Martes' Journal

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Inks Done
Finished the inks on chapter 6 of City of Ice. All 48 pages of it. Now comes the lettering and toning. I still need to finish the cover, as well (I have it drawn, if anyone would like to do me a huge favor and do the coloring I would be ever so grateful...)

Will be putting more stuff on EBay tomorrow (mostly old computer/electronic stuff from

titanic ), and as usual, whenever I photograph EBay stuff outside, a certain kitteh has to get in on the act.

"Howcome you're not paying attention to me??"

Current Mood: tired

Various Stuff
Is FA down? It's not resolving for me.

I must have had another severe attack of acid reflux last night, but curiously, it did not wake me up. But considering every time I swallow I feel like there's a golf ball passing down my esophagus, that's the only explaination I can think of. I can't remember how long it took for this shit to go away last time I had it.

Nearly done with the Stephen King book. Have 2 1/2 pages left to ink on the comic. Got some computer and telephone parts I need to photograph and list on EBay. I also need to wash the car, get more water, and go to the post office to get a price quote on something being sent overseas. How much fun can we handle in a day??

Current Mood: sick

Bad Book into Movie
An absolutely hilarious summary of why the final Twilight book MUST be made into a movie. The original article was on Chud.com on this page here, but I did a cut-and paste for people who are too lazy to click links.

****
With New Moon likely to make yet another metric fuckload of money this weekend we need to find the bright side to the entire Twilight mania. There must be something good that comes from this awful Mormon fantasy that seems to have invaded our culture on every front. That something is the eventual movie version of Breaking Dawn.

Even though New Moon has made a bazillion dollars and even though the third Twilight book, Eclipse, is already filming, Summit has declined to announce the fourth and final Twilight book as a movie. There's a good reason for this: Breaking Dawn is completely fucking insane, and it is probably totally unfilmable. But if they do film it... man, we are in for a treat.

Breaking Dawn opens with Bella Swan, the lacteal heroine of the series, finally getting married to Edward Cullen, the mopey vampire hero. They go off to honeymoon on Isle Esme, a Brazilian island the Cullen clan owns (this is already ridiculous beyond belief. Imagine a vampire going snorkeling; it basically happens in this book), and Edward is afraid to fuck his new bride. The reason: he's super strong and she's just a human - Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex type of situation here. But Bella wears him down and Edward throws it in her - and knocks her the fuck out, leaving her badly bruised.

Let's go over that again: Edward fucks Bella into unconsciousness. This alone should have you running to Fandango to pre-order your tickets, but it only gets better.

Despite being knocked out cold by his sexual style (and having the headboard destroyed), Bella goes back to Edward for seconds. This time he knocks her up. Yes, an undead vampire apparently has enough viable sperm to impregnate a human woman while fucking her off the coast of Rio de Janero. Stephenie Meyer, you fabulous idiot!

The baby in Bella's belly starts growing incredibly fast. And it starts hurting Bella, as each kick it gives has the super strength of a vampire behind it. As it grows, Bella gets sicker, and then the good stuff starts. The baby kicks so hard it breaks Bella's ribs and then severs her spine. Are you imagining Kristen Stewart wearing a fake pregnancy belly and pretending to have been suddenly crippled by her own fetus? Because I am and it's making me laugh and laugh and laugh.

Oh wait, I missed something. Edward is completely freaked out about the baby, fearing it will kill Bella. He tries to convince her to get an abortion (but seriously, how could she? Vampires are tough to kill even in this shitty series), and goes so far as asking Native American wolfboy Jacob to impregnate his wife so that she can have the baby she desperately wants. I'm dizzy with how ridiculous this is, and we're just getting started.

Eventually the baby starts to get born and Bella is dying. The baby has telepathy, by the way, so everybody can read its thoughts while it's in the womb, and it turns out to have an essentially adult mind. Like Alia in Dune; I would accuse Stephenie Meyer of ripping this off, but anyone who thinks that Meyer might have read Frank Herbert has never been within spitting distance of Twilight. The woman is a moron.

In a moment that demands to be shown on the silver screen, Edward gives Bella an emergency C-section with his fucking teeth. It's like something out of XTro, for the love of God. It's so horrible it's brilliant, and this scene alone is why I remain firm in declaring that David Cronenberg must direct Breaking Dawn. This is surely his movie.

Once the baby is out, Bella gets vamped by Edward, as she's about to die at any moment. Then comes the most astonishing turn of events in 21st century literature, and possibly in the entire history of awful fiction aimed at tweens: Jacob the werewolf, who has been madly in love with Bella, sees the new baby girl and immediately imprints on her. What this means, in layman's terms, is that he falls in love with the baby.

I want to pull this out on its own: Jacob falls in love with a baby.

The book makes no bones about this; while Jacob doesn't want to fuck the baby right off the bat, he can't stand to be away from it and visits everyday. His love has been transferred from Bella to the baby (who has the tongue shattering name Renesmee), and because of the science behind imprinting he'll love her forever. So one day he's going to stick his wolf dick in this girl that he see as a bloody newborn. Romance is not dead, it's just being abused by insane Mormon writers.

There's more in Breaking Dawn - the Volturi come back, for one thing - but these are the main amazing events that demand this book to be turned into a film. I will not rest until I have seen a movie in which a werewolf falls in love with a baby. Hell, once I've seen a werewolf fall in love with a baby I may quit movie watching - I will have seen the ultimate culmination of a century of cinema. The entire film of Breaking Dawn would play like the weirdest exploitation film since Doris Wishman died - brutal sex, bizarre body horror, unbelievable pedophilia.

A werewolf falling in love with a baby. This is why Thomas Edison invented this shit in the first place. So we could see a werewolf fall in love with a baby.

Current Mood: amused

Do Want!
On FA Paul Kidd posted a link to an online place that sells exotic praying mantises.

Definitely on my to-get list when employed again (and during the spring/summer). I've been wanting to try my hand at some orchid mantids for a while.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Fox 11 News

Post-Thanksgiving
Sorry no LJ posts this week-- my mother was visiting from Ohio and I was busy doing mom-stuff around town. When I wasn't doing that, I was busy inking the comic, with some breaks to continue reading the mammoth new Stephen King book.

Today I'm driving down to LAX to drop off a few books for Fred Patten while he's at LosCon. I will not be staying for the con (no $ to buy a membership, and I have inking I need to do) but I will keep an eye out for people I know while I am there.

Current Mood: hungry

For friends who are sick

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Current Mood: thankful
Current Music: Howard Stern

Animation Expo
So today I went to an animation expo in Burbank with

furtech and

ruggels . There was a vague chance I might be able to do some networking and drop off some resumes. They did have some pretty big guns giving talks and seminars, but I was there mainly for the expo room. It reminded me of a tiny ComiCon-- lots of people selling stuff, very little buying (people hiring).

What was cool is that I reconnected with a number of people I very seldom see from school days, including my old layout teacher. I also ran into another student who was a junior during my freshman year (he gave me a free book that he did-- I guess because I bothered to stop by and say hi to him!) I also ran into old CalArts and Rowrbrazzle friend Garrett Ho, who I had not seen in some years. The person who sells Tracy Butler's materials was there as well, and I actually got a chance to chat with him since this wasn't as crowded as ComiCon. I also saw Scott Shaw, and several other CalArts people.

The depressing part was that everyone seemed to be out of work. The usual keywork was "I've been doing freelance," which is double-speak for "I don't have a job and am barely scraping by with irregular gigs," or just a flat-out lie in lieu of saying "I'm unemployed." I could count the actual employers there on one hand, and of those I don't think any of them were seriously looking to hire, but were there more for public relations. The rest of the booths were individual artists selling their work, larger book dealers (Stuart Ng Books was there. I could drop a fortune at his table if I had it), people peddling their animation software, and a few schools.

It was a mixed thing. While I loved seeing and talking to my old friends, it was also horribly depressing to see how very many desperate unemployed there were, and to realize what I'm up against in the pursute of work. If i had the resources I'd seriously consider doing what

xianjaguar is doing and switch careers, but I can't afford to go back to school (even if my tuition was paid somehow, I still need to make X amount of money monthy to help cover household bills on top of any tuition) The best i can do is keep looking, and hope that one of my old contacts, old co-workers or bosses, actually comes up with something.

Current Mood: discontent

Big Bux at MFF?
I spoke to someone this evening who said he was at MFF and heard that something of mine (art? A book?) went for quite a bit at the charity auction. I was unable to find out more details, and was curious is anyone was there and knows what it was. (x-posting to my FA journal in the interest of covering all bases.)

Current Mood: curious

Odds
I'm home almost all day. So why, when I go out for 20 minutes to get some damn laundry detergent so I can wash my stupid clothes, the FedEx guy chooses that one tiny sliver of time out of the 24 hour day to show up?

Current Mood: angry

Megan's Mutant Mealworms + Muse
When

dustmeat was in town and I went down behind the Orange Curtain to visit, her dad gave me a container of mealworms (he raises them to feed to birds). I've been using them to feed my killifish, the occational spider, and Gandalf (for some reason Gandalf likes eating mealworms. He'll go as far a sticking his paw in the container to pull some out.)

I've had them long enough that they're starting to turn into beetles. But frightening, unsuccessful beetles. They transform without wings, or so twisted they can't even stand upright and just lie on their back with their legs waving. They can't completely shed their pupal skin and wander around half-in and half-out of it. Sometimes they have wings but they're horribly shriveled and mangled. And some don't transform at all, but just shrivel up and dry out still in the pupa.

dustmeat , what sort of inbred hillybilly mealworms is your dad raising?? Are they all decended from a single brother and sister mealworm pair? These are the most f-ed up beetles I've ever come across! Half of them can't even walk!

****
I recently found out that Muse will be playing at KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas program. Tickets go on sale Saturday. I am of split mind here.

Pros (to trying to go see this show.)

It's Muse!!
Do I want to wait until some time next year when they come through on tour?
Matt Bellamy!!!
Something could happen between now and next year that might prevent me from seeing them; this could be my only chance.

Cons:

It's fucking expensive ($75 per ticket, not including Ticketmaster fees, and I honestly can't afford that now.)
I can't afford to get scalper tickets so I'll have to go through Ticketmaster and get shitty seat way in the back where they'll look like fleas on stage.
They're part of a multi-band concert, and do I want to sit through half a dozen other crappy acts to see them?

Well, I still have a couple days to agonize over this.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: Howard Stern

Various Stuff
Jealous of all the people going to MFF. No con for me until FC.

Did some temp work today filling in as receptionist at a friend's business. Gave me some nostalgia for when i was doing receptionist work at another friend's business a few years ago.

Yesterday i had a follow-up 'consultation' at the dentist I went to last week. The consultation consisted of them taking images (photos, not x-rays) of all my teeth and sticking them up on screen in all their horrible full-color glory, where the dentist described all the awful things wrong and equally awful (and hideously expensive) things that would need to be done. Now my teeth honestly aren't that bad-- I do have a lot of fillings, but the teeth are straight, not discolored, and my gums are in great shape. Compared to some of the dental messes I've seen even in my own circle of aquaintences at conventions, my teeth are damn perfect.

But after having to sit through all that shit yesterday, now I'm all parinoid and think I'm getting a toothache in one of the teeth he said I needed to have fixed. I think the pain is due to them shoving that damn camera back there.

Current Mood: blah

No camera when you need one
While walking with

furtech and his dogs in the arroyo, I slipped going down one of the concrete berms and fell flat on my back. I'm sure it would've looked great on America's Funniest Home Videos. Luckily I didn't hit my head, but I'm at the age where you can't brush off falls any more and I was fortunate to escape with just a sore back. God knows I don't need a broken arm or a concussion right now.

Stuff on FurBuy
Stuff on EBay

Jaspurr has begun picking on Fluffy. I'm not sure if it's due to the two kitten getting older, or some other reason. He doesn't bother Gandalf, although sometimes he'll pick fights with Sugar too. If I see him picking fights I yell at him and chase him away, but I can't be there to do that all the time, and i hope it won't turn into anything more serious. I'm still haunted by

doronjosama 's descriptions of intercat conflict that left one cat so traumatized she wouldn't leave her hiding place even to use the litterbox.

Current Mood: uncomfortable

5 YouTube videos you can watch over and over
Taken from Ruggels and Lyosha.

You know you're getting old when you have such nostalgia for the cartoons of your childhood. But I think this intro (from the early 60's) holds up very well.

Of course I had to put this one down.

Fabulous song, matches the movie clips perfectly. If only they'd used this in the movie...

Perfect music video.

Second perfect music video. Lots of hidden stuff in the backgrounds.

Current Mood: okay

Winos Shall Inherit the Earth
They (the County/City) were giving out free swine flu vaccines down on LA's Skid Row earlier this week.

While I'll be magnanimous and say the homeless don't deserve to get sick and die more than anyone else, yesterday the LA Times had an article about how bad businesses are being hurt by the flu, when workers have to choose between being docked pay for sick days, or coming into work ill and infecting everyone else.

So I'll hesitantly venture that maybe workers (particularly healthcare workers, but anyone who is employed) might get a slight priority over winos, drug addicts and panhandlers. I can just picture the rest of the city getting knocked to it's knees by H1N1, while the winos are still hale and hearty.

That being said, a couple friends suggested I could probably pass for homeless if I wore my rattiest clothing and didn't bathe for a few days (if I don't comb my hair first thing in the morning it looks kind of scary.) While the idea has merits, I wouldn't serious consider it because I don't want to drive or park my car anywhere near that area of town.

Insurence company: "So why was your car broken into again?"
Me: "Umm, I wanted to get a swine flu shot so i went down to skid row and pretended to be homeless so i could get a free shot, and while I was doing that a real homeless person broke into my car."
Insurence company: "..."

I did call the local GP I go to, but they have no H1N1 or seasonal flu shots, and don't know when they're due to get them. So in the meantime I'm just doing a lot of hand-washing.

Current Mood: aggravated

Happy Cows, Various Stuff
There's a bit of an uproar over the the California dairy "Happy Cow" commercials being outsourced to New Zealand. Not even getting into the rediculousness of the commercials themselves (for those who have mercifully not seen them, they feature happy cows in beaucolic fields waxing on how great it is to live in California, and the commercial's tagline is: "Great milk comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California.") Ignoring the real conditions dairy cows are kept under, California has been hit hard by 'runaway productions." Movies, TV and commercials filming elsewhere due to exhorbitant production costs here. Why does it cost so much to film here? One reason is the stranglehold unions have on productions. The same reason animation ended up going overseas. Yeah, having a union job with sky-high pay and fabulous benefits is a real plum deal for those who can get it. For 98% of the rest of the working stiffs, it means businesses and jobs fleeing out of state or out of country to get away, taking jobs with them.

Spent a large portion of today getting EBay and FurBuy stuff ready to list. I got a nice bulk offer on most of the comics and fanzines, so I won't need to list those. I'll post links when those are up later.

I got the new Stephen King book Under the Dome today. Amazon was selling it for $9, so how could I resist? It's a frigging HUGE book. Over 1,000 pages. It looks like a Bible. I'm a little bit intimidated to start something so big, so I'm warming up by reading a short hard-boiled dective story. This is kind of an odd book with furry (mostly cat and dog) characters, but it's done by a mainstream publisher and mainstream author. You can tell this is not a book out of furry fandom, because it's 'cute," with place names like San Bernard and Kathattan, and lots of references to "Fat Cats" and "mangey mutts." This passage should give an idea of the tone of the book:

When he got promoted the chief stopped calling me Crusher. He also stopped eating doodah in the local park. He got braid on his collar and a fancy spread in Baskerville with a back yard big enough to herd sheep. He took a shampoo every week, had a coat trim every month, and got his nails filed every quarter.

I don't know if there's any doggy sex later, but I'll be sure to let you know.

Current Mood: sore

Around the house
Today was

titanic's day off, so I spent the entire day at home first helping to clean the kitchen, then helping to clean the garage and look for EBay stuff. Now i have a ton of shit I'll need to photograph and list, including a bunch of furry comics.
Stuff dug out includes:

4 volumes of the collected Omaha the Cat Dancer
1-4 of Fangs of Kaath (I'm pretty sure I have #5 somewhere.)
full run of Xandu across Diamond seas
Some old Misc. furry fanzines
A San Diego ComiCon program guide from 1988
Some issues of Vampirella from the late 70's early 80's.
A box full of comics (non-furry) from the 70's and 80's. I'm not even sure what's in it.

20 (yes, 20) ear protector muffs from when Dwight was working at LAX
A bunch of computer stuff.
A carrying case for an old Apple computer from the early 90's. (Mac classic?)
A bunch of telephone recievers (God only knows who would want those.)
A box full of Pokemon cards and toys, and various misc. toys I haven't been able to sell over the years.
Some Toy Story 2 promo plastic popcorn buckets.
My BlizzCon badge from 2007.

I have been unable to sell the rest of the laserdiscs even at less than a dollar a disc, so they will probably all go to GoodWill. The exception to that will be the Japanese Song of the South Laserdisc, and probably the complete Jungle Emperor (Kimba) set. But with the price of LDs not even worth the stuff they're printed on, the chance of getting even a small fraction of what it originally cost is doubtful. If it even sells at all.

If anyone is interested in any of this stuff, make me an offer and save me the trouble of having to list it.

I also have half a dozen commissions lined up I'll need to get done by the end of the month in my unending quest to keep up with bills and expenses. I'm plowing through the inks on Ice #6 pretty quickly (up to about page 20) but I'll have to take a week off to get the commissions done.

Tomorrow i also get to go to the dentist for a cleaning. I can't afford it, but I've been having some problems my dental-phobic friends probably don't want me to describe, so I need to at least get it looked at to make sure it doesn't turn into something more serious. Luckily I'm not particularly afraid of the dentist-- it's just an uncomfortable hassle. I have a very small mouth and it's not fun having to have it jammed open for an hour or two. One time they even had to use some kind of a door-stop thing shoved between my teeth to keep it open wide enough. Bleah.

Current Mood: apathetic

My Team
X-posted to FA, but since a lot of you don't go there, I'm sticking it here too. I had a ton of fun picking out the pictures.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: boiling water

Wrong audience
Wrong audience
I got a call from the CalArts alumi association today. It was supposedly to update my contact info, but it was really to solicit 'donation' money from me. Umm...maybe if I wasn't fucking unemployed and still having to pay off my damn student loan I might consider it. I told them to go beg money from some of my classmates that have fabulous jobs and more money than God.

You get what you pay for.
I needed to get some new brushes to ink with. I went with the cheaper ones, which are already splitting after 15 pages. On the other hand, my old Windsor-Newtons are still working perfectly, as long as I wash them with brush soap a couple times a day. I guess in this case you do get what you pay for.

Get the damn vaccine
Someone on my LJ friends list is in the hospital with H1N1. He's been in for over a week and is on a resperator and is in very grave condition. Everyone who thinks the shots are dangerous should read what he's gone through in the past week.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: TV commercials

Confusion
I was recently given a copy of the Dec. 2009 Realms of Fantasy magazine. Not something I normally get, because i (generally) don't like reading short stories. But a freebe, sure...

Anyhow, it also had a lot of ads for various books, both pro and self-published. Now I'm aware writing a blurb for a book is tricky, but you know a book is going to be trouble when the blurb sounds confusing! Witness: (copied verbatum, including the spacings.)

Maggie Roche is an out-of-work poet and single mother. Spied on by a cyborged rat, attacked, drugged into panic and rapture, seduced, drawn into conspiracy, she's flung four thousand years into her own future. In the alien world of the Ull- Upload Lifeform Lords who are human-machine hybrids of overwhelming power-she learns that she is history's first true time traveler, hunted by friend and foe to the end of time. The entire future of the cosmos will be reset by these terrifying events.

That blurb would make me run for the hills. If the blurb sounds confusing and is difficult to get through, imagine what the book is like!

I've given some thought to a blurb/brief intro to my own book, in case i need to start sending out query letters to publishers. Most books can be summarized by a single sentence. So summary #1:

A griffin's search for his missing daughter inadvertently leads him to a conspiracy that threatens his entire world.

But for a query you're generally supposed to summarize the story in a paragraph or so. Ironicly, the more leeway you're given, the harder it is to distill the important elements down. So summary #2 would be something like this:

When Griffin Ranger Harrell White-shoulders' daughter Aera, along with four of her friends, vanishes without a trace, he is pulled from his familiar partrol to find her. Accompanied by an extoic Griffin investigator and an inexperienced assistant, Harrell's search leads him across the continent to an isolated town on the southern plains. There he uncovers a secret so devistating those hiding it will go to any lengths to keep him from telling what he knows, including killing everyone he loves.

Even that is a little more abbreviated than it needs to be, but generally less is more.

And of course there's the good blurb that leads me to buy a book that ends up being sucky, but that's a whole other post.

Current Mood: working
Current Music: Howard Stern

Whiney Muse, South Park

ruggels was over yesterday, and said that someone had complained that the new Muse CD was 'whiney.'

To which I say "duh!!" Matt Bellamy has been known to sing entire songs in falsetto. This isn't exactly a CD that manly men would listen to in order to raise their testosterone level. (what is manly man music? Tom Waits? Rappers singing about bitches and 'hos?)

Did anyone see the new Southpark, where they make fun of the Animal Planet show Whale Wars? While I sympthaize with their cause, I've watched the show a few times, and it is kind of stupid. So not only did Southpark skewer the captain of the Whale Wars show (literally) they also went after the Japanese tradition of stabbing dolphins to death with spears. The show won't make as much sense if you're unfamiliar with Whale Wars or the recent documentary about the Japanese dolphin slaughter, but it's a real hoot if you do know the material.

Current Mood: complacent