Serenity now!

These ambitious Sunday strips will be the death of me. Why must I make ART!? Why can't I cut corners? *takes deep breath* *passes out anyway*

Oh well, this sketch is the easy part of the strip scheduled to run on the 31st. The harder stuff still requires more sketching, but it'll all come together. It should be wonderful and sweet when I'm done with it. Sketching adds time to the process, but it's a necessity if I keep going artistically ambitious. (Just wait until you see this Sunday's strip!)

Agoraphobia

I'm back home, after a long time away - and nature did all it could to keep me from making home. I would have been better off taking a submarine home. What I'm saying here is... FUCK RAIN! That was overkill, you damn weather gnomes, and you know it!

See: Proof the world is against me! Life is cruel and damp out there. MY VOW IS TO HIDE FROM EVERYTHING AS LONG AS POSSIBLE!

Sew it goes.

Today's painting mission was aborted when I discovered I had somehow mortally wounded Etruscan Blues. (Man, those guys can't catch a break!) At some point I managed to stab the painting with something, causing a nice big tear. (If you click on the image to see the larger version, you can spot it on the right of the lower right eye-thingy.) Well shoot, that makes things difficult. So it goes. (Hey, you can see my Vonnegut collection in this photo!)

Can this painting be saved, or will it become so meta it falls into obscurity, damaged and incomplete? Maybe I can sew up the wound. Maybe it'll still work. A scar reaching across the most visible eye form in the painting? POETIC! I could stitch it up, paint over the back of the painting to seal it - red paint, of course, so it can seep through a bit - and, hell, PAINT THE WHOLE BACK with something Roman. That way, when held up to a back light, it gets OPPRESSIVELY LITERARY! Or not. Who knows.

The mass of paintings in the picture is to show the different fates of the recent work. Dana's painting is finished, and it is marvelous! Everything went right with that one, and it is both large and in charge. Kickass! Andrew's painting, meanwhile, got stabbed. Oops.

(The flower paintings are there to fill space in the composition, which is fairly symbolic of their nature as well when you think about it...)

And the meek shall languish in obscurity

I made the sketch. I scanned it. I remembered I had to actually post it at 11:40. Victory! Ok, so it's not like this was done *early* - it took forever for a decent sketch to appear - but I had a comfortable window, dammit!

If Kaitlyn doesn't drag these two along, what chance do they have? You know, this post can make a real deep statement about something. I've been fighting to get my strip noticed, and networking is not my strong suit. Kaitlyn is the only *normal* kid in the class, and so she can guide the meeker/crazier class members. Then again, even Kaitlyn can't break through the Gemstone delusion. What chance does erratic Vincent, who tends to stick his foot in his mouth by cluelessly rambling - or Yvette, who is near mute but *potentially* lives a complex inner life (we're not sure) - have if their leader can't succeed?

If I sound like I'm reeeeaaalllly stretching, DUH! The original idea was to draw the other half of the class like a posse. After starting on Vincent, this post's title popped into my head - so I stopped with the 9-year-olds. I'm just happy I got a decent sketch today. Don't read too much into it. ;-)

Life in grayscale

Today the goal was the colorize the next four strips (they go live starting Monday) and possibly get the other two for next week done as well. If not the next two, I could work on some promo pics for the website. I had plans!

Today I woke up feeling great - for the first time all week. I even had a dream of minor complexity! In the past week of fatigue, my brain couldn't muster anything memorable in the few moments of unconsciousness I achieved. The dream was fairly uneventful, and most of it was promptly forgotten in the way all dreams are, but at least I had one.

The part I remember involved my family moving into a new house. The neighborhood was newly built, with not all houses completed and grass just beginning to cover the dirt. After waking, I got the impression that it was in Georgia - possibly based on the few memories I have of the house Dana's family had down there. The family and some friends were gathered in the family room watching some program, which later turned into a ridiculous Lost/Battlestar Galactica/sit-com mash up. There was a crisis: Food. Some of us had eaten earlier in the dream (I was one, and I think we ate in a mall food court) and some were starving. Well, this being a new house, we had very little to offer. The best I could find was some crappy frozen pizza, and I felt bad about preparing it. Instead of making the pizza for the few who were hungry, I asked the group if they would be ready to eat a slice or two if I had pizza delivered. Everyone was noncommital, so I decided to go ahead and order pizza. Only problem: I was new in town and didn't know the number to call. No one else did either, so the result is one minor thing turning into a the most boring clusterfuck ever. It was not a great dream, but there was something that I overlooked initially: My dad was there.

Shortly after my dad died, I had a dream in which I was sitting with him in the back of a theater. He told me that if I ever needed him, he would be there for me. Since then, in times of stress and worry, he would show up in me dream. It was always very casual - just everyday normalcy, He was just there in boring family scenes. Only after waking would I realize that is not normal. When he appears in my dreams, it means something is wrong - even if I haven't realized it yet.

After this dream, I just shrugged it off. The dream was SO inane, I was content to let it go. I did not learn my lesson. I was feeling good! I was energized and refreshed! I spent the first hour of waking calm and relaxed, content to compose whimsical stories in my head for the fun of it.

And then I got a phone call telling me my grandmother (mom's side) had a stroke. Mom came home, packed a bag and drove to the hospital to be by her mother's side. I had to stay here to take care of the animals. While typing this post I got the update call. It wasn't a stroke! It was a seizure brought on by two-to-eight malignant and inoperable brain tumors! Whoopee! If she survives this episode, she'll start hospice. They're not sure if it will be days, weeks or months right now, but an MRI later could tell us more. For those keeping score at home, that would be two grandparents on hospice and two with scary chronic health problems.

This is the second time in recent months that I woke up and declared to myself that it would be a good day. First time my cat died. This time the only grandparent we WEREN'T worrying about almost died - with the "almost" still in doubt, mind you. I know all of this is coincidence, but DAMN. If I was just a tad more egocentric, I'd believe I was the center of a universe that was extremely displeased with me.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep moving on with Precocious stuff. I finished inking the next four strips and sketched out the cast picture seen above. I may or may not use that for the website, but no matter what I won't be coloring it today. I scanned it and prepared it for coloring, but my efforts will be going to working on the strips. Whenever I color, I set up a layer of the gray I use to filter out leftover pencil marks when scanning. It gives me a background that shows any artifacts left behind. Since I wasn't going to color today, I just saved it with that background. I figure it fits the mood.

It's Chrispmastime again!

Oh, the pun is pain! I was tempted to save this sketch for the sketchbook postmortem post (probably coming tomorrow) but I needed to kill some time. See, it's hard to watch an insanely complex show with a bajillion characters while a drill constantly runs above your head. I have to wait until they're gone. Also, this gives me a chance to preach about personal theology, so yay!

Technically, this announcement is a week late. Chrispmas runs from December 8th to March 24th. (Or, my mother's birthday to my birthday.) Epic holiday, eh? The idea is to reduce stress by giving folks a large window for gift delivery. Sure you can stress over a gift and do a cheap buy to have something before the 25th, OR you could wait for inspiration to strike and give a great gift when the opportunity presents itself. Similarly, if you're stocking up for a gift-giving blitzkrieg on the 25th, mellow out! Why not give a gift when you have it? In my world, holding onto a gift because it's not close enough to Christmas is a *great* way to ensure the future giftee will acquire the same item for themselves. Whoopsy doopsy!

I like gifts to have a personal flair to them. You find something that is tied to an old in-joke or fills a need you know your friend/relative has. Those gifts are as fun to give as they are to receive! (I still love my Darkwing Duck shirt, Dana!) Problem with that, of course, is that you need a level of familiarity to figure out what the perfect gift shall be. The friends I gift to have been busy and largely unavailable - and my epic stays in DC just makes it worse. It's awful, but I have no idea what to give people for Chrispmas. I just haven't had the face time these past few months that is needed to gague gift need. Thankfully, religion comes to the rescue! Chrispianity: The laziest of all major religions. (Why, most followers have no clue they're Chrispians at all!)

For the record, I make no promises for epic gifting. Little things can bring the most joy! Picking up the tab for a nice meal brings with it good fun and great conversation. (Cooking a fun meal for/with friends can also work.) Grabbing that video game someone talks about wanting by never seems to go buy is kind act of enabling courtesy. Sure, the *best* gifts are ones that fill a need the giftee didn't know they had, but those winners can't come every year like clockwork. For me, I'd much prefer the generic Amazon.com gift card to a forced gift. I hate leaving my house so buying goods online is fun times. Most Chrispians should be of like mind.

Cash is still not an option, however. While the "get it yourself" apathy is nice and Chrispian, the giving part comes in procurement. Even gift cards means the gifter chose a suitable store for the giftee. Cash only works as a gift when it's a gift from a family member to one of a younger generation or when it's a company's holiday bonus.

The noise seems to have died down (for now) so I'm going to stop proselytizing and get back to The Wire.

Articulate Friday

Rant post has been put off again due to good things. Yay!

So, with my DVD player dying... I feared I might have had to brave the frightening outside world on this soul-destroying shopping day. Then I remembered Amazon.com! I found the DVD player I wanted on sale *and* it'll be shipped to my doorstep for no additional charge. Yay internet!

This bonus holiday strip is the result of my joy. The poor parents must brave the brutal shopping environment... except for Sydney, who is rewarded for her laziness!

Did you get my best side?

So I've actually started working on my comic again. Shocker, I know. What thwarted me this time was trying to draw Dionne (and, to a lesser extent, Tiffany) in profile facing left. For some reason I just couldn't get her to look right!

Flipping through my sketchbook, the vast majority of my left-looking drawings all feature a three-quarter pose at most. True profiles are few and far between. And all but one were doggy characters. (It's not surprising Bud is the exception, as he is the most drawn character and thus gets to try more poses.) Weird.

Edit: My own blog defies me, as the sketchbook page I posed a while back contains a left-looking Tiffany I missed - drawn only because she was looking left in the comic I was working out, which is the same comic I mentioned struggling with today. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy or something! Um. SO TWO KITTIES! That's it!

I guess it has to do being left handed. I naturally draw my characters looking right since the flow of drawing fits the hand position. I know back when I did the very first Precocious promo pic I drew a great Bud looking right, but Autumn was a disaster. I finally had to draw her looking right and reverse the image in Photoshop.

Reversing characters doesn't always work, either. What looks so natural can become bizarre when flipped. How irritatingly quirky.

With sketching, my tendency to draw characters facing one direction is all well and good - but the actual comic features characters, y'know, talking to each other. That means lots of folk looking left. Uh oh. Some of them are even kitties! THAT'S BAD NEWS! (My guess is that kitties have more subtle features with the curves of their heads while doggie muzzles and fluffy cheeks tend to point strait out.)

So I went through my sketchbook counting figures facing left. Most were Jacob and Suzette. Jacob, being who he is, tends to be the character reacting to the more aggressive characters, so he appears more on the right side of panels. Suzette is easy to draw. The sketchbook is littered with aborted Autumn sketches, all given up when it came to drawing her hair.

What's pictured in this post is the one left-looking Bud in the book along with the better of the two fully-drawn Autumns. To show the crazy mirror effect works both ways, I flipped the image. Autumn especially looks distorted when facing right.

Oh well. It's just another hidden obstacle that keeps me from being a real cartoonist. Now that I recognize the problem, I've got to spend time trying to correct it in my sketchbook. This will not be fun.

The Paulsen Wildlife Sanctuary

BEES!



Such is life in plague-a-day land! So far we've dealt with the biblical onslaught of terrors such as cute vermin, construction workers, my brother and bees. What's next for God's wrath? My bet is ambitious raccoons making their home inside our walls.



Check it out: Exterminator dude found the queen! Her she is next to a minion for comparison. We've hit the colony with biological weapons, destroyed their infrastructure and paraded their dead leader about for our own amusement. HOW AMERICAN IS THAT? USA! USA! USA!



Exterminator dude said we had the largest nest he'd ever seen. This is not to be confused with the last times yellow jackets made a bold real-estate venture into our neighborhood. What does that say about my family that we ignore these problems until hundreds of bees begin to rain down upon us, coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE! We watched them zoom around all summer thinking, "Hey, cool! It's nature!" What could possibly go wrong?

I tried to sneak up next to the action and take some close-ups, but that venture was thwarted after my unrestrained hair became a net for buzzing bastards. It's the hip new accessory people! After getting my buddies to tag along, I backed down before disaster could strike.

Covering myself in bees for attempted bad photography = cute.
Getting stung repeatedly by bees for bad photography = stupid.

The subconscious is one's worst critic

OR, how to start one's day in the most inauspicious way possible!

The culprit this time was a dream. Usually I have dreams of brain-numbing repetition or ones where I'm continuously hunting for candy. (Thanks, shameless sweet tooth!) When stress or gluttony dreams aren't in the rotation, it's usually mind torture in the form of anxiety dreams - where everything goes wrong for me. As noted before: My brain hates me.

In today's dream, I was shipped off the convention for people with personality disorders. The goal was to isolate us from society and teach us how to stop being drains on the world. My group was seemingly the worst of the lot. After all, our "invitations" were done in sinister black. The other defect groups had bright cheery colors linked to their disorders. Mine was black. Like, death and depressing black.

This awful group you see, was the COMPLAINERS! We were the cynics and sourpusses who lose their cool at the slightest irritant. We were mean, bitter and no fun to be around. If we didn't fix ourselves, we'd be doomed to a life of sad ostracism.

Proving the event organizer's point, I didn't take my invite well. I, well, COMPLAINED about being singled out as a bad person and admitted I felt persecuted because the black envelope let everyone else know (people who were just as dysfunctional as me - if not more so) that I was the worst of all! I was being avoided! The told me I didn't have to eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the nuts - I could help myself to candy in the guest room. (Yes, even in this dream I desperately needed a chocolate fix.)

The main reason I was upset was because they organization just didn't get it - there are two types of complainers: Zesty and bitter! I complain a lot, but I do it as a purge and I try to find some humor in it. I think running around proclaiming the sky the to be falling is FUNNY! My fellow black-labeled wretches were clearly on the bitter side. We had the old ladies who had nothing to do with their lives but yell at people for being noisy during their naps. We had TONS of repressed conservatives and Christian fundamentalists - who hate themselves because their values are so strict any deviation from them must make them horrible people, so they judge everyone else harsher in retribution. We had the general sad sacks who were so beaten down they'd lost their sense of humor. Basically, I was surrounded by BAD CONVERSATIONALISTS!

We had a private pool just for us sourpusses, but it was very unfriendly. The old ladies wouldn't get in the water for fear of getting their hair wet. The conservatives all inched dangerously close to each other in the hot tub, filled with sickening tension. The sourpusses would dog-paddle around by themselves. I was the only person to take a leap into the water and make a splash. The rest silently walked into the pool from the shallow area - doing all they could to be silent and keep the water calm. I splashed around and tried to get the people to play a game. No response. This was went I went off to complain about my "peers."

At least my brain was telling me I don't belong on that group. As the dream went on, it became clear I was the star of my crew. My fellow complainers - while still hating each other as much as themselves - all warmed to me and my charming ways. I had become a leader and I was fairly respected by everyone in the reject convention.

The next morning, I got a visit from Dana - who was wearing adorable jammies for some reason. Seems she was taken away too, as part of the "obsessive" camp. We happily chatted about sneaking off to get breakfast away from the rest of the wretches. Conversation then turned to the old lady in the bed beside mine. She was frustrated with inconsiderate people making too much noise as she slept. When Dana asked if I was causing problems - as I'm an insomniac and I toss and turn like mad - the old lady said I was the only one she liked. I was never a problem and I didn't make any noise to disturb her. It was a good self-esteem boost.

Eventually, I found some kin in the complainer group in two women. One was a pushy New Yorker whose tongue was sharp enough to disarm all those not tempered to absorb "New York charm." The other was a tall woman - well over six feet - with a loud voice and a pushy attitude. She seemed like the lawyer type. Together, we decided to write a letter to the organization explaining the two types of complainers. We might bitch and moan, but the others in the program are not our people. Line by line we laid out why they suck and why we are simply misunderstood. At one point, I sat back and wondered if what we were doing was too self-serving or something that would make us far more irritating in the organization's eyes than the wretches we found to be vastly inferior. The New Yorker could see it happening, but the other lady (who seemed less self-aware and probably wouldn't be in our group if there had been anyone else slightly worthy) got a bit self-righteous, claiming truth is truth.

At that point the dream trailed off and fell into the standard surrealism/stress dream stuff, such as me trying to reach the pool on the ground level from my floor and managing to end up hanging off a balcony a few stories up. This happens all the time in dreams, of course. Instead of going into the elevator, I ended up outside it and I had to strategically drop down floor by floor, getting me in tons of trouble for the disturbance. During this, another dream standard was at play: I was trying to travel with a gal (generic hottie) and no matter what I did, we'd be separated. I reached the pool and jumped in, only to find she had made it down with me... but forgot her suit. Once again, the pool symbolized isolation!

Overall, I think the meaning is fairly straightforward. The dream was more of a highlighter and exaggerator of stress than one hiding it in symbols. At least it was creative in handling it. I take it as failure when my brain only offers up cookie cutter dreams. Anytime I'm flying or my teeth/hair fall out, I wake up embarrassed for my brain.

Still, it's rather depressing to wake up after a dream where you are officially labeled a black-level asshole. Hey, maybe something reassuring could happen as soon as I wake up to make me feel better about myself.

I woke up to see a GIGANTIC FUCKING SPIDER on the ceiling directly above me. It waited until it was sure I saw it, before it scrambled into a vent. Thus, this arachnophobe now knows there is a GIGANTIC FUCKING SPIDER in my room that is just WAITING FOR ME!

There is no way this day can go well now.

A justification for navel-gazing essays

A forum like this, read by *maybe* four people - most of them forced by my needling or through guilt of ignoring me - is still a nice thing to have.

I think about the ezboard universe (now Yuku), where the bigger board personalities would create their own forum and posters would bounce between each newly-created in-group. What started as the internet cesspool that was/is Survivor Sucks - a collection of unwashed, unapproved and barely-moderated reality TV fans, either too stupid or too late to get into the exclusive Plant Sucks board membership - eventually exploded because the use of ezboard was so easy and the board was so open. Unlike the quality controlled land of Planet Sucks (my origin, and inspiration for the Realiiity.com message board I ran), everyone on ezboard knew the forum was for spillover - so they treated it as such. I've seen accounts describe the insanity and inanity as that of the old Wild West.

As with any community, personalities began to emerge as the major posters became familiar with each other. Around the, Sucks became *the* place to go for irreverent reality riffs - at least for those not early/awesome enough to get into the quality places. Once it grew big enough to have its share of board wars and cliques, something very strange happened: It began to splinter. Each board personality would go off and create their own ezboard, populated by the poster's friends, admirers, well-wishes and the occasional assailant. Sucks was *too* big and it required far more patience that I'd ever have to sort through it and get to the good stuff. By creating a splinterboard, you could invite the posters you liked and ban anyone you wished. Over and over this happened, until it was sort of a rite of passage. You get big on a board, you fork over $30 to get the "Gold" features needed and you get your own board for six months! Dozens of these boards existed, with their own rules, language and logic.

I was happy running my own kingdom at Realiiity, and had no desire to dumpster dive into the Sucks land - but not all of my friends felt the same. Eventually I was dragged into the mix to take part in what could be called the Survivor off-season Olympics: Spoofs! It was mostly a contest to out-funny and out-in-joke the other teams, making filtered and hand-picked talent from my group highly valued.

During this time Riii was having server issues, so I bit the bullet and created my own ezboard, flatly titled "Riii's Down Again." When the next Survivor off season arrived - a time when the show was off the air and boards had nothing to do except implode - I imported a crew to the "trash board" and claimed it was a splinterboard to get into Spoofs. We naturally crushed the competition, getting second only because we took two challenges off thanks to some board drama. (It's inevitable online - someone is always good enough to get through even the best bullshit filters, and all it takes is one of these crazies to bring a board down.) More importantly, we established a new board identity: Woeful House. As a frequent Waffle House patron in those days, I had used the diner to create a jokey team identity.

At the end of this spoofs, Woeful was getting visitors from the splinterverse and we were enjoying a fair amount of respect for our wit. To explain how a board of people who had never once posted on Sucks could be part of the splinterverse, I made my infamous remark: "If you have a huge ego, a mental condition and $30, you probably run a splinterboard."

Nowadays, we nutcakes blog. This circumvents the need to actually have followers or enough friends to sustain conversation. It's you and your ego, allowed to run wild! On message boards, you were only interesting if people replied to you. With blogs, you can be the entire fucking universe!

It's why I resisted blogging for so long. No one really cares about the emotions and stuff of other people unless there is a personal connection or the content is especially well-written. I wasn't going to blog just blog about myself. It's sickening! There had to be a reason for me to be interesting, which began to emerge as I fixed my head and got back into art. Still, it wasn't until I was tasked with learning how to stylize one of these blogs that I started this thing. It gave me a place to practice and a location where future fans could find me. While I'm of no interest to anyone at the moment, should I ever win over people with my art or cartooning, I thought it would be cool for them to see me as I was just starting out.

I was blogging, intentionally, to no one. With Precocious, I want my 60-strip archive done before I began with my daily publishing because new readers need to see enough to justify a return visit. If I go advertising myself around, and interested parties come to see only three strips on the site, what is there to tell them the strip will continue? The internet is littered with webcomics that didn't even last a month. I have to show the audience I am serious and professional. I want to confirm to everyone that I am the new badass on the scene! The same principle is at work on this blog. You don't advertise something without a product being it! (If you have a soul, that is.) By creating blog archives, I'm proving my determination to achieve eventual awesomeness. I blog for the future.

It's not always pretty. For every artistic update with insightful commentary, there is another post full of navel gazing, emotions and desperate attempts to be interesting. It's weak, but it's something. I'm a temperamental artist who tends to work in inspired bursts. That's great, but they are unpredictable. If weeks or months go by before I do a big update on my website, then people will only check it every few months - if they even remember I exist! The blog is proof I am trying, whether I am active or not. Sketches prove I am doing lots of conceptual work on my projects, even if the final result gets postponed. Even if the post is the most self-indulgent garbage out there, it's something to read and an indication I'm alive.

To think that some future person would spend and afternoon going through this blog to see all my old sketches is comforting. Before, I would hide or destroy my old stuff, because my skills were not as strong and it was embarrassing. Now I see the value in showing the process. I love reading other artist's commentaries on their work, and I hope people will enjoy reading mine. I'll assume they'll skip the essays that don't have pretty pictures with them, which is generally a good thing. The only thing worse than blog emotion is AGED blog emotion. Lame!

The nerdy equivalent of a hangover?

Usually when I try to do a commentary thing, it's an attempt to flex my muscles and see if I can channel my egotism and self-serving ways into essay that's worth read. Last night I had a bunch of ideas that, in a perfect world, would have all folded into each other nicely and make me look like an untapped literary superstar. This didn't happen. As he who cannot dance blames the floor, me who cannot type blames the keyboard. I don't know if I could have pulled it all together, but technical difficulties (everything in this room is dying on me) stopped me from even trying.

Either way, this worries me. My life mostly hinges on me having more natural talent than everyone else. I need to write better than writers, market better than marketers, network better than agents, talk better than orators charm folks better than scumbags.

All I'm trained in is art, and the thing with art is... it's kinda hard to out-art other artists. Those bastards just keep changing the definition! Sustaining oneself as an artist is about becoming a generally skilled (note that I didn't say talented) illustrator or carving out your niche and desperately hoping there's an audience. I can do everything right in presentation, speech and skill-level; but if my "brand" of art isn't what the charge wants, I'm out of a job. Crap artists end up doing ad layout for bad newspapers. Good artists end up unemployed until they find a working balance of niche market and willingness to be a whore - man, I need to paint more chicks - or give up by designating art the side-business or a hobby

All my training is in a field where one's good angle could circumvent another's skill and talent. This is why I must blather here, give lectures to my poor friends, research the creative process behind disciplines and work on my many thousands of potential writing projects. I need to be good at *all* these things to overcome the cold hard fact that I am not remotely trained in any of 'em!

Trained professionals: I am coming to destroy you!

(If I don't die in the gutter first.)

I need to stop watching movies with subtitles

Yes, fresh off my "problems with minorities" post, we get the "speak (American) English, you bastards" post!

Now, my quarrel with subtitled films is purely artistic. Poor subtitling - I'm looking at you, Juliet of the Spirits - can seriously mute a film's impact. More importantly: I CAN'T SKETCH WHEN I HAVE TO READ A FILM!

Movie people: We are in the Instant Gratification Age!* I am a dude with three weeks of Big Brother saved up on his DVR because I find it appalling to have to deal with the distraction of having to fast forward through commercials I refuse to sit through. (The brain-deadening recaps that take up much of those shows fail to help the situation.) To expect me to pay full attention to a two-hour movie is just cruel. I can't microwave my dinner without losing patience! (I'm not kidding. I've been living off leftovers for days and the two minutes it takes to get sub-standard food - thank's mom! - is excruciating.)

(*term capitalized out of cynical optimism that history will remember us this way.)

If you've noticed something from my examples, it's that I cannot stand inferior quality when I have to wait. Big Brother is inferior in every way, while my mother's baked spaghetti is just as lackluster as my own. If am going to invest my PRECIOUS TIME - I could be taking up a new destructive habit like cutting myself! - the quality better be great!

Without subtitles, I can "watch" a film while sketching. I sketch while people are talking and look up when they stop to see why. Knowing I have to stare at the screen and read, I feel helpless. I find myself trying to get some doodling in during musical numbers or extended pauses, often resulting in me having to rewind and read what I missed. Stupid language! BE MORE ENGLISH!

The joke here is that the movie that set me off was all about language barriers: Babel. Here's another surprise: It was actually good! While other movies of its type (Traffic, Crash) failed because they hit with the subtlety of a giant anime mallet, Babel overcame its issue by... well, mostly telling a story and ignoring the point. It had its pretentious bloat, but far exceeded expectations so it pleased me.

What's also notable is that I *was* able to get some sketching in during the film. Yes, this was mostly during the English scenes - but I was pleased to be able to understand some of the Spanish and Japanese too! Not full comprehension, of course - I should note I failed Spanish - but considering lots of the Spanish was simplified because it was addressed to English-speaking children, I was alright!

Following this was 2046, which was a true mind trip when it came to language. At first, I was totally lost. All the 2046 parts were done in what sounded a lot like Japanese...but something was off about it. Wasn't this a Hong Kong film? About two-thirds of the way through I got my answer: 2046, a fictional story in the story, was written to feature Japanese characters. I *was* hearing Japanese, but with the Hong Kong accent! This was a neat discovery for me, while any native would immediately know what was up, as only the Japanese was originally subtitled. (The scene with a Hong Kong girl learning basic Japanese for her boyfriend was awesome, since she moved slow enough that even I could understand it!) Sprinkle in 2046's tendency to use songs from at least three other languages, and my world was a subtitled mess today!

I should have followed this up with The Science of Sleep, a Michel Gondry film that is about a Spanish dude and French Chick (whose song immediately came on my random iTunes playlist when I mentioned her) compromising by speaking English between their native tongues and weak attempts to crossover to the other's language.

Don't you love how the premise of this post keeps changing? Subtitles ruin my sketching! I am too impatient to do anything inconvenient. Subtitles can open the door to interesting language experiences! Subtitles can add a new level of depth to a story if used correctly! I like all the subtitled films I'm suppose to be railing against, while dumping my contempt on decidedly American atrocities.

Speaking of American atrocities: I'm tired and my wireless keyboard keeps dropping letters. I apologize for the massive typos and mangled sentences that likely appear. Maybe I'll do some editing tomorrow.

ALMOST EVERY WORD IN THE LAST PARAGRAPH WAS ORIGINALLY MISSPELLED BECAUSE MY KEYBOARD IS WORSE THAN HITLER! OH FUCK IT, HERE'S THE PAGE I SKETCHED WHILE READING MY FILMS:



I had commentary, but I've rambled enough as is... and typing this sentence is taking so long it is a perfect example of taxing my attention span for something NOT WORTH THE EFFORT!

Someday this will be a t-shirt!

Ahh, such an inspirational message for the children...




It's a variation on a tried and true theme, which has been broached in both The Incredibles and in my rationale for not driving medium-weight racers in Mario Kart.

If Roddy wasn't such a jerk, you'd almost feel bad for him. See, Roddy is one of those well-rounded geniuses. He's the guy who scores evenly in all standardized testing and has a knack for several of life's disciplines. Problem is, in a world of geniuses and prodigies, there's lots of specialization. (Heck, even the dreaded normals can have one attribute that is excellent!) No matter the competition, Roddy will always be trumped by a specialist in the field. His awards wall may be larger than anyone else's, but there are precious few #1 honors hanging. As Roddy is ultra-competitive by nature, this leads to inevitable frustration.

As all characters are a reflection of their creator, Roddy's struggle is my own. In art school, I hated the idea of specializing and suffered the consequences for it. See, you need to establish a stylistic identity to make an impression on people, and if you spend your time showing off how you can work in several styles - guess what? NO ONE CARES!

I eventually found my compromise. I have my own style that is present in all my work, making all of my pieces recognizably mine. With that identity, I can use my style as a base on which to expand to suit my need for variety. The major I chose, printmaking, is more of a consolidation of skills. It can incorporate drawing, painting, photography - any combination of techniques can be used to produce a print. For graduate work, I'm focusing on illustration - a discipline where versatility is key! It's a balance in life that keeps on moving forward. It took me until 25 to learn this. Roddy's 10, so he's screwed.