I promise to fall in love with the girl that sings to me the way Natalie Merchant sings.
There is a 70% chance of similar results when one substitutes Stevie Nicks for Natalie Merchant.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
October in Essence
Today, I walked out of work and felt the first blast of cold wind of the year. The sky was shrouded with clouds and all my senses were overwhelmed by a vague sense of nostalgia. I touched something deeply beautiful and infinitely bittersweet, a comforting swirl of sadness and contentment. In a brief moment I touched thirty Octobers that preceded this one, and felt a sensation that might well have been a rapturous religious experience in another context.
I stood for a brief moment and absorbed what I know as October, a sensation and an experience that is more than a point in the annual marking of time.
My only regret is that you weren't there.
I stood for a brief moment and absorbed what I know as October, a sensation and an experience that is more than a point in the annual marking of time.
My only regret is that you weren't there.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Vote Your Subconscious!
or... Obama / Troop '08 - Change Like You Wouldn't Believe!
A man once said that there's nothing more boring than another man's dreams. To that man I say... Havesomeathis!
Last night I dreamed that something had happened to Joe Biden. I'm not sure what, exactly, but Joe was gone and there was a spot open for the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. All this had gone down in the middle of a debate with Sarah Palin and a series of very odd events then followed.
First off, the ghost of my father apparently has great pull with the Democrats, and I was, thanks to his intervention, vetted within a few minutes and made the new vice presidential nominee, and ushered on stage. I was worried about the debate, but since Palin didn't answer any questions and couldn't question my credentials because she was trained to debate Biden, I coasted through pretty well. As if this were not strange enough, I then went to the white house hangers-on area. This was a massive sprawl of TVs, secret service agents and politically minded people wandering around the White House lawn.
There, I met Penn Jillette. He was performing death-defying magic for a pair of Japanese tourists (I think it was Hiro and Ando from Heroes) but I got his attention. He was reluctant to talk to me but I insisted that he was one of the few people who actually cared what the Constitution said, so I wanted his opinion. "According to the Constitution, do you have to be 35 to be President or just to RUN for President?" I asked. Apparently, my ghost-vetting had not brought up the age issue. His response was bizarrely philosophical and out of character. "Well, you're forgetting the much overlooked 12th Amendment, which states that all rights held by one citizen are held by all. As long as there is at least one person over 35 in the country, you can run."
When awake, I know that the 12th amendment actually has to deal with the election, but states quite plainly that I would not be eligible until the 2012 election.
He then continued: "Sometimes we are individual people living our lives, sometimes we are our entire species, a mass of apes, dying all at once. Sometimes we are both and sometimes we are neither."
At this point, I informed him that I was now in the running for vice president. He said he would not vote for me and left. I spent the remainder of the dream wandering around the sprawl around the White House, wondering how to adjust my wardrobe to fit my new role.
A man once said that there's nothing more boring than another man's dreams. To that man I say... Havesomeathis!
Last night I dreamed that something had happened to Joe Biden. I'm not sure what, exactly, but Joe was gone and there was a spot open for the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. All this had gone down in the middle of a debate with Sarah Palin and a series of very odd events then followed.
First off, the ghost of my father apparently has great pull with the Democrats, and I was, thanks to his intervention, vetted within a few minutes and made the new vice presidential nominee, and ushered on stage. I was worried about the debate, but since Palin didn't answer any questions and couldn't question my credentials because she was trained to debate Biden, I coasted through pretty well. As if this were not strange enough, I then went to the white house hangers-on area. This was a massive sprawl of TVs, secret service agents and politically minded people wandering around the White House lawn.
There, I met Penn Jillette. He was performing death-defying magic for a pair of Japanese tourists (I think it was Hiro and Ando from Heroes) but I got his attention. He was reluctant to talk to me but I insisted that he was one of the few people who actually cared what the Constitution said, so I wanted his opinion. "According to the Constitution, do you have to be 35 to be President or just to RUN for President?" I asked. Apparently, my ghost-vetting had not brought up the age issue. His response was bizarrely philosophical and out of character. "Well, you're forgetting the much overlooked 12th Amendment, which states that all rights held by one citizen are held by all. As long as there is at least one person over 35 in the country, you can run."
When awake, I know that the 12th amendment actually has to deal with the election, but states quite plainly that I would not be eligible until the 2012 election.
He then continued: "Sometimes we are individual people living our lives, sometimes we are our entire species, a mass of apes, dying all at once. Sometimes we are both and sometimes we are neither."
At this point, I informed him that I was now in the running for vice president. He said he would not vote for me and left. I spent the remainder of the dream wandering around the sprawl around the White House, wondering how to adjust my wardrobe to fit my new role.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
EXCALIBUR!
At long last I have found it... The perfect blue-line pencil!
I like sketching in blue-line. Its easy to drop out during scanning and you don't notice the pencil lines as much so there's no ink/pencil confusion during the inking process. But the problem is that most blue pencils are terrible.
Prismacolor makes almost all of them. Oh, they work, in that they are blue and they are pencils, but the leads are, for lack of a better term, greasy. They're soft, lay on thick, smear easy, and worse: they repel water, and thus, ink. So you go through the process of inking something, but the ink doesn't stick. It fades when you go in to erase something or it just beads up.
I found a better blue-line pencil, though it took buying one each of all the blue line pencils offered by an online art supply store (it wasn't that extravagant, they cost about 50 cents each and there were only three varieties). Of the three pencils I obtained:
Pencil 1 is a Prismacolor Verithin 761 1/2 Non-Photo Blue/Bleu Inactinique. Same old story. Greasy, thick, soft as my midsection. Practically worthless!
Pencil 2 is a Prismacolor Copy-Not 1298 Non-Photo Blue. Getting warmer... this is an actual hard-lead blue-line pencil! The telltale sign is that this pencil has a real eraser on the end... one of the crappy pink ones. This pencil was made for architects rather than artistes (in my experience the architects get all the coolest supplies). On normal paper, this thing would rock. Sadly, I don't use normal paper for most of my sketching. I've fallen in love with a #234 Paris Bleedproof pad from Borden & Riley... the pages are like velvet and ink doesn't bleed on them, at all... but our Copy-Not's lead is too hard to leave much of a mark at all on the almost tractionless surface of the page...
Pencil 3 is our winner. It is a Staedtler Non-Photo-Blue 108 30 / 0 31901 10551 8. First off, its from Austria... which means it was made with that sort of Schwartzineggerian Knockoff of German efficiency. Its sales barcode is printed right onto the pencil in negative space between white lines for Genius' sake! No crappy sticker wrapped around the haft for this pencil! Moreover, the lead is the perfect balance of tone and hardness. No greasiness, not to light, not too dark and the line quality is beautiful.
All hail the new king of blue pencils!
As an aside, I've been considering posting art to the blog. Would anybody want to see that?
I like sketching in blue-line. Its easy to drop out during scanning and you don't notice the pencil lines as much so there's no ink/pencil confusion during the inking process. But the problem is that most blue pencils are terrible.
Prismacolor makes almost all of them. Oh, they work, in that they are blue and they are pencils, but the leads are, for lack of a better term, greasy. They're soft, lay on thick, smear easy, and worse: they repel water, and thus, ink. So you go through the process of inking something, but the ink doesn't stick. It fades when you go in to erase something or it just beads up.
I found a better blue-line pencil, though it took buying one each of all the blue line pencils offered by an online art supply store (it wasn't that extravagant, they cost about 50 cents each and there were only three varieties). Of the three pencils I obtained:
Pencil 1 is a Prismacolor Verithin 761 1/2 Non-Photo Blue/Bleu Inactinique. Same old story. Greasy, thick, soft as my midsection. Practically worthless!
Pencil 2 is a Prismacolor Copy-Not 1298 Non-Photo Blue. Getting warmer... this is an actual hard-lead blue-line pencil! The telltale sign is that this pencil has a real eraser on the end... one of the crappy pink ones. This pencil was made for architects rather than artistes (in my experience the architects get all the coolest supplies). On normal paper, this thing would rock. Sadly, I don't use normal paper for most of my sketching. I've fallen in love with a #234 Paris Bleedproof pad from Borden & Riley... the pages are like velvet and ink doesn't bleed on them, at all... but our Copy-Not's lead is too hard to leave much of a mark at all on the almost tractionless surface of the page...
Pencil 3 is our winner. It is a Staedtler Non-Photo-Blue 108 30 / 0 31901 10551 8. First off, its from Austria... which means it was made with that sort of Schwartzineggerian Knockoff of German efficiency. Its sales barcode is printed right onto the pencil in negative space between white lines for Genius' sake! No crappy sticker wrapped around the haft for this pencil! Moreover, the lead is the perfect balance of tone and hardness. No greasiness, not to light, not too dark and the line quality is beautiful.
All hail the new king of blue pencils!
As an aside, I've been considering posting art to the blog. Would anybody want to see that?
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