'Nuther Blogging hiatus.

It's all work and Berlin and projects for the next little while, folks! All hail respite from computer procrastinatory tactics.

Leerzeichnen

is a german word meaning "space" (as in the space between words), but literally translated it means "empty drawing"

GLEEEEE!!!

re: drawing

You wouldn't divorce someone you still Loved, would you?
So...

I miss you Shannon Gerard!

Just thought I'd write it as I was thinking it.
Dear Friends. Love 'em!

I know this isn't about Berlin

But this still makes me Happy.

Happy like biking to Charlottenberg in the morning, which is like attending a daily critical Mass. Like Erfrischungs Stübchen, this german candy that I had as a kid and thought had disappeared from the face of the earth and then found in a Spätverkauf completely by accident. Like speaking germlish extraordinarily well. Like an Obscene selection of Michael Sowa postcards. Like saying mundane things to strangers in a foreign language. Like visiting friends of 15 years ago who now live in Oman and Dresden and Paris and What Are the Chances we would all see each other again. Like some strange resurrection of my relationship to drawing, due to something in the air (?). Like cobblestones. Like well-designed pencil sharpeners, that I get Far Too Excited about. Like East German scooters. Like a five-day sprint to Milan (because it's an hour away) to wander through a graveyard with a life-long Friend. Like Italian Gelato. Like hand-made pasta. Like....Like....THIS.

HAPPY LIKE THIS.

Let's face it; this is a weird thing to have done. My purpose is maybe somewhat ambiguous, and I'm trying very hard not to think that it is a fleeing from pre-June existence. But I would so much rather be in some debt over this than matching dishware or carpets. MUCH RATHER. I wandered around yesterday just thinking Yes, YES, YES. THIS is how one should live. These are the leaps one should take. Perhaps not everyone. But Sweet Christ, this is My Life. GLEEE!

My life.

MY LIFE!!! In Milan now. New Manics in the background. Lifelong friend at table. Leaving anon to explore. MY LIFE!!!

CAUGHT.UP.

In here, that is, not caught up, work-wise.

The thing about working from the other end of the world is that distractions are much easier to come by.

HOWEVER.

Whilst inputting changes to BP, I uploaded some photos. I think they can, to some extent, speak for themselves, bless them.

Check out Berlin: Part 1 here.
And Dresden here.

And now back to work.

Yeah, I know.

I have the blog. But I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN.

Two and a half month cultural orgasm. I'll ponder it for the evening and get back to this.

HAPPY. So. Happy.

You give me

10 hours in a new city with a bicycle, and I will give you a girl who Knows How To Get Around (with but a few occasional hesitations). This place is some kind of velocipedial Heaven. In fact, this place is Just Heaven. Full Stop. Tattooed men, bike lanes, old buildings, graffitti everywhere, Flöhmarkts, etc etc. YES YES YES.

One more photo.

Just one more of great importance, and then it is time to leave.the.computer.

That's right, dear reader(s). TRAFFIC LIGHTS. FOR THE BICYCLES. GLEEEE!

Well that took all of four days.

I'm torn between the blog and Berlin, and the latter will definitely win, but a few things at least just a few days in...

apartment keys: check.

handi (german cell phone): check.

bike: CHECK!

internet: (still pending, but that's actually just fine for the moment, methinks.)

Sunday (Day three):

I ran into Liisa Repo Martell at the Flöhmarkt. I don't really know her, 'xcept she's an Amazing Toronto actress who has worked with Theatre Smith Gilmour, so I knew her right away. She's actually in Prague doing a theatre thing (I thought perhaps she was in Berlin with Volcano as part of the Four Horsemen project), and decided to come over to Berlin for a few days. I was also thrilled to discover her daughter(?)'s nickname is Pickle.

Purchased a bicycle. BICYCLE! It weighs almost as much as I do, and the pedals fell off a few hours after I got it (not unforeseen) But with a good cleaning and lubing, it will function just fine for the next two months, and sweet christ, it's OLIVE GREEN. AND it has those lights that are generated by the motion of the tires, which I Adore. ADORE. I have christened it Oliver B. Germlish, in honor my exemplary language skills.

Monday (Day four):

There I was, biking my bicycle (BICYCLE!) along the streets of Berlin, and who do I run into but someone I met in Sweden FOURTEEN YEARS AGO.

For those reader(s) who don't know the back story, I dropped out of university in '95 to move to Sweden 'coz there was a guy there (Micke by name) I had met in London the year before (at the Albert Hotel, no less!) and he wrote amazing letters to me, and that's just what one does when one is 21 in such circumstances. It was all very enlightening, to live in the tiny town of Västerås and kick barrels down a street and listen to the Pixies at full volume and blow out the speakers, and order pizza and eat pepper streaks, and go to parties in Malmo hosted by circus school students, and make strange sculptures out of charity shop finds. But I left two months later anyhow and went to London.

So Micke's best friend at the time was this guy Crippa, known for climbing through Micke's windows when he wasn't home, trying to sell his father's stamp collection, getting arrested in London for stealing CDs from HMV, engraving his name on a washing machine at the Albert Hotel, and wearing his grandma's angora sweaters. When Michael called me seven years ago out of the blue (and then disappeared again), he mentioned Crippa was in Berlin, making comics etc. But that was the end of that.

So.

There I was, biking along yesterday afternoon, feeling very Kermit-like and content, and THERE'S CRIPPA. NO.WORD.OF.A.LIE. We looked at each other oddly, kept going our own ways, and then I exclaimed STOP! WAIT! YOUR NAME IS CRIPPA! And so it was. I cannot Believe I recognized him. He is working these days at a comic book shop in Berlin, making comics, and was carrying a freshly purchased black bicycle wheel.

Can you say GOOD OMEN?!?!

anmelden anmelden ANMELDEN!

4.02am, Toronto time, Frankfurt Hahn airport. One more flight to Berlin!

I'm not sure what it is about Europe that makes me feel 20. Maybe the fact that last time I was here I was 20 something? Oh. 29. Anyhow, AWESOME. I'd be doing giddy cartwheels if I wasn't sure that I'd harm myself seriously with the fatigue factor.

AND, signed into blogger and it automatically went to a german version of the homepage. WEEEEEEEE!

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

YAHOOOO!

But WHY, why, is there always so So much to do before leaving the country. How does it happen? Yeesh.

MoCCA comic arts festival: index

Days spent in New York: 5

Days at MoCCA festival: 2

Number of places stayed: 2

Number of books (of mine to sell) brought with: 49

Number of books given away: 4

Number of books sold: 45 (!!)

Number of books read during trip: 5 (1 novel ["The Angel Riots" completed; awesome]; 3 silent graphic novels [completed; also awesome, and fascinatingly incomprehensible in one case, which was most informative, given my own stuff; 2 interviews from an anthology [David Hockney's Camera Lucida theory about the Renaissance painters; FASCINATING]; excerpt from Coco's as yet untitled masterpiece.

Number of books purchased during trip: (ahem) 6

Number of them that were in an unfathomable scandinavian language: 3

Number of gin gimlets drunk on my first night in New York, at a gloriously elegant bar with my even more gloriously elegant cousin: 3

Nibbles on toes from a tenaciously cute cat named Bix during my first evening in NY: 2

Number of onlookers at the time: 2 (blue japanese fighting fish, named Chet and Josephine)

Number of natural phenomena experienced during the trip: 2 (one full moon on the Hudson river in a sailboat, one lightning storm at 20,000 ft flying towards Toronto at nighttime)

Number of art exhibits attended: 4 (two at the Moma, two at Jonathan Levine gallery in Chelsea)

Number of bookshops visited: 4 (St. Marks once; Jim Hanley's Universe once; Strand twice)

Number of blocks walked over the course of the visit: (approximate) 121 (probably more)

Number of times I yearned palpably for my bicycle: 6

Number of times I got to lose total control at the Whole Foods Market salad bar: 2

Number of nights in Brooklyn: 1

Number of excited woops (all silent) at the sight of the hem of David Byrne's garment during a free concert at Prospect Park: 3 

Number of bars visited afterwards: 2

Number of beers that evening: unremembered

Number of regrets: 0

Most importantly, I decided to bring Art with me to New York, and we are getting along rippingly well. We've decided on an open relationship for the moment, and the many savory characters who showed an interest in our work made for an unforetold resurrection of my enthusiasm for it all. A close life disaster, averted yet again, in the very death throes.  YES.

And tomorrow

New York City! MoCCA comic arts festival! Woop!

pic-tionary graduate. At last.

Before and during art school I drew only from life, never from photos. Years of just my eyes, real life, and paper and pencil.

When I started making my little books the idea of the story took precedence, and demanded particular pictures that led me to take specific photos to get specifically what I needed. But this has happened so much in the past couple of years that I've been feeling practically enslaved to it, like some surreal human photo-copier.

I was recently approached by an Amazing author to work on an even More amazing project, which is in the formative stages of formative so I have to mind my excitement somewhat. 

It is an illustrated book. Starting sketches for it, I decided it was time. 

Time to renounce the heavy reference once again. Terrifying.

The weird thing about breakthroughs in art is that not only do they make very little sense to anyone who doesn't do exactly what you do, but process is so solitary from the get-go that it hardly feels like a victory to anyone else anyhow.

BUT.

I feel right now like someone who's been learning a language for ages, and is finally constructing sentences without using the dictionary (pic-tionary) to build them from scratch. Reference as exactly that: reference. 

And working on someone else's ideas is about the Biggest Relief I have Ever known at the moment. Extraordinarily Awesome. 

I think Art and I (as with most mercurial relationships of great infatuation and questionable benefit) are for the moment back together. Or in couples' counselling, anyhow.

Here are three of the first five drawings (drafts, not finals, tho' I of course got somewhat carried away.)

BUT I LOVE THEM!!!

All blogging postponed

Due to grant application of magnificent drawing excellence, trip to New York, MoCCA art festival, and laundry somewhere between all of those things. News after the 12th. Yeeeesssshhh!

Oh blog.

You are such a venue for late-night passive agressive email-like postings, aren't you.

That's okay.

It's my blog and I'll qvetch if I want to. 

All in the name of personal history.

I actually realized on Wednesday

that what they say about tattooed people? It's pretty much True. I used to think not, but I've looked around enough to know now, that yup, it's true. All hail strategically worn long sleeves and turtlenecks.

TWENTY SIX DAYS

to Berlin.

And Counting.

These days...

Despite what it must look like, with my life as it is and such, ALL I WANT (no, really) is for weirdos and trainwrecks (and their possibly-normal-but-who-the-fuck-knows-really friends who I DON'T EVEN KNOW) to leave me alone. 

Is it that I am marked for life in the weirdos and their "clever" ideas category? How. How did I get this stigma. And to whom do I write a letter to get it removed.

A bit of peace, and a bit of predictability, and a bit of foresight as well while I'm at it. 

Are these really so much to ask? 

In other words: TROUBLE FUCK OFF.

I cannot remember where I read this.

But it re-occured to me last night, and again today:

There is no cure for hot and cold. 

(as in, they just are, there's no getting away from them; warm is an unreal and psychologically tepid contrivance)

sigh.

Brick 83

Is out in stores now, and somewhere in there I have a new illustration published. (I forgot to ask them what page number). So Go Forth and find it, and be amazed, won't you?

two words.

Pomegranate Sorbet.

Pomegranate Sorbet pretty much sums up (in a suitably awesome equivalency) the sublime nature of my life these past few weeks (the inevitable stef-stress factor notwithstanding)

It's Spring, everything is green, everyone around me is Awesome, I've been eating Most Excellently, and I'm going to Berlin. 

And though I don't have anything profoundly bloggable going through my mind, I would like to record, for the stef-lenk-annals-of-history-at-some-undetermined-later-date, that I'm quite thrilled with all of this, life and such.

genetics

I have an excellent conversation from last week lingering in my mind; this reminder that since we are all predominantly similiar (made from a human template, as it were) the same truth might hold for our psychological makeup. And though this makes me very sympathetic towards the rest of the human universe (I'm sorry, dear reader(s), to think that your brains are likely as fraught as mine often is) it's very comforting as well. 

The key to it all then is to see who has the best coping tactics, and adopt them with great expediency.

BERLIN.

24 June - 8 September.
YES.

TED, pirate supplies, superheroes in Brooklyn, and kids getting published.

This is SO awesome.

three times lucky?

So yesterday Mac FINALLY FINALLY replaced my computer, which was still faulty after SIX visits to the genius bar, where they had previously already replaced the logic board, display, and hard drive.

I would like to record here that, even with the botched attempt to use timeMachine, which not only doesn't work, but overwrote my previous auto-backup in the name of "migration assistant", a complete rebuild of my hard drive, applications, backup and all now takes me two hours. Two hours. And that includes defaults and preferences and all that pap, ladies and gentlemen.

Yes. I am proud of this.

Geek with a capital G. MISTER Geek to you(s).

And I spent the weekend at a comic arts festival, and ended it with a motorcycle ride and a viewing of Star Trek. And I'm recording it on a blog. While the sun is outside shining away.

All that's left is for me now is to move into my mother's proverbial basement, build model airplanes, get into D and D chat rooms, and masturbate vociferously to internet porn.

Better late than never(?), even if it is on a bulletin board in Paris.

Last January I took a trip to Paris, in part as an exhibitor at the Angoulême comic arts festival. I was accompanied by someone I had been dating for 7 months prior to that, and things were unfortunately shaky between us before we even left (Read: we had broken up a week prior)

Anyhow. As a result of said strife, I backed out of a trip down to Spain we had planned months prior, in favour of staying in Paris and wandering around solo for a bit of peace from it all. Our agreement was to meet back up at Shakespeare and Co. on the evening of his flight back in, for the last couple of days before returning to Toronto. 

It was well-planned, giving him five hours or so to get from Charles de Gaulle into the city before we had to meet the woman we were couchsurfing with later that night. All relevant contact numbers for Paris were exchanged (there were three of them, two being people he knew and english speakers), and we went off our separate ways.

Well, I went to said bookstore at appointed hour on appointed day, and he wasn't there. Despite the fact that this tardiness was not at all uncommon, I waited for three hours (not the first time), and as a consequence missed the person we were to stay with and had to find a last-minute hotel on my own. 

I spent my last two days in Paris frantically worrying about what had happened, as he had contact numbers both for two of our couchsurfing hosts and one of my best friends in the city, none of which he used. Eventually, through a bizarre set of postage-stamp sized notes and near-misses at random meeting places, we managed to reconvene.

It ends up he had missed his flight. He didn't want to use the pay phones because to do so would mean purchasing a phone card for a hefty 7 euros. And though an apology would not have reconciled the relationship, it would have gone a long way to preserving a friendship, I felt.

So why am I rehashing this unsavory story now, dear reader(s)?

WELL.

I am part of a housing list that sent out a posting this morning, as I am looking for a subletter for my place during my Berlin stint. A few hours ago I got an email from someone who recognized my name (on the housing list), and on the off chance that I was the same person, sent a photo she had taken of a note she found taped to a bulletin board at Shakespeare and Co. last May (five months after the whole incident!)

This note.

So a belated thanks goes out to Oz, I guess. It's a very sweet note.

Apologies, such as they are, are always appreciated; and  better late (I guess) than never. 

Finally.

I'm embarrassed with myself at how long these drawings took to complete, but they are finally done. To appear, along with this one, in Descant Literary Journal's winter issue (theme: Dance) (They are accompaniments to an amazing prose-poem by a ballet dancer, forget her name...)

Sylphide

Pas De Deux

TCAF: a roundup of sundry thoughts.

opening night.

Friday night's opening event at Harbourfront included an address by Adrian Tomine and Seth, followed by an interview between Tomine and comic artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Seth's speech was rather protracted. Though I'm not a fan (obviously) of his tendency to deride people who wish to draw accurately or naturalistically in comic narratives, I did truly appreciate his observation that comics (cartoons, specifically) are a coalescence of graphic design and poetry. It's true. They can't quite be called drawing; cartoons are collections of shapes designed to represent people, places, things, and to convey a message, meaning, story. And it does become poetry, when one can successfully convey something human through a strategic co-mingling of non-human shapes. An excellent medium.

the event itself.

The festival was at the Toronto Reference Library, which is so my frequent haunting ground it was like showing up in my living room and inviting the public in for a look. The festival represented the same mix of exhilaration and melancholy I find doing all most book fairs this last while. Really overwhelming how much Good work there is, and sometimes hard to feel at home when what I'm up too seems rather out of place with the predominance of more cartoon-oriented comics. I also envy peoples' ability to tell stories simply.

The melancholy was, however, completely trumped by checking out the GOLD that is the work/publications of Tom Neely, Brett Warnock (Top Shelf), Dylan Williams (Sparkplug comics), Brian Musikoff and ever Shannon Gerard.

adolescence vs. real life.

And then there was Anke Feuchtenberger, (visiting from Berlin) who did a talk about her work. She and Renée French make me understand the phenomenon of fanboy-ism, when I actually went and lined up for the first autograph of my life. Embarrassing but true.

Anyhow, when Feuchtenberger was discussing her "W the Whore" series of books, it was commented on that the main character changes guise in each episode, almost to a point of being unrecognizable, except for her name. (In one of the books she looks a modern full-grown woman, in another a small child, etc.) This is only possible in visual narratives, as a written book doesn't do the work of description quite as accurately. A name is a name, and the reader fills in the rest.

The effect of this is of creating a really timeless narrative of this character in these surreal environments. Anyhow, this idea came up that during adolescence we live in a haze of clichés and ideas, and it is with adulthood that these are tempered by what is actually possible. Hence the development of this character whose only real consistency is through her name.

Just thought that was neat.

the word "hobby".

Feuchtenberger also pointed out whilst speaking on a panel about European comics that she still considers her comics-making to be a hobby. As the pay she receives is never commensurate with the work she does, she said that her books were really a "gift" to her publisher. (She is an art professor in Hamburg, I think, by trade) It was an important moment, to have someone whose work I revere a great deal point out that it is not her living; that comics are not a realistic trade. Yes, 35, and I still labour under ridiculous delusions, 'tis true. 

There is no "arrival" in this business. Or rather, doing the work="arrival". It is easier to accept this, unfortunately, when it come from further up the proverbial ladder. It took some of the sting out of the word "hobby", to have someone use said word, who so obviously is dedicated to her work as Work.

thank god(s).

The calibre of work at the festival, and the quantity of it made me realize how long it's been since I've been around people concerned with pictures/words co-existing as a medium, and was fundamentally inspiring. Thank God(s).

Tomorrow! Sunday! Toronto Comic Arts Festival

That's right, dear reader(s), it's that time again. This year's TCAF festival is happening tomorrow and Sunday at the Toronto Reference Library, where I (along with a veritable plethora of brilliant comic creators) will be exhibiting/selling my little booklets and prints of strange and disturbing artwork for your cultural gratification. 

Free event for all!

Scads of comic book creators! 

Visual stimulus for everyone! 

Come!

The emergency of the western world.

So I had a completely fascinating conversation about medicine over the weekend, where it was pointed out to me that the emergency room is the only real place where western medicine with its drugs and machines and "immediate" cures has significant relevance. 

So what does this mean when a visit to the doctor, an average check-up, is handled with the same palliatives, the same emergency measures.

No wonder everyone is so stressed.

Teatime part 1

now online at TopShelf 2.0.

Would that I could produce new work as fast as this.

Objectified.

Went to see this documentary last night, by the same guy who made Helvetica. 

It was fantastic, needless to say, and of course prompted a few sundry thoughts on objects, people, and grace.

This idea that what designers have been ignoring for so long when creating goods is the art of dying gracefully, so to speak. We create all these new things to satisfy our fetish for novelty, for new stimulations, ignoring the fact that there's always more, there's always the need for more, and dead things don't decompose organically the way people do.

 

At some point during the documentary someone asked "why do we create anything to be permanent?" People aren't permanent. Our love for things isn't permanent. Why the need for permanence?

Of course to me the question of far greater importance is the quality and function said thing provides during its time in anyone's life. This also applies to people. If you give someone shit while you are with them, no function, no kindness, you cannot expect anything back in return. 

Of course this does not apply to objects, and herewith lies the fatal misunderstanding. 

Living amongst things guarantees an impunity from selfishness, non-reciprocity is just a given in the relationship. 

Eg. I have a chair, it's lovely and comfortable, and I don't owe it anything for that service.

There are people who've been living amongst things (computers are things) for so long that they cannot distinguish, and behave badly. 

As someone who is on a computer constantly, I worry about this.

The very end of the documentary pointed out that the most valuable things  for people are the ones with attached emotional significance, that have had an intrinsic effect on peoples' lives...an old key, a teddy bear, a letter. 

The doc ended with a shot of a small wooden cupboard and on its drawers someone had etched the words: 

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

If only.

new lease (well, chain) on life.

My bike chain derailed mid-ride this morning, and only the trickiest of swerves saved me from splattering all over a white car. But THIS is luck, it all happened half a block away from my bike shop. I went in, the repair guy looked at me agog, and said WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THIS CHAIN. Nothing, I insisted, that's what 365 days/year will do, I suppose.

He replaced it immediately, no wait at all, marvelling at the fact that it had not in fact snapped yet. I marvelled at the whole situation, given that I had had no intention of getting my chain checked, being quite lazy in this department.

He also secured my beloved Brooks saddle with some sundry chain links as well.

The moral of the story? Bike people are the Most Awesome, as are near feats of human flight in close proximity to a white car and a bicycle repair shop.

Clean Sweep

With things going as they have lately, I feel much like it must be a very marked end of an old chapter and beginning of a new. As if to verify this, my computer, but 6 and some months old, needed to be brought in for repairs again today, not a month after the last time I brought it in due to perpetual insomnia (the hard drive refused to go to sleep. No, the irony is not lost on me, dear reader[s])

Anyhow, thankfully the mac technician was very lovely, and replaced both the display and the hard drive in one day (last time it was the logic board). On a Saturday, no less!

Of course this still means reinstalling all apps from scratch, rebuilding preferences, files, etc etc. Which I would like to say I have just managed to do app. 80% of in just under four hours. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I am up and running again and I am officially a MACHINE of macintosh computer restorative powers.

Achilles Heel

(alternate title: trust.)

And the answer

to the question of the stalled elevator, would be to give Rachmaninov the shotgun, were it to come to it.

Of course, of the two of them, Rachmaninov would not use the gun.

Which is the reason why the world keeps turning and people keep getting hurt.

(I am aware of course, that I am making a brash generalization about Rachmaninov based on his music, which is Also potentially bullshit, so really, there's just no answer to who's good and who's evil, is there.)

Today i found out

that the world is home to people who very Consciously do not care about other human beings. 

i do not understand this. 

i Do Not understand this. 

i DO NOT UNDERSTAND this.

And what I am doing instead of looking for a job...

The Fantastic place I work.

Last weekend, I came into work only to bump right into the girl whose shift I've been covering (while she was on two weeks' vacation). I had known she was coming back, but thought perhaps her plans had changed since I received the call to cover the shift for the next month. We were both baffled. Went upstairs to check the schedule. Her name was completely missing. Two days later she had no further access to inter-office email. The scheduler blames admin and admin blames the scheduler, but basically she is the second person (with the same position I have) to be laid off without being told. After two and a half years. 

Awesome world. AWESOME.

What I want.

(besides a motorcycle, that is) is to know what would happen if you put Rachmaninov and GW Bush in an elevator together and shut it down. What would happen. How would they relate to each other, what would they say, HOW would they connect and make friends.
THAT is what I want to know.

Motorcycle Whore.

Using people shamelessly for their motos from 2006.
sigh. Perhaps growing up and getting my own is an idea.

Again with the shower

Pondered this morning the interesting notion that I seem to cave in to doubt and cynicism and early warnings in every department except for that of other people. Faith is fickle, goddammit.

As for this Art business, maybe this is the three-year (Art) itch. 

To push through, or to step back, to push through, or to step back? 

The answer of course; a bike ride, a sketchbook and skinned feet at the anatomy museum.

fiction vs. fact.

Realized this morning, whilst in the shower, that I've been expecting Art to save my life for Far Too Long. From the 8 year old with the pile of paper and pencils copying picture books before giving them away as birthday presents, to the 35 year old who looks at every single situation as if the strategics of artistic fate are going to solve it/make it come clear/workable in a real-life platform.
Ass is ass. Doesn't matter how good the story is or the drawings look.

Work.

Since I don't have alot of it at the moment (ah, the life of a freelancer) i decided this morning to look up the term itself to see what I am in fact missing. The Oxford English Dictionary (1980; illustrated version) dedicates two-thirds of a page to this little word and its offshoots alone.

The following are selections from said definition:

- operation of a force in producing movement or other physical change
- something to do or to be done
- literary or musical composition, product of any fine art as statue, picture etc.; person's writings, compositions, paintings, etc as a whole
- internal mechanism, moving parts of piece of machinery
- Engage, be engaged, in bodily or mental work; make effort; be craftsman (in some material)
- Carry on, manage, control; have influence or effect, exercise influence on; bring about, effect, accomplish, produce as result.
- gradually become (tight, free, etc) by motion
- Knead, hammer, fashion, into shape or desired consistency; artificially and gradually excite (person) into (a rage, etc)
- bring gradually to efficient state; elaborate in description; advance gradually to (climax); excite, incite, stir up, arouse (to)
- stir up, make up (materials), compose, produce, construct; study (subject) carefully and in detail.

I Love work.
Everything should involve work.
Everything.

The Haircut

now re-published online at Top Shelf 2.0.
All hail previously completed work.

How I wish The Editors wrote novels

given song lyrics like these:

...every little piece
pulls in its own direction
please love, don't be scared
it's just your own reflection...

grave decision about trial separation with Art

was of course followed by finally being able to get back to sleep, and a subsequent dream of strange and unsettling proportion.
A while back I made mention of my Draw Cuter Things campaign, and perhaps this is what prompted the subject matter, tho' of course never far removed from my trademark Bleak.
In my dream there was a bird bleeding to death that flew in the door and landed in my apartment (which of course wasn't my apartment) I was horrified, grabbed it and put it out the door into a flower pot, so it had somewhere to nest while I called the SPCA (or whoever one calls). It came back in and there was blood Everywhere. I put it out again.
Then I was lying on the floor looking at a baby bunny that came out of nowhere (oh cuter things) and the bleeding bird came back in and settled on my back and would Not be removed.

I wonder if anyone can be committed based on random blog entries like this.

me and Art

After mental disputes that have been escalating for a few months now, me and Art (my art, specifically, that is) had it out at 4.30am this morning, and have agreed to a Trial Separation. And while I'm not convinced the separation is permanent, and it makes me extraordinarily sad, I do think the decision is at this point anyhow, a healthy one.

One reaches a point where one's partner must needs offer up either an explanation for its unwillingness to put out, or walk away, and Art has not been able to provide this adequately in the past few months. It is perpetually underemployed, and demands relentless nourishment. It speaks to me incessantly in muddled terms that are time-consuming to untangle, and taxing on my brain. 

Tho' I do tend to partner with fickle communicators, it is time for a New, simpler, less trouble-ridden epoch.
So as with life, so with Art.

This transition (which makes it quite certain that "The Fairy Tales" launch will unfortunately be delayed to late this year/possibly next), is assuaged by a few illustrations I have committed to an upcoming issue of Descant Literary Journal, as well as awesome author Ibi Kaslik, who has approached me about possibly illustrating a kids book for her. Though this is only in its preparatory/first draft stages, it's something I'm really excited about, and poses a great relief hitherto unforeseen with independent projects. So, Yay!

Yes.

Yoga, Beer, Bicycle, Movies, A Best Friend. All In One Evening.

YES.

Paper.

The thing about growing up with paper for friends is that it makes real life quite a bit more difficult. 

Paper allows you to see the entire story, all at once.

Paper doesn't move around or change. 

Even Paper's lies have been cemented in ink, so that they become the Truth. You can go back and reference Paper, and understand everything in context. 

Paper and intention are not the same thing. 

If you Follow the Instructions on a piece of Paper as you see them, you will reach the desired result. Rules can be rewritten on a piece of Paper, and every player has a chance to decide beforehand, in an unchangeable state.

And Paper will accept anything you offer it, and will wait patiently for your answer, and will not judge until you reach the end of the page, or the end of your sentence.

I couldn't decide before, really, but this photo above really is more accurate than this one. 

This Paper isn't abstract; it's not a concept: it's a thousand shredded people/Possibilities and one unopened instruction booklet. It makes me Sad.

Potential.

Like trying to rest my head on a pillow only to realize I'm lying on the edge of a staircase with my head facing down.

Hypocrisy.

Feel like this post bears revisiting. It is Fundamental that what one puts into the world through words, and what one puts into Action in the world— it is fundamental that these things match, as closely as possible, at the very least. 

It is hard. But one must be accountable, for this, I believe, if for Nothing else.

Boring details about my eating habits, followed by the revelatory nature of High Park and the humble tomato.

So I've started this diet. 

Die.t.

I would like to preface my posting on this with the Fervent conviction that I think diets in general are FUCKING RIDICULOUS. The idea of denying onesself food of any sort at any time is torturous anathema to me, and contrary to life itself. 

This is a brash generalization, true. There is stuff you really just don't put into your body on a regular basis if you have an ounce of logic to you, and people also have a tonne of different reasons/concerns with their food consumption or lack thereof. I also appreciate we have obesity in the world, and related problems, but I'm quite sure this is a problem of inactivity, not of consumption. 

Whatever. I try not to judge. I Do, however, judge self-torture. Harshly. No No No. I want to go out having had as much ice cream and french fries as spinach salad and green beans, and happily so.

Pourquoi, then, dear reader(s), pourquoi, you may ask, am I even entertaining this outrageous D word in my life, much less in my blog?

Well, it's a new (hopefully tiny) chapter in my ongoing experiments to find out why I'm such an over-energetic and constantly anxious Nutter. The latest theory is that I may have an allergy to certain foods and my body is in permanent panic mode having delayed reactions to them. So far I've seeked (sook?) four opinions and three of four say it's a possibility, one of them being my mum, who said my father claimed a severe allergy to gluten and wheat which caused much histrionics and anxiety. 

So for 21 days in gustatory hell eliminating practically everything good, I may find out a thing or two about the effect certain foods (read: everything) have on my body. In short, no cheese, no dairy, no caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar, no chocolate, and, worst of all, no tomatoes. For 21 days. And then re-introduce them, see what happens, etc. etc.

And, dear reader(s), I will give it a Try, whatever I may think about it. 

The crucial thing, I feel (as with everything) is Not To Judge Before Trying.

Enough boring details about eating and food and such. Dear reader(s), you really are most tolerant. NOW ONTO THE TOMATOES.

So I went for a walk in the park with my good friend jrbi today and was lamenting over the imminent lack of tomatoes in my life. He too was reserving judgement on whether or not the whole D--- was going to meet with any success, but pointed out I may well learn a few other things about my psyche inadvertently, which could be cool.

For instance, he pointed out:

Here we are standing on a street corner talking and the only thing that is true at this moment is that you are not eating a tomato. If you were not presently forbidden from eating tomatoes, you wouldn't be thinking about your tomatoeless state two days from now at all, much less three weeks from now, but because you now have this restriction, the panic sets in. Really though, standing here not eating a tomato is not causing you much pain, and probably won't tomorrow, nor the day after that. THIS is the significant thing. The moment of understanding that it is all in your brain. This concern over tomatoes. And the future.

And he did, as he often does, have a Very Good Point.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I think about the title of this book So often, in So many ways, and with So little levity. 

And I can barely remember what it is actually about, it's been so many years since I've read it.

I wonder how many authors would bother completing their books if they realized how much they had accomplished merely by putting the title to paper.

(sigh)

Bad weather in my brain all day long.

Shredded paper and empty sketchbooks and foreign countries.

I went to bed thinking about the photo of shredded magazines (below) and had the most lovely dream that I was stuck on Toronto Island for some reason and had to camp out in a bookshop that was floor to ceiling 360 degree books 'xcept for a little bunk much like the sort you'd find in a ship cabin, also covered in books. The lighting throughout the whole dream was (of course) the sort you would find on a stormy early evening by the ocean. So excellent!

Anyhow.

As someone who would cut off my own toes before letting a paper shredder near my house, I remain fascinated to death by this photo. There's something so valiant about shredding so much paper, all of which held some sort of record of somethingthat was once significant on its surfaces. Photos, writing, whatever.

It's like leaving the country with just an empty sketchbook and a pencil in your bag.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO LEAVING THE COUNTRY!

I have just got news that I have an apartment sublet for Berlin this summer. And with both a subletter and an emergency backup subletter for my place here, and my passport in hand, ALL'S I NEED IS MY TICKET. YAHHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

yesterday's fascinating reminder

that paper and people are not the same thing.
Easy to forget, but easy to relearn.

(this morning's) Deep Thought. by stef lenk.

It's always easier to justify hypocrisy from the inside out. But try justifying it from the outside in, now there is the challenge.

Gleefully reincarnated online: The Alteration

For those of you who haven't seen it yet (SHAME!), The Alteration is now up at Top Shelf 2.0 for your online viewing pleasure. As always, real-life full-colour books of the story (that one and others) available at steflenk.etsy.com

And today, ladies and gentlemen

I am thirty-five-and-a-half-years-old.

Another six months of successful (?) living.

And a friend of mine remembered said event before I even did this year, oddly enough, presenting me with a cake last night in celebration.

I was unexpectedly touched. All thirty-five-and-a-half-years of me!

Ironic, and in keeping with today's theme.

Here i am, all "people should talk about themselves" and "navel-gazing is great"... I have just now been inadvertently reminded of proof that perhaps my thinking is flawed, in this respect.

I was asked out on a date of sorts a while back. It was a fairly lovely evening, if you discount the facts that said gentlemen left his cell-phone on and actually answered it three times over the course of 4 or so hours, stated on two separate occasions that this convening of ours was one of three events he was expected at for the evening, and managed to tell me oh so nonchalantly that one of his books had been reviewed (or something) for the New York Times.

We ended up at some point back at my little home regardless (these are tough times, dear reader(s)), where said gentleman told me about his latest novella, and when I responded that it sounded very interesting, he said "you should read it, I have it right here!", took a USB key out of his pocket (yes a USB key) and saved said novella onto my desktop. 

Two days later he emailed me asking if I had read it yet, as well as forwarding links to the latest additions to an online project he works on, and an interview he did with someone of great notoriety (or so he indicated) that I had otherwise never heard of.

This insistence on my attentions from a gentlemen who does not show up at book launches himself, and didn't even see his way to asking what I get up to when not AT other peoples' book launches.

So.

Conclusion: navel-gazing=acceptable, but it should perhaps be acknowledged that it is the height of rudeness to carry your navel around on a USB key and presume other people are interested in looking at it, especially when you have no interest in looking at theirs yourself.

Also, judgement is inevitable. Let's face it, never date an artist. No, Really.

Now holy FUCK do I ever need to get back to some real work. Bloody blog.

and, pursuant to the previous posting...

And this is why, dear reader(s), fiction, embellishment, and lies will always make the world go 'round. Whether I like it or not.

the answer to the below.

Well, that was quick. I went to wash my dishes and discovered, somehow, the answer to my very own question.

People don't want to be judged harshly. 

And worse still, silently.

And who, really,  could blame them?

Why does navel-gazing get such a bad rap? (skip past pictures for actual post, my dear english reader(s))

First. My own bit of navel gazing. In a foreign language.

I did this German presentation last night; my first attempt at writing something in German beyond an email here and there. It's the first thing I've written in german First (as opposed to translating from english) and tho' what you are seeing has been corrected to death, I remain rather proud. (I would like to point out this will be exactly of No interest to the reader(s) of this blog, being in german, but at some point when I am eighty I would like to look back and see what all the little dead-end expenditure of my time actually accomplished, so  here we are. My motivations are entirely self-serving.)

NOW. For the actual post.

So far, my favourite presentations in this class have been by one student on her part-time work as an actress, and another (who is a flight attendant), who played travel agent and took us through all the necessaries for our dream-vacation in Germany. All the presentations have been a blast, don't get me wrong, but my fondness for these in particular was to be given a tiny somewhat personal window into some of the people I've been sitting next to in the past year or so. I suppose if I was more discerning I could see the personal details in a presentation of a historical monument or a cultural entity, but these ones were a more open doorway, so to speak.

I've been glum over the past four days, and last night I was pondering the above. (In english).

What I would like to know is why navel-gazing seems inherently to have such a bad rap (sp?). People make Such a concerted effort on a daily basis to say Nothing personal about themselves whatsoever. We all sit and socialize and discuss world events, the weather, other peoples' gossip, but tactfully avoid talking about ourselves at any cost. (This is, incidentally, a reason why I was so thrilled with that "25 things" meme that was going around on fb some time back) Those of us who do talk about ourselves are considered selfish, self-absorbed, disinterested in the rest of the world. (And I am not, incidentally, speaking of those who feel the constant need to regale us with extensive lists of their accomplishments and badges of distinction. I am speaking of people who speak about personal moments in their lives.)

I do very much appreciate that there is a time and place for discussing one's dysfunctional family or dissatisfaction with one's life choices, and around the water cooler is not that time or place. But "professional" hour has to end sometime in the day, does it not?

And isn't there a possibility that people who do have a tendency to navel-gaze might also be intrinsically interested in the belly-buttons of others? That they are hoping, with their own discussion of personal details and tid-bits from their own daily lives, to find out more about the people they are surrounded by, and therefore feel a little less lonely?

With some amount of realistic temperance, it just doesn't seem like such a crime to me. 

Frozen food.

So a few weeks ago I noticed a book on a friend of mine's shelf entitled "Eat Me", and commented on it. He said he hadn't read it yet, actually.

Then a few days ago he told me the book had been lost. 

["The book you hadn't read yet?" 

"Well, I decided to start reading it, and then I lost it. I just can't figure it out."]

Then yesterday he sent me an email—he had just found the book in his freezer. 

He couldn't fathom why, and then remembered spilling water on it and putting it there to get rid of the sogginess. 

Utterly Novel.

Thumbnail drawings.

Like having the same argument between lovers, in a thousand different ways, where the lover never gives in, and rarely compromises.
Paper stronger than rock. Where are my scissors?

Kathy H., are you out there?

A few weeks back, I received this mystery postcard in the mail:

(address taken out 'coz in these days of wine and google, nobody's safe!)

I asked the handful of people I know who are living in NY, but none were responsible. I found out, incidentally, that a friend of mine who teaches comic stuff in NY in fact gets his students to make comics based on overheard/unfinished conversations of strangers.
Anyhow. The handwriting is Really Familiar. And tho' the mystery is half the appeal, I can't stop wondering. I've had it perched on the shelf above my drafting table since.
Then this morning I think I got it.
KATHY H., IS THIS YOU?!?!
I have all your other postcards somewhere, SOMEWHERE, but I have four suitcases of old letters and can't find them to double check. SEVENTEEN YEARS, if so. COOLLL!!!!

How Proust Can Change your Lie...erm...Life.

One of the chapters of this Alain de Botton book that I am presently re-reading is called "How to Open your Eyes". 

It starts with the following sentence: "Proust once wrote an essay in which he set out to restore a smile to the face of a gloomy, envious, and dissatisfied young man" 

Proust had a theory that seeing a painting by Jean-Baptiste Chardin could quell said young man's need for the lush and opulent goods he was so often seeing (and missing from his own life) in other works at the Louvre, and how he could learn, through seeing this artist's subject matter, how to see the beauty in simple things such as a sideboard, a loaf of bread, or a coffeepot, just as much as in villas and kings and diamond-studded door handles. Because, with this diversion, the man could once more associate himself with the greatness of art, and an art that actually lay within his corporeal grasp.

...beauty is something to be found, rather than passively encountered...it requires us to pick up on certain details, to identify the whiteness of a cotton dress, the reflection of the sea on the hull of a yacht, or the contrast between the color of a jockey's coat and his face. It also emphasizes how vulnerable we are to depression when the [painters] of the world choose not to go on holiday and the pre-prepared images run out...

The moral? That we shouldn't deny the bread on the sideboard a place in our conception of beauty, that we should shoot the painter rather than the spring and blame memory rather than what is remembered...

Vanity and scissorial remorse.

This photo found whilst going through reference material. Don't remember it being taken AT ALL, or who took it, even. I always find it odd when that happens.

Why, oh Why did I take the scissors to them?!?!

LOOK at those Glorious Dreadlocks! 

Fundamentally process.

So I am involved with an art show taking place in Connecticut this September, showing process and finals from my Details books. And I am Pleased as Punch about it. 

Now. I have this preoccupation with making sure (that my tiny corner of the world anyhow) remains aware that art=Work. It adds to its legitimacy, and it sheds some of the bullshit illusions that are out there that we art sorts live a charmed and lazy life, especially where worktime and funding are concerned.

So. I spent about a half day just going through all my process material for the book, and this is some of the stuff I found. And I mean Some. I would say about a quarter of it.

Because I am not being paid for the show, nor are they paying the shipping of the work, I have already had to put together a grant application to get said funding, and accept the fact that I've been handed an opportunity with a potentially up to 1200$ price tag (and that was just the estimate for shipping!) 

I'm not complaining about this (well, not really), but I think it's important information that never makes it up onto gallery walls. There's always a method (and a price tag) behind the magic.

Anyhow. Beyond any of the administrative rubbish, looking at Process is SO.Cool. 

I usually just tuck this stuff away and keep going. But look at these little doodles! This is one of a Tonne of these pages! WHO KNEW! (click on image for full size)

Morbid Anatomy. Blessed blog followers, blessed Morbid Anatomy.

Sally Smith knew, (thank you, Sally!).

A stray posted comment from a fortuitous stranger led me today to Sally Smith's blog, which led me to a list of blogs she follows, which led me to this Other Blessed Gem: Morbid Anatomy, which couldn't BE more perfect. Thank you thank you, Sally Smith, from Deepest, Darkest, Essex.

(I should clarify, I'm new to the world of blog following and such things, I don't click around too much on the internet, I find it too easily overwhelming. But in this case, Most Happily Overwhelmed. GLEE!!)

I could lose years of my life

to the smell of old books. 

Years.

Thank you Doctor.

There is no indignity in being afraid to die, but there is a terrible shame in being afraid to live.
(THE Doctor, that is.)

Das Leben einer unbekannten Kunstlerin

So I'm putting together a presentation for my german class, and have, of course, decided to do it about me. And, while feeling lame and abashed for once again caving in to navel-gazely (sic) tendencies, there is a certain honesty to knowing that I am the only thing that I can really speak with any honesty about, and even here I cannot speak with learned certainty. I have no knowledge of german beers, german landscapes, german film history. But I have some sense of what I get up to when I'm not learning german. And maybe it's a bit interesting. Maybe.

Anyhow. Whilst looking for old pictures/drawings to create my little chronicle, I came across this stuff. I'm proud (not so much of the content as the fact that it exists.) I've been at this for a while. I can't say that about many things in my life.

(self portrait, not exemplary, 2000)

(life without travel; 03/04?.)

(ACTUALLY DRAWN FROM LIFE. No photos here. Can I even believe there was a time. Nostalgic sigh.)

Love and Envy

This shot also from the Spring Equinox on Toronto Island on the weekend. (The best shots aren't mine; this for now.)
Now.
About this fire.
About fire.
I Love fire, and I Envy it too.
It's so astounding to me how it's Just Fire. Everything/everyone can sit with each other, strangers, say nothing, do nothing, for hours, just staring at fire. There are no questions, no doubts, no debates.
It's Peace in the face of something so Fundamentally Dangerous.
Somehow it feels like all the answers are in that.
How can fire breed calm, in such an effortless way? HOW?!? 'Coz it does. I could stare at it Forever and Happily so.

Never learnt not to touch the stove-top when it's on.

I imagine it would have helped, but I probably never will.
How people can resist it at all, ever, is just Simply Beyond Me.

photo by Chriz Miller

Lounging and listening to music yesterday...

I realized that some people collect alot of stories to feel as though they are living their lives completely, and some people don't need alot of stories to be living their lives completely. 

Closer. (thank you, Patrick Marber)

Ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist wrapped in blood.

drawing, drawing, diy comics-primer

I am completely exhausted today, but can happily say it is as a result of five hours drawing which led to COMPLETED work, as opposed to stuff I'm going to likely sit down and just erase to nothing tomorrow morning. Awesome.

Also, I did final edits on a diy self-publishing primer I originally wrote for the Xeric Foundation when they gave me a grant last year, and that Jim Munroe, No-Media-King-extraordinaire, so kindly offered to post on his site. And now, dear reader(s), it is! Up on his site! Here!

ordinary life.

The mother of a friend of mine who I stayed with periodically during and after high school once said that I was ruined for ordinary life. At the time, I of course took this to be a compliment of the highest degree.
Last night I lay awake wondering if this is in fact a good thing.There is alot of ordinary life to be lived, what does one do with it all in contrast?

Anyhow. I'm without my computer for a week due to a faulty logic board, which keeps it from going to sleep. (Here I thought it was just taking on its owner's characteristics)
Needless to say being at the mercy of other peoples' computers at work and otherwise is going to drive me just shy of Completely insane. God. Where's that heroin, again?

Of course this bodes well for drawing, so yay!

Top Shelf two point OH!

I am thrilled to the tits (ahem) to have been asked to have work on Top Shelf's amazing online publishing compatriot, and the first of my Details books (Carnival) is now up here for your online viewing pleasure.
Dearest reader(s), do remember, if you like what you see, you can still buy a BOOK (yes, a real printed book of the matter) from ME! They are available here.
Just think: you can bring books to bed with you, while Top Shelf 2.0, is restricted to computer viewing. (Unless, forsooth, you are prone to bringing your laptop to bed. If this is the case, likely you have far more entertaining materials on there than my small booklets, and can therefore feel free to forgo the rest of this posting)

TopShelf2.0 will see the five (completed) episodes of The Details find some life online, followed by an online reprint of The One-Night Stands, (which has alas sold out of paper copies), followed by a new project called The Fairy Tales, which will be launching at this year's Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and subsequently in New York at the MoCCA art festival.

And so on, and so on. Work Work and more WORK!

Although I frequently forget

Every so often I am reminded of the intrinsic reason I have built my life this way, and why I love it so. The other evening, I was invited to attend an editorial meeting of a literary journal that has asked me to do some illustrations for them (about ballet dancing.) (Ballet Dancing!)

We drank red wine and spicy tea and ate home cooked glorious food as we discussed the this'n'that's of the magazine, the pieces already chosen for it, etc. Then we lounged in a cozy salon-like picture filled living/dining room of Uncle Monty-esque furnitorial (sic) splendour. And whilst a cat named Mr. Book curled up beneath my chair, we discussed everything from Obama's hands, to the gender dynamics of traditional ballet, to the struggles of Paul Klee, to the anatomy of dancing feet, to the collapse of the world economy and beginning of a new world.

Biking home, I remembered a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, that being around a large ratio of extraordinary people means that one often becomes inured to that very thing; Extraordinariness. How utterly lovely when the veil lifts again. Dear reader(s). It is, impoverished and stressful though it may be, a Good Good life.

Receiving this by (e)mail the other day

made me realize how many friends I still have that have known me for over 10 years. (about 12 that I'm still in contact with, to varying degrees, and despite many clamorous moments, in some cases)
Which means they have know me over many chapters, really.
Here's to sending that in the mail. 

(click on image for full size)

Paper. Fire. Deaf.

The building fire alarm went off THREE times last night. 

You know, I appreciate the need to wake people up in times possibly fraught with danger.

The need, however, to DISEMBOWEL THEIR EARDRUMS with relentless unstoppable high-pitched beeping seems highly unnecessary.

Anyhow, the fire department got called the first time around (the second and third I just stayed in bed. Perishing in the flames, I decided, would still be preferable to opening my door that sound again.)

But yes. The first time. In a highly foggy manner, I thought to myself perhaps this could be an incident fraught with some danger, and I collected up my drawings, in case I should have to vacate in a speedy fashion. I put my laptop in my bag, and my camera as they are the only expensive things I own, and stood in my living room, thinking about the end of my world. 

Why, you ask?
There are five archival boxes of completed drawings in my home. At least a dozen more drawings/paintings on the walls. We won't even attempt to count the books, visual ephemera at least 500 postcards strong, etc etc.

And then I put all the drawings down, save the present unfinished six. 

Let's face it. My entire life is made of paper. If I'm going up in flames, it's over.

Then I stared with no small amount of irony at a photo on my wall of me spinning (fire) on Toronto Island last summer. 

Conflicting interests, could we say?

Dazzle camouflage.

Someone told me, some time back, about a military technique of disguise called dazzle camouflage. It was a technique of painting war ships out at sea with bright patterns and colours as a form of camouflage during WW1 and WW2.

It seems an odd technique, given that it draws attention to the ship, out there by itself in this vast stretch of water, rather than hiding it. But wikipedia explains that the purpose of this method was confusion rather than concealment; the bright covering made it difficult for visual rangefinders* to estimate its speed and bearing, whether the bow or stern is in view, whether the ship is moving towards or away from the viewer. 

I am curious to know how well this works. How many colours, how intricate the patterns, how much of the ship has to be covered for it to reach its destination unassailed?

*Rangefinders were based, so I've read, on the coincidence principle, with an optical mechanism that is human-operated. The operator in question would adjust this reader/mechanism until two half-images of the target lined up to form one whole. Dazzle worked because the clashing patterns looked abnormal when the two halves were aligned.

courtesy of Em and Lo.

"One should avoid asking oneself, "What would my mother think of this arrangement?" And one should definitely avoid asking one's mother, "Mom, what do you think of this arrangement?"

Banned Together.

Yes. Dear Reader(s). It is not news that I have been to many book launches in my time. They are funny animals. I love them, but that is because, frequently to always, I love (Love!) the people involved in them, either writing, producing, or promoting said books. 

I do find them a bit incongruous with my nature, the actual reading parts that is, as I am a pretty traditional reader as it were (alone, in the comfy chair, with the book). I don't like being read to, I can't register the words properly, I feel like I'm being cheated somehow, can't tell you why.

BUT.

Tonight I went to a reading sponsored by PEN of books that have been banned. Banned Banned books. And Derek McCormack read from Are you there God, It's Me, Margaret and Michael Helm read from Charlotte's Web and Dennis Lee (BLESS HIM) read from his own highly offensive children's poem about murder and cannibalism (Lizzie's Lion), and other passages included the talking asshole passage from Naked Lunch (YES) and the opening page of Lolita, and I.Was.Enraptured. 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE BOOKS. LOVE them.

Years ago I had a boyfriend who had some excessive addictions. And when the shit hit the proverbial fan, he pointed out to me that porn and booze would always be there for him, while I could not  make the same guarantee.

And he was right. He treated me like shit, and I dumped his ass less than a month after that disagreement. 

To this day though, this comes up in my mind. I had No argument for it. I have No argument for it. It was utterly impossible to prove him wrong. (Nor did I want to, really. You treat someone like shit, they dump you. Simple math. Sad and simple math.)

Every so often I worry about arguments like this though. About mathematics like this.
Why, you might ask? Why, dear reader(s)?

'Coz Books don't dump you.  

'coz ya never know.

So the New Model Circus Army has invited me to spin with them next week, and the people who asked them to perform put out some sort of press release, and when we received it today, it was rather funny to note that the photos they had were in fact of us, from our Nuit Blanche performance. Well, except for this stray shot of me, which was, oddly enough, from a Kensington jam. I don't even have ANY idea who took this, or when.

But, dear reader(s), it is FIRE. FIRE, FIRE, FIRE. There are few better things on earth.

From Harpers Weekly

Some Republican governors said they would refuse stimulus aid that required their states to expand unemployment insurance. "If Republican governors do not want this money," said Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association," Democratic governors will put it to good use." Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele announced an"off the hook" Republican publicity campaign, targeting "urban-suburban hip-hop settings." "We need to uptick our image with everyone," he said, "including one-armed midgets."

nothing noble or important lasts forever.

I finally have a chance (and the determination) to post this extraordinary link and it has been apanthropinized. PANTS!

To be in Europe, perchance in Angoulême

Words to live by, courtesy of the Editors

...It breaks when you don't force it
It breaks when you don't try
It breaks if you don't force it
It breaks if you don't try...

And in today's news.

Or rather, what didn't make today's news, but really should have:

Baby meerkats!

Also of note in the New York Times:
Career Options for Ex-Wall Street Workers : Among other choices, a laid-off financial district worker could begin to give tours as a tour guide.
AWESOME.

Reverse Cheerleaders.

The Best People You Could Ever Hope For. Ever.

No word of a lie.

Cheesy but true.

"Hope is a thing with feathers and no brain."

Rapunzel's Dilemna

(don't like it any more: have taken it down. Back to the proverbial drawing board)

One of my favourite paintings ever is a painting that Dali did of his wife Gala's back. That's all it is. Nothing's melting, there are no weird creatures, no surreal landscape...it's him staring at his wife's back (or so one assumes, as he is not in the canvas) while she looks off into the distance. I find it utterly captivating. 

And he was another one, this Dali, who was excruciatingly accurate in his rendering skill, at some point, and then got on with it.

Anyhow.

The above from the Fairy Tales series, with a modest attempt to render a simple back myself.

HARD.

I'm trying to take a few more process photos of drawings these days, but it never seems to work. There's no "half-way done". This is 3/4 done (well, maybe 2/3 done); I guess that will serve. 

I will likely destroy it when I add colour, as with the rest, so you saw it here last, folks. (The original is bigger, so all the lovely white space got cropped out in the scan, and I had to scan it in two pieces even, so hence the blurry middle.)

A tea holder for a drafting table.

I googled to no avail, but would that Not be Awesome? 

I will freely give away this patent if someone will make me one.

Sweet GOD.

Happy ending!

For my "Fairy Tales" series.
I just came up with it, whilst drinking tea in the sun in my window, with uncharacteristic slowness.
I can barely believe it.
Now let's just see if the drawings will agree with me.

The lake, Maurice Sendak, Picasso.

So the other day I went down to the lake to sit and celebrate (the day, the lake, and sitting too.)

They have these concrete barriers out in the lake, about 800 ft out into the water, I don't know what they are called or why they are out there. They are ugly, and the effect they have is odd; all of the water from shore to barrier is frozen, at least on the surface. It's not moving, for some reason it's not reflective either, it's just wretchedly staid. 

Beyond the barriers, however, the water laps as usual, it gleams, it moves, etc. So the key to the view is going long, obviously.

For whatever reason, I found myself thinking about Maurice Sendak and Picasso. And how their early artwork (like, at age 14, in Picasso's case) was so painstakingly accurate, and how they must have cared a very great deal about drawing, and how their later works are so spontaneous and magical and fun. 

They were following a dedicated practise of learning to do something well, nay, perfectly, and then something magical happened. SOMETHING happened, and they lost their obsession with accuracy. And suddenly there was so much room. WHAT?!?! WHAT HAPPENED?!? And where do I get in line?

My favourite thing about this drawing

(or detail thereof) is that I was listening to Garbage, Ladytron, and Rage against the Machine whilst doing it. 

AT TOP VOLUME.

That's right, dear reader(s).

Fuck you I won't do what you tell me. 

Tell Me WHY

I don't go dancing, like, EVERY NIGHT EVER.

13 years later, and what does it all really mean?

...choir in the yard
in the house next door
where a grandma brought
some songs from the shore
six foot girl gonna sweat when she dig
stand close to the fire
when they light the pig
standing in her chinos shirt pulled off clean
gotta tattooed tit say number 13
viva don't want no blue eyes
la loma
i want brown eyes
rica
i'm in a state, i'm in a state...

It's all happening in Scotland.

Baby otter takes walk in mailbag, drinks milk from a byro pen, and is being handfed 15pounds (the currency not the weight) worth of salmon a day. Now THAT is the life.

I have a Very Interesting Life.

In 2006, I went to Coney Island for the first time, and got completely obsessed with photo reference there, as it was the most carnivalesque of carnivalescent places I had hitherto been to. I took 191 photos, and I decided I must be a Loon, as I would likely never need said reference, and couldn't possibly finish that many drawings in a lifetime.

WELL. 

TODAY, I was searching through my picture reference library, for reference, and found Absolutely What I Was Looking For. The Perfect Picture. In this very sub-file.

I am not going to post said Perfect Picture (because I'm drawing from it, you wingnut), but I am going to post these, 'coz they are interesting and cool. 

As am I. 

Interesting and cool.

Don't shoot me.

Birds (well, Oscars) of a feather:

(I Love the Brighton Pier the very most in the entire world. 

The Coney Island pier was, however, an admirable runner-up.)

With its well-aged inhabitants.

I am So tempted to preface the next photo with a great big WTF. 

If I were a person who used green dancing banana emoticons and the like, I would preface the following photo with a Great Big W.T.F. 

IF i was that sort of person.

But I'm interesting and cool.

my love was like a dead dead rose.

I have this new years resolution to try to get rid of things with the same frequency as I seem to acquire them. (I define "things" as anything from groceries to scraps of paper with random thoughts on them to rough drafts of drawings I can't bear to throw out, to movie ticket stubs, which I also can't bear to throw out)

Today's chosen offal was one dead rose, tied up in string. 

Yes. It does sound like the saddest thing to toss out a rose, until you know that the rose was in fact given to me dead (not dried, just dead). 

Yes.

At the time I didn't (want to?) notice this and put it in water in an empty wine bottle, and less than 20 minutes later as we all sat around talking, the petals started to drop off onto the table, one after the other, in rapid succession. Feeling slightly embarrassed (I had been very excited to receive said rose), I exclaimed "That will never do!" and tied string around it to keep the petals intact.

And then, a few months later, I finally got it.

Throwing out said flower was not the challenge, it was tracking down all the petally shards that had broken up and scattered throughout my box of paper nostalgia distinctly annoying.

A life less ordinary.

Ever timely. Yes.
Thank you, Levellers.

You got nothin' on me Naughty Lola.

Well read, frequently cynical, not fat.
Write for details.

Because I will probably never re-read facebook.

(at 21:22, on 09 February) - (Kathryn) thought Bunty Cutler couldn't possibly be the real name of a real author, but was wrong about that.

(at 21:27, on 09 February)
I want my name to be Bunty Cutler. Of course, meeting someone dyslexic could be more offensive than I'm willing to risk on a daily basis. At least in the morning.

Important.

I do not want to have to apologize (out loud, to myself, or above all to strangers) for wanting to live an extraordinary life, or for wanting to share it, or for being little to no help with people who feel or act (or don't act, as the case may be) otherwise.

Nostalgia for illegal substances and profound poetry.

Grabbed a journal randomly from my shelf, to alleviate glum. 

Opened randomly, and started reading.

Saturday 10 February 1996. 

OF COURSE. This same weekend of the year, 13 years ago. And you, dear reader(s), get to hear about what I was doing on that fateful day, because I can't figure out what to do with myself at this very moment.

Intensely Profound Poetry.
(written by stef lenk, London, England, and a rather large block of smoked hashish*.)

lost a lightbulb in my nose
broken shoelace, funny toes
now i need to sew my feet
aren't those rubber eggplants neat?

runny nose and scrummy worm.
grandpa's body in an urn
spider web and cornwalls eye
take one last look lay down to die.

here i sit with pen in hand
reaching to a far out land
with cursive scrunched up ropes of ink
i sit me down and start to think.

Awesome.

(* and no. FBI, I no longer smoke hashish [or anything, for that matter], and if you ask me about 1996 I'll tell you I made this up.)

This ALMOST made me feel better.

Almost.

In yesterday's news.

Nothing but bad. Couldn't selvage a bloody thing. Cases in point:

Fifty pupils in a school in Wiltshire have been suspended for going on strike to play in the snow.WHY?!?!? WHY suspended?!? How often does England get Snow, fer Gods'sakes?

The teenagers, from Nova Hreod school in Swindon, refused to leave the playing field after their morning break on Wednesday. They have been suspended until Monday. Julie Tridgell, the school's headteacher, said she was forced to take a tough response because the strike's ringleaders were encouraging others to miss class to play. It was just a poor excuse for bad behaviour, she said.

(I wonder what Miz Tridgell would say if she knew 35 year old canadian women play in snow when they should be doing sundry administrative tasks on a daily basis.)

----

A "phantom goat" is seen after it was captured Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009 in Paterson, N.J. by an animal control officer. The animal had eluded capture for 12 days, causing dozens of people to call 911 with goat sightings along the north Jersey city's riverbanks.

( Since WHEN is ambling along a city riverbank a crime?!?)

Closer to home, one stef lenk, 35, from Toronto, Ontario, occasionally employed for large companies that couldn't give a shit, was in a superlatively bad mood. Unanswered calls from Canadian Geographic for an invoice now 2.5 months overdue (illustration ALREADY PUBLISHED) reached 3. Her last (next) week's work at the CeeBeeCee was cancelled without any notice, much to the pending chagrin of her bank account. 

It seems that lenk only got news of this cancellation last night around 8pm, when a co-worker came to deposit his pencil box behind her monitor, stating that he would be resuming his post there come Monday. 

She said "Mais au contraire, monsieur! I have one more week!" but was then proven wrong with a quick gander at the schedules by the photocopier. 

Watching said news with its never-ending tally of the downward economic spiral and pending employment doom for most all citizenry of our country did not help.

While the above forecast will perhaps bode well for lenk in the drawing department, heavy skepticism and a hibernatory nature are coming in from the east, putting into effect well-worn cynicism and an inability to concentrate. Stay tuned for more on this as the month of February progresses.

nonkonformistich

I think I've been given permission to blog this. I think. It is one of my friend Brendan's pieces. The lighter ones. So lovely.

Hi, Oprah?

36 days. That's right, love, you too can change your life. Or, at the very least, the state of your bedroom floor.

This morning.

There's a moment, that split second when you're cycling down a winter street and the back wheel starts to slide. 

Black ice. Which you know exists, although it's invisible to the eye, or the eye in motion, anyhow. The only way to "see" it is to bike right onto it, which happens, both body and bicycle, with constant and terrible spontaneity.

It's never more than a millionth of a second, but the CLEAREST second. It's amazing in its clarity, actually. Completely untainted. Time somehow crunches because you are able to think the entire thought, despite the speed, EVERY time it happens. 

I know EXACTLY what's going on here, at this VERY moment. EXACTLY. Regarding the Actual Occurence there is no variation. The only relevant questions remaining are "how far will I slide, will it be into oncoming traffic, will people be able (or willing) to stop, will my clothes be intact, how big will the bruises be, and Why the Fuck do I continually insist on biking in a city with no bike paths in the wintertime?"

Yeah. Ain't life a metaphor.

Awesome.

The first item a few weeks old now, but that airplane that crash landed in the Hudson river, just out of Manhattan, where ALL 155 people SURVIVED. Well they had audio footage of the pilot this evening, and I have never heard a more level-headed human being, discussing how to handle the situation, WHILE it was happening. Listen to it. It is So Amazing.

And today, a 60 year old woman gave birth to twins, after 43 years of trying to conceive. Yes.

Trite but true.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

Nowhere more evident than when watching someone check their email repeatedly, in a dark room filled with monitors and few others, not the first time, an hour after their shift has ended.

Well put, thank you Henry David Thoreau.

history; blank pages.

So my mum was one of three children, born during the end of the second world war in Germany. Her (real) mum died when she was...three(?) I think, and her father was a prisoner of war in Russia. All three kids were sent to different places when he was presumed dead, my mum to an orphanage. 

Then the war ended, and suddenly he was back, and suddenly he was remarried, and suddenly all three kids got put on trains from all parts of germany to be reunited with their "new" family.

On Wednesday I got to see my cousin KJ, who I don't get to see enough, dammit, as she lives in New York.  But we finally managed it. And out of nowhere, she said "I have a gift for you" and she pulled out this book. It is the single greatest gift EVER. It is from 1950, and belonged to my mum's stepmum, who is now dead.

The translation of this page, this first entry, is (9 November, 1950) "I love my children Erika (my aunt), Hans-Peter (who ran away to France and then killed himself in his early 20s) and Gabi (my mum) deeper and more intimately as each day goes by" 

The rest of the journal is completely empty. 

Albeit not knowing both sides of the story, I was led to believe for years (and won't dismiss quite yet) that she was unaccomodating and unloving towards all of her surrogate children. The book is totally empty. It has a lock on it, a locked book of blank pages.

We decided how cool it would be to surmise what she might have filled the rest of the pages with. 

The best gift Ever.

Today, working from home.

Blessed home. No monitors, no networks, no petulant directors or writers or researchers or me, no mailbot.

Am also being reminded of how much I love design, and type, and such. LOVE IT.

However, feeling a strange absence from news, seeing as I've been wallowing in such a surfeit of late. So here is some. This picture was stolen (STOLEN) from a special resource (SPECIAL RESOURCE) at work yesterday, of the most ambitious boy scount in the world. Copy:

Andrew Schigelone, 18, of Lincoln Park shows some of the 121 merit badges he earned between February 2002 and December 2008 during a photo shoot in Detroit on Friday, Jan. 23, 2009. Schigelone is an Eagle Scout and a senior at Gabriel Richard High School. Rick Williamson heads the 4,700-member Detroit Area Council of Boy Scouts of America and says no one has earned all 121 badges since its 1910 founding.

I want to find him and marry him.

Sorry, to be clear, I want stop time and then find him, 18 years from now, and marry him. Well, perhaps make sure that he can grow facial hair. Maybe rough him up a bit. Nothing a few bottles of scotch can't help. At least lose the cravat. But the merit badges can stay, by gum.

And then there is St James Park, covered in snow.

Which also makes me Lose My Mind. ST. JAMES PARK!

Cute like, LOSING MY MIND Cute.

How strangers can change your life.

In 1995, I (as I've probably gone on about at great length here somewhere) lived in the Albert hotel for about 8 months with an Unbelievable, Exemplary gang of people. One of them specifically proved a constant inspiration, who I felt I observed a bit from afar, as I cartwheeled through that year doing a great many drugs, eating a great many chocolate truffles, climbing a great many trees (and cleverly losing my passport for six months in the process), and reading a great many books. 

This person had come to London from Italy, to pursue an illustration career, clean and simple. And here she lived, amongst at least a dozen different sorts of english-speaking accents, on a shoestring budget minus the shoe, in these Less-Than-Satisfactory quarters with a cast of characters and daily dramas that would make Coronation Street look like a birthday party. And just quietly kept going. She put up tin foil stars, and painted on the walls of the basement, and is literally one of the inadvertent forces behind a few of my major life decisions. So inspiring. 

It's amazing how observing a near stranger can affect ones own decisions in a positive fashion. I don't notice this often in myself; I mostly come by my resolutions via force of deduction; that is, I look out at the world daily and say "nope, not doing that, nope, that's not for me." Etc. etc. 

To clarify: I see amazing people doing amazing things all the time, but predominantly their circumstance or style (so to speak) is quite different from mine and it's hard to make a possible corelation.

ANYHOW. 

Yesterday, through another of this sublime group of friends, I was sent her website link, and I couldn't wait to verify, and I emailed to see if it was her, AND IT WAS!!! IT WAS.

GLEEEEEEE!!!!

-----

Won't SOMEBODY tell me the proper etiquette for naming friends on blogs? Do I go back to numeric code names of three blogs ago? C'est quoi le repons?

And before I sign off for the evening.

I have been linked to a Lovely Blog, and wanted to reciprocate, here in this posting for the moment, 'til I get it together to make a blog-link list. Quiver, it is called. Go forth!

And in the news, while I'm there.

Octuplets. Born in California, alive, and doing fine as of today. EIGHT KIDS, six boys, two girls, born one after the other, each weighing in between 1 and 2 lbs, and in a labour that totalled five minutes. FIVE. The doctors had thought there were only seven in there. What a fiesta. They were probably like, "Okay, it's time! Everybody out of the garden!", and off they went.

Facebook status. Abgelenkt. A morning dialogue.

Stef abge-lenk-t. Constantly abgelenkt. So. Excellent.

SD at 09:50, on 27 January.

huh?

ASH at 09:54, on 27 January.

what SD said.

Stef Lenk at 09:55, on 27 January.

ABGELENKT: (well, abgelenkt werden) to be sidetracked. (as well as about a thousand other related side meanings in german) As i said. Perfect. I cannot take credit for making the connection though.*

Stef Lenk at 09:58, on 27 January.

It's all german dictionary and exercise books, (well, and drawing) this little corner of the world. All hail winter hibernatory activity!

ASH at 10:00, on 27 January.

OH of course!

SD at 10:04, on 27 January.

what ASH said.

ASH at 10:06, on 27 January.

What I said.

Stef Lenk at 10:17, on 27 January.

Harumph. What I said. I'm now going to abgelenk from these status comments. 'Coz it's in my very nature.

Stef Lenk at 10:17, on 27 January.

so there.

ASH at 10:17, on 27 January.

what you said.

SD at 10:23, on 27 January.

what they said.

JPR at 10:31, on 27 January.

What did I say?

EG at 10:37, on 27 January.

Ditto huh

Stef Lenk at 10:41, on 27 January.

LOOK. All I was saying, when all of this started...ABGELENKT. Perpetually abgelenkt. Thank you all.

SD at 10:44, on 27 January.

this thread is abgesteflenkting me.

Stef Lenk at 10:52, on 27 January.

YOU!!! I'll have you know I've been abstefgelenkt for 35 YEARS. It's a Tainted bloody life, my friend.

* I would like to credit B for initially pointing out the fortuitous german word, in the subject heading of an email. Would that my german was adept enough to have called it to mind!

So.

What was it...a week ago? A very old friend (as in, old-from-times-gone-by, not OLD, found me on facebook, at the same time as she found an old (again, see above) crowd of exemplary human beings I spent nearly a year in London/Europe with, like, 14 (!) years ago. The online reunion has filled me with GLEE. (Members' current geographic locations include Australia, Dresden, Lübeck, South Africa, and some place I don't even know in the middle-east).

For one prone to rampant bouts of nostalgia, I have been literally agog with excitement. I was trying to remind myself today to stay focussed on artwork (as opposed to succumbing to said nostalgia, which can literally consume hours of my life), and reminding myself not to digress from choices I've made that have led me here, (travel-wise, work-wise, art-wise).

THEN, today, I received an order from South Africa for two of my books, from the aforementioned lovely friend (known here most affectionately as E), AND an email asking if I mightn't possibly want to do a show in Berlin this summer, from another member of the gang (I shall write B, oh the endless question of bloggy etiquette in naming people, but shall link to his website anyhow, as his artwork is friggin' amazing)

White the latter notion is only on very outer perimeters of possibility, it is nonetheless making me Lose.My.Mind with excitement. And, more likely and JUST as exciting is talk of a tiny reunion of a few selected of our gang this summer in Germany, and a pilgrimage to a fantastic museum in Hamburg: Helium Cowboy

And this, dear reader(s), reassured me in a way I haven't felt in such a very long time, that past and present and future really do, somehow, even in the smallest ways, and some of them very unexpected, work together. Love it.

Siamese spinach.

Glee!

Oh, and Oprah?

24 days. Still no clothes on my bedroom floor. Suck my left one, deary.

Yesterday's favourite headline.

CHICKEN WINGS IN SHORT SUPPLY IN WESTERN NY BEFORE SUPER BOWL

And here I worry about living a useless life, accomplishing nothing, and dying alone.

microwave etiquette.

I do not own a microwave. I do not know how to use them, nor do I like the generic "I-was-once-good-food-that-has-just-been-reheated-and-now-smells-the-same-as-once-good-now-defunct-through-reheating-food-so-help-my-digestion-indeed."

HOWEVER. I had leftover chili yesterday, and couldn't stomach the idea of the food court for anything. "Food Court". Harumph. These places are antitheses of courting, healthy living, or kind sentiment of any sort.

Determined to overcome my bias, I approached the lunch room. (Which I may say is also the location of the water cooler, so promised at least the potential of some nutritive gossip. By the end of the day, however, I tallied an hour and 10 minutes of sundry gossip (in varying places) about Ikea furniture, exemplary sofas, and bedframe design. Which I, of course, had nothing to contribute to.)

A good five minutes later a fellow employee (a stranger, of course) came upon me staring at the microwave in consternation. I realized that this wouldn't do. I had to act, and act fast, and like I knew what I was doing, or both chili and self-esteem might be lost forever.

I put the bowl in, pushed some buttons, and stepped back, exuding an air of inpenetrable confidence. Or so I thought.

I looked over at his meal, churning away merrily in the microwave opposite.

Christ.

"Do you put a paper towel over the bowl?" I asked, making to sound like this was some sort of cultural choice of his, that I had already tried many a time and then deemed out of chic, given my hip modern appearance.

"Well, it's only proper etiquette" he said. "But I wouldn't want to tell you what to do!"

Microwave etiquette, ladies and gentlemen. Microwave etiquette.

The Awful German Language

By Mark Twain, read today in its entirety, and highly enjoyable. Consider the following snippits, so bitterly true:

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in the distribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and by heart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like a memorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print -- I translate this from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-school books:

Gretchen.

Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

Wilhelm.

She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen.

Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

Wilhelm.

It has gone to the opera.

....and also this (on the subject of the length of selected german words...

These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And they are not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and see them marching majestically across the page -- and if he has any imagination he can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martial thrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in these curiosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it in my museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When I get duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase the variety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at an auction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:

Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen.
Alterthumswissenschaften.
Kinderbewahrungsanstalten.
Unabhaengigkeitserklaerungen.
Wiedererstellungbestrebungen.
Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen.

Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching across the printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape -- but at the same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocks up his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnel through it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is no help there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere -- so it leaves this sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things are hardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and the inventor of them ought to have been killed.

Pondering the known works of Theodore Geisel, and childhood matter(s) in general.

A while back a friend of mine showed me a book of his entitled "The Secret Art of Doctor Seuss*", comprising drawings, some of a questionable nature, done by the infamous childrens' book author. 

This crossed my mind today, for no particular reason, and I wondered at the many illustrators pigeonholed into doing childrens' books, merely because no categories for illustrated "adult" books as yet really exist, 'xcept for the thinly veiled T and A bullshit that passes for mainstream comics, and is of course revered by oversized children calling themselves adults everywhere.

So Theodore Giesel, of course exceptionally gifted in childrens' work, but likely with alot more on his mind than such simple things, came to be known exclusively in this manner.
And then he dies, and then one day people find his real drawings, or his unpublished drawings (is there any difference?) and say, "Hey, secretly Dr. Seuss was a pervert!" when really, secretly, Theodore Giesel was merely an adult.

To be fair, a return to childhood subject matter (as witnessed firsthand upon my recent re-read of The Wind in the Willows just last week, is a return to a time of unadulterated optimism. Most kids (especially in this part of the world) don't know enough to be cynical at their age the way adults are.
They also don't know how to define loneliness, so when they feel it, they are able to move past it with relative ease.

*(Seuss means 'cute' in german, by the way, and yes, he was german.)

Mole.

Design vs. Creation.

There's designing something, and there's creating something, and people frequently seem to morph the two together, or expect the latter to be a free accessory to the former. I had never myself made this distinction before, but it has happened so so often, and there must be a way of kindly distinguishing the two?

Und jetzt

fangt es wieder an!*

(*corrected. Amazing what a good nights' sleep will do)

Sweet.Balls.Of.Christ.

PLEASE won't someone rich find me and marry me and purchase THIS for us for my honeymoon.

Or yes, S, a timeshare. Would that it were possible. Even vaguely possible.

ANYTHING. 

PLEAASSSSEEE.

Oh God. It's killing me. Really literally killing me.

Be still my ever-beating Withnail & I loving heart.

Kindness on a Monday morning.

Some clever thing has put a clock in the window of their basement apartment, facing outwards, towards the bus stop just outside their door.

We interrupt this blog for a bit of Proust-inspired nostalgia.

I first began reading The Remembrance of Things Past in 1992, in the excessively moss green and floral drawing room of one Patricia Neatrour, retired dancer with the (British) Royal Ballet. I was 19, (voluntarily) bald, hopelessly awkward, and just as happy to sit at her home in the evenings (I rented a room in her flat for eight months) and read books, will Pat watched Snooker and did the crossword, and waxed nostalgic about that night so many years ago, when she finished a dance performance and was introduced to Prince Charles in his special box. (There was a photo of it over the fireplace mantel. His ears really are that big.)

Pat lived at Portman Mansions, across from Baker Street, and for some reason I found it ludicrously pleasing to be so close to 221b, despite the fact that it never really housed Mister Holmes, and Jeremy Brett in fact conducted his last interview only steps away, before dying some time later, much to my horror. 

But Pat. Yes. Her eyeballs were remarkably protuberant, her wardrobe invariably Marks and Spencer, and her underthings frequently hung on some wooden contraption over the kitchen table. 

The man who rented the room next to mine was Kevin, I believe, and he was very "shy" said Pat (read: gay). We never saw much of him, but he did have a fondness for potato salad. And he had marvellously orange hair.

During the days I worked at a record shop in Soho, that had previously been an Anne Summers shop, or so we discovered when cleaning out drawers and finding all manner of unmentionable things not saleable by a shop of our repute. My best (only) friend was my co-worker, one Pippa Hinge from Reading, die-hard Lloyd Cole fan, bless her, who had the most gorgeous olivey complexion that I was constantly jealous of. She could not figure out why, telling me of the time (when she was little) when her mum had come home to find Pippa with her head in the freezer. When asked to explain herself, Pippa burst into tears, and said that if white people could lie in the heat and get brown, why couldn't she lie in the cold and get white?

In general though, there were far less memorable moments then I like to suppose about those eight months. However. There was one funny time, just after new years, when I had freshly returned from visiting a friend in Norwich for Christmas, upon which occasion we listened to a great deal of Leonard Cohen and shaved my head in the bathtub while a one-legged cat (no joke) looked on. 

Back in London and at work, I got sent out to get change at the video arcade, with a 50 pound note. I went to the back, put it in the change machine, and made to leave with the booty: bags and bags of pound coins. Well. I got chased out by security, and only realized afterwards what I must have looked like with a swedish military jacket, docks, and a shaved head. And a non-english accent. 

He wouldn't let me leave the arcade, convinced I had rigged the machine somehow. Finally he escorted me back to my shop to have my story verified, and barred me from the arcade for good as a ne'er-do-well.

I'm pretty sure he didn't call me a ne'er-do-well, but what's a gratuitously nostalgic posting without a term like that, really.

Thank you for your forbearance, we now return to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Proust on his deathbed, as photographed by Man Ray, as drawn by stef lenk.

Real life to fairy tale.

Due to a fortuitous error which saw an email to Coco waylaid to the illustrious N at the Brick offices, I was sent this background (as cited on Wiki, i think), which inspired Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes.

I love it. I love also the thought that such old old fairy tales have their origins in real life incident, which is evidence of just how much life has gone on, and what it has resulted in, even so long ago.

But to the origin of The Red Shoes:

Andersen explained the origins of the story in an incident he witnessed as a small child. By his report, his father was sent a piece of red silk by a rich lady customer, to make a pair of dancing slippers for her daughter. Using red leather along with the silk, he worked very carefully on the shoes, only to have the rich lady tell him they were trash. She said he had done nothing but spoil her silk. "In that case," he said, "I may as well spoil my leather too," and he cut up the shoes in front of her.

Temperance. Even with the "Draw Cuter Things" campaign.

Things of great significance that I woke up thinking about.

I don't usually wake up with pleasant and harmless thoughts running through my head in the morning. I have Wind in the Willows to thank for this, no doubt.  

So, without further ado: Things I thought about this morning that were rather lovely, thank you very much:

1. My pilgrimage to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1993 to see the original EH Sheperd drawings for Winnie the Pooh. I was allowed to have a pencil and paper with me to take notes (? Like there were notes to be taken that would have been sufficient enough to leave with any real sense of what I was seeing there). I was given white gloves to handle the drawings as well, and they were Sublime.

2. My godmother, who took care of me before and after school when I was little, and who will forever and eternally call to mind the Britishly-anthemic intro to the BBC radio news, complete with the four beeps at the end, before the newscaster begins. And also english muffins with butter, first thing in the morning.

(My mum told me last night that 'Del (said godmother) had come to visit some weeks ago. She has been having worsening hearing problems over the years, so my mum put some headphones on her that were hooked up to the computer, and played her Symphonic Bach, one of their mutual favourites, and for whatever reason, 'Del was able to hear it fully for the first time in forever, and the look on her face I am told was of unparalleled Glee. Love it. In fact, am listening to symphonic Bach in empathy, this very morning.)

3. This strange place which I dream about with fascinating frequency (and did so again last night), always in a different context, and for no particular reason that I know of. It always seems to have "London" as an undertitle (were dreams to have undertitles) but isn't actually any place I know of in London, and so serves as some generic fantastical european place of old buildings and narrow streets and convoluted urban corridors of historical aesthetic, which I of course deem London-esque, 'coz that's just what I do. It's a bit inscrutable as cranial tendencies go, as it's almost like some irrelevant set change. Nothing particularly Londoney ever happens in said place/dream; indeed the setting rarely has any relevance at all. 
Except of course that it's extraordinarily comforting and nice-looking.

Wind and the Willows, and Dear Old EH.

Today I decided to revisit this Amazing piece of Literature. My primary reason was to see if it was as glowingly warm and sweet and good as I remembered it (It was. In the best of ways. Perfect for January), and to ponder possibly illustrating a few choice portraits of Ratty, Mole and Toad, as part of my "draw cuter things" campaign.

An errant googling upon the completion of said book informed me that there is in fact an illustrated version by one EH Sheperd. Miracles will Never Ever cease, I thought, as I stared somewhat unimpressedly at my copy, whose illustrations are stiff and mundane, and no doubt by a man named Bruce, or some such nominal blight. 

Bless you EH Sheperd, BLESS YOU. (And your daughter Mary (yes, Mary), who illustrated the Mary Poppins books, of course.)

Although, like I need another reminder that my pencil-illary activities really are not adding anything significant to this planet.

This book.

Purchased yesterday in a fit of uncontrollable excess, makes me put down my pencil and weep. Literally. 

Jesus. Is there any point, really? 

I am perhaps better suited to accounting, anyhow.

(Don't judge it by its cover. Go find it. Really. The cover is okay, but it's the drawings inside that count, not the digital colouring stuff.)

Fuck you Oprah.

So around New Years I read this article in the New York Times about Oprah falling off the weight wagon again, and her saying that people rarely to never change their ways significantly, so new years resolutions are superfluous, most of them expiring within a couple of days.
WELL.
I have two bad habits, one of which is leaving my clothes on my bedroom floor. Every year I lament this and resolve to do it no longer. Same goes this year.
HOWEVER.

Contrary to previous years where said habit has indeed reappeared some days after the new year wanes, I now find myself thinking, every time I drop a sock to my inconsolable carpet, about Oprah and her cynical observations. 

Every time.
And I have now gone 16 wonderful days with a floor unfettered by underwear or belt buckle. 

So really perhaps this posting should be called "Thank you, Oprah", although she isn't really who I want to be thinking about when I change into my pajamas at night.

No electricity and no heat.

For 15 hours and counting, and I had a weird moment, stepping out of my tepid shower this morning, of feeling like I've turned inside out.

My job at the big red building

is often, alas, very mundane. And not often do I get to do something that requires large (or sometimes any) amounts of technical photoshop skill. Though today, I was asked to do a double cel, showing Obama in real life, proceeded by a depiction of him on the cover of a special edition Spider Man comic (which I want, by the way.) The idea was to get as close to an identical IRL picture of him as possible, so that the clever news techies could morph the second on top of the first as Mister Mansbridge informs the world of this history-making comic book.
The fact that I managed to to track down said close-to identical picture of him fills me with GLEE, (original pictured here, UNcropped)


and follow this by my genius photoshop work in building the photo out, etc, at breakneck speed (just LOOK at that cufflink. And extended suitage. LOOK AT IT! Okay, so it's not That extensive, but if you see one cel morphed into the other, it really does look rather impressive. No, really.) Anyhow, suffer me, won't you, my glimmering moment of Geeky Photoshop pride.


Not to mention one of the first moments of genuinely having FUN at my job, even though it is the news, so frequently a recipe for incumbent despair and loathing. (insert gratuitous moan here)

Whatever to Peter Mansbridge, just LOOK at those graphics.

(Oh, and for the illustrator who drew the cover, his ear is all wrong.)

(Just saying.)

(Oh, and for those of you wondering, Spidey is asking Obama: "Hey if you get to be on my cover, do I get to be on the dollar bill?")

-----

update: Okay, so, looking at this again, it's hardly that exciting, photoshop-wise or image-wise. But it's Obama, so I forgive me. And it beats the lemon on wheels car I had to build later on that evening for an item on used vehicles.

On self-publishing: an extensive discourse.

So, one of the requests from the Xeric foundation upon granting me my...erm...grant, was a testimonial on the ins-and-outs of self-publishing. I started writing it last year, and revisited it at last, ironically close on the heels of the fact that I no longer want to self-publish. That is, I feel like I've reached a ceiling on what I'm going to learn from it, and I think my time should now be focused on different avenues of publication (read: OTHER people publishing, ME creating.) So here's hoping.

In the meanwhile, though, if anyone happens on this blog via the Xeric site, or my website, who might have an interest in self-publishing, or how I self-published my books (that is, what's involved) well, here it is. I'm proud, actually (which is rare). Writing this summation made me realize just how much there is to learn, and just how much work I've done. And also, the realization that I've been involved in most to all aspects of book publishing (albeit on a microscopic scale), gives me a wonderful sense of holistic satisfaction.

For those of you here who are friends of mine, the following will probably be very long and boring. So you've been warned. Feel free to skip ahead to the next posting as well...

The Xeric inspired/stef lenk construed Discourse on Self Publishing. 

In Many (many) Parts.

BEFORE YOU START.

Someone wrote in another Xeric testimonial that you should not attempt self-publishing and all of this business unless you have no choice. This is really true. It's a tonne of work, there's no money in it, and trying to put comic books out there for public consumption is another full-time job on top of doing the actual (creative) work. I have tried to get rid of my bookish compunctions from every possible angle. I talked emptily about potential book projects for years. I took a course in book publishing so I could make other peoples' books. I went to art school to learn how to make stuff to put into books. I've read a million books looking for one that hasn't been written yet. And yet all of this has still brought me here. 

These days, I pay my rent through work in book/magazine publishing/design, I draw obsessively, and I still have many many unfinished book projects. But the more of your own work you do the more focused you become, and the easier it gets, at least to be confident enough to start a project, see it through, and learn a thing or two about it and yourself in the process.

For those of you up for it, self-publishing is a full-time job, which I think can lead to great things of many sorts. Here are some of the things you'll need to think about.

TIME.

Writing/storyboarding/drawing the book (for me, this reigns in at app. 200-250 hours per book- including storyboarding, reference material, final drawings, and tonnes of mistakes/second/third/fouth tries) 

YOUR DAY JOB

Don't quit it. No one else does and survives (well). Freelancing is an ideal complement to self-publishing ventures, but the stress (and the effect it has on doing your artwork) shouldn't be underestimated either. Be nice to yourself along the way.

If you can stockpile cash and then take time off, do so. If you can marry rich, that too is a good option. If you are already rich, you must email me so we can discuss this further and in great detail.

TELEVISION.

Get rid of it.

ART SUPPLIES/STUDIO

If you are waiting to start your project until you have a new MacBookPro or a fully equipped studio space in NY's East Village, don't. I know a few people who spend alot of time collecting toys and very little time actually using them. This is unfortunate. Use whatever you can get/whoever will let you. Preparation is the worst form of procrastination.

GRIEF/GUILT RELATED ANXIETY THAT YOU ARE 

NOT WORKING HARD/QUICK/WELL ENOUGH

NOT helpful. Inevitable, but NOT helpful. Try to override these thoughts with great expedience and fervour.

EDITING

If you know anyone with this skill who will be willing to help you, you have struck gold. Honestly. Having an editor=Creative GOLD. Allow them to criticize, Listen to the criticism, Act on the criticism.

PRE-PRESS.

Books are offset-printed (should you be choosing this format) in 16-page increments called signatures. This is due to the folding process necessary to make sure all pages have a reverse-side, and can therefore be efficiently bound/stapled, etc. If you have decided to make a book that is, say, 18 pages, you must be prepared to pay for 24 pages, and have a bunch of blanks. 1/2 sigs are a possibility, which means you can have 20 pages (the magic number is 4 in folding pages) but you will likely still have to pay for 24 pages and they will be trimmed after printing, which wastes both paper and money. Obviously 16 pages/24/32 are all magic increments.

If you know a bit more about your printers, such as how large their press-beds are and what the max size of paper they take, there are ways to cut down costs even more. My books are just slightly smaller than conventional ash-can size; this so they get printed on one sheet and reverse on the other side to create two books per sheet. (the process if called print-and-tumble) This cuts down HUGELY on costs.

Colour is more expensive than b/w. To print in colour, the printers have to make four plates for each page and ink colour (one for cyan, one for magenta, one for yellow, and one for black, which are the four staple inks in colour printing. This might be evident to any of you who have home printers with separate cartridges in your inkjets) The pages of your book then have to be run through the press four times (one for each plate) which ups your man-hours for the job. And there is ever a hassle with proofing and colour correction which is much trickier, I've found, than b/w.

So if you are printing in colour, be prepared for at least double if not quadruple the cost quoted for a b/w project.

Paper stock is an issue. Coated paper is the shiny stuff, where ink sits on top of the page and looks shiny and lovely. Like most magazines. Newsprint is the other end of the spectrum. Like newspapers, it's thin, ink soaks in and dulls, but is cheap cheap Cheap.

Your printing costs will break down (or at least mine do) into three: paper, print, and bind. Bind, the third of these, is stapling (called saddle-stitch) or perfect binding (glued together, which is most trade paperbacks). If there is any way you can handle any of this stuff yourself, you will cut down on billable-man-hours there.

Pre-press/ process-wise: I try to avoid tweeking in photoshop all together, but do find that I need to do a bit to make all pages consistent in terms of levels/gray-scale tones, etc. This takes time and some photoshop skills, or at least basic knowledge of the program. Or someone who can help.

BLEEDS. 

For gods' sakes read up on "bleeds" if you've never published before, and intend to have artwork that reaches (past) the edges of your book. The amount of reworking and redrawing I've had to do because I didn't have properly trimmable edges has been highly frustrating. (This will not really apply to artists working in panels with white edges, btw, leaving white borders is another simple solution to bleed/trim problems.)

PRINTING COSTS

These can vary of course, but mine cost $1200 for a print run of 350-500, keeping in mind they are 16 pages each (plus cover) and full-colour. (see pre-press for more info on this) 

You CAN opt for photocopy/zine-style, but just know that these days desktop publishing is ubiquitous and the standards are getting ever higher, so it's harder to grab peoples' attention with the cheap photocopy format, except for a very specific niche market. In the end, the more seriously you invest in your work, the more seriously your potential audience will invest in it.

Screenprinting, letterpress, are other options, and beautiful ones; printmaking is, however, a separate affair. 

BOOK FAIRS

There are a tonne of them, that vary in cost/efficiency. If this is your first book, do as many as humanly possible. At book fairs you get to keep all profits from book sales, but this occasionally at the price of malevolent glares by bargain hunters who can't fathom why you would charge $8 for what could be construed as a rather elaborate looking brochure. Many people will not understand. Be prepared for this. The people around you also selling books WILL understand. Love and respect them accordingly.

A couple of years down the road you can start doing a cost/benefit analysis of which to do/which fairs to skip. The experience is fantastic for making a niche for yourself in the comics community, meeting publishers, having your work evaluated. The people are AWESOME. But again, you never sell quite as many books as you had hoped, and the prep work shouldn't be underestimated. Tables also cost money, if you can find someone to split the cost with, by all means do so.

Some of the book fairs/comicons I've done/know of.

Toronto Comic Arts Festival

SpeakEasy Comics night (Toronto)

OCAD Book Arts Fair (Toronto)

Word on the Street (Toronto)

Canzine (Toronto)

Expozine (Montreal)

Wayzgoose book arts fair (Grimsby, Ontario)

SPX (Washington DC)

MoCCA (New York)

BD Angoulême (the MOTHER of all festivals, and the best Best BEST one out there EVER! A DREAM! Comic exhibits in the town church. No joke. Of course, not to be attempted unless you are planning a vacation in France already, you speak at least basic french, and can plan way ahead of time so you can get cheap place to stay etc, and have alot of extra money, or a very liberal credit card.

Book fair math is always helpful if you are feeling discouraged about money. After every book fair my friends/fellow book-makers sit back and evaluate: "This time I made back the cost of the bus ticket to get here!" "This time I made back travel AND the cost of the table!", "This time I spent every penny on other books, but Christs' toes, LOOK AT THIS STUFF!"

Consider postage/shipping costs if you are doing book fairs outside of your own country. Bringing them over the border could be questionable at customs, so this is an extra cost/inconvenience.

ONLINE SALES

Consider ETSY, it's free and awesome, and you can direct anyone you want there. They sell your books, and take a nominal fee for it. There is a tonne of stuff up there though, so drawing attention to your page can be another assignment in and of itself. Your own website is a great help (but building one is a challenge); blogs also work (blogger or wordpress are the most popular and the former is the easiest to use/no website skills necessary) 

Nothing online will be too too helpful, however, unless you have a way of driving traffic to the site. Facebook/MySpace can be helpful publicity, but to get beyond your immediate circle of friends you will need other tactics. 

ADVERTISING/PUBLICITY

If you have a knack for design/some basic skills in CS and/or Quark, it will be of great help in this venture, as you can make posters, postcards, etc to give out. People always want free stuff, so anything you can give them to take away/remind you of their work, Awesome. Websites (as stated above) will save a tonne of postage costs (in terms of submissions) and give people immediate access to your work. Associated costs should be factored in: printer ink cartridges; labels; book stands/table signage, as well as promo postcards and business cards.

EMAIL PROMOTIONS/MAILINGS/PRESS-RELEASES

You can do as much or as little as you want, with results accordingly. Once you've self-published a few things you will want to have built a bigger fan-base than your close friends, or the cost/momentum is going to be harder to sustain. Consider a mailing list, letting people sign up for it and sending out announcements when you have new book/events. Also put together press releases and send them to the weeklies/comic blogs/ etc. in advance of your official launch. (Double check the timing on this, it varies with each publication)

SELLING BOOKS ON CONSIGNMENT

Personally, I find that accounting makes me feel like a fat man going uphill on a children's bicycle. DIY distribution, inventory and selling books on consignment, however, makes me feel like a fat man with no legs running a 200-metre dash, rife with hurdles and a full bladder. But once you get the hang of it all it's strangely edifying, and a great peephole into the world of business that will inevitably surround you the deeper into publishing your books you get.

Consignment is not a huge way to recoup costs, but it is the best way to have your books available/visible on a day-by-day basis. Check out bookstores in your area, specifically ones that sell small-press stuff, and offer books on consignment of course. Typically for a 40/50% take, these shops will stock your books and you play your own distributor, stopping by occasionally to restock/get paid for any sales. 

Be aware of the profit ("profit") margin: Here's the math on one of my typical consignment books:

8$=cost price per book

print run cost=$1200 therefore unit price per book= $3.42

consignment fee=40% of the purchase price (another $3.20), 

profit=a resounding $1.38 per book. 

When approaching stores try to accept that your books will possibly be tucked into a milk-crate on a back shelf somewhere, where ideally they will be accidentally found by a customer hoping for a cheap score in a carefully hidden smut section. This is, alas, how it works. But you get to know book-store owners (who are Awesome), you get to put your books in the company of all the stuff you read yourself (Awesome and Gratifying), and you are broadcasting to the world with increasing dedication that you are not just drawing these things for yourself, but you are searching for an audience (Yes!).

Also, check in frequently. ESPECIALLY if your book has been reviewed, written about, or excerpted. No one is ever going to love your work as much as you are, so you have to take care of it, even once it's left home. Salespeople/bookshop proprietors have bigger distribution/inventory issues to sort out and rarely to never keep up with their consignment. There is also so much consignment material in any given bookshop , that books are all usually in great disarray. Make sure your work hasn't been lost, trampled, or moved to the staff washroom for reading material, or worse.

DISTRIBUTION.

Eventually the charm of zooming around on a bicycle to stores throughout the city so they can sell 4 or 5 of your books every six months will wear off, and you will have a wall of unsold books cluttering up your home. 

Distribution is a good idea. There are many people who can help with this. At this point, I am not one of them: I am still investigating what the possibilities are out there. It seems like having work accepted to comic distributors is no small accomplishment. And there are fees. And unsold books shredded. And such. Be warned.

GRANTS.

Writing grants is another job/financing possibility for this whole process. The more applications you write, the clearer your project ideas and focus will be. It's a great exercise, and also a humbling one. Don't be discouraged if you don't get one. Collect rejection letters. And keep writing them. It is so valuable to teach yourself to explain what you are doing to complete strangers. I have yet to master it. And there is luck involved.

Submissions, press-releases, and queries (to publishers) are also really helpful in honing your ideas and evaluating which ones are worth seeing through to completion.

SUBMITTING WORK FOR REVIEW

Google comic books/journals, read the specs, submit your work. All attention is helpful. Tell/show anyone who will listen. And be thankful when they do.

SUBMITTING WORK FOR PUBLICATION

Probably at some point you will get tired of being a one-(wo)man band with all this self-publishing. Submit excerpts for consideration to magazines, publishers etc. Best way to figure out who to submit to is to look at your own bookshelf. If you like reading them and the work they publish resonates with yours, chances are you have found a good publisher/venue for your stuff.

ALTHOUGH.

I don't suggest skipping the self-publishing part. There is no better way to gain respect for the people you will be working with in the future. It's a tonne of work, but there's something fascinating and holistic about the process, you're actually involved with your books from the very beginning to the very end (their sale). No part of publishing is easy, whether it be publicity, marketing, editing, or sales, and getting high and mighty about your artwork with the people who are trying to help you put it out there is just lame. 

THAT'S ABOUT ALL. GO FORTH, SELF PUBLISH, RINSE AND REPEAT.

Eloping to Africa, courtesy of Harpers Weekly

A six-year-old boy and a five-year-old-girl were detained in Germany, on a train to the airport; they explained to police that they planned to fly to Africa to be married. The couple, disguised in sunglasses, had brought along several suitcases, a pink blow-up doll, swim fins, and the boy's seven-year-old sister, who planned to act as witness. "What struck us was that the little ones were completely on their own," said a police spokesman, "and that they had lots of swimming gear with them."

Behold dear reader(s)

Who SAYS I can't draw anything cute.

Flying Car.

From England to Timbuktu. TRUE STORY! ADVENTURE! GLEE!


-----Update-----

And a picture of said car, from live footage. Who says I haven't got the goods.

found whilst googling fire escapes.

Only in London.

sigh.

The Experiment.

I have this really weird fascination/complete revulsion for books, movies, etc, that are quintessentially, all-caps-ically, MALE. Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk is the last known example of this. It was one of the grossest books I've ever read, but I must have finished it in about four hours. The most interesting thing about it, is that there are predominantly men (it's about a porn shoot where some woman is trying to break a gang bang world record, from the perspective of three of the constitutent men, one of the women organizers, and, nominally, the porn star) There are, as stated, only two women characters, though somehow it ends up the book is fundamentally actually about these two women.  In the case of this book the results are not pretty.

Well. So I saw this movie Das Experiment last night (the Experiment) (I think that's l'Experiment in french, but would have to look it up to be sure) It's a german film about these guys who agree to be locked up in jail for fourteen days, 12 as prisoners and 8 as guards, as a social experiment on prison life, claustrophobia, and the behavioural changes and agression that develop as a result of being locked up. It's based on an actual experiment that was carried out some years ago at Stanford University.

Again, funnily enough, there were only two women characters in this film, one a woman the main character meets and has a liaison with one night before going into the clink, and the other, who is one of the scientists spearheading the experiment (who, of course, attempts to stop it when it first starts getting out of hand, only to be thwarted by her male counterpart) 

The film is horrific. But I found it remarkable how even in their near absence throughout the story (except for near the climactic ending), this film became so very much about the women. Or rather, about women. Just...about women. And it was really really good, actually.

As quoted by Monsieur de Botton...

What in us really wants 'truth'?...We asked the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?...The falseness of a judgement is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgement ... the question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements...are the most indispensable to us...that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life. 

(Nietzsche | Beyond Good and Evil)

My personal idea of hip living.

Out with my most hippest friends the other night, where talk invariably turned to all manner of liberal behaviour in the realms of romance and/or doin' it. And, invariably, it was like "Yay, illicit encounters in public places" and "Yay, illicit encounters with as many hip people as you can in the name of hip young living", "Dude (refering to me, of course), you're SO straight", and "Yay, kissing someone else doesn't count as cheating".

Yeah. Yay.

How about, it's 2009, I'm not that hip, I'm Happy I'm not that hip, I am really straight, puritanically so, even, (despite being an avid supporter of non-straightness) and "Yay, let's keep it simple, date one person at a time, try to actually respect them as well as oneself in the process, and do it in a bed for a change." 

Let's face it, illicit encounters in public places was a kick, and fine for the hip-sex-resume-building bullshit of one's twenties. But it's always overrated, it's rarely that physically gratifying, and honestly, more often than not, it's more bother than it's worth.

So, with this posting, I hereby cast off my proverbial "hip" membership aspiration card in the name of good old monogamous, straight-up dating people, and simple old Doin' It. Like, at home Doin' It.

Here Here.

Because no good retrospective is good without some black and white photos.

I'm particularly fond of the last one, as I have a very clear memory of my fervent dedication to that number bowl. Note the gaggle of dedicated childhood friends I was imminently surrounded with. (Hobby horse notwithstanding.)

Moving into adult life...

I did manage, though, at last, to find like-minded souls much the calibre of my hobby horse.
(These ones are for Jody...)

Blog-iversary.

Something was niggling at me, and I thought and I thought, and then I realized that yesterday was my four year anniversary of blogging. That's right. I began Meanderings Through a World-Weary Synapse, the first of four of these things, on 28 December, 2004. 

In the last four years I have posted 1,460 tidbits of useless information, for the incalculable benefit of three? maybe four? readers. Perhaps five, including myself. That's an average of 1 posting for every two days from 04-08. That's 292 posts per reader. Now that's generosity.

I spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour and a half on this thing at any one time, so there is some sort of commitment to the act of writing (if not the quality of it). Well, more accurately it is a firm commitment to navel gazing, but a writerly commitment to it.

But seeing as my commitment threshold for most things seems to wane/Completely Explode after three years, this is quite gratifying. The only things I have been doing longer than blogging are drawing and reading. And sleeping. And eating. And riding my bike.

Anyhow.

It seems a bit of a "year in summation" is in order. This is not for the benefit of any other readers, so much as it is for my own benefit. I like to think that when I'm 80 and floating through the solar system in a hermetically sealed suit of some sort, I'll be able to tap into my newly installed intra-corporal internet-wired hard-drive and read what my life was like back in simpler times, so some retrospective is in order. Let's see...

update: yes, well, I never did get to said retrospective, and here we are, well into January. Perhaps next year.

Do you ever have one of those mornings

Where your tea-ball just Does Not Want to be found?
Well, this morning was one of those days-neatly averted. (proverbial pat on my shoulder)

Preparing for pending blogdom; late 70s

leaves on a chalkboard.

One of my friends (I can't remember which one) just cannot figure out my sense of repulsion when confronted with an accidentally stepped-upon potato chip. I HATE it. It's like nails on a chalkboard. I hear the sound of it in my head for hours. Even thinking about it threatens to bring about the same lingering thought.

WELL. It is for that person, whoever s/he may be, that I post this update: same applies to dried out leaves of the conical variety, on a hardwood floor. I have just discovered. Sigh.

Lovely PL.

I'm doing my end-of-the-year reading, in an attempt to finish up all unfinished or aspire-to-read books before 2009 begins, and on that list were rereads of the first couple of Mary Poppins books, Mary Poppins, and Mary Poppins comes Back. I ADORE these books of course, though a short venture through google brought this article, and I now officially adore PL Travers as well: Weeping at the back of the cinema after the 1964 premiere of Mary Poppins...trying to adopt her teenage maid at the age of 39, arranging to build the girl a bedroom off her study...then adopting one of a pair of twins from Ireland, (who had been told his father was killed in a horrible accident in the tropics, raised by PL on her own, and met his doppelganger at the age of 17 in a pub)...and wearing trousers, of course, bless her.

Not to mention the look of her (above). Indeed!

Philanthropy.

I'm not as much of a news junkie as it may seem, but I am determined to keep a record of how often POSITIVE headlines actually make the front page of any given newspaper.
This is a good one.

Harold Pinter.

Has passed away on Christmas Eve, I just discovered.
Reading the news is not a happy venture.
What a dark cloud on an otherwise lovely day.
What an Unbelievable Loss.

Shan!

Shannon Gerard, personage extraordinaire and the truest fan of the bountiful moustache.

Merrrryyy CHhhhrrriistttmmmassss!!

Christina!

And below is one of my next portraits... of my friend Christina. Usually after about 48 hours the self-criticism takes hold, but I love it still. This may be one of my favourite undertakings so far, this tiny series, partly 'coz I'm NOT, for a change, drawing myself. It is invaluable in this undertaking, of course, to have the most lovely friends. Merrryy Chrriisttttmass, dear reader(s)! (still more pending...)

Some remarkable fe(a)t.