, I realize, I'm just a miserable, lonely pile of shit. I just need to become ok with that and it's smooth sailing.

It's one of those nights

2011-02-24T00:25:00.000-08:00

As I stated previous, I'm back on track. I finished this slew of things, running this idea firmly into the ground and getting my hands back in action

I decided to do nine things roughly in series. Three animals coming out of other animals, three animals carrying other animals, and three animals with objects going berserk. This goat turned out alright. I trued to use more vibrant colors with these, but an error in the beginning ended me up wit a green goat so I had to make it dark by way of covering that business up. Still though. Happy with it.

This might be the best bear I've ever drawn.

These three turned out alright. This lion has a giant head, but I like it's expression. I've gotten into the terrible habit of drawing in pencil on the bus. I end up with graphite sketches that I really like, but whose sketchy nature doesn't transfer well to ink. This was such a one. End result still acceptable.

This is an image that has been kicking around in my head since I sent my dog Bandit to go live out on the farm. My initial idea had more arrows sticking out of it, so I'll definitely revisit this before I settle on a version to get permanently emblazoned across my back, but I do intend on doing that at some point.

I tried a different method on the feathers here. With some fine-tuning, this will become better. I like how it turned out. I like anything into which I can incorporate a coat of arms.

In other news, I've finally (FINALLY) resumed progress on the last page of this book project. It's coming along quite a bit better than I expected. The inking process is going to be a mild nightmare, but I'm still looking forward to getting to that tonight. After I get the writing portion of this done, I'm going to lay out an outline for another. This thing sort of lends itself to serialization, and even if I'm the only person who ever gets to enjoy it, it's worth while. I've got nothing else to do, aside from watching the same BBC sitcoms over and over again drinking scotch alone in my room at 4am. I lead a fairly lonely, depressing life. I've become alright with this I suppose. Inured to it at least. I've learned to let things go. Sort of.

Onward, to progress!

2011-02-12T06:19:00.000-08:00

I've been busy again. Some dike has burst in my brain yet again, and like the unwary dwellers hiding behind a shuddering levy, the torrent his obliterated all of my ramshackle huts and replaced them with the palaces of antediluvian sea monsters and nameless gods from out the vaults beyond time. This might be a mild exaggeration. But I did paint 4 things.

Firstly there is this. It's Minos from Dante's Inferno. I was challenged to depict this by a stranger over the internet, so naturally I was all over it. I'm happy with how it turned out, despite the fact that in every sketch stage of this thing it just looked like the old boy was wearing a hoop skirt frame. The king form here is one I've been thinking about for awhile, for a different series I intended/intend on doing. As seen-

here. I want to do a series of Nebuchadnezzar in the wilderness things. Not because I have any judeo-christian religious convictions, and not even because I am particularly moved by the image of a great land king humbled by a magic sky king. But there is something special about a feral king in the woods. This one isn't even done, really. I am just loathe to try and improve on it because the form of ol Nezzar turned out like it did and I'm just so fucking pleased with myself.

This is the third and final (for now, probably) laurel-crowned animal born out of another animal. I like the way the bird turned out. Not much else to say about it. It's pretty awesome, I suppose.

But that idea has progressed to this one. I'm going to do three of these too. More color, living animals, etc etc. This one is probably the most colorful thing I've ever done, and I like how I turned out. More of that, please. The next one will probably be a harnessed mountain goat covered in cats. After these I'll do three that fill in the destruction end of this idea, because the trinity has been taking up my mental processes ever since I finished Aldous Huxley's 'The Devils of Loudun'. I highly recommend that book if you are interested in a bone dry and thoroughly cross-referenced account of a priest accused of warlockery and nun seduction in 17th century France. Get your olde tyme french vocab in order, because all the most choice passages are left untranslated.

In other news, I've been happier lately. It might be the cause for this sudden burst of activity. I've come to terms with a few things lately, and a few things are moving. I'm shaking off stagnation slowly but surely, but some tricky spots have become accustomed to their turbidity.

Stirring slowly back to life

2011-02-05T06:07:00.000-08:00

I'm rising laboriously from my wreckage. My brain is sputtering back to life and my hands are itching again to move. Capital developments, all around.

I've got another show at the hostel lined up. It was tentatively set to open next Friday, but I have pushed it back to give me some time to prepare. I think I have everything set out to show, but I am planning on running this by my crack team of advisors (ok, crack team of advisor) and making small adjustments. I recently completed a triptych what will sit at the center of the whole thing, which is as follows-

I had the vision of this thing in a flash of inspiration as I was falling asleep three days ago. I hazily groped for my sketchbook and a pencil, whereon I scrawled out reminders in my pictorial shorthand. On waking, I had no recollection of this until I chanced upon the book in a heap by my bed. I finished one a day in what has been my first flurry of activity in weeks. I'm pleased with the result. It follows sort of a creation/preservation/destruction narrative, but more actually it's just a series of awesome things involving elk. I love elk. I expect to see more of the lancer and his be-stechhelmed steed in the future.

Other things I've got in the works include a Nebuchadnezzar series of woodwose-king drawings, a picture of Minos from The Inferno by request, and the completion of a great many partially-painted things abandoned in my torpor. More information to follow as it reaches the news room.

In other news, I am still in limbo. My personal life has been a rollercoaster which I have been advised on all sides to get off of. But I won't. Or else I can't. I'm still unsure. We'll see what happens today. Everything could change in an evening. It's happened before.

A transitory writ

2011-01-15T05:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I haven't been up to much. In terms of painting, at least. I finished this a few days ago and haven't really done anything since. But I've got some ideas stewing in my guts, so we'll see how it goes in the next day or so.

It's the third of these, with one other ready to be painted. It turned out alright. Actually, after I finished it I was ready to throw it off a pier, but after waking up in the morning I liked it a little better. I'm terrible at feathers. I need to change that, because I love the hell out of feathered things.

In other news, things down south went quite well. I was expecting misery, awkwardness, maybe a fist fight with the ol' pater familias, but none of that really came to pass. I enlisted the assistance of a good friend and the drives down and back went by without notice, embroiled in discussion about ethics and materialism. Capital. The funeral for my uncle was heartening and well attended. Some salty dogs there, for certain. But I patched things up with my father and got a giant cow skull in the way of peace offering.

I've strung it up with some of my other bones, and now one corner of my room looks as though I rent it out to the Predator. I'm happy about that. I've added a beaver skull to the bundle since the picture was taken, but you get the idea. Otherwise I saw an old friend who I haven't seen in ages. Our oppositionally hermetic natures prevent us from interacting much. Whenever we do everything feels right in the universe.

I've decided that I need to start working on a larger scale. I'm going to make a strong effort away from the moleskine sketchbooks I've been painting in and invest in some giant watercolor blocks. Some of the ideas I'm putting together will benefit by more space. It'll take some time to adjust, but we'll see. I'm going to have to get a better camera to get these things onto them ol' internets, but seeing as how they don't even exist yet I'm not worried about that stage of the process just yet.

For the past week or so, things have been tentatively great. Things are moving anyway. I guess I'm still unsure if they are moving down the well trod path of eventual and inevitable solitude or if the footfalls are heading upward, but I'm not about to retreat. Dismal optimist, that's me. Until next time.

Reporting from the cold

2011-01-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

It's freezing here tonight. Our 1920s era steam radiators are hissing like mad but the cold won't abate. I'm all for it, personally. Roll on cold weather.

I've been a little more stagnant the past couple of days. Not stagnant, really. Busy I suppose. But not painting, and that makes me feel turbid. I did this-

It's quite small, maybe 3x4" so as to fit an old frame I had. It's a wee little thing, originally holding some small portrait of an ill child praying or somesuch, painted an almost easter-y yellow and white, so naturally I figured something blood splattered would have to go into it. I'm pretty happy with the result. I'm going a few of these things. After the faun and the hare, I've got a starling and a fox in the hopper. Kitten to follow, I'm sure. They have a place in the story I'm putting together. Appendix material for religious iconography, unless I change my mind on it. Either way I like the results. I'm using watercolor and gouache for these. Gouache is finding it's way into my toolbox. Slowly but surely.

There is also this. I have another show coming up at the hostel, all new work going up. I had this in the works, and when I was about half way done I realized that it was perfect for a flyer for the thing. So it's that now. The name of the show is "Somos Animales Salvajes" and as such pretty much everything there will be in some way beast-oriented. Nothing anthropomorphic this time around. I don't think. It's possible.

I'm going to be able to do a few things differently with this showing. We've gained more freedom with the space, so I can hang things however I want. That'll be nice. I smell another trip to the Bargain Barn, Santa Cruz's premier post-apocalyptic junk shed. I've gained a better eye this time around, so I predict better results.

Not much else to report. I'm heading down south, back home for the first time in over a year. A one day affair, but I hope to visit some old haunts. I also hope to drop off a birthday gift, a month late because I'm too lazy to find my way to the post. The trip itself is for a funeral. All in all, I'm trying to limit the inevitable unpleasantness as much as I can. Luckily, this has served a fairly effective distraction from my general unpleasantness up here. Jackpot.

Disinclined to action

2011-01-04T17:18:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a few days. Productive ones, after a fashion. Book store today, I replaced my copy of The Prince finally, and found a Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of Dead Souls that I'll start reading after I finish this tawdry account of 17th century episcopal mayhem. I finished a number of things in the works (although not the last panel of this story, which is infuriating me and I might throw it out of something. A window. Or a moving car.), started a few others, finished a couple of those. Behold-

The fourth and (despite the description there) possibly last part of that line of things. Seen before, but now finished for real. The middle bear turned out the best. The thing is now lined up on my wall, eight feet long and looking weird.

This is revisiting a nostalgic idea a bit. I find myself doing these when I'm particularly bearing-less. It's tied to memory that makes me feel better. A different chain of causation that fired off in some direction that I didn't follow.

And then I did this. I am actually very pleased with this. It may well be my favorite. I've started using gouache in certain ways. I can't paint in the stuff for shit, but I can use it to highlight certain things. I haven't done any particularly bloody images in a while, what with this story business being largely bloodless (and the bloody frames done first), so I felt I needed to balance that out a bit. It worked out. More blood. More entrails. More shattered bone. And more of this faun. Definitely more of that faun.

And at long last!!! A month or two ago, my friend and fellow skull enthusiast RJ Adams informed me that he had a gift to bring into town on his next sojourn. He visits the hostel every few months to write and (the lucky bastard) examine the Cal Academy's basement specimen collection. Yesterday he arrived, with a plastic basin in tow full of isopropyl alcohol solution and baby cougar skull. I am very pleased with this. I'm still mulling over exactly how I want to mount it. I'm probably going to go with the bell jar, half exploded and half intact. I'm just loathe to start taking it apart, because it's 100% complete and in amazing condition. I'll get to it. In other bone project news, I'm now soaking my beaver skull and my goat spine in peroxide, so I'll be getting to those soon as well.

Tonight I'm still chasing a ghost. Waiting here on a suggestion, a hint, the possibility that I might be visited is enough to keep me riveted in place. Even as I doubt it'll come to pass, I invest myself in that slim probability. I'm goddam hopeless.

Reporting from 4am

2010-12-30T04:36:00.000-08:00

It's been a long couple of days. Not for any definite reason. I've been fairly productive, but not on the one thing I need to be producing. The last panel of this book thing is just sitting there in semi-completion. Tomorrow after work I am confident that I will finish it in a whirlwind of activity, but I've been confident of that whirlwind appearing for days now. We'll see. The only whirlwind I've been reaping these days is the proverbial. I did do this-

I'm definitely doing a lot more animals these days. Looking at all the sketches I've done over the past few days they are all beasts of some variety. Should be interesting. As someone important once wrote to me, "somos animales salvajes" so it fits. I'm sure that'll be my theme for a while.

I did this too. It's been in the works for some time, and I like the way it came out. The thing as a whole started in June, and is now eight feet long. I'll probably finish it with one more thing to round it out to ten-

If I do another one it'll be pretty sparse. As I said previously the whole landscape of the thing will move around a lot more outside of this single plain, but with this thing as the center. I'm going to have another hostel show in February and I think I'm going to focus on these things with the green field/grey sky configuration.

The world at 4am is a weird thing. I feel like nothing moves. It's an odd period of stasis after the initiation of the wolf's watch at 3am, when crazy things start happening, and the waking of the early risers at 5-5:30. Every day I feel like this. I thought I'd write about it because it's 4:30 and I'm procrastinating. I need to go to sleep, as a matter of fact. Work tomorrow. New Years Eve I work the overnight by myself. It's going to be hellish, and I plan on striking down upon all interlopers and ne're-do-wells with iron and steel and the streets will be washed with their crimson vigor. I probably won't report again before then. Be seeing you.

Yuletide

2010-12-25T06:03:00.000-08:00

Well, it's become that time again. Yuletide. I'm at work. This has become a longer running tradition than most. It's been tumultuous over the past few days. I got to see Agalloch live, which was amazing. Met up with some old friends and had our faces melted off by brutality. It was good. My brother came into town that night, we shot the shat and ate with my roommate in an all night diner where I consumed the worst sandwich I've ever had. It was a good time. The next morning I got some terrible news from him, but I'm not going to ramble at length to the world at large about death. I used to handle death better. Maybe not better. Differently. Ever since I did what I done to my dog, things have changed inside my head. In any case, godspeed. You will be missed more than you could have known in life.

I've been throwing myself into other business. This is the second to last panel. One left, and it's a doozy. This one turned out alright.

Brother Bear's slow march, as the reality sinks in. He's off now, finished with all of this. The ages of struggling culminated in this grizzly business, and he isn't interested.

I've been to work on a lot of things. I'm house sitting now, spending christmas in a giant empty house with nothing but a cat to yell at me, and the solace of giant movies warming my blood. Things were better last time I was here.

Being that I'm away from home, I'm away from my scanner so I can't post all of the things I've got going. It's more than usual, actually. I've been doing things with other mediums and methods. Using dip pens and starting to use gouache for certain things with mixed success. Tonight I picked up some clay for the first time in a very, VERY long time. I've since decided that it's something I want to do more of. I sculpted a bust of Brother Bear with an eye patch. Maybe not the same brother bear. But I want to do a bunch of those. It turned out pretty alright-

More to come on this. I plan to paint this as soon as I'm back home. I anticipate a Sunday sojourn to the art supply store to waste more of my precious gold coins on stuff to transform into other stuff. Clay and clay tools. I'm going to need a bigger desk.

As always, I had big plans to paint up a Yuletide card this year. It didn't happen, yet again. Ah well. There's always next year.

I'd like to say that things are looking up, but I'm still just staring into the middle distance these days.

So close, so close

2010-12-21T05:19:00.000-08:00

These are coming slower, but generally it's because they are more complicated. This one came out mighty fine if I don't say so myself. I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to use this cutaway view more often, I like it for some reason. My scanner is dying, so it's a little blurry.

Brother Elk informs the security council of his own plot. Mostly, this plot involves letting a bunch of people kill each other while he relaxes in a library getting drunk on expensive scotch.

I've got a lot in the works right now. For the first time in a while. That's a good thing, because at this point I definitely need the distraction. The tides ebb and rise again. Fuck.

Anyway, two panels left. The last one is going to take time, but I'm looking forward to it. I won't have time to work for the next few days, but after the 23rd I'll be house sitting, watching giant movies and painting my ass off in the company of Captain Meowmers the Hollering Cat. Next time I update here I'll be there. This has been pointless.

Bury me at sea where no murdered ghost can haunt me.

2010-12-19T06:55:00.000-08:00

Recent times have seen me crushing the jeweled thrones of the earth beneath my sandaled feet. Or if not of the earth, at least the jeweled thrones I've constructed in my own brain. As my progress on the painting portion of this thing I've undertaken reaches it's final stages I'm finding ways to stretch it out. I managed to finish one more panel and start another before digging up some other old crap to finish and get excited about again. Two and a half (ish) more to go and I'm already distracting myself. Here's the one I completed-

Brother Cat convenes the faithful. After claiming the council's mantle from the dear departed Brother Lion, the old pureheart, Brother Cat set about enacting his bloody agenda. It'll end in tears. Or decapitation. Probably decapitation.

I also cooked up another panel, long in the works, for the long as hell, multi-panel thing I cooked up at the beginning of the year. I've decided that I'm going to frame this a little differently. Instead of one long progression of things, I'm going to do a bunch of stuff like this what will lay out in a landscape of sorts. Really it's just a way to make all of my inane one-off ideas somewhat cohesive. Here is this-

And it'll turn into other things. So far, I've got 3 24x8" stretches of this done, and an idea for a fourth. BUT it will move in other directions. Such as this one-

In total, it looks like this-

You can't see it, because the scan cut off, but the beginning portion of a bear's snout creeps into the end of the last frame. Fourth panel will be bears.

The Stegotine and a few others already fit in line. More in the works follow this green ground/cloudy sky format, which I find it be an easy background for me because I'm lazy and I like the colors. So we'll see. The end result of this will really just be my room being dizened with the things, and hopefully it will look like I'm surrounded by a march of monsters.

In other news, an old fire has been kindling in my guts for a while now. I am on the verge of becoming a monster again. Living where I do makes it easy. The late night panhandle will thunder at my step and the trees will shudder under my fists. Or else I'll just hurt myself again and become even more bitter and hateful. I'm going to wait until the rain abates, but I'm doing all my preparatory action for retaking the reigns of Bajiquan. Proof positive that I never relinquish love, no matter how much it destroys me, right there.

I had this dream

2010-12-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

Last night I had a very vivid dream. As I am in the mood to procrastinate, I am going to type it out here while I smoke on the stoop.

I was running through thick reeds. Oak trees hung overhead, grey and green, and over those hung heavy thunderclouds. My hands and feet padded on wet earth. I broke through a line of cat tails into a riverbed, boarded with with great boulders and hanging with thick grey lichen. A ribbon of water ran through the middle of the bed, a few feet across, and in this lay the form of some great hulking beast. It was dead, or nearly dead, it's thick brown fur was matted with mud. It lay motionless and partially submerged so that I couldn't make out exactly what it was. I stood next to it and plunged my hands into it's body. It's insides were warm, but it didn't stir. I felt something sharp and hard inside of the thing, and pulling hard my hands came out holding a pair of antlers. They were covered with some kind of semi-translucent humour, yellow and pungent. I knelt by the stream washing the things off. The ends were jagged, and looked as if they had been broken off with some amount of force. I held one in each hand, raised them above my head and brought these jagged ends down on my skull, fixing them in place on my brow. I didn't die, which would generally be the expected outcome after perforating one's skull with a pair of pointed objects. They just fixed in place. I proceeded up the river bed, loping from rock to rock against the flow of the water, seeing faces peering from the tall reeds on the bank. All familiar, these faces. Some of them were looking at me, some of them were preoccupied with whatever reeds have to offer. I proceeded on my way along the water. I woke up feeling like I had been asleep for years.

Last night I also experimented with gouache for the first time. I said I was going to hold off on showing anything until these book panels had all seen the light of day, but I'm stalling. This is what I did-

It turned out alright, though the colors got slightly messed up in the scanning process. I think my old flatbed is on it's way out. Bah, oh well.

In other news, there is no other news. Things continue, and things stop continuing. My pervasive misanthropy has reached a fever pitch. I'm feeling pretty good about that.

On the ever progressing process

2010-12-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

I have definitely, at this point, missed my "finish in a week" self imposed deadline, but with 4 left to go I still feel good about my progress. Especially with how the second of these two turned out. I've done some other things as well, but I'm not going to show anything else off until these are done.

Brother Bear, after conferring with his elder, gives his decision. Kill everybody. How could that go wrong? I hated this one, especially the bear's head, from the point when I put ink on it initially until I finished the last line. Now I kind of like it. Especially the bear's head. Parts of it still look like complete shit to me, but I'm not going to point them out. Now it's like Where's Waldo, but instead of looking for some asshole in a stupid hat you are looking for where I fucked this thing up.

A pine box full of dog heads, a letter of challenge, and the final breaking of a mind on the brink. Brother Cat knows he can never match the Bear for skill with a sword, but the intractable wheel of fate is rolling directly over his neck.

So this process continues. I'm still staring down the barrel of the writing portion, but I'm slowly coming to grips with that. I've drawn myself a timeline. Organization! I'm getting there. My poop is slowly getting itself into a group. I'm still plagued by the ol' black dog. But I do feed the thing well, so maybe it'll work out.

On business

2010-12-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

And I'm busy again. Distractions, distractions. But welcome ones. I bought some gouache at the goading of my friend New York Dan, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the hell that business functions. It'll have to wait until I finish these last six panels, but I plan on trying to do classy things with it. We'll see.

Brother Cat protests the Bear's challenge to the head of the security council. Tragically for him, his pleas fall on deaf ears. All that owl is thinking about is eating mice.

And Brother Bear sets off. Showing my hand a little here, but this is one of the last panels. After his tragically climactic battle against an old friend gone mad, he sets off toward parts unknown. There there may be dragons, but behind him there certainly be vipers.

Two more down, six more to go. And some of the more interesting ones at that, so I'm happy to get my ass back firmly in gear. I finished reading a book recently, which I would gladly cast into the sea. "The Man Who Was Thursday" was written by GK Chesterton in the early 20th century as an anti-anarchist novel/religious allegory about how fantastic England is. I knew it would piss me off, but being considered a classic I decided its paltry 200 pages would be a welcome break from the blocks of Russian prose I've been happily slogging through (plus considering the persistent influence Chesterton's inane politics have on politics today, I figured it'd be interesting to get to know the enemy). It wasn't. It wasn't clever, it wasn't witty, a predictable story, and worst of all chock full of appeal-to-pathos Christian anglophile horseshit masquerading as cogent arguments. It bordered offensive. One thing is certain: Chesterton loves England and not Chinese people or Blacks.

Bah. Otherwise, I've been chasing phantoms. It never ceases to amaze me, the way I can extrapolate a whole string of maybes and misinterpreted hints into a load bearing structure, and then become utterly destitute whenever it crumbles around me. I am an idiot, it's true. But I'll chase on, nonetheless, because the end is ultimate and impetus is real. Irish cad, author and playwright Brendan Behan once said, "The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink, and somebody to love you." The latter of the three is the real trick, I suppose, because I'm eating goat and drinking scotch as we speak. I wish you were here.

On doing things and otherwise

2010-12-05T20:28:00.000-08:00

Well, it's that time again. Since I last updated here I have been doing things. I deleted my social networking garbage for the most part, which was a long time coming and has definitely paid off. I lost contact with a lot of people who I don't really know. This is just fine. I don't even contact the people I do actually know. There is obviously something wrong with me. Jackpot.

It was a friend's birthday recently. I only know the birthdays of four people (october 24th, december 2nd, july 5th, march 24th). If you don't see your birthday on that list, don't let yourself get too depressed. In any case whenever one of those people has a birthday, or someone else who is also awesome and I find out what their birthday is, this is what I do-

Seeing as this birthday person is a one who might not want information paraded around the internet, I have excised the name from the image. But I still had to post it somewhere, because I'm proud as shit about how it came out. I'm going to ship it off on Monday or Tuesday, depending when I rally myself to hulk out of my spire and shamble down the the post. Anyway, onward!

Progress on these panels has been going again. After a short period of not doing a damn thing I'm back on top of my game a little bit. Maybe not top, but at least climbing. I told someone I'd be done in a week, and I fully intend on meeting that goal.

Here we see Brother Cat's irrational and inadvisable reaction to the goading of Brother Badger. The Badger predicted as much and if he can manage to survive this thorough seeing to, he is one step closer to pressing Brother Bear into action. And Brother Badger is a man of action.

And he marches. After letting himself get duffed up by a handsome murderer, Brother Badger makes his way to Bear's workshop. So long as he can retain ownership of of his precious vital humours. Here's a bit of trivia: The house at the back with the long casement window is the same house in which, one day after these events, Brother Cat pleads with Brother Owl of the security council. That image is next on the docket.

So I've got 8 more to go and then appendices. That and the writing portion. I'm nervous about that part. I had someone to work on it with, someone with a poetic turn of mind whose writing I love, who I felt could definitely improve my clinical prose, but everything there went south. I've slowly come to grips with that. Not exactly. I still hold out hopes for a sign. I still can't stop thinking about her. I'll still paint something for her birthday.

Anyway, I'm not sure if I've described exactly what all this crap is leading up to. Essentially, there will be 31 images and 31 pages of text linking them together. The story is in place, though these things have not been presented in any kind of coherent order. But the whole thing, presented in book form, will be followed by two or three appendices: the first being a series of naturalist style sketches of the animals that live in this world (all of whom will have human heads), the second being a retrospective section surrounding the conflict that precedes this whole story by about ten years (against a bunch of squid), and the third (which I'm still unsure about) being about the religion that these fancy beasts have (in which all of their gods are just regular animals). I've got a lot of ridiculous ideas about all of this ridiculous garbage. If it falls on any portion it'll be the writing, but I'm going to try my damndest.

I've learned the hard way time and time again that trying your damndest isn't necessarily a path to success. Failure, repeated and persistent failure, also teaches a lot of valuable lessons. I just wish these lessons made this shit less painful.

On the outside and why I don't bother

2010-11-29T19:02:00.000-08:00

Slowly but surely I'm getting back to work. Steady progress, that's the way forward. Ten odd panels remaining and some of those some of the most interesting. To me at least. These are a bit boring.

Not this one, this one turned out better than I hoped. Brother Rabbit is a careful and calculating sort. But when it comes time to kill a lot of things all at once, no one is quicker to the nitroglycerin than he.

These other two have story line importance, but are otherwise terrible. Something with this one went wrong early on and I never bothered to fix it. As I had run out of pages in the book, I just went with it. Whatever. Brother Bear consults with the elder Bear to get some guidance. In the circumstances this might not have been wise, as the old madness has been creeping into his brain. When the gentlemen become addled by the ages, the old bloodlust strikes up again.

And last but not least is this thing. Something seems off about this one too, but I can't put my finger on it. It seem unfinished. But it's not, and to hell with it too. It works. Brother Mouse attempts to talk sense into some ungulates and a dingo. Being of the sensible type, he is completely unable to understand why the nigh-illiterate Cow keeps looking at him like he's made of books.

Being by myself is a hateful thing these days. I feel like history is repeating itself. I bury myself in work to keep from thinking about it, and when that fails I inevitably reach for the bottle. I've been getting better about that. I've been in touch with some old friends and that also helps. But even still, I never want to see anyone. With exceptions, I suppose. Exception. History repeats itself indeed. Different place, different time, different players but the same outcomes. I know this is a problem with me. I just don't understand it. In any case, I am becoming more of a hermit. I can't see why I should make the attempt anymore. To hell with it.

I suspect sightings of me will become rare from now. Like the mighty bigfoot before me, I will retreat into the wilderness, leaving only scant footprints and blurry photographs in my wake. Be seeing you.

On relocation and recollection

2010-11-22T18:49:00.000-08:00

And it is done. I have moved. Since I got to this city, I've always lived far from things. Closer to the ocean side, further from all the central activity. This generally suits me. My previous lodgings marked the shortest period of time I've spent in a place by far, staying there for only a few months before circumstances arose that forced/allowed me to up stakes. Thanks to a serendipitous collusion of events, my new appointments are in a house I have coveted since the World Cup, the place we would meet before games at 4am to bake and drink and generally carouse until it was time to eat Irish breakfast and holler about the Netherlands. Good times.

In any case, here is a picture of my desk taken from where I am sitting now-

This place is close to everything. Across the street from the Panhandle, a block away from an old familiar coffee shop. The neighborhood directly around me sleeps early, but I'm going to explore the post-11pm world a little further afield tonight on my forage.

After two days of arranging my room has taken on it's familiar wunderkammer state, with my artworks plastered all over everything, skulls skulking in the corners and books piled wherever they can be piled. This room being larger than a mouse hole, I am now on the prowl for even more crap to pile into it. High on the list are a rack of antlers, more books, two wingback chairs and some kind of table. I plan on doing some rearranging, but by the time I'm done with this goddam place it's going to look like a time machine threw up in here.

My mind has been outside of my control lately. I've been going through motions and my brain spins feverishly. Every time I think I've moved forward, I find something and realize I'm in the same spot. Work has nigh halted, but I suspect nothing short of a coma could put a stop to my stupid hands. Whenever I move I find hair from my dog. I don't know where this crap hides, but its still everywhere. This time I found a lot of detritus from better, more recent times. Painful memories, but most are these days. I keep a silent hope kindled that I know I should douse. But I won't. Dismal optimist, that's me. But I've run out of words. I've run out of ways to try to explain this to myself. Love is a peculiar thing. Right now, there isn't anything I wouldn't do to make everything turn out alright. But I know there is nothing I COULD do. Or rather, I don't know if there is anything I could do. If any movie from the 80s taught us anything, it's that things will work out if you stand outside someone's window with a boombox blasting Peter Gabriel, but I don't even know where she lives. For the time being I'm resigned to sit by myself, hoping against hope that something shifts, recollecting nights passed and forcing myself not to turn to the bottle for solace. Time to bury my head in a book.

On madness and resignation

2010-11-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

I can't say I've been busy. I can say I may be going slightly mad. I'm unsure exactly what has become unhinged. I see familiar faces on strangers, I've been lingering around places we used to meet, I've been waking up from dreams which I can't differentiate from reality. I'm hoping it passes in due course. The move should help.

I'm moving again. I've lived in this current room for about 3 months; This is the shortest stint living in a place ever, for me, who generally roots down and won't be shifted for at least a year. I'm moving closer to things, into a larger room (which isn't necessarily saying much, considering that my current accommodations are roughly the size of a roomy shoe box), in an older house. I've wanted to live in this place since the world cup, when we'd go over before games at 4 in the morning and bake cakes with insulting slogans written across them in dutch. Good times. The downside to all this is that I'll be broke for a little while, as I have to pay rent in both places for a month. But it's worth it. Incidentally, if anyone wants to pay $400 to live in a shoe box by the ocean for a month, just holler at me.

In working news, I've been trying to finish this thing off. At least the image portion if it. It's been slow going due to my malaise, but I've got almost all of the drawings done and ready to paint.

This one's just the pencil sketch so far, but I like how it's turning out. It's another cut away shot, like the earlier badger-killing-dogs one. I've decided that I need more of those, because just having one in a series of 30 or so seems like a waste of a cool idea.

A plaintive Brother Cat tries to sway the steely and uncaring resolve of Brother Owl. This will follow the challenge he receives below. These aren't in any kind of order because I can't figure out how to move them around on the page. This is just as well, considering that none of the others have been presented in order anyway. If you want a well presented picture, wait for the end result you impetuous lout!

Following the tragic interaction with Brother Cat (see directly below), Brother Badger makes good his escape and struggles on toward hopeful assistance. A bit of odd trivia: The paneled window on the third house from the left looks into the same office the cat pleas with the owl in above. When that one is complete, you should be able to see this street scene from the other side, albeit without the staggering for of Brother Badger getting his vital humours all over the cobbles.

The scene preceding the above and proceeding from one already posted a while ago. Foppish action poses from both of the beasts, but hopefully when painted the eye will be distracted by the blood.

Brother Rabbit doing what he does best: well timed and wholesale destruction. This has a place in the narrative, but I'm still not 100% sure where. I've got some ideas. And every story needs a bloody explosion at some point, doesn't it? Didn't we learn any lessons from Die Hard?

There is nothing so disconcerting as receiving a pine box full of dog heads in the mail, especially when they belong to the same dogs you have ordered to do your dark bidding. And even more especially when it comes with a letter of challenge from someone you know is capable of murdering the living shit out of you in a sword fight. Tough break, Cat.

Brother Bear issues the order for bloodshed. Not a big fan of violence, this beast, but good at it. Clearly the grey coats are much more pleased about the decision than their leader is, but they've always been a bunch satisfied by unrelenting, kill-crazy rampages.

I've got a few others ready for paint, and a couple others still being penciled in. Progress is being made, though the pace isn't tremendously constant.

The other part of this in progress is a brilliant idea that my main man D. Gregory Price and I cooked up. When it's done, and in book form, there will also be an accompanying audiobook, featuring the text read by someone with eloquent elocution and music written by the man himself. We've also decided that it will be funny as hell to include the bell tone to indicate the time to turn the page, as a lot of old children's audiobook/book combinations had (see: Teddy Ruxpin et al). This will give us the opportunity to present the whole thing as a multi-media display as well. I look forward to this. I just hope my brain holds out. I anticipate early onset dementia. Gives me something to hope for, at least.

On disconnection, the reaper, and fanciness

2010-11-06T21:06:00.000-07:00

Things for me have been bad. There is no two ways about this. A while back in August, I mentioned meeting someone and commented on the fantastic rarity of such an event. The relation grew toward something, and as I should have predicted from the outset it all came to an end, unrequited and tragic. Such is my lot, I suppose. I hope there is a specific reason the grim gods are so intent on me being alone, because it got tiresome long ago and is now extending into unbearable territory. I won't whinge at length. I would like it if these things closed off. I would like it if the logical understanding that it will never amount to anything would end my constant hope that she'll show up unannounced and things will turn out alright. If you read this, everything I've ever said to you stands.

I met Death on the bus two days ago. I boarded the thing at my normal place, and it was unusually crowded (seeing as I get on at the far end of the line, it's generally just me and some elderly Russians to start with). I sat down next to an elderly gentleman in a dark suit. A fairly nondescript sort, but definitely well dressed and reading something. I sat down and did the same. I had started Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita" the day before, but I didn't even finish half a page before I hear a very clear voice in my ear ask, "What are you reading?"

I'll note here that I was wearing headphones, and listening to brutal metal at very high volume. I could hear none of the ambient bus noise whatsoever. But the voice rang directly through all the same, so that I was startled. I removed my headphones and told him, and we started talking about Russian literature. I've been on a kick lately, having finished The Brothers Karamazov a few days earlier, which itself followed Tolstoy and more Dostoevsky in the months previous. He was very knowledgeable, and we talked about some of the stranger themes of The Brothers Karamazov and others. I talked about loving the Tolstoy story The Death of Ivan Ilyich and he became animated with agreement. In any case, at a point he grasped the cord to request a stop at 10th Avenue. We said our goodbyes as he ambled from his seat toward the door, but turned to me at the last minute. He looked directly into my face, and I noticed for the first time that his eyes were dead black. Shark eyes. "Incidentally," he intoned, "you have two years left."

And with that, he disembarked and set off for parts unknown. I sat on the bus and ran a line of thinking that continues even now. I suppose if it's all true, I can do whatever the hell I want for the next two years. Which brings me to my next thought:

What I will do for the next two years is wear a goddam suit every day of my life. BEHOLD! FANCINESS!!!

A day spent with my associate and heterosexual life mate for manlife, D. Gregory Price, scouring thriftstores and vintage clothing hellpits. I learned a lot in what was my first outing to buy clothes in probably 10 years. Firstly, vintage clothing stores and consignment shops can burn forever in a lake of smoldering magma far under the crust of the earth for all I care. At least those in this city. At least those I visited. Walking into a place like that, my skin crawls. Waifish shopboys listening to electronic noise, eying the world with affected disinterest and honest fear. Expensive as all getout. I walked into one wearing a coat they were, it turned out, selling for $200, which a person can get from military surplus for twenty. Nay, sirs and madames, never again. We fell upon that old standby of the destitute human in need of garments, the Goodwill, aplace where you can bet good money that many of the articles (and probably all of the articles that I purchased) were dropped off after the previous owners' demise. The slacks and coats of fat old dead men are exactly my interest, and are exactly what I got. From this day on, I'll never wear something that isn't a suit again. At least for the next two years, when I will probably end up beheaded by a hatchet wielder.

On progress and solitude

2010-11-03T03:22:00.000-07:00

I've been busy. In times of extremity I throw myself into work. I tend to make technical progress during these periods, despite the fact that I wish something would just kill me and be done with it.

A funeral procession for Brother Walrus.

And a viking funeral to boot.

This is one of my favorite things I've ever done.

And this one will come near the end of the thing. Maybe an early reveal for concluding scenes, but I'm painting in the order I drew these things, and drawing in order of whatever the hell occurs to me. This turned out alright.

Tonight, my feeble and ill advised hopes were dashed on the rocks like an errant child by the seaside, along with my heart. Times are rough. I'm numb. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. It seems that the gods have decided that I am to toil on in solitude. I give up. Getting set up and knocked down must give causality some kind of great big laugh, but I can't do this anymore. A heart that has only known solitude and disappointment won't persist without collapse, and I don't care at this point to rebuild. The edifice will shudder and threaten fall, and I'll sit in it because the only other option is oblivion. I'm not there yet.

Hallowe'en again

2010-10-31T23:12:00.000-07:00

That time has come again. Grey clouds hang across the welkin and old spirits stir. Again I've let myself be cast into the gulf. Sitting here, finishing my last beer and trying to paint, I'm caught reflecting on recent history and tearing myself apart. I still don't know what the outcome of all this will be. I guess no one ever really does.

I finished this one this morning. It's terrible in ways I hope no one notices. It'll probably be the third to last when the thing is complete. A waiting game that never ends, while the order meets cataclysm outside.

I've finished another except for the ink, which I'll set myself to now. Happy Hallowe'en all. I hope yours has involved more merriment than mine has.

Wherein things fall apart, and things come together

2010-10-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

I feel in good spirits, against all expectation and good sense. Short lived, I'm sure, but while it lasts I'm going to make use of it. I've finished two more of these, and progress on more is forthcoming.

A dismal meeting in a filthy backroom, wherein Brother Horse is forced to bargain with unsavory, worm eating characters. The fact that the table looks like it was drawn by a drunken 6 year old will make sense. Or at least I'll excuse it somehow. Shut up.

Brother Badger making a brazen though well calculated accusation. This, I can assure you, will not turn out well for him.

More on the way. In other news, tomorrow is Hallowe'en. I'll be at home, carving a turnip and chain smoking alone. Would that it were otherwise, but the gods have made their position clear on the matter.

Wherein my powers are returned

2010-10-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

I have been busy again! Though the three articles I put up last night aren't the best stand-alone things, they did turn out alright. I've been slowly coming to grips with the content of this thing, and I have a broad outline with focused sections.

This one developed the best of the three. Brothers Elk and Bear play chess and plot against each other while establishing some kind of ostensibly quid pro quo political maneuverings. It's place is secure in the story, though condensing the dialog into the space I've allotted for myself will be a challenge. This challenge will be no match for me, because I am a mighty champion. This is something obvious, but I still felt like pointing it out.

This one doesn't stand up individually very well, but it also have a clear place in the narrative. Brother Badger interrupts a bear from his important pounding away at a chunk of meteoric iron to ask him to kill someone. It also prominently features a horse with a human head. As I've stated, in this world all of the actual animals, that is the beasts of the field etc etc have human heads. Why? Because it is awesome, and creeps some people out a little bit.

This one sucks, has no place in the story, was only finished because it was next in my moleskine, and was only uploaded because I like the weird bulldog a little bit. I might use it if I need some filler toward the end, but I also might hurl it dramatically into the tumultuous sea to be wracked against the rocks and devoured by screaming gulls.

I have more now completed but unscanned. I'll fix that this evening, while I recline languorously in a chair and smoke a pipe like a gentleman. I will also swill beer like a scoundrel, but I choose not to talk about that because it makes me seem less classy than I would like people to think I am.

Wherein my abilities are diminished

2010-10-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't painted anything for a couple weeks. That is to say, I have, but with terrible result. I've been drawing steadily, but as of yet none of these things have seen color. The story portion of this thing is still nebulous, but it's taking shape in vague and hopeful ways. The main thing is that my hands keep moving, so as to keep my mind from it's own more dismal ruminating.

The first in a series of simpler scenes, involving animals making various arrangements.

Another of those. I have no idea what that animal in the middle is supposed to be. Adding pen to the thing did nothing to make it any clearer.

Something more dramatic. I feel that writing the dialog for the fox is going to be the most fun I have in this project.

A calm scene in which there will be much in the way of machiavellian scheming. I can't wait to paint this one, and I hope I don't fuck it up, as I have done others.

A scene to follow the stabbing of the walrus, this procession will in turn be followed by a viking funeral rite.

All in all I'm pleased with the way it's taking shape. A few setbacks and the overarching hand of the melancholic ghost have kept progress slow. I mentioned happiness in my last post here I think, but I may have spoken too soon. This kind of happiness can be torturous.

Wherein I have not been so busy

2010-10-16T03:34:00.000-07:00

I have not been working at such a frantic clip, but I feel alright with this. I've been laying out some storyboards for this business, so I feel more directed. I've got pencil down for some scenes which will fall in order, but trying to maintain each image's individual merit is a little difficult. Below is the most recently completed panel, which I don't feel stands on it's own the way the others do.

Tomorrow, my docket is clear and I intend on getting at least two more completed. They involve a funerary procession and a viking funeral. Ink on those tonight, fates willing. I've got ink on a good 5 others which fall in mostly as-yet uncertain points on the timeline. I think painting in order might help, but maybe not. We'll see. In any case, I'm still excited about this project.

In other news, my life has taken a turn for the better. I blame this on one person in particular. She knows who she is.

Wherein I have been quite busy

2010-10-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

After being snagged for a time without any strong impetus or inspiration, the floodgates are loosed and I have set to work again. This time around, I have a vague goal for myself. I am hesitant to set it down solidly at this point, but these 7 things below are the first of many. Maybe 20 total. My hopes here, my eventual aim, is to have some kind of illustrated book. Or a picture book with some words at least. I'm a terrible writer when it comes to story arc and character development and all the everything else that goes into fiction, so I am hoping that the pictures will be able to dazzle people away from this fact. This will, I hope, be a story of machiavellian political struggles within an organization of fancy beasts in a world mostly, but not completely, unlike our own. We will see animals in fine suits maiming eachother, alliances formed and smashed, double cross and climactic beheadings. All the things we know and love. The first 7 are here-

A tragic double cross begins a chain of events that can only lead to mass murder and general unrest. A relatible situation with a guarantee of comedy.

The Grey-Coat Council convenes in secret, but progress is hampered as tempers flare and Brother Fox sets off on another one of his incomprehensible tirades.

Being of a naturally cantankerous disposition, Brother Badger is only too pleased to shove some poor bastard out a window to make a point about who is better at killing whom.

Brother Fox, inveterate swordsfox and smoker of fine tobaccos, relaxes after dispatching two would-be assassins.

Literate as hell. Murderer as fuck.

Brother Mouse, master of the distraction, can definitely get you to be looking at a lantern while he swoops in from the wings and swords you in the vitals.

Trampled to garbage by a fine and upstanding member of the Association. Humiliating, to be sure. Though also inevitable.

I've got sketches for at least 5 more and ideas running around for a good many further than that. I really should work on a story outline, so as to not end up with scenes that have to be hammered in somewhere, painted on a whim because I liked the image. But I've got some ideas on that front s well. Work continues. Updates to follow.

Wherein I discuss recent business

2010-09-19T21:47:00.001-07:00

So the past week or two has been productive. I don't have any crazy stories or things to babble about, so I'll just get on with it.

Murderer-

I had never drawn a cat all fancied up before. Seeing as how cats are functionally just handsome murderers, I decided that it'd best to err on the side of honesty.

Baba Yaga's Hut-

Russian folklore has some of the coolest crap. All manner of witches and skull collecting monsters and Koschei the Immortal, good stuff. Here, we see the chicken-legged hut of Baba Yaga. Turn your back to the woods, your front to me.

Manodiles!

I then proceeded to go off on a man-headed animal kick. Here we see the deadly manodile, both dressed and toothed to kill.

The Gentleman Tiger-

I like the hell out of this one. What started as a half-assed sketch eventually turned into something respectable. I'm going to give it to someone.

The Mountain of the Self Eating King-

I worked on this one for a while. It turned out alright.

Otherwise, I have got a few other things in the works. We'll see how well they turn out. I'm going to listen to the Pogues all night and paint my ass off. Or possibly drink a giant pile of beers and watch Wickerman. I'm undecided.

Wherein I become irrationally unnerved by the public and have an art show

2010-09-16T15:18:00.001-07:00

It's been some time since I last updated this thing. Last Friday night I had an art show at the hostel where I work. It was well attended, profitable, and there was free booze. A good evening, all things considered. Some photos from the thing:

As I say, it was a good time. But I'm not a social animal, and when put into these kinds of situations, I tend to lapse into a period of hermitude. I took advantage of this and bolted down to Santa Cruz. I spent a couple of days at my teachers place, getting my ass kicked and not thinking about the world at large. The last night I was there I spent some time wandering around the property. Everyone out there turns in pretty early, and in keeping with my normal night owlish ways I didn't. He lives in the mountains, the crisp air nothing like what lingers around the city, so I retraced old paths by starlight. I followed a deer around for a while, sat under a tree containing an owl, and listened to coyotes having some kind of untoward coyote party (as is their wont). Picking gravel out of my arm for the next couple days was a continual reminder of my own incapabilities and growth. I'm working now on more paintings, but I'll wait to post anything about those until they are done.

Wherein I examine the value of currency

2010-09-05T03:51:00.000-07:00

I just had a strange conversation. A cab driver came to the door, and I buzzed him in. A Turkish man named Adnan, by his introduction ("My name is Adnan, I am from Turkey!") And he handed over to me a fairly worn twenty dollar bill.

"Is real?" he asked, "Woman just gave this to me."

I looked at it in the light and saw the security strip, and asked him if I could tear the edge slightly to see if that was real. He consented, and I did, and the metallic glitter of the strip was there, so the thing couldn't be fake. I showed this to him, and he looked bewildered. I explained what it was, and he seemed to agree. Satisfied, he went back outside, giving this bill to a man who was still hesitant. I could see him gesticulating toward me, and explaining what I had just explained about the security strip, but this man wasn't having it. I could hear him yelling, "It's fake man, feel it! It's fake!" Now, Adnan and I agreed that this thing was worth twenty American dollars. This third party, however, decided otherwise. If this third party mindset catches on, we are in for a lot of exciting economic turmoil. One can only hope. Anyone wanna barter for some sheep skins?

In other news, I have started hanging things up at the hostel. Right now it looks a little on the sparse side, but once complete it should fill out nicely.

I have nothing new to show here, but I'm working on something that makes me uneasy. A good sign. Updates to follow.

Turbidity, that persistent ghost

2010-08-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

I've been in a holding pattern of late. I don't know why. For a while, I felt on the verge of something; maybe cataclysm or else something new and awesome. At very least I anticipated productivity. But this sense built and held, and the holding stagnated and now I find myself here. I've been working on these three things, but their completion has been hampered by my ability to idly distract myself.

The first one depicting torosaurus (formerly triceratops) ridden by three skeleton folks, the second sees parasaurolophus and some kind of gun wielding skeleton, and the third being iguanodon and some kind of skeleton and his owl friend. All came as a result of my age old dinosaur fixation and my discovery of a photo archive containing pictures of 18th century Italian monastics in funerary garb. I've got no idea what's going on there, but I enjoy the idea.

These chaps fit slightly to the stegosaurus guillotine I finished most recently, and when completed will form something of a set. I might do more prehistoric beasts, as I'd like to see my main man, the wooly mammoth painted. time periods do not match, but time periods mean nothing to me. In my universe the veil of time has been rent asunder, and it's tattered threads laid across eachother at whatever intersection I think is funny.

But until then I'm trying to end my stasis. Flurries of activity are often followed by periods of lull for me, but I'm trying to crack this one.

I don't even know anymore

2010-08-23T02:20:00.000-07:00

I did this today. I had a dream a few nights ago that featured, among other things, this prehistoric capital punisher, along with a Chinese restaurant full of jackals, me pushing a man in front of a train, and an army of skeletons occupying some old city. All in all, a usual night.

I mentioned in the previous post how a whirlwind of changes had settled a bit. That's true. In good ways and bad. I have a history of investing myself in situations, the outcomes of which I have no control over. I recently met someone who is amazing. This is a fantastically rare thing. Will things work out for ol' Valin Mattheis? History says no. Too bad I'm such an optimistic misanthrope.

New times are always happening

2010-08-13T16:17:00.000-07:00

I realized I haven't updated this thing in a bit. I'll start with apologies for my last entry. Re-reading it now, it's very clear that I was high on crack when I wrote it. That's one for you, crack gods. No more.

My life of late has been a moderately strange whirlwind. I moved, for one. Ten blocks down the road, closer to the ocean and a market that doesn't close, but further from everything else. I feel good about that. The fog horns I could hear bellowing melancholy from my old room are closer now. The raccoons and skunks that occasionally ventured near my old block reside out here in force. Sitting on the back steps at night (yes, this place has a backyard. I can't possibly express how happy I am about that), I am often joined by a set of glowing eyes, furtively navigating along the fence and scampering along a rooftop on some errant errand. It's comforting. My room itself is a small thing. About eight feet square, and ergonomically packed with my desk and shelves. It's perfect for my purposes, and the house it's in is populated by fantastic folks. All in all, it's been a very suitable change of surroundings.

In odd coincidence, the move came almost exactly one year since moving to this city. I have this very strange tendency. In the past eight or nine years, I have not lived in one place for longer than a year. It's never my intention to vacate after a set period, but the only place I've remained in for longer was the winnebago (which was only a year and a half). I hope this place sees me staying for longer, but the fates are capricious.

I haven't been painting or writing much of anything, but I also feel that this is changing as I settle in. As I say, things have been a pretty constant whirlwind of activity, leaving little room for repose. But I have got some things done. This for instance-

Other things are in the works. I got a pile of stuff framed, and my art show is on for September, starting on the first and my crap will be up all month. That gives me some time to put together a tweed suit.

The story of how I got high on crack

2010-07-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

Well, tonight has been exceedingly interesting. I don't have the time or attention for introductory remarks, and I'm feeling quite sick for reasons that will become clear, so set yourself down by the fire and listen to a tale-

I was sitting at work, as I often do, enjoying the persistent tides of vacationing travelers with their myriad queries and odd requests, when through the doors of the hostel came a woman from the street. "I'm not gonna lie, I'm a street kid," she started. "This guy has been harassing me, can you call the cops?" I said yes, I would, and she left. I looked outside to see who it was, and sure enough there was a character lingering about my doorstep. Not tall, thin looking but not exactly sickly, backpacked and bedizened in leather jacket and jeans. Not your typical life-battered crack smoking goblin but still clearly a one under the crooked claw of those gods. I went back to the desk, trying to decide whether or not I was going to bother calling someone. I sat down and the door opened. Someone let out a quick shriek and hurried inside. My co-deskateer and good friend Anthony asked what had happened. The student coming in told us that the man outside had grabbed her ass. Well, that dog won't hunt. I charged back toward the door and told this gentleman to fuck off immediately.

He began to comply, so I went back inside. As soon as the door was closed, he reversed his slow meander away from the building and took up station once again directly outside of the door. Anthony called the number for our security force (known as "The Patrol Specials"), and I went out again to holler at this wayward ghost. This time, he just started to stalk back and forth, but seemed to be making his way onward, so again I went back inside. By this time we had been joined by Em, a lovely poet and writer and one of the few authentically fantastic acquaintances I've made at work. Anyway, this bedraggled wretch paced in front of the hostel's entrance like a brain-sick jaguar in a low-rent zoo, turning to look at me in between hits on his crack pipe. I was standing with Em in front of the desk, just watching this guy. At this point, I had decided that waiting for the specials was going to be more entertaining than chasing him off, so I just smiled back at him and waited. Alas, they didn't arrive before he attempted to make his way inside.

I watched him as he came toward the door, so I started forward immediately. I don't know what this guy had planned, but I didn't intend on letting it get past the threshold. I remember this part very clearly. I contemplated whether or not just punching him in the face without warning would constitute assault. He was, after all, guilty of at least one minor sexual assault, and was now trespassing with the intent to commit mayhem. I decided against it, instead falling back on the ol' hard shove through the door. There exists a technique in martial practice called "Hu Pu" the tiger's back. I didn't use it, despite my planning to. Just as I approached him, the second I was taking in breath to send this bastard flying across the street with my magical forces of kung fu brutality, he blew a stream of acrid smoke directly into my face. I inhaled this deeply, and my preparation was somewhat stuttered. I choked a bit as my hands made contact, shoving him as hard as I was still able out through the doors and onto the sidewalk. I followed outside after him just as the specials pulled up. My throat stung a bit, but aside from the normal induction of adrenaline in my system I wasn't feeling odd yet. I didn't even think about it. The man recovered himself off the sidewalk and immediately started off down the street. I pointed him out to the patrol cop who arrived (he had meandered down the road and was pestering some other innocent pedestrians), and went back inside.

I soon realized I might be missing a show. I went back out, and sure enough, this belligerent man was being stalked by the specials, slowly still but keeping ahead of them, yammering an inane stream of nonsense. Back and forth they went, their saunter occasionally turning to charge as they tried to get ahold of him. He paced again by the hostel, demanding my cigarette as he loped passed. The number of his pursuers had increased, as did his frantic pace, and before I knew it they were all tearing ass across the neighborhood, him shouting continually about the events of the evening and nearly being hit by a car, finally concluding in his being brought down to the asphalt and pummeled an appropriate amount. The cops had arrived, and the throng got brave and the streets got crowded. I went back inside. By this time, I realized the buzzing in my system was not the old familiar adrenaline charge. I was high on crack.

The big cloud he expectorated into my face had indeed mostly wound up in my lungs. The timing couldn't have been better if I was trying to shotgun a hit from me ol' cobber's crack pipe, and that was exactly the result. I couldn't focus, I felt somehow frantic. My hands started shaking, and eventually the rest of my body followed suit. My legs got numb and my thoughts moved like a race car greased with cheetah blood. I called my manager, who told me to go to the hospital. I wasn't about to spend the rest of my evening sitting in an emergency room, so I declined the suggestion, but he told me to at least go home. I wasn't sure. I was outside smoking with Em and Dan and some Germans and it was all something of a blur. After about 15 minutes spent sitting on a couch, trying to get my head in order, I decided to go home early. Which I did. Which is where I'm sitting now. I'm feeling somewhat ill.

There was a short epilogue to the events. Just before my cab arrived (I had missed my last bus home), a reporter came in. Channel 5 microphone in hand, he was asking the night guy at the desk what went on. I approached, telling him that I was witness to the thing (still vibrating slightly, but keeping it together). This man was a picture of slimy journalistic exploitation.

"So you saw it, eh?"" he asked in a sneering, greasy tone.

"Yeah, the whole thing."

"Did you get it on tape, you wanna put it on youtube?" he chuckled. Disgusting.

"No, it wasn't filmed by anyone. The guy was going crazy, he caused trouble, assaulted this girl, and the cops arrested him. Normal stuff."

"We heard about some police brutality..." Ahhh, his angle rears it's ugly head. I didn't want to go on record defending the cops, but I told him that there was no foul play. The guy got everything he deserved. I denied his request for an interview, packed myself into a cab and left. Crazy times, folks.

Meeting new people

2010-07-27T15:25:00.000-07:00

Mostly on paper. And at work. I've actually met a fairly large number of new folks at work over the past few weeks (comparatively. Ok fine, 3). The unending torrent of baffled Germans and Japanese tourists radiating optimistic cluelessness occasionally breaks and someone comes along with whom I automatically feel some common thread. Generally I terrify them somehow during the course of a conversation, or they become offended or disgusted. In some cases they make me laugh. I'll never see any of them again. This is the trouble with crippling social anxiety combined with an acute sense of loneliness. In any case, I'm painting again.

The above stretch of picture is a bad shot of this-

Combined with the older one I did in some bygone era. I plan on doing a great deal of these. By the finish, it'll probably be 5 panels, and 10 feet long. Next up, a whole row of gentleman centaurs. I've got a course plotted.

Yesterday, I was given a beaver skull. It was promised to me a long while ago, by a biologist named RJ who was in town to examine the Cal Academy's specimen collection for a book he is writing for UC Berkeley about spiders. The man has an exuberant interest in animal skulls that borders on the inappropriate, so he's my kind of people.

I didn't realize Castor canadensis had such a big head. It's definitely the largest beaver skull I've ever seen personally, though not surprising because I haven;' seen many. One broken incisor and no mandible, but otherwise 100% complete. Jackpot. I'm going to mount this one exploded in a bell jar. Hopefully one in between the small one for the squirrel and the large one for the goat. It'd make a nice set. Anyway RJ, duly impressed by my skullfuckery, also encouraged me to try my hand at a full skeleton mount. I would definitely like to take a crack at it. He also wondered if I had tried any avian skulls. It'd also like to take a crack at that, but that optical bone ring is a bugger to preserve.

I'm off to meet with me Ma. It's her birthday today, and in town for the evening so I'm buying dinner. Then I'm going to set myself down and paint panel 3, the stately procession of the gentleman centaurs. Anticipate progress.

Something

2010-07-19T08:36:00.002-07:00

I don't want to jinx myself, but I feel pretty good about things. Today, when it starts after I wake up, will hopefully prove quite productive. Bank account, cell phone telephone, mat cutting, train station rendezvous, all of these things are on the agenda. Will I meet with success? I'm guessing at a 75% completion rating for my planned operations. I'm still not sold on this cell phone idea.

Anyway, I finally finished something I started ages ago-

The lighting effect came off well, and the texture on the mantle comes with apologies to Ken Mortensen, who I stole it from. I feel more things beginning to clamber to the surface. I'm going to be busy as all get-out, but I hope some time at the laundromat today will see progress.

Last night I stayed up all hours with some new friends. Well, I was being paid to stay up all hours, but they weren't. I yelled at a crackhead, talked about music, and shared a couple of stories from life observing the mean streets. Or at least the batshit insane streets. I reflected that every place I've been employed over the last 10 odd years has been in some way completely ridiculous. I wouldn't have it any other way, I suppose. Anyway, like all these hostel bound acquaintances, I'll never see them again.

It's 9am. Time to go to sleep.

I cannot stop listening to this song.

Just as I suspected!

2010-07-16T04:03:00.000-07:00

More inactivity. Not exactly I guess, but sloth nonetheless. I'm at pains to actually do anything productive. Several things slowly coming together. But I did clean up a deer skull.

Actually this thing came out much better than I suspected. I don't think I'm going to do anything else to it this time around. It's too large to fit in any of the bell jars I can readily get ahold of. I might find something to mount it in, but I don't think I'm going to tear it apart.

Otherwise, I had a delightful visit from M this week. And another on the horizon. Movies, walking, banter and food. Good company does wonders. Sunday I've got another appointment to go cut mats for framing. I hope to get at least 10 things put together for this upcoming show. I still don't know which yet. Graphic violence is out by order of management, but otherwise the sky's the limit. We'll see. Hopefully it'll coalesce within about a week or so. Next week I plan on going crazy on it. I know, best laid plans and all that, but I've got a good feeling about this one.

I'm going to turn in early. Goodnight.

I am a man of action

2010-07-09T04:38:00.000-07:00

I have been less inert. I consider this a wild turn around, and thus should be praised constantly for it. I've done a third and (for now) final robot triptych. Behold:

Slightly different tack, but not really. Otherwise, I'm working on an extension of the procession I did a few weeks back. It will also have robots. And some weird quadrupeds. Who doesn't like weird quadrupeds? Communists, that's who.

Tomorrow, I'm going to finally get my business in gear. To the DMV as soon as I rise from my wretched hibernation. I read a book tonight. Whole damn thing. Wasn't very good.

I'm going to sleep right now. Sunday is going to be madness, Saturday is going to be mildly stupid, Monday is going to be a day of rending crappy furniture to splinters and leaving it on the street to rot, and other days, well. We'll see. Today I had a conversation about police corruption with an ancient, retired longshoreman. He showed me a picture of himself a month ago, in which he had a glorious white mane. He had cut his hair so as to look more presentable, but it didn't do the trick. He was considering shaving his beard. I urged him to stop considering this. He had a mighty beard indeed, and I hope he doesn't touch it. I don't think it'd help, really. "Retired longshoreman" and "presentable" don't exactly belong in the same sentence. Unless the sentence is, "I left the house looking rather presentable, but then I ran afoul of that retired longshoreman."

The ladies of the evening, and those who track them.

2010-07-04T05:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight has been pretty interesting. I finished a second robot triptych that I enjoy a bit. I've got a third in the works that will have a good deal more animals in it. I'm not sure what's up after that. I'm hoping like hell it's not another period of turbid laziness.

Around 3am this morning I was standing outside enjoying myself a cigarette, as is my wont, standing sentinel in the front entryway. A rotund asian man with a shaved head and a tan leather jacket hurried down the sidewalk and turned abruptly into the doorway, hiding himself as best he could from the view of some unseen figure across the intersection. I turned to look at him, hoping to clearly give him the impression that whatever he was hiding from could tear his arms off and feed them to his relatives for all I cared but could he kindly fuck directly off out of my doorway, but he was busy yammering information into his blue tooth earpiece and staring furtively across the road like a meerkat. A moment later, he turned to me and gave me a knowing grin, simultaneously informing whoever was on the other end of his blue teeth that, "She went around the corner, toward the other car."

I first thought undercover police, but he was too well dressed. I next suspected private investigator, then maybe high dollar and well coordinated kidnapper. He stopped erratically and quite conspicuously glancing around the street, and by this time I had decided it would be more interesting to find out what the hell he was doing, instead of just telling him to stop darkening my doorway with his probably-illegal carryings on.

"Are you working?" I asked. At this he spewed the entire story unsolicited, which convinced me immediately that this was not a man to entrust with any of my valuable state secrets.

"Yeah, we are. We are watching this girl who works in the massage parlor. Her husband found out she's cheating on him. On the job is one thing, but when it's time to go home, you have to go home, you know what I'm saying? Anyway, we already know where the guy lives. We know how much money he makes, where he works, what kind of cell phone he uses, everything. We think she is going to try to get to him tonight. Bad idea, you know what I mean?"

The massage parlor in question is one which is quite obviously a sex dungeon of some kind, though clearly not one which is too terribly selective in it's hiring practices. Who ever heard of a prostitute cheating on her husband? For shame prostitute. For shame.

Anyway, this gentleman asked me a few questions about the hostel, including "Can my friend and I sit inside there by that window to look for this lady?" and "Is the hostel only for international students?" and "Do the students also have jobs?" and "Are there many girls there?" and finally, "Any Filipino girls looking for work?" At this point, I decided it would be best to extinguish my cigarette and lock the door as hard as humanly possible. I told him that it would be best if he pushed on into the night, flicked my cigarette into the gutter, went inside and laughed my ass off. Interesting times.

Sloth turns over, if only for the evening

2010-06-29T01:50:00.000-07:00

I think the knot of anxious dread in my gut is steadying my hands. I've finally been able to get my poop in a group and produce something. Behold-

This didn't start as a triptych necessarily. I just had three small panels and wanted to draw a robot with an owl in a cage for a head. As the thing spun out, I realized that it was workable in three individual parts, so I'm going to frame it up that way. I've got a small show at the hostel toward the end of July, so I hope to have a bunch of my crap looking pretty fly. I think I'm going to concentrate on robots for the thing, as the powers that be don't want a bunch of graphic violence decorating the walls. Just as well, I personally prefer the robots to most of the other stuff I've put on paper. I might get the two ambling mechanical villages printed on watercolor paper and giving them a refurbishing. I'm just thinking aloud (after a fashion), but things are happening a little bit.

Oh, hello there. It's been a while.

2010-06-25T03:00:00.000-07:00

I realized tonight I hadn't updated this thing in a while. It's for the best, because nothing much has been going on anyway. Nothing good at least. Aside from obtaining a new, moderately fancy desk on the street, I've proceeded to lose my wallet and thus my passport. My last form of personal identification since the gubbermint took away me driver's license (on account of my preferring to drive faster than they would like me to) is now in the hands of some crack-blasted degenerate. I believe I dropped it from a car during a mad rush to work. I did this because I am smart. Obviously.

In other news, I haven't been doing anything else. I've been more Eyore than Owl these days. Here is a picture of the only thing I've done in weeks. Three worthless idiots marching over a forest. The ol' inspiration well has been powerfully low, as you can see. I've been trying to keep my hands moving, in hopes that they produce something awesome by automatic writing, but that hasn't happened yet. It's not even that I don't have things I should be doing. I'm on the verge of doing something drastic. Like moving across the country. We'll see. I'm going to New Orleans in October. I might not come back.

In the mean time, I'm going to start reading Douglas Adams again. The Hitchhiker's Guide tends to get them ol' spirits up. The Dunsany I've been reading lately isn't doing the trick. I'm anticipating a couple of visits. That might make things better. Or worse. Stupid emotions.

Something revisited

2010-06-12T03:07:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned, I'm terrifically inert these days. I haven't been painting at nearly the clip I'm accustomed to. I've been spending my time wallowing in shit, I guess. Not literally. Although my room could definitely use a good once over. In any case, here is something-

I initially wanted to get down in good ol' paint and ink some things I'd done in msPaint. Not having something I can physically touch makes me feel uneasy. I've extended my scope in this endeavor to cover some of my old ink drawings. The laurel here took some time and taught me a few things in the process. Next up will be something from msPaint times. Either walrus killing tyrannosaur or mammoth eating unicorns. We'll see.

In other news, I've been recovering from goat skull mayhem. I've been looking at this deer skull I've got and trying to envision how the hell I'm going to mount it. It's too big for a bell jar. Probably another shadow box project. Might be nice. Might also be nice to stuff it into a bell jar anyway. In any case, I've got to get myself down to Paxton Gate.

And as I'm bored as all get out, here is a picture of the top of my cabinet.

Visible are a few relics; my recent goat cranium explosion, my third watercolor attempt, a magazine full of british 303 rounds for my old rifle, a brutal chopping knife, a horseshoe given to me by someone important, and hiding behind the lamp a tobacco pipe and a reliquary box containing a pheasant skull (best birthday present ever). I realize now that most of these items, lamp included, are of supreme sentimental value. I entrench myself in objects like that. I've got a loteria card in my wallet that will attest to this. I cling to things like this because I am such a goddam hermit, I think. In any case, I enjoy the hell out of this stuff, despite the fact that it makes my room look like the den of a murderer. Or an apothecary's lounge. Either way.

Disarticulation 2: Rise of the Goat Skull

2010-06-09T04:45:00.000-07:00

I've had a goat skull resting calmly in an old drawer for some time now. It was procured during a trek along the railroad tracks some time ago. A fantastic day, that. It netted me the squirrel skull previously seen here being rent asunder and re-purposed, but this goat skull was definitely the top prize. I've been going back and forth about how exactly to get this thing into presentable shape. It still had a bit of matter on it, mostly dried out leather and fur. A couple months back I boiled the thing and started taking it to parts. That process stank to high hell, and I'm glad the none of my roommates were awake to smell what I did to the kitchen. One of the many benefits of being a nightbeast. Luckily it aired out, but the pot I used will never see function as anything but a bone boiler again. It's become a grizzly mess.

I started out with the pile of crap on June 3rd, a large bell jar obtained at Paxton Gate, a couple spools of copper wire, various adhesives and macabre desire to see these things collude.

I started out by breaking the thing along the sutures on the top of the brain case, orbits, zygomatic arches, lambdoid sutures, nasal bones, the whole top of the thing. I tethered these back together with a few wire links, and it looked like this-

I also spent a good hour using a dremel bit to hand-auger a hole in the base of the bell jar. This resulted in several blisters and not a small amount of swearing. Into this, I stuck what would be the main support with a cross piece to support either side of the mandible.

From here I decided to pull some teeth. I wanted to have the beasts chompers exposed in some way, but I wasn't sure how. I messed around with a couple things and decided to suspend them with wire above the stinking gumholes.

I dialed it down a bit after some thought, but it provided me the opportunity to yank out and subsequently reassemble a bunch of goat teeth, which is something that not many people ever get to do in a lifetime.

I pulled the teeth out of the maxillae, wired them back in, and started thinking about how the hell I was going to actually get this thing rigged up.

I finally started to crack a few of the issues involved with this bastard, got the top mounted, and my camera couldn't keep up with the frantic flurry of wiring that followed.

After getting the top and bottom situated, getting the rest of the thing stuffed together was fairly straightforward. After solving a stability problem that stemmed from the entire construct being supported by one wire strut, after 6 days, a whole mess of wire (probably about 15 feet in total, 16 and 22 gauge both), and enough toxic adhesive to get an entire bathroom full of central valley high schoolers high for two days I had something moderately terrifying glaring at me from inside a lovely glass dome.

It feels good to have the thing completed. I've got more things like this to do, but for now I'm going to wash the bone dust and chips out of my beard, clean my table off and smile like a self-satisfied prick for a while. Do not disturb.

There goes my brother, there goes my wayward friend

2010-06-06T03:50:00.001-07:00

Tonight, I had the great pleasure of meeting a fine Irish lad by the name of O'Donnell. Drunk as a longshoreman and just as ugly, this fellow was a picture of Irish charm. I was, apparently, his best friend after directing him to the bathroom. He regaled me with stories about Sean Cannon of Dubliner's fame, and what it's like to live next door to him. He danced the river dance across the lobby floor. He engaged in a brief political debate with an Israeli man (who told him, with deadpan eyes, that Ireland is the number one target of Israeli military strikes). He tried unsuccessfully to get laid multiple times, and as a matter of fact owes me 5 dollars on that score. He also demanded a sandwich from me. I drew him a picture of a sandwich, but I don't think it's what he really wanted. During a visit from some returning travelers from New Zealand, he flung himself around one of them and swore undying love, then promptly forgot her name. The antipodeans were less than impressed with his shenanigans, though clearly a little charmed by the brogue. They didn't spray him with mace at least.

His lovelorn sorrows prompted one man to invite him into his own bed for the night. "Do you want to get my smell on you?" he asked.
"No lads, look here. Let me explain something to you. Thank you, by the way, for the offer. And no offense. But I'd rather smell like myself." Which is a happy coincidence, really, because not only does he have no choice in the matter but he also makes up the entire supporting crowd for that odor.

Finally, his steam began to wind down. My persistent urging for him to get some sleep finally seemed to register and he bid the then-empty lobby goodnight. He stopped to lament that his bunk was on top, complained about the difficulty he'd have getting up there, collapsed briefly to announce that he'd surely die in the attempt. I told him that if he died that night I'd say some beautiful things at his funeral. This seemed to be enough, and he shambled off. I could track his upstairs progress by the series of thumps and swears where he'd fall on the landings. Truly, a prince among men.

In other news, I finished this recently-

I've decided to make this one stretch out. I'm going to add panels to it soon. There was a startling lack of robots, so I decided to fix that problem. Also a lack of walking tree monsters, and things with houses for heads, and all the various other beasts that tend to dominate my thinking. I'm looking forward to that. But first, I've got a goat skull to mount. Expect news on that soon.

inconditus

2010-06-02T03:39:00.000-07:00

My attention span has been all over the place like a crazy woman's shit. I'm without muse. I should say I am at distance. Physical and otherwise. Living in a city like this is interesting, but I'm sat with the distinct impression that it's killing me. Being without a car, being cursed to probably never have a car in the state of California again; it's also killing me. It's a kind of incarceration. In any case, it's my shit sandwich and I get to eat it down.

I've been working on a lot of crap simultaneously. It's bad news for me. Stripped along the side is a good chunk of it. Four items that have been sitting around for a while.
I've got a thousand other half formed ideas failing to culminate in anything substantive in the ol' brainbox.

We'll see how things turn out. Prints edge ever closer to being a reality. Other projects are being worked on at a steady clip. None of that goes any further to extricate my own lethargic process from the mire. Something will shift soon though. I can feel something just beyond reach. For the time being I'm sitting here in my own filth, watching a BBC program featuring the greatest screaming scottish menace I've ever seen, scrawling what I can and waiting for good things to happen.

Hopefully they will next weekend, when a previously thwarted quest for second hand tweed suits resumes.

And now I'm going to sleep. I've got to work earlier than usual tomorrow. I am hoping to revive my Gentleman's Response blarg soon. That's just what I need. Another thing to be working on.

The Claxton Associates convene

2010-05-23T00:11:00.000-07:00

I did another line of these chaps. It used to be that whenever I couldn't force my hands to move right I'd draw robots. These days I find myself coming back to these folks more often than anything mechanical.

My favorite is the owl

followed by the bear.

My squid business is progressing slowly. My other business is not progressing much at all. I just (finally) finished The Turn of the Screw, after starting it, moving, losing it, finding it, and starting it over. Pretty fantastic in its dense narration and weird ghost business. I recommend it to anyone who can read.

squid parliament in session

2010-05-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

I did this a few days ago. I had such high hopes. My grand machinations, though, met with only mediocre result. I started too big. I've decided to do a bunch of smaller portraits and work my way back up. I need to get my methods down, as per usual. But here it is-

In the end, after the thing had taken an inexorable turn, I decided to just wash it over. It sort of worked. Not really. In the end I resorted to digital chicanery to correct a bit of the blunder, which in my mind makes this a failure. I do, though, like the portrait in the back. I'll need to see more of that guy.

It's been a while since my last update on this thing. What has been taking up all of my precious time, you ask? Drinking secret recipe Russian booze with a giant Russian brutalist (brewed by his grandmother). I can cross that off my list. I've also been working on a whole mess of painted things, but none that are fit for looking at. I hope that changes. I can't focus lately. The black dog is at my heels again, and I'm thinking about doing something drastic.

The skulk, the cete and the maul

2010-05-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

Three more finished, and I'm done with this idea for a bit. I intend on doing a batch of birds (owls, corbies, pelicans, nightingales, and falcons I think) and a series of sea life (sperm whale, narwhal, walrus, right whale, and great white shark in all likelihood), but those'll have to wait. Here are the last of these three-

A notable decline in quality toward the end. I always make the mistake of saving bears for last, them being my favorite beasts, but instead of being more warmed up to my process I'm always getting tired. I rarely do bears justice.

I've been cutting mats in preparation for prints, with the use of a good friend's tools. We'll see some result there soon.

The warren bounds

2010-05-02T01:29:00.000-07:00

Second in this series, which I've decided to break down a bit-

The hare has always been an animal with strange implications to me. I used to watch the animated adaptation of Watership Down as a lad, almost religiously. As a result, I've never been able to think about hares being cuddly little harbingers of Easter. I've got a scar across my right wrist, from the radial side on down, diagonally across the forearm. It's faint now, but visible in some light. It looks like I tried to do away with myself, but nay. It's a rabbit scar.

Growing up we used to keep all manner of animals. Goats, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs, finches, reptiles of all description; our house was something of a menagerie. One of the rabbits we had was a distemperate beast, a huge white thing with cumulonimbus fur perpetually matted with feces and mud. All our animals (with the exception of one goat, for a brief period) were outside dwellers. Anyway, this rabbit hated everything. It's stereotypically adorable exterior hid a heart black with wroth. It would bound across the yard, hating the earth under it's cute not-quite-dainty paws with every stride. It would never let anyone get near it. One day, we had to capture it because a neighbor was bringing a dog over. Apparently this dog was a rabbit killer. So we set to the task, running around like maniacs to corner this fell, benighted creature in the garden. It was finally caught without an escape route next to the body of an old Datsun Roadster that used to hulk among the weeds back there, and I set upon it like a shot. I wrapped my arms around it's bulky frame while it struggled frantically, rasping and squealing like a demon in a church. It's big back legs pounded into my chest and it gained purchase enough to bound free. On it's way out of my clutches, it took a kick at me and raked one of it's vile talons across the arteries in my wrist; a clear attempt to kill it's would-be captor. But as luck would have it, I didn't die, and instead seized the beast by his ears as blood dripped from my wounds. It was later killed by a different dog.

The herd strides

2010-04-23T03:26:00.000-07:00

As I promised-

It didn't turn out as I hoped, but after giving it a thrice over I was able to knock it into some kind of shape. After this attempt I think the rest of my mauled animals are going to have slightly less scope. Maybe not.

Today I've had the wherewithal of a set of deranged pajamas. I need to eat something. Or check myself into a home for the bewildered.

Swallowing the Sword of Damocles

2010-04-22T02:43:00.000-07:00

The other night I finished the fourth and for-now-final robot hunting portrait. I intend on doing more of these, probably more in the vein of said robot hunters lounging in their dens with human components displayed above brick mantles as trophy mounts. But as of now, it's these-

I'm happy with the colors. The first is my favorite. Something about the blank face of the mechanical man. Poise. Dignity. Dispassionate murder-love. But yes, that's one for the books.

I finished off the watercolor pad I was using with that last item. I picked up something a bit bigger and considerably more fancy. Moleskine. Class act. We'll see how it takes to paint tonight, my first impression is that I'll be able to do clouds the way I like on this thing. By morning you'll be able to see a family of mangled elk grazing on the grasslands. My intention is also to paint several mangled-though-functional creatures having a good time while missing portions of their precious corpus. Hare is next on my list, followed by probably 3 or 4 others. Fox, bear, badger and owl are what I'm thinking. Some of my favorite creatures. That list could grow, but it'll be those at least. Working in series keeps me moving.

In other news, the possibility of financial gain has peered it's skittish head over the horizon. If it pans out it will mean a lot of things, but mostly that I'll be wearing a tweed suit every day for the rest of my life. Fingers crossed, horseshoe hanging.

Productivietygasm

2010-04-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I found myself struck with the idea of drawing some more fancy beasts in formal dress. I had this idea that it would be cool to see a bunch of the fellows walking in a line. I also had the idea that I wasn't going to draw any animals I had already drawn, considering how many animals there are in the world repeating myself seemed like an idiotic plan. I drew up a list and started in. By around 2am, I had gotten ink finished over the frantic pencil sketches I had finished at work and on the bus, and it looked like this-

only much larger. As the night waned I painted like the antidote was in it, fueled by Turkish coffee and my own compulsive drive to finish ideas the night I have them. As the dull light of dawn started in through my window I finished the last inking on the 8 devils and had my result. All in all, I'm quite pleased-

They are all separate on paper, and all about 5" by 5" (roughly). For me, the standouts are the hare,

the otter,

and the sloth.

The latter of those was inspired by an old sketch by Goya which is generally thought to be a self portrait of sorts done in his declining years. An addled and berobed hermit struts forward with the assistance of two canes. I figured that if a sloth has to try and walk upright it'd be about the same. Anyone who has seen a sloth normally trying to navigate flat ground would be forced to agree, because while that creepy, slow amble might be many things, it is hardly dignified.

They are all up on me ol' flickr at this point, and I intend on printing them in the future. And now, I'm off. I don't work for a while yet, and I've got two pages in this book to cover with robot hunting portraits. Filling my time with painting distracts quite well from my overall senses of creeping dread and impending doom.

A thanks has to go to my friend James Lord, who inspired the name "The Cornwallace Few". Things come out of that boy's mouth deserve either medals or prison time.

Steady she goes

2010-04-11T01:59:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, as soon as I wrangle my various poops into various groups, I'll have prints off the ground. My first run is going to consist of 5 portraits of classy animals and 5 battle chap engagements. After those turn into a big shining pile of gold, I'm going to set my sights on another run. If it amounts to anything. I try not to let my delusions of grandeur run amok, but if I'm not perched atop a small hill of gold bars in two months I'm going to be very disappointed. I've got not a few debts to repay, one in particular that pains me on a daily basis. The owner of it should expect some recompense soon. It'll never heal the divide but it'll ease my mind a bit.

After I get these done, I'm going to work on getting printed a series of these-

Right now, I've got a million portraits of upstanding victorian robots posing for hunting portraits running through my brain. I've painted two (well 1.75), pencil on a third, at the end of it I'm hoping to have 5 at least. As a side note, if I had any money at all to spare on such things, I'd dress like that robot every day of my life.

My pace has picked up considerably. I'm glad for that, at least.

Attachment is a weird thing. It can grow upon something by force of memory alone, and wane by the same. Mine stand strong still, living vitally off the memory of bad times made better and worse. Places I'll never go back to. I'd be better off leaving these by the wayside, but I won't. Now if you'll excuse me, there appears to be combat outside.

Godspeed Osiris

2010-04-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

On occasion, life among the lowest dregs reveals something powerfully amazing. Tonight, as I stood outside smoking my wretched cigarettes, I was approached, as I often am, by someone adrift through the pitiless night. This man stopped, addressing me in a scholarly tenor withered slightly by his advanced age, and introduced himself as Osiris "master poet, painter of oil on canvas, and world scholar." I curse my feeble brain, for I can't remember half of what the man said, though all this took place not 5 minutes ago. He told me, and all this is true, that I had the most wonderful beard he had ever seen on a citizen of the world, and that I was possess of "a mental acumen sharper than the edge of a sabre sword." He asked if I would not be adverse to hearing a recitation, and asked if his recitation could by chance garner a small donation. I said it would, and for me this is unusual. My opinion regarding the masses straying idly through the dark, misdeeds and maladjustments provoking their every action and reaction to the world around them, always desperately gnashing through the drug addled haze for some addled soul to leech another fix off of is decidedly against. I'm no humanist in this regard. Compassion and goodwill are virtues, but generally speaking charity to an evil person is a discharity to the world at large. But I digress.

I told Osiris, a stick thin man in a blue suit coat and red scarf, his tightly curled beard gone to grey to match his closely cropped pate, speech hissing and teeth missing, movements jerky and manner erratic, that a recitation would indeed see donation, and he began. Again, I twice curse my own addled brain for it's goldfish memory, because Osiris launched headlong into a series of poetic recitations with vigor and vim, gesturing softly and speaking in a rapid stoccato. He moved from place to place, praising sadness and rain, exalting the skies and the earth. I listened in rapt attention, knowing all the while that my pathetic brain was allowing this to fall from it like water off the proverbial. I was moved by this, the entire scene. Knowing all the time I would never begin to be able to recall the things the man had said verbatim, this silver tongued poet continued on, line after line, silver ships and flowers in the field he recited. It was beautiful.

My cigarette finished along with his poetry and I handed him 20 dollars. I wish I could give him something more meaningful than money, but it's what he wanted. He pushed my hand back, eyes going wide at the sight of Andrew Jackson's murder-happy face in green on my palm, and announced, "Osiris the master poet is not finished reciting!!!" He straightened up, gaze fixed on the middle distance, but words wouldn't come to him. He began to weep softly and kissed me on the cheek. I hugged the man. He told me that I was God's own arm. I told him I was just an appreciator of craft. He told me that he didn't know what brought him there that night, but whatever it was it was important. I might agree. I opened the door and bid him godspeed, and he was away into the night.

Paiting progress and the snail's pace

2010-04-01T17:54:00.001-07:00

Recently my hands have been shaking. I haven't been able to draw. It's irksome as all getout. Over a couple of days I managed to produce something I am moderately pleased with. I was going to keep going on it, but the dull sensation in my hands put in me the fear of ruining the thing. Bah. anyway, it's here-

Inspired a bit by Sidney Sime, I think. My first attempt at painting clouds and sun like that. Turned out alright I think.

Tonight I met a biologist at the hostel, in town to examine the cal academy's specimen collection for a book he is writing about spiders. The topic turned to skulls, and I showed him pictures of the disarticulations I'd done. He was impressed enough to promise me a beaver's skull on his next trip through the city, in about a month. Jackpot.

In the nature of this thing

2010-03-28T04:57:00.000-07:00

As there is no real direction to this winding stream of mismanaged thoughts and mishandled stories, I've decided that it will include some writing about the one thing in my life that really has any value or substance. I am a martial artist. That is one certainty I have to live with. I will never be a painter, though I paint, and I'll never be a writer, though I write, and I'll never be a skull disassemblist, though I do disassemble my fare share. The one thing I set upon in my life with a bitter desperation was the pursuit of martial endeavors. I began with no aptitude. A fat, slow fantasist with a flare for the ascetic and a quiet tendency toward the hermitage. I was maybe 16. 15 probably. I had wrested my brain from the sucking mire of a chronic depressive haze and I was ready to do something really stupid with my life. Given the means of my recoupment from the brink of self destruction, martial arts made sense. I won't go into it now. I won't go into a lot of things now. This will probably all come out in reverse order, but I'll leave it to the interested to stitch together the pieces.

Somewhat recently, I moved to San Francisco. Before this were dark days languishing in the perdition some settlers named Atascadero, full of pathetic weakness and regrettable activity. Also some of the best days of my entire life. Funny how that works. I've told parts of that one. Some parts of it I never will. This does connect somewhere, just wait for it. Through that time, there was one thing I could go back to, one place that obliterated the hungry ghosts that tailed me. Every morning, or at least every morning I could grasp hold of my will and stand tall through the whiskey haze, I'd take up my staff and go outside. I had allotted a portion of driveway as my field of battle, my own private thunderdome, where one man enter, one man leave. Quite a safe thunderdome, I suppose. Anyway, I'd practice. For at least a couple hours every morning. It was the one time when I couldn't be touched by the mountain of shit I'd let my life become, the only internal admonishments coming in a mixed stream of mandarin and english, "Xi Kou Qua Yuan, you feckless troll, tou bu, duo zi, nian bu, drop that basin, bei jian! Bu hao, bu hao," directly from the mouths of those who have deemed me worthy of their time and apparently limitless patience. And it was good. Small islands of good in what was a sea of angry shit.

When I moved, things took to the tumultuous. The grey haze I had become accustomed to took on color and I finally wrenched myself free again. But when times get that way the inherently lazy, and I am above all else, dear reader, inherently fucking lazy, always find a way to postpone the difficult. Proper practice is always difficult. So I let myself go a bit. I was enjoying myself for the first time in a long time, so I considered a small break from the back breaking alright. But as that sort of thing does, it went on too long. I'd make the occasional sojourn back to class in Santa Cruz, back to the quiet serenity that is my teacher's school, and know that I was home. But off I'd go again, and my inertia would take hold (it's a constant companion, very cheap to keep fed but demands a lot of time). Various little disasters struck, I lost my means of transport, and as such my means of visits south. I got lazier. I'd been wallowing a bit.

On Tuesday, I got a visit from Bud, my kung fu brother of some odd 5 years, and the only other person who's been carrying the torch. He brought the staves. I'll note, for those who don't know, one of the primary practices at our school was always fighting with the 9 foot staff. The finest feeling on the planet, I'd contend, is the feeling of that practice. Contending against yourself to never lose your train of focus, remaining perpetually on the edge of losing your composure, losing your step, and keeping it. Being pushed to the end of your technical and physical capabilities, but urging your spirit forward, beyond any limit you'd care to impose, in order to avoid being brained and bludgeoned by a person who's only interest is you bettering yourself. Forged in the crucible of contusion. The only time I've ever screamed out of pure fright was at the hands of such a stick, and the only time you'll hear me howl out of pure enthusiasm is in the midst of this combat. Keep food, keep drugs, keep sex (well...), I'll take the practice every time. So anyway, Bud brought the sticks.

We headed out to Golden Gate Park, to an expanse of asphalt around 5th Ave near the botanical garden, and started in. It had been months since I'd last held that length of hard rock maple, trusty old workhorse, months since I'd really exerted myself at the pursuit of the ol' fist. We went round after round, circling and vying for position, locking and crashing. I felt rust falling off of joints, and my brain shaking loose it's mantle of laxity. Steps falling rapidly, hands passing and passing again across that battle-scarred pole, old tricks returning, new ideas evolving and changing, tactics pondered in the wee idle hours playing out to either success or failure. As I say, it's impossible to truly describe. It's a training of mutual beneficence, but it's also a combat of very real consequence. A moment of lapse found a blunt force across the top of my skull, another saw to it that my ribs would ache pretty well in a few hours. Round and round we went, breaking when the actions saw a finale and starting up again without missing a beat. My feet blistering, my body aching, gasping for air like a landed trout, my guts slowly creeping up my esophagus as the exhaustion threatened to turn into vomiting. We called an end to it and retired for coffee. For the rest of the day I was completely raised of spirit, though battered of body and throbbing of head. For the first time in a long time I felt my roots again.

There was a period when I had lost my faith in my practice. There was something I wanted in my life that simply couldn't be obtained by dint of those efforts. It was, it seems, an unrelated area. I'll never forgive myself for letting that happen (though it was, in it's way, an important lesson). That thing is something that will always be with me, always unobtainable and always paramount, always a distant ache. But learning to reconcile that with the reality of my life and my decisions is what the practice is all about. Anyone who tells you that martial arts is some kind of spiritual path is full of seven kinds of shit. It's a very corporeal, very empirical path. The most spiritual thing about your life is way you relate to the world, plain and simple. There is nothing airy or mystical going on that your brain doesn't process at every watch. The trick isn't trying to live like a sage, the trick is trying to become a human being. I gained something important that day. Or I should say I remembered something important. I'll never be a painter, I'll never be a writer, but I can never stop being a martial artist.

O, dear inertia

2010-03-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Well, internet, it's that time again. I've been doing weird things recently. Or at least out of what I consider ordinary. Waking up early, mostly. It's just not right.

The other night I had a dream, and as I lack anything of real substance to write about right now I'll describe it. Please don't bother to bear with me. Spend your time doing something more productive than reading this. I was riding on a taxi, perched on the hood above the driver's side wheel well. Looking down at myself, I seemed to be some manner of ape, which was fine because otherwise keeping my grip on the cab would have been difficult. The taxi was barreling down the freeway, under some decrepit overpasses. A fork in the road ahead, and I told the driver to take the path on the left. He did so, but informed me that after a certain time of day this was not proper etiquette. I soon found out why, as the previously wide open freeway was obstructed with burned dumpsters and debris. The road entered a narrow circular tunnel and tapered down to a footpath. The cab was gone, and we were loping on all fours down this passageway into the damp darkness below. The hulking piles of burned metal outside hid a retinue of crazed squatters, dressed in the tattered and oily rags on would generally expect these types to be swaddled in. Pursued by miscreants hiding among the metal detritus, we made fast our escape. They kept up behind it, sharpening lengths of scrap iron across the gray rough walls of a rapidly darkening tunnel. A sharp turn in the pipeline, and I decided to sit in wait. As the two remaining chasers came into view, scabbed faces streaked with soot, twisted hands gripping rotten metal, I lunged. The rest of the dream was about eating rib cages, so I'll spare you. What do I think this dream represents? Many things. Firstly, that my brain thinks about pretty awesome crap when I'm sleeping. Also, that my working in this place makes me think about crackheads and street folk a great deal. Dreams are complicated.

Painting again, with purpose. Improving my approach to doing this, and I think I'm seeing results.

I've got a lot more in the works, and once I get back on my grind I should be turning this business out with regularity. As of now, I've succumbed to my own fatalistic tendency toward inertia. I just want to sleep.

Finished Product

2010-03-14T08:18:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post my completed work on this thing. Time well spent. Next project: Goat skull. It's been boiled and it's smelling like death. It'll be some time before I finish that, I think.

After a night like I've had, I should be going to sleep. Windows being punched in, drunken people getting roughed up a little bit for trying to affect ingress to the building I work in, general chaos on the streets after a premature St. Patrick's Day parade in this blasted city. But sleep, she'll have to wait. I've got painting to do.

Valin Mattheis: Disarticulation Scientist

2010-03-08T06:27:00.000-08:00

Tonight, deciding that my hands were not producing what I demand of them in terms of ink and paint, I decided to turn my attentions on a project I've been putting off for a while; the disarticulation and mounting of a rodent skull in a bell jar.

The skull in question was obtained along the railroad tracks during one of the best days in semi-recent memory (S). I also obtained myself a goat skull on that day, but that one is going to have to wait. The headbone I used tonight belonged to a mystery rodent. I initially thought gopher, but it's not that. The person who identifies it gets a secret prize. In any case, it's a rodent. I started the process yesterday, after it had been taking a bath in hydrogen peroxide for a while. The bell jar was obtained at Paxton Gate, purveyor of all things 100% awesome.

I set to work at around 12:30am. As I am a primitive bastard who doesn't want to wake up his roommates, I used a dremmel bit like an auger to put a hole in the bell jar's base to start myself off. I flattened out a strip of brass from the edge of a ruler with a pair of rusty pliers and I stripped a bunch of wire from an old power cable to some forgotten electronic contrivance. As an avowed primitive I prefer to use what ever the hell I can find at hand to do these things. For tools, I had a pair of needle nosed pliers, some tweezers, that's about it. Thanks goes to my roommate Maya for providing some much needed glue to make sure all the parts could stay put.

Stage 1-

After doing my basic preparation and disassembling of the skull along the sutures, I affixed the first length of brass to the base and put the frontal skull portion on top of this. Here you can see me on cigarette 2 of the evening.

Stage 2-

After faffing about a bit with some constriction details, here the nasal bones and the occipital portions have been attached. I had to wrap a crosspiece on with wire to accommodate the extra weight, and to provide a crux for later bits of the thing.

Stage 3-

Added another crosspiece for the maxilla and zygomatic bone. This skull is slightly incomplete, missing the zygomatic arches and mandible, but to hell with it. As you can see, I'm obviously pleased as fucking punch.

Stage 4-

A complete product. It turned out a lot better than I expected. Here on Cigarette number 6.

Well, that was that. I'm sitting here now, it's 7:30am. The whole process took me about 6 hours. Soundtrack: Tyr- Eric the Red. Goatskull, you are next on the disarticulation block. I was hoping to put a deer skull in the larger bell jar that I picked up, but it's too big. I'm going to have to do something awesome with that thing, but I've got to pray on it. The gods will show me a way.

Dark days, ladies and gentlemen

2010-02-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

I can't express exactly what is wrong with me these days. I'm generally contented enough, and I think this fosters an introspection that never turns out well. I regret decisions I have made, I regret actions I have taken, I generally see what a complete parasite I have been. The only people I'd care to spend time with are far away, and in any case are those I've wronged most egregiously. I simultaneously hope that they always be at my side, and that I never see them again. Waxing pretty vain glorious on this one, as you can tell. In any case, right now I have to content myself with staying holed up in my room. When fucked with by the big picture, my solace always lies in the hermitage. Now as before there's few I'd break it for.

I've been filling my days with very little, but a whole lot of that. Smoking vile Peruvian cigarettes and painting consumes the lion's share of my time right now. I consider that a good thing. I have been absurdly productive in that respect. Example:

Along with a truckload of classy animals, animatic frames, and a spectrum-showering einhorn destroyer to round things out, I guess I'm pleased with myself.

Things otherwise have been quiet. Intentionally so, and I'm glad of that. If I ever draw myself out of the mire I will buy stamps.

From out hoary vaults beyond the veil of time to the black gulfs of primordial chaos. At least that's what your mom said.

2010-01-22T07:04:00.000-08:00

As usual, at least as has been usual but will no longer be after I clack on this "publish post" button, I haven't updated this thing in a long time. Thunder rattles through the sky and lightning cracks the welkin. It's 7 am and I haven't slept for a while. Recently, my life has been turned if not upside down, then at least in some similarly awkward position. Many things change, and many things stay the same. A quick memorandum on the occurrences of the past few months; painting, working, drawing, sleeping, meeting a french girl, watching crackheads, not writing, not practicing, not driving, and losing a battle against the DMV (with the 5th being the best and the 8th being the worst). Now that that's out of the way, here's a story-

I was at work, as I often am at 4 in the morning, enjoying, as I do, the constant flow of wasted human potentiality flow ever onward toward parts unknown (and untreated for STDs) outside the tall windows onto Ellis Street. It's an entertaining, occasionally harrowing, and always train-wreck interesting past time. This night it was cold, as it has been, and it was lively. Scuffles among the itinerant drug addict community are common enough, ranging from a minor shoving match over a personal space infraction, to a savaging-with-baseball-bat over a mighty 4 dollar debt (payable at this point only in blood, obviously. Although how much blood 4 dollars will buy you is probably not an advisable question to put to medical professionals, as you will likely be explaining your query to the police). This night hadn't seen much in the way of extraordinary activity, but the 4am hour begins the crawl across the earth of those desperate for their shackle of choice. Prime time, as it were. As I watched across the road, two such worthies did begin a row, and struggle they did mightily. For a given value of mightily. They are crackheads after all, and you can't expect too much. But struggle they did, madly grasping at eachother, throwing the wide and impotent punches common to these engagements, generally trying to make a good showing although I guarantee no one in Valhalla took notice of their battle. From a ways down the street, on the edge of hearing, the distinct noise of low thumping bass could be heard. As the vehicle approached, and it's always safe to assume that this kind of noise comes out of a vehicle, the air outside was filled with the heavy, repetitive rhythm of the hottest club jam. The kind of thing that ill-clad men and women love to get drunk and grind to. And loud. This had a profoundly amazing affect on the combatants on the sidewalk. Their fight ceased, stopped dead with both men letting go of the tattered and matted jacket of the other. They began, dear reader, to dance. For a given value of dance. They both jerked in time to the song, pumping their arms and flailing their legs in a movement that can only really be articulated by limbs atrophied by the rigors of crack addiction. And it was amazing. I watched in rapt engagement. The red light turned green, the vehicle-cum-DJ sped off down the lane, the two men halted their ill-advised gyrations and locked once again in semi-mortal combat. All in all, it was a stupefying display of human interaction. For a given value of human. Amazing.

Hallowe'en blarg post

2009-11-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

I figure I should update this thing. It's been over a month. I'm sitting behind a desk, watching the detritus of 2am filter across the world. I've been especially idle of late, my perpetuity sagging heavily across my back like the legendary stone of Sisyphus. That's a little grand maybe. Living in a new place distracts me in a good way I suppose. Having work does, for certain. But as comfort and familiarity set it, so do the old ghosts begin to stir. New phantoms and old. At least I'm not considering suicide anymore.

It's an impossible thing to relate; building up a structure so high and finding out you've built the wrong thing. You can still live in it, for a given value of living, but you'll always know, for your ignorance or arrogance, that you'd lost your future from the outset. If you hadn't built it so well you could start over. But those walls are strong and that foundation is thick, and all the lessons in construction came from the thing anyway. Hindsight is a motherfucker. So you live, or try, in that tower by yourself, sitting outside in the sleet because you can't bear the solace of a roof built in error. Maybe you are punishing yourself, but more likely you are just a coward. Maybe it's time to go back inside. You're by yourself either way, but at least in there you can stay dry.

Anyway, here's a drawing.

When I can't get my hands or brains to move the way I want them to, I always draw something mechanical. It doesn't help, but it sometimes works.

That time has come at last

2009-09-24T05:58:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I last updated this thing. There hasn't been some dearth of eligible content really, but more an overall lack of my ability to care. But, as the tides are risen and felled by the position of the moon, the old stirring to write something down boils up again, like a badly digested sandwich. Unfortunately for you, dear reader, while the will is there the subject is not, so you are subject to this aimless prattle. You'd probably be best advised to stop reading now.

One of the unrelenting and time-wasting pursuits I've directed my energies toward is drawing crap like this-

Re-drawing, I should say. For printing's sake. I'm hoping to get a bunch of these, and those like them printed off on fancy paper, to eventually be sold to those of discriminating taste and distinction. Of the recent batch, this one I like the most. Largely because of his cravat, which is classy as all hell. More are on the way, as well as an animatic featuring the rage and hubris of a unicorn sea captain attempting to reap his revenge against a fire breathing narwhal (with apologies to Herman Melville). My wretched inertia is the only thing keeping these things from developing more rapidly. If I'm able to conquer that, those who enjoy this type of thing can rejoice. Here's a drawing of the captain-

And his fate-

Time will tell, as it always does. And in that between now and then I will continue to drown in my perpetuity, as is my wont, waiting for someone to come along who can drive a wedge in this endless hermetical rut I've etched for myself. Won't happen, but it's always nice to dream.

what has become

2009-08-15T06:06:00.001-07:00

hard luck
Originally uploaded by unforgivable realness

Recent history has seen quite a few new scribblings from me. I've been drawing at a constant clip, and am finally getting trees I like to look at. This is going to be the penultimate part of a series of drawings that depict a unicorn being killed by a centaur. At least I think a centaur. Something awesome at least. Really it's just an excuse to draw a shitload more trees. And yet another excuse to draw a terrified unicorn getting killed.

In other news I'm becoming comfortable enough in this city to feel that familiar gut punch of isolation again. Hello old friend.

STREET FIGHT, MAN!! G- SEVOWWWWN!!!

2009-08-02T02:15:00.000-07:00

It's very difficult, I am finding right now, to write about a melee. A proper melee, that is. The rare and tentative and insidious calm of 2am on Tenderloin streets was shattered a few minutes ago. The first thing I could hear from my position behind this desk was a woman, screaming plaintively at someone not to get involved in something. As her cries grew more urgent, it became clear to me that whatever was going on wasn't minor, and it wasn't cooling off. I decided to take a step outside and see what all the commotion was about.

Across the intersection, some kind of disagreement had reached the point of one man frantically pulling his shirt off. With the spectators on the sidewalk and the normal drift of human detritus through the neighborhood, exactly who was in disagreement was unclear. But as the ranks of the shirtless grew it was obvious that it was no small problem. Or rather, it was no problem that a whole lot of people weren't willing to tear off their shirts about and brawl in the streets. I am generally under the impression that this requires little provocation for a lot of people, so there is no telling.

In any case, clothing peppered the ground and the two sides lunged. They took to the intersection like dogs, howling at eachother in unintelligible screams of rage, communicating the basest kind of intent. As they clashed, more than ten people in total, the mad scramble dissolved into confusion. Bodies sprawled on asphalt, fists and legs gangled through the crowd occasionally striking some manner of target. In the most artless and amateur display of violence I've ever seen in my life (which is saying quite a bit) these two groups flailed and stumbled and rolled across the road. As it reached fever pitch, in this context meaning the most number of people falling over simultaneously during their ill-attempted attacks, I noticed several bizarre things about the fracas. Two people standing side by side, kicking a man kneeling on the ground suddenly realizing who they are standing next to begin to strike futilely at eachother, faces twisted in sudden twin rictus of furious realization. Another combatant somehow produced a crude cudgel; some bend and uneven lump of softwood. I can only assume that the hoary and ancient god of miserably poor fighters grants this to his chosen champion in any given brawl of this nature. In any case, his attempts to bludgeon anything with it besides the unsuspecting air around him and at one point his own knee met with failure, and he quickly limped away. At points, portions of the violence would relent into a brief yelling match and quickly rekindle again and the sad display of attempted battery would continue. As the fray shifted down the road toward me, standing in the doorway to the hostel, several of these men ran toward the entry, maybe hoping to get inside and away from the shameful lack of brutality they'd brought on themselves. I fixed myself to the spot, dropped my arms and prepared to repel the ineptly invading force, but at the last minute they decided against whatever bizarre course of action they had set on. Another small faction within the larger debacle seemed to be at odds with itself, with members asking eachother such questions as, "What am I supposed to say?!" and "How are you going to handle that?!?" in response to some events I assume were unknowable to the outside observer. It was a confusing time on the streets of San Francisco, clearly.

The degree of furiously violent intent was matched only by the gross and catastrophic inability of the combatants involved. As the maelstrom of ineptitude churned around the street I found myself actually becoming frustrated. When a group of people descend on one another with such unshielded aggression, you'd expect at least someone to reap that whirlwind. But as I watched this, it appeared as the proverbial sound and fury, signifying nothing. None of these bastards was any worse for the wear, and as the festivities wound to an impotent close all I could do was laugh. My laughter attracted the attention of a crackhead on the sidewalk next to me, who responded with a jovial stream of gibberish and a resonant chortle of approval. I think I made out the words "wild" and "geeyone" but I'm not sure what that last one meant. I suppose every tragic cataclysm is incomplete without a touch of the gnostic.

This began around 2:10 am. The entire humiliating attempt at violence lasted for maybe 10 minutes. As the sirens wailed in the distance and the last holdouts of hopeful fighters stopped trying to injure eachother and scattered back into the woodwork, I went back inside. Five patrol cars screeched to a halt in the intersection and the officers emerged ready for action, shotguns in hand, but there was none to be had. At the end of the day, more damage was caused to hands and elbows hitting concrete than anything else. The stick wielding gladiator will probably have a sore knee tomorrow. I honestly hope everyone involved is ashamed of themselves, because that shit was just plain pathetic.

ps- the title to this post is a reference to a movie. Anyone guessing which movie this is gets accolades.

The Chase

2009-07-18T04:46:00.000-07:00

Well, after a loud and busy though otherwise uneventful night (drunken belgians, crack deals, swearing frenchmen, the usual), I managed to spot something worth reporting on. I was outside at 4:30, enjoying a cigarette with a hostel guest from Santa Cruz, remembering my old haunts and talking about how disgusting woodsies are, when the sound of crazed shouting started around the block. Now, this is a normal turn of events in the Tenderloin, as anyone who as spent any amount of time around these few blocks knows, so I didn't pay a great deal of heed. The distance-muffled sound of running became more distinct and a youth of maybe 18, short, wearing a giant black jacket, came from around the corner of Larkin. From behind him, I could hear a bellowed tirade in an elderly tenor, the sound of labored running, and as the figure came into view 25 yards behind this running kid what turned out to be the rapid tack-tack sound of a cane on the concrete. It was a withered, ancient looking man, back crooked and face weathered, his pursuit assisted by a wooden cane as he limped after the boy, actually gaining!
"You fucking bitch!" he shouted at this kid's back, "You better hope I don't catch your faggot ass!!"
The kid slowed, clearly tired, but kept his feet pounding down Ellis. The elder behind him showed no sign of slacking his pace, as he closed more of the gap. We had been joined shortly before by a dealer from the corner, trying to bum cigarettes and blasting music out of his cell phone. The tinny sounds of Solja Boy acted as soundtrack to the chase. With a solemn look, in a serious voice, the dealer says, "With the cane, ol' man's not gonna make it. That's the streets." And I suppose that is the streets.

Like a weather beaten tripod, down the street the old man chased, a perpetual stream of profane curses wishing the worst on this kid who did him wrong. Turning the corner at the end of the block the sounds faded, the dealer walked off to ply his trade, and I finished my cigarette. I'd like to think that the old man won out in the end there, but honestly there are no real good guys in situations like that. There's bad and worse. Or bad and just as bad, at best. That's the streets, I suppose. Interesting thing to see though.

Inane drawings: a retrospective

2009-07-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

Ye gods I woke up too early for my own good. I've decided to use this time stolen from the hoary jaws of the sleepbeast to post some drawings I've done over the course of the last few months, including a little bit about what I was thinking, why I bothered, and in which ways I am an artist of such greatness as to shame Michelangelo himself. Working in loosely reverse chronological order. Enjoy.

Some manner of birdman-

I drew this hapless unfortunate in the kitchen wile watching Ghosthunters. I've had a lifelong fascination on animals with human heads, and any perusal through my now nonexistent sketchbooks of ages yore will tell you. Why is this? I have no idea, other than the fact that it would be awesome to see a lake full of these guys having a hard time reconciling human vocal chords with avian mating calls.

The three rotting kings

These were from a dream I had. I was sitting in my house, looking out the window at the roiling mists which had descended on the neighborhood. From up the street, I could see three indistinct figures slowly marching through the whirling fog. As they got closer, their features more distinct, I could see three skeletal figures, each crowned with a tarnished nimbus of brass. Clutched in their dessicated hands, they each held an object; a bell, a book, and a sword. As they continued their inexorable path up my driveway, I woke up. Basically, I interpret this dream to mean that my brain is awesome, and it thinks of bad ass shit while I'm sleeping. I draw a lot of things from dreams I have for this reason.

The Goatman's Remorse

This sketch was a quick one, done in the margin of a page covered in crap. I liked it because this feckless beastman has clearly done something he's sad about, but which is also so goddam awesome. I think every child who adores unicorns secretly hides a desire to decapitate one and feast on it's doubtlessly delicious innards. Why do you think we see so few unicorns around? They are fucking delicious. Plus it's kill or be killed, which brings us to-

Late Lunch

Self explanatory. Everybody gets hungry. I think if people thought about unicorns as baby eating megalomaniacs we'd see a lot less of them gracing the walls of our 12 year old daughters' rooms. Humanity needs to wise up.

Man of Action

Did I mention that robots are awesome? Because make no mistake, robots, they are awesome. If in the future the technology exists to implant my brain and heart into the clockwork robotic structure you see above, you'd better get ready to buy a new door every time I come over. Because if I don't chainsaw the fucker down, it's getting blown apart with the giant gun I have for a head.

A bunch of kids eating a pony

Basically, I enjoy anything that is generally considered cute and twee being devoured or somehow destroyed by those which are supposed to love it. Plus I guarantee that ponies have all manner of vitamins and minerals, and it's only for decency's sake that we didn't see a big lump of pony meat in all of those "part of a balanced breakfast" ads growing up. Stupid decency. Had I known how nutritious pony meat was, maybe I'd actually have grown to average height. What I'm saying is decency leads to malnutrition.

Some kind of catbeast

I drew this after a frend's cat named Cody. The thing definitely has a lot of toad in it's ancestory, it knows it's own name and will come when called, it stares like a gambler and it's so overweight it can't lie down properly. The drawing is significantly less awesome than the beast itself, though the poor thing can't shoot anything from it's eyes which is unfortunate.

The end of days cometh

Again from a dream I had. There was a procession of these characters, all bearing the torches and pitchforks of monster-crazed peseants, and the sandwich board placards of the doom-sayer. The message was detracted fro, by the uniform, I feel, because no one in the dream took them seriously despite the face that the earth was consumed by something horrible a few minutes later. Score one for the End-is-nighsters.And

Onward, ye mighty, to battle

Possibly a misguided choice for a general, to amble slowly into battle aback a giant tortoise, but I suppose when shopping for oversized beasts to strike fear into the hearts of the wicked you take what you can get. I would like this turtle to have a more ornatr shell, but my talents only go so far.

And lastly, as this grows tiresome and I've got showers to take, the various beasts in their various waitcoats

I have no idea what my fixation on these things is, but it's definitely a big one. There will be many more of these in the future, I'm sure. Maybe one day either science or magic will invent a method by which I can make my dream of seeing these fine chaps fight to the death a reality.

So there we have it. A chunk of inane artwork drawn over the past few months. My pens and whatnot are all packed away, so my current massive desire to draw has to stew for a while. Hopfully when I pull them from their hiding place I'll have a glut of scribbling that turns out a least a little bit of crap worth looking at. Time will tell. It's now time for me to drag my filth encrusted corpus into the shower to do my semi-daily ablutions. And then work. The good times, they never end. Either that or they never started and I just don't know any better, but I doubt it.

* * EDIT * * It looks like some of these got cut off a bit as a result of the weird size restrictions on the images posted here. HTML is a dark art, and I choose not to submerge myself in it's evil mysteries, so they remain as they are. Deal with it.

Bloodshed and Seizures

2009-07-06T02:51:00.000-07:00

It's a suspiciously quiet night here in the Tenderlion. I'm using the lull in activity to update here, and in keeping with the environment outside I'm going to tell a story about brutality.

As youths growing up in a small town, a lot of things that the more metropolitan sectors of the populace may consider beyond the pale were taken as a matter of course. Small town boredom drives individuals to do a lot of interesting things, and for us instead of killing cats or storming filthy trucks through filthier creek beds, it was violence. The lot of us were petty criminals of one stripe or another, generally thieves or small time drug peddlers, but even that paints our activities in more extravagance than they deserved. In short, we were miscreants. Happy miscreants, yes; petty miscreants, yes. But at some point things took a turn of sorts. Call it introspection.

Among the other fitting descriptors that could be applied, we were also cowards. Well, we were young, and some cowardice has to be afforded to youth, but that's no excuse. At least, we didn't think so. And so, in the immortal and unending quest that the young undertake to leave youth behind, we started to beat the shit out of each other on a weekly basis. Some clarification is needed here. After the fact by many years, it's clear what these events were driven by. At the time, things aren't so well understood. We don't live in a society with understandable marks of adulthood. It's a floating world. People can live their entire lives as children, never being tested and never emerging from their cave. Many do, it's undeniable. I guess what drove us was a desire to understand something difficult, but exactly what that was we couldn't have told you. But all the same, we fought. Like bastards. In parking lots and basements, in the wee hours when the world sleeps, we were gathering together for a rite of violent passing. Maybe it was to understand ourselves better. More likely it was boredom infected with a touch of the vain-glorious.

This went on for some time, many a bloodied face and contused body left where ever it was that we had met up feeling like a champion. In our own minds, we were at the top of something; we were kings striding out from those embattled asphalt plains into the world. In reality we were just assholes with more black eyes than other folks, but you couldn't tell us that. But as these things do, it eventually waned. I began studying martial arts in an endeavor to sharpen my fleetness of fist, but that's a story for another time. The rest of the gang became otherwise occupied, and life continued on as it always does.

A few years later, there was a sussuration among the old group. Something in the air maybe, but I got word that some of the guys wanted to start things up again. By this time, I was secure in myself enough to understand it wasn't something I wanted to do. Plus I don't think my teacher would have been too keen on it. In any case, I encouraged them to. I always encourage mutual violence for the sake of self improvement. I again got word maybe a week later. Some people were in from out of town, they were going to fight in a parking lot out by the airport. They wanted to meet me. I figured it couldn't hurt, and it would be a lie to say I didn't feel a small nostalgic tug toward the event, but I told them I wouldn't fight. 2am, near an old storage unit, and I was off.

As soon as I arrived, I knew something was very wrong. Back when this was a regular thing, we had very few guidelines or regulations to limit ourselves with. One of the only rules strictly adhered to was one against spectators. The nature of this kind of combat is personal. Two people stand, outside the view of the world and struggle against their own cowardice and fear, to fight in this case is to win. The very act is a victory, and as such the idea of victory in terms of subjugating an opponent doesn't enter into it. But now there were spectators. And lots of them. The inclusion of a spectating population to such an event is a terrible thing. No longer can someone simply stand up and fight for themselves to the best of their ability. The braying crowd demands things that a person would never normally sink to. I knew immediately this would cause problems. The other thing that was amiss was in the participants. Maybe it was an effect of the crowd, but there was a palpable sense of nerves beyond those, or at least much different than, what was normal. Out of towners, first timers, and people with something to prove, a catastrophic outcome was only a matter of course.

Standing there, on the grime encrusted cardboard and oil stained asphalt, I felt that nigh-inexorable the pull to fight. Even knowing that the thing was going to be bad. Even knowing that the attention of the crowd would push things too far. The familiar fear and excitement welled up, but in the end was kept firmly in check by the over all sense of disquiet. I kept to the back of the howling mass and tried not to get involved as the fights started.

And for a bit, things seemed like they always had. Everyone had a good time of it, and some people got to know a little bit more about themselves. The familiar artless scrambles, the dull thump of bony fist on flesh, the smart crack of the odd well-landed blow. Second to last event of the evening, things started to pale. A brutal, blood smattered brawl, as one sided as a brawl can be, and continually egged on the the jeering mass surrounding it. Spitting blood, squinting through swollen eyes, one contestant finally said enough. The other vomited from the exertion and sat heavily on a curb. After this, the crowd a little uneased by the gore they had called for, became a bit more silent. As I say, spectators at an event like this is a terrible thing. Two people fighting alone would never readily dole out so much violence onto another person in this context, nor would a person's dumb pride allow them to take such a grim beating if they weren't subject to the judgement of the throng. Stupid.

The last fight that night was the one that hangs in people's minds, though. Between a friend of mine who had no place fighting, and an out of towner who felt he had a lot to prove. Without getting very specific, I'll just say that for me there was a clear sense that if something bad was going to happen to someone at a thing like this, it was going to happen to this friend of mine. No fighter, is he. Neither one of them, really. But they stood to face eachother, and in a mad scramble they began. Arms flailing wildly, legs staggering at random, a few shots connecting, and many more flying off their marks. They locked up in a desperate clinch, and this friend of mine fell. He toppled onto the cardboard that had been taped down over the concrete, and his head struck the ground with a sickening crack. Immediately, his body seized. His arms curled in toward his chest, his hands spastically extended into misshapen claws. His legs pushed outward, ridged and almost hyper-extended, and his feet strained at unnatural angles. The worst was his face, every muscle contorting and contracting, his eyes rolled back in their sockets and his mouth shuddering in agonized rictus. As I looked down, blood was pouring from his skull in a stream. As a matter of fact, from my vantage it looked like the blood was coming out of his ear, though luckily this wasn't the case. All these things happened in a matter of seconds, though dialated by memory it seems like years. In the seconds immediately following, the crowd panicked.

I've blathered on at length about a crowds reaction to circumstances like this in the past, and this time was no different. I layed a jacket down over this prone figure and tried to keep his head from impacting the ground any more as grand mal wracked his body. Someone cried to call an ambulance as people paced and rocked and and stammered and generally went into shock. The cry for an ambulance was met with one person's desperate plea for self preservation. "NO!" they cried, a true coward acting on an instinct for letting other people die so that they may avoid inconvenience. I still have no idea exactly who this one was, but if I could have picked them out of the crowd that night I couldn't say for sure how I would have reacted. In any case, an ambulance was called. The crowd dispersed at my insistance, and three of us remained to try and see our friend to medical help, and to fob off the police with some bullshit story. The cops got there first, but couldn't get anything out of us that they could ticket or arrest so they vanished. The paramedics arrived, but this guy is quite an obsinant one and outright refused to get into an ambulance. He had gained a little bit of wit back, but was still clearly concussed. Nonetheless the paramedics couldn't convince him, so they told him not to go to sleep for 5 hours and went on their way. We walked out of the lot back to our cars, all a bit shaken for the event. To this day the guy who got the worst of it has no memory of the night in question. It's probably for the best, but no one else is going to forget it in a hurry.

Whenever I write about times passed like these, I can't help but feel it all sounds a little vain-glorious. I guess it's because they are distorted by the lens of nostalgia and reminiscience. I'm also quite self concious about sounding like that, as I have more shame than pride about these events. The fact is there was nothing really special, in the grand scheme of things, about stuff like this. Still, interesting times.

End of an era, opening of a new

2009-07-01T01:43:00.000-07:00

As I sit here, alone in an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar city, I'm trying to put into words the tumult of the past few weeks, and by extension the last few months. Atascadero has this affect on people, I suppose. I moved back home in an effort to assist my father in a house remodel, and in hopes of settling down somewhere comfortable. I suppose it was too much to expect that outcome, and the outcome I'd eventually reap should have been in line with expectation, but I do tend to hope for the best. All summed, I'd have to say that this go-round through living in my hometown was marked with both heights of unspeakable wonder and lows of soul crushing loss, and generally suffused with long lulls of terrible loneliness. Many firsts and hopefully lasts, a few new vices and a new appreciation for the world outside of my cloister. And at the end of it, I find myself here. I always told myself that I'd never live in a city, but I guess I've always told myself I'd never do a lot of things. I've never been one to look back and second guess, causation being what it is turns that into a futile exercise, and now is no different. But I still curse the fates on a daily basis. Humans are strange creatures.

The few days I've spent thus far as a denizen of this city have been radically different from the eight odd months of stagnation and inertia. Suddenly, things are moving at a pace that I find myself slipping from. I'm employed, I'm standing custodian over a stranger's house, I've got a place to live for the foreseeable future, I'm regularly screamed at by a bizarre cat whose allegiances are questionable at best, all the hallmarks of a successful living. I suppose the only odd thing for me, a person who generally moves with the rapidity of an oak tree in terms of planning, is the amazing speed with which things have come together. A few weeks. I don't know, it's difficult to explain. Just take my word for it, it's weird.

As I've got nowhere else to really put these things, I'll share a couple of the experiences I've had over the scant few days living here. I'll preface by saying that I'm working at a youth hostel located in the tenderlion, a place whose charms must only become apparent under the influence of crack or meth, because those people seem to love it.

I anticipate a lot of strangeness will revolve around cigarette breaks. At the desk, things are pretty much a constant series of guest relations. When the familiar creep of tobacco deprivation rears it's head, any lull in the action is exploited to sate it. Standing on the street, in front of the place, drawing in smoke and feeling the slow, cool buzz of nicotine in your fingertips, the world interacts with you. Or wishes death on you, as happened today. Outside, I was spending time watching the building across the street (the address of which is 666. It is Section 8 housing for the formerly homeless, and referred to as the Hellmouth), when sidles up a skeletal figure bearing all the unmistakable marking of the crackhead. Matted hair and rotting teeth, his body shifting lazily like an errant marionette, his eyes with the constant semi-roll of the influenced.

"Hey maaan, you got one o' them cigarettes?" burbled a voice from this shade.

Rule number one, I was told, is never give out cigarettes here. Feed the stray and it will keep coming back.

"No man, I'm sorry. This is my last one," I lied.

"Yoouu..." he began, attempting to fix me with a stare that wouldn't cooperate, "I wish death on you!!" the voice was like a rusty hinge, creaking the curse while the head lolled at the sky. It took it's shaky steps away, soiled sweatpants and tattered shirt swaying in the cool breeze. I'm lucky that crackheads don't have magic powers, otherwise I'd be in real trouble.

Another peculiar event that stuck out in my mind also occurred during one of these smoke breaks. It was early, maybe 9:30, before I started. It was day 1, and I decided to play it safe and show up early. Awaiting the start of my shift, I loitered outside. The streets were strangely quiet, it being an hour that the drug addled generally passed out and the morning business was just getting into swing. From down the road, a noise broke the relative calm. It was a slow sound, and constant. A scraping of wood on concrete. As the source came into view, I was transfixed. It was a vision of contextless oddity, which like so many others I'm sure would be rendered unto mundanity with a little information about exactly what was going on. But away with context, says I! Here I saw a man crooked and wizened, no more than 5 feet tall, as dessicated as dead wood, and just as brittle by all appearance. He was dragging in his knotty and gnarled arms a giant sheet of plywood, at least 8 feet long and 4 feet wide. It dwarfed the tiny elder. Straining against it's bulk, every labored step looked like a lifetime's endeavor. His bald head was pressed forward in obstinate exertion, veins and tendons standing out on his neck like ropes, his wispy white beard soaked with sweat. Down the street he went, a standing refutation of time's passage, and a stubborn denial of his own body's degradation. Why was he dragging this bulk of shoddy timber, and where was he going? I have no idea. But the sight was an odd one. Maybe not. Really, many things are standing out to me these days in sharp and vivid contrast. It's probably the brain's way of coping with a new and different environment. In any case, I expect things will become much stranger before too long. Expect reports from the night audit.

And sometimes weddings go bad

2009-06-20T21:43:00.002-07:00

As I've stated, working during all hours of the night is something that puts a person in the path of many events which generally go unnoticed by the waking world. This event, however, was one that violently pulled the waking world to it, unless said world was able to sleep through a man in the throes of torrential rage.

I was at Costanoa. It was an unusual weekend, the entire property (some 40 rooms, 80 odd tent cabins, and 100 odd campsites) was bought out by a single group. It was a wedding, and one held by a man rich beyond the dreams of avarice (no great exaggeration. I'm not sure about his current standing, but at one point he ranked 160 in the 400 richest human beings in the United States). The upside to this was the there were no extraneous people caught in the wake of these plutocrats and their wanton spree, but the down side was that with group-uniformity of the population, the power of the desk lost most of it's clout. The greatest fallback for anyone at a hotel front desk when dealing with various rowdies and belligerents is to tell them that they are bothering other people, and an immediate cessation to their inanity is the only thing that will prevent a call to the authorities. In this case, the only recourse to minimize the damage caused by a night of furious, over-moneyed chicanery was to keep the ol' head down and ride it out. And this I did, like a true champion.

These upper-crustmen had outfitted this event with booze, drugs, portable hot tubs, live music, and a spectacularly annoying light show. It was functionally very similar to a high dollar pornography set, including paid camera people and crying women of easy virtue. As the evening wore on, this slowly became more and more apparent, reaching it's full and stupefying climax at 4 o'clock in the morning.

Before this point, maybe around 3am (the persistent companion hour of the night owl), the desk phone received a call. I picked it up with the customary greeting, and the call went as follows;
"Front Desk."
"Yes hello?! They broke into my room! You gave them a key!!" sobbed the drunken woman.
"I haven't given out any keys this evening, ma'am, was there anything stolen?"
"They took my car keys!! And some clothes! They are all on drugs!!! You need to help me!!"
"I'll help you any way I can, do you want me to call the police?"
"NO!! YOU need to help me! You let them in, and they took my keys!!"
It should be noted here that this woman was very, very drunk, and the clarity with which sentences write out across a page cannot properly capture the incoherence that made up 60% of this conversation.
"As I said ma'am, I'll do whatever I can, but if there's been a break-in, I think we should call the police so you can file a report."
"I don't need the police I need help and you won't help me and they stole my keys and they ARE ALL ON DRUGS!!!"
"Ma'am I..." *CLICK*

She hung up the phone. Now I, as all of us, am a flawed creature Paramount among the many being that I am prone to extravagant sloth. Sloth is a clever beast, and in this case showed it's fangs with my mentioning the police. I knew that in no way did a person in such a state want to talk to the police, but a sensible and law abiding citizen would suggest this as an act of good faith. I myself suggested it because it would end the phone call, and thus my responsibility to become entangled in the disordered and nonsensical affairs of the super-rich. Had I been a more upstanding and stalwart fellow, and had my chivalrous heart overcome my feckless nature I'd be telling a very different story right now. That's my only regret I suppose. But I digress. I never got any kind of context for what it was she was babbling about, though maybe 45 minutes later a woman driving a sports car was spotted by me racing out of the parking lot. It struck me as strange, but the two didn't directly connect, given the available evidence. But within 15 minutes, the sky opened up to unleash upon the world a fury to shake the firmament.

Now when I say sky, I mean one man. But his fury was mighty indeed. It began at 4 o'clock, as I say, and with gusto.
"FFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCKKKK!!!!!!!!!!" he railed.
"NNNNNOOOOOOOO!!!!!" he added.
"FFUUUUCKING WHHOOOOOORE!!!!" he went on to say.
"AAAARRRRGGGGRRAGGHGGGHHH!!!!" he continued.
The lobby of the place is in building that sits next to a large-ish copse of trees, dotted with semi-secluded tent cabins and very skinny on lights. As this man railed on into the night, cursing the world and everything in it, ringing the very welkin with his tirade of unadulterated and incomprehensible hate, I stepped outside to get to the bottom of things. The screaming continued, modulating through clear profanities and bestial howling as the waves of rage wracked against the afflicted figure. I stood on the grass, looking into the densely packed trees and considered my options. I could either wander toward the source of the fury, without a flashlight or a tranquillizer gun, and try whatever I could to put this benighted beast at ease, OR I could stay standing right where I was, yell at him to shut the fuck up and go back inside, leaving the problems of the evening to those who created them. Sloth rears it's hoary head.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" I yelled.
"FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!" came the response. And the gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes continued as I retired to my chair, secure in the knowledge that I tried my best.

It went on for a little while longer, but the human body is a thing suited to only very short periods of gut rending savagery, and the cries turned to whimpers and by 4:45 it was silent. As the first hint of dawn spread across the sky and I finished my paperwork for the night, I watched out the window at the milling groups. They hadn't gone to bed that night, and by now they were rendered virtual zombies in the dark blue pre-dawn light, stammering and slowed by the fading effects of alcohol and drug use. They shambled about whatever nefarious tasks their cooked brains felt important, but none of them seemed to involve me so I was happy to remain a spectator. Just before quitting time, the father of the bride, number 160 himself, walked into the lobby. We had a very brief but enlightening conversation. My own slow wits and fogging memories can't put it together word for word, and much of it was muttered and mumbled through, but the gist of it was this;

A man, in fact the Best Man in the wedding party, had the grave misfortune of walking in on his wife in one of the many portable hot tubs brought for the wedding, twixt a man-man-lady threesome. Rage ensued. The wife took off in her car and the man remained behind to wail and gnash. In #160's word, "This weekend, we had one wedding and one divorce."

The universe, she balances.

Cops are people too, sometimes

2009-06-13T21:42:00.000-07:00

I told this story last night, and it occurred to me that I should lay it down here for posterity, as my addled brain is want to forget things. I curse this fact, as it's sent many a bizarre occurrence adrift in the gulf of oblivion, never to be related again. And so, this one get put down here, so as it doesn't join the others.

I should preface this with two things; one is that I have a deep and abiding distrust and general dislike for police officers for reasons I won't get in to now. The other is that for the vast majority of my employed life, I have worked as a night auditor. This, for the majority of you who won't know the term, is a fancy title for the person who sits at the front desk of a hotel between the uncanny hours of 11pm and 7am. Many, many a strange time has been had while on the job. This is one of them.

I was sitting at my post, enjoying the wonders of the internet and defiling beloved religious icons with msPaint (a storied pastime for me, as a quick run through my flickr stream will tell you). It was spring, and the raccoons were fucking with abandon. Costanoa is a place of wilderness. Or at least wilderness of a sort. A half an hour from any other kind of human encampment, the animals loved it for it's piles of hot garbage and structures for hiding under. It was a hotel and campground piled on top of eachother, essentially a place for the rich to go and pretend to be with nature. Gorgeous landscapes and plenty of creatures roaming through it; foxes, coyotes, bobcats, wild pigs, mountain lions, and gaze after gaze of raccoons. And as I said it was spring, and the raccoons were fucking with abandon. Raccoons, like most of nature's beasts, are capable of making loud and horrifying sounds while at work, likened by me to a child being set on fire and threatened with a stick. So on this night, the normal nature sounds were well-augmented by this amazing racket (to the chagrin of those spending upwards of three hundred dollars a night not to hear wildlife in heat). It went on until maybe 1am, and the savages took their party elsewhere, leaving me in silence.

About two hours later, right around 3am (that most uncanny of uncanny hours, populated primarily by unsavory humans and wholesome ghosts), the lobby doors in front of me burst open. In strode a cop, clad in his costume and quizzically wearing sunglasses. He waltzed directly up the the desk, and asked me in his best cop voice, "What was that noise?!"
"I'm sorry, officer, I didn't hear anything. What did it sound like?" I asked, with the confidence of a person who can't be arrested or given a ticket for anything at the moment.
"It sounded like something screaming. You are sure you haven't gotten any complaints about it? I'm sure it woke a lot of people up."
"I haven't heard anything, I'm sure it was an animal. Maybe a bobcat, those things scream like people." My automatic nervousness, and desire not to talk to a police officer blanked my mind, and the automatic connection between the screaming of scavengers mid-coitus and what this guy was describing didn't click right away.
"No," he said, cracks starting to show in his voice, "it sounded like there was a whole lot of them. I've never heard anything like it..."
It clicked in my mind, "Ahh, yes. It must have been the raccoons. They are mating this time of year, they were on the property earlier."
He sighed in relief, "Ahh, ok, man, that's good to know, that shit freaked me out..." His puff-chested shield of confidence now completely dropped. He sagged against the counter and took off his dark glasses. I could see he was actually sweating a bit. Now, as someone who has always dealt with cops on the business end of a ticket book and a power trip, this was new territory for me. I gawped a bit, but recovered.
"I know there have been mountain lions sighted on the ridge recently..."
"Oh maaaan," he interrupted, "I saw one of them things once. Thing was huge, I don't even think my sidearm could take it out!"
Now, I'll grant that the counter was high, and I couldn't see his belt, but unless his sidearm was a sack of oranges or a collection of fine Russian nesting dolls, I'm absolutely positive it could kill a mountain lion. It's a gun, it's job is it kill things that are alive. I would have thought that this was uppermost in any person's learning how to use a firearm. But apparently not. Anyway, I digress.
He'd started talking now, and burning off the nervous energy developed in his apparent terror at the exuberant noises of raccoon love, and it suddenly became far too interesting for me to bother stopping him.
"I seen some things out here man. I'm always parked up, hoping to catch drunk drivers out here, but I seen some things. Saw an Indian ghost once. Just walking there, along the side of the road. A guy all dressed up like Tanto or some shit, leather, fringe, the whole deal, just walking there on the side of the road at three in the morning. I stopped to ask him where he was going, and he was GONE man!"
I chuckled and stated my amazement and mild skepticism. He leaned forward, and said in a low, conspiratorial voice, "So... You ever heard of the Chupacabra?"
"Why yes, the legendary goat-sucker from Central America, I am familiar. Why do you ask?" At this point, I'm trying to contain laughter. This man is dead serious. And he relates this to me:

"A couple years back I got a call out in Halfmoon Bay. A migrant worker had been attacked in a field and we had to go find out what was up. My partner and I get out there, and this guy speaks no english. My partner had to translate everything. This guy was working in the field, and something runs up and attacks him from behind. Knocks him over, scratches him up, and runs off into the woods. He kept sayin' that it was like some kind of big dog. But man, he obviously just came from Mexico, and he gets attacked by something like that? I swear to god, man, I swear to god it was the chupacabra. It sounds crazy, man, but it makes perfect sense!"

The sense, I assume, is that any migrant worker who gets randomly attacked, must have been attacked by the mythological/cryptozoological beasts from his homeland. Which, I am also to assume, either followed this one specific man all the way to Halfmoon Bay from ol' Mexico for reasons only knowable to beasts which eat goat blood, or else got lost on it's way through Canovanas and ended up in northern California, and at a loss for goats attacked someone who at least spoke a familiar language. I have no idea exactly in what way this made perfect sense to the police officer in front of me, but it did. Either that, or he was the greatest deadpan comedian I've ever seen.

After he had sufficiently calmed down, he mopped the drying sweat from his brow and composed himself, donned his shades, and bid me a good night. As he walked out of the lobby it was nearing 4am. I was dumbfounded. I probably laughed until it got light out, finishing my work-related tasks for the night reflecting on the my first real experience with a law enforcement officer as a human being. I haven't really had one since, but at least I can now assume that under the tough-guy facade, there is a guy who believes in the chupacabra.

Prepare your body for the thunderdome

2009-06-13T10:37:00.000-07:00

One of the strangest things I've ever seen in my entire life was sighted in Salinas, California at 3 o'clock in the morning. I was commuting from Santa Cruz to Atascadero for work, so I found myself along that stretch frequently. Along a main drag in that poor place, as I rounded a curve in the road there was a solitary man standing on the sidewalk in front of a filthy muffler shop. He was standing in the unmistakable posture of a man urinating; legs apart, hips craned forward slightly, back hunched a bit looking down at his work. It was a Mexican cowboy, hat and all, and as my car got closer my eyes fell on the full terrible majesty of the scene. Standing alone on the sidewalk, pissing for all he was worth into an open briefcase laid on the pavement before him. I was dumbfounded. What had possibly led up to such a thing, what line of drunken, half-crazed reasoning resulted in the actions I saw playing out before me, I couldn't imagine. But there it was. And it was amazing.

I've seen plenty of strange things in my short time trudging through life, many of which you will probably end up reading about here as they occur to me, but this one was unforgettable for sheer context-less insanity. The mind reels. Good job, universe.

The first job I ever had.

2009-06-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here with nothing to do, and I'm in a mood to tell stories. A puzzling mood for someone who sits alone in a room all day, but the universe is full of puzzling things.

The first job I ever got was at Kmart. It was a short period of time, two glorious weeks, but I'll never forget the valuable lesson learned there. For the first period of time, I was a check-out robot, catering to long lines of faceless malcontents eager to not have to deal with me any more than they had to. It was endlessly robotic and powerfully mind numbing, the time passed and I kept at it. Two weeks in to this early foray through employment, I arrived to find my name was not on the schedule, so feeling like I'd dodged a bullet I stole away, back home to continue doing whatever the hell I was doing before I got there.

A short while later, the phone rang. It was Lisa, the human resources harpy, whose screeches and gurgles communicated that I was indeed supposed to be at work that day, but I was to train as a stock person, which would be my sentence from that day onward. "You've got to learn today, because tomorrow you are the only stock person in the store!" she crawed. Now, I'm not a slow learner, but at this point in time, I had no conception of exactly what a stock person did, and the prospect of learning this in one day to be the sole custodian of the task tomorrow hit me in the gut. My most recurring observation of my fellow employees was that there was a direct link between time spent working at Kmart, and the dullness of their eyes as they trudged through their days, and that was something that bother me a great deal. But back I went, and met with a man named Matt.

Now, Matt was a tremendous fellow. Built like a pile of laundry stacked 6 feet high, he had a spark of life which had long died in the other denizens of the place. He instructed me in many of the subtle arts of the stock person, including where to stand when it's hot outside (in front of a giant cooling fan), what to do if one of the teetering stacks of merchandise starts to fall one you ("Just let it happen. You can sue the store and hopefully get it shut down. Please."), and which mirrors employees are not allowed to steal from the back room, and subsequently where his car was parked as we stole aforesaid mirrors. In this way, we raised moderate amounts of low-key hell for the 3 hours of this training shift that I didn't miss. But a change came over me at a crucial moment, something that was perhaps slowly dying sparked back into life by something great.

Walking through an aisle, maybe 30 minutes before the finish of my day, a song came over the Kmart PA system. It was the theme song to The Never Ending Story. We just stopped in our tracks, the both of us, looking up as people do when listening to something carefully, dead to the world as the sounds of Limahl reminded us about everything that was good in the world. And here we were at Kmart.

I turned to Matt and said, "It was good to meet you, Matt." He nodded at me in understanding, and I walked out of the store.

The next day I decided to do the right thing, so I called to tell Lisa the crone that I wouldn't be coming in, "I'm not coming in today. Also I quit."
"WHAT?! Do you know what you are doing here?" she rasped.
"Yes Lisa I do."
"Well," she cracked and burbled, "You have to come in and return your uniform, or else we are going to charge you for it!"

It was only because I didn't want to have this reminder floating around that I actually did return it a day later. When I got there, I felt unbelievably good. I strutted through the aisles toward the human resources office, walked into Lisa's den and laid the red polyester vest on her table. I didn't say a word. She looked up from her stacks of Kmart-important documents and, in an attempt to lay on me one final wound, she sputtered "You know, if you quit without giving notice, you can never work at another Kmart establishment as long as you live!"
"That's fine," came my reply, "Just fine."
And it is. Of all the life-long curses that can be scored onto your soul, it's probably the most beneficial. But I'll never forget the moment I realized that I didn't have to be there, that I didn't have to turn into one of those tarnished and life-hating souls, living 4 or 6 or 8 hours at a time, dividing themselves between real life and the dead time which funded it. Everyone has to work to make a living, but the difference between that and slowly killing your will to live in exchange for table scraps is colossal. My employment since that time has taken me through some pretty bizarre circumstances. At least, bizarre in their way. And at no point in time have I ever regretted the curse which sits upon my shoulders even now. Banished from Kmart employeehood, for all time.

BLARG POESHT!!!

2009-06-12T12:05:00.001-07:00

scream allways; let they know your power
Originally uploaded by unforgivable realness

And then I started a blog. Mostly out of boredom. Here, I will share my various inane drawings and ramblings which are of very little interest to anyone. Why do I do it, you ask? Because I can, says I. And because I'm hoping it will impel me to draw and write more. I doubt it will, as my shiftless and feckless nature finds many things easy to ignore, but one can dream, can't one?

Anyway, first blog post here, so I'll share my most recent foray into drawing a bunch of animals having some kind of an awesome time. I'll also note that this drawing started as a picture of that horse in the middle tenderly reaching out to eat a human infant, but I couldn't get the context right. Things, as they do, fell apart, and rapidly coalesced into the orgy of yelling you see before you.

Today, I laid a great thing to rest.

2009-03-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

Great first real post for this thing, start on an up note and all that. Today, I put my dog to rest. My only real constant companion of 15 years. It was done as I always knew it would, by the pond in the backyard on a cloudy day. If the scene played out in cinematic slow motion I could say that the rifle roared in my arms like the stormy sea against the rocks, but life doesn't play out in cinematic slow motion. The rifle cracked like thunder and the muzzle flashed, shattering the calm air and bringing to a close the final chapter of a life fantastic. So long Bandit, and godspeed.