Martes' Journal

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Book review: Fragment
Some spoilers alert.

The book I picked up to read on my trip was Fragment. It looked like a quick popcorn read, and that's exactly what it was. Another book that doesn't really waste time with character or plot development, and has none of that annoying backstory. It's pretty much all action, all the time.

It has an interesting (if very implausable) premise: A tiny fragment of the supercontinent that exisited around the time of the Cambrian Explosion, Rodinia, still exists and has been isolated in the middle of the Pacific ever since then. They explain the fact that it hasn't been eroded away in 700 million years because "the land under it was upthrusting faster than it was being eroded." When the book was talking about ancient supercontinents I kept thinking of the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns puts down his birthplace as Pangea.

After a brief prologue where a hapless 18th century British boat has some of it's members eaten by monsters on the island, called Henders Island, the action switches to present-day. A reality TV Show called Sealife is filming nearby Henders and inexplicably gets a distress call from the Island. Except for the (prerequisite gorgeous, and single,) lady scientist and a daring cameraman, every one of the landing party is eaten by creatures on the Island before they get 50 yards. Following the live broadcast of everyone getting eaten, the government quickly quarentines the island.

The next chunk of the book is taken up by scentists studying the island's biology and the various characters manuvering for thier own agendas. Most of the critters on the island are variations on furry mantis shrimps, including things the size of an SUV and a freshwater lake mantis shrimp that's the size of a truck. All this on an island about 2 miles in diameter. All the plants aren't really plants, but also alive. There's also something called 'disc-ants,' wheel-shaped creatures that are multi-generational colonies. If you're unfortunate enough to get hit with one, microscopic-sized larva will swarm in the wound and basicly dissolve the victim. Everything on the island is a mindless eating machine, plus hermaphrodites with an incredible rate of reproduction.

After many characters get eaten, the government decides to nuke the island to prevent the creatures from being used as terrorist weapons.

Various characters include:
The gorgeous female scientist who has been unable to find true love.
A young black professor who seems to be book's Stephen J. Gould character.
The female producer of the reality TV show who will do anything to get the big scoop.
A daring & athletic cameraman.
And the villian, a very sleazy scientist who wrote a popular book about how intelligent life will always be incompatable with it's enviroment. We know the guy is sleazy because he's a public vegitarian but eats steaks in private, and arranges for his illegitimate son to drown so he won't have to pay child support.

After Henders Island is schedualed to be nuked, a survivor from the reality TV massacre unexpectedly resurfaces, having been saved by the one sentient creature on the island, who he names Hender. Sort of a six-limbed, furry spider/mantis shrimp. There's only 4 "Henders" on the island, something that's not entirely explained, except that the creatures are essesntially immortal and don't need to reproduce. The last half of the book is a race to save Henders from being nuked. Their efforts are undermined by religious fanatics who see Henders as an affront to God, and the sleazy scientist, who thinks he won't win any awards if his book on intelligent life is discredited by Henders.

As I said, the book has an interesting premise, if you can overlook the implausibility of it. There's also some illustrations of the creatures (but none, interestingly, of Henders.). It would be interesting to see some Wayne Barlowe art of these critters. Don't look for a deep, thoughtful tome here, but a quick breezy read.

Current Mood: thoughtful

AnthroCon 2009
( Here's my con report )

To Cleveland:

I usually choose flights that leave at gawd-awful early morning hours. Since it’s a good idea to get to LAX about two hours before your flight (in anticipation of huge lines at the ticket counter and at security) I had to get up for my 7AM flight at 4 AM. At least that means I’ll get to Cleveland so tired I won’t have that much trouble with the 3-hour time difference.

Rain

It was raining when I arrived (causing some nasty turbulence on landing) and it rained most of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Since rain is so rare in SoCal this time of year I didn’t mind. Everything was very very green and lush—it really drives home how much of a barren, sun-blasted desert LA really is. Went for a walk in one of the local parks with my mother and saw an indigo bunting, big frogs, chipping sparrows, and some other stuff I’ve forgotton. There’s also a bird feeder in her back yard, and I saw lots of blue jays, cardinals, chickadees and a red-breasted nuthatch. Also tons of chipmunks. I kept thinking how much the kitties would love it there

Hotel

Thursday morning I left fairly early (driving my mother’s new Toyota Yaris) in order to get parking at the hotel, and get a roll-away bed before they sold out. I ran into some rather heavy rain between Cleveland and Pittsburg, but nothing I couldn’t handle. At least in the Midwest people drive a normal speed in heavy rain.

I was able to get to the hotel in time for parking and to get a roll-away. I was on the 15^th floor, which meant the stairs were out of the question unless I wanted to give myself a heart attack. But hopefully it also meant no noisy parties. (yeah, that really worked out! Hah hah hah.)

calicougarand

mistahbojangles arrived a few hours after me. Luckily my mother’s friend Lou loaned me a dolly, so we were able to get everything up to the room in one trip. AC also had the dealer’s room open for checkin and set-up, so we schlepped everything over on the cart later on. They also had the art show open for set-up that night, which was wonderful (no getting up early the next morning!) I had too much art for my single panel, but the show staff was very very helpful and I was able to get 2 extra panels.

Dealer’s Room

This year the dealer’s room and art show moved one hall over, so the dealer’s area was ginormous. It also included the art show and artist’s alley.

Good side: tons of room in the aisles and behind the tables.

Bad side: tons of dealers competing for the same money =relatively low sales for everyone.

Sales were ‘ok’ for me. As usual I actually pulled in about half my money from con drawings (a huge thanks to everyone who commissioned me there.) But for some reason the sketches completely dried up late Saturday. I have no idea if people thought I was booked up and didn’t bother coming by, or if they were out of money, or if people simply didn’t want to hire me over all the other people there.

The dealer next to me was a very nice and quiet young lady. For some reason she was singled out by an effeminate black guy to do an extremely complicated drawing, and he kept checking back on her progress every half hour (and the drawing took all day Friday and part of the day Saturday.) Beyond that commission from hell, she didn’t seem to do much business, so I know I did better than at least one person.

This year I had a BIG problem with people standing at the table, reading a whole comic, then wandering off without buying it. After the third time this happened, after a person read through a entire book, then picked up another one to start reading it from the beginning, I finally snapped and told him if he’s planning to read all 50 pages, he damn well better buy it. He actually did (the book was a whole $5.00. Wow!) then scurried off, and I didn’t see him again. I hate being nasty to people who might buy something, but I’m learning to tell the difference between the readers and the buyers. For FurtherConfusion, look for a big standee of Apu saying: “This is not a lending library!”

Pup-party

Thursday night we all went to bed by 11, mainly because Brian was exhausted from traveling. Friday night we had problems. There was something called a Pup-party directly across the hall from us. It seemed to involve people gathering in a room and yipping to each other. There were also a lot of slamming doors and loud voices. At one point Tracy heard someone shout: “I can’t find my master!!” By midnight we were unsuccessfully trying to get to sleep. Then we had to figure out who was going to crawl out of bed and call hotel security. Apparently someone beat us to it, because before we’d decided who was going to do the deed we heard pounding on the door and hotel security telling them to cool it. It got quiet enough for us to fall asleep, only to be woken (out of a sound sleep) at 4 AM by a group of (probably intoxicated) people shouting at each other in the hallway. This time Brian got the honor of getting out of bed to chase them away.

Art show

Unfortunately I won’t be able to do my extensive art show review. I was stuck behind my table 90% of the time, and unable to thoroughly peruse the show and take notes. However, there is some stuff I remember:

Most offensive—a toss-up between a picture with two boys that looked about 10 years old (with huge wangs, of course) or a lesbian picture of a Nazi officer forcing a Jewish prisioner (complete with Star of David) to perform a sex act. Honorable mention goes to a RogMinotar pic (in glorious close-up detail) of some guy shoving a bunch of fingers up another guy’s butthole. I also really wish Blotch would do some straight art for a change.

Good stuff: There was a beautiful black cat head—pretty much the only time I’ve seen a fursuit head that I would have actually worn. Lovely art from Hibbary Surprized to see some art from Huskee in the show. The Goldenwolf prints still doing well, although I don’t think anyone bought her originals.

Much kudos to the artshow staff. I got in and out quickly and efficiently, and they went above and beyond helping me get my extra panels.

Food

I brought most of my own food this time, partly as a money-saving measure, and partly so I wouldn’t have to run around looking for a place to eat. I did have a very nice dinner Friday at the fish place With lunden_otter film2edit + Tracy and Brian. Saturday I didn’t feel like going out, so I grabbed a menu of an Italian place that delivered, and had dinner in the room with xianjaguar and vulpes_rex . That food was really, really good (it gave me bad heartburn, but it was worth it.). Sunday was a food bust. McDonald’s managed to fuck up their breakfast (too dry and crumbly), and then I went to a local sandwich place for lunch. There were 50 million people in there, and the pizza was nasty. Next year, bring more bologna.

“That’s a man, baby!”

The freak factor at this con was pretty high. An ambulance had to visit the hotel at least once. Tracy saw a guy with a bleeding gash on his arm in the elevator, making no attempt to cover it or staunch the bleeding. I was stuck in line waiting for the elevator in front of an obese man wearing a leather kilt and a tank top that smelled really bad. Thank God he got tired of waiting and wandered off. I saw a guy lying on the sidewalk near the hotel being poked at by the police. I have no idea if he was hit by a car, passed out drunk, or something else had happened. The hotel had to institute a maid-check every 24 hours due to people completely trashing their rooms. In the same line with the smelly guy was a girl laughing at all the freaks, while she had teeth that looked like they came out of Deliverance.

The dealer’s room floor had a goodly number of transvestites, transsexuals, or just plain sexually ambigious persons. While it’s a free country and people can dress however they want, sometimes you just gotta gracefully accept the hand nature has dealt you, and if you’re 6 foot 5 and look like Walter Cronkite, wearing a dress, heels and a wig just ain’t gonna work.

The majority of the other con-goers seemed split between older (usually obese) fans, and young, underweight, flouncy gay men that were more interested in scritching and hugging than buying anything.

The old standby Bondage Bob (now wearing a badge that says “Tiger”) was there. He stopped by my table several times, said he supported my work and wished me success, but didn’t buy anything. He also said he wanted to see Judge Dread shoot Salem in the head.

The other very odd thing that happened was Steve Martin waving me over to his table and launching into a pitch for (him) doing a Salem tribute comic. That was so far out of left field I had no idea what to say, other than to ask him to send me a script. He asked me to send him the Jack Salem ‘bible.’ Just for the record, there is none. I have it locked in my ratty mind. If he wants to know about the universe and characters, read the books. It’s all in there. Since I’ve heard his current work ethic is less than stellar, I’m not expecting anything this century, so that leaves me to puzzle why he would even consider doing such a project. His motivation is usually money, but if he thinks *I’m* making tons of money from my work, he’s sadly mistaken.

Grebe!

Inside joke to calicougar: Greeebe!! Grebe in mating plumage!

Miscellany

Saturday night I went over to the convention center and watched 4^th of July fireworks from one of the balconies. I had a great view, both of the fireworks and of the hundred or so boats in the river below. Very cool.

I read an interesting book called Fragment. Kind of dumb, but with an interesting premise. Expect an extensive review tomorrow.

Loot: Heat #6 and X from Sofawolf. Heathen City #2 and David Hopkin’s Sketchbook from FurPlanet. A copy of the Lackadaisy Cats graphic novel. The two Extinctioners previews and two portfolios from Ebonyleopard. Jazmyn from Bernard Doove. A few other things I don’t recall. Radio Comixs was sorely missed. Tracy got a cool graphic novel called Seaweed, by one of the GOH’s, but at $30 was too rich for me to justify getting.

Lost

Sunday traveling did not go well. I had trouble getting out of the hotel parkinglot because I accidently left my ticket in the machine (Thank God no one took it until I’d realized what I’d done and went back to get it.) I got lost trying to get out of Pittsburg because I didn’t know that 560 turned into 760 (I know freeway # are wrong, but you get the jist.) and drove around for 20 minutes looking for 760 until I finally went back to the hotel and asked the valet for directions. When I got close to Cleveland I ended up in Parma, due to the fact that there are two streets with the same name, and Mapquest gave me the wrong street. So it took a phone call to my mom’s place in order to get directions back to the right road. When I finally got within a couple miles I kept missing the right street, until I found it be process of elimination. By the end of the day I was sure I was either losing my mind or suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s.

The longest night

My flight back to LA left at 9 PM Monday. I usually don’t like to take such late flights, but it was the only one available Monday. The flight was packed like sardines, there were people with tuberculosis coughs, and I was in the aisle right by the exit where the seats won’t lean back. Imagine a 5 hour flight that lasts until 1 AM with no leaning back seat. I ended up using a box of soup as a pillow to keep my head from banging on the side of the airplane while I tried to sleep.

I didn’t get into LA until after 11 PM (PST), and didn’t get home until 12:30 (3:30 AM EST). But did I get sleep? Nope. Gandalf and Fluffy were so excited to see me they spent the next hour wrestling on the bed, and using my body as a springboard to pounce on each other. Sugar got angry and began hissing and growling at them. Every time I tossed them out of the room they came back in, and Gandalf would attack my feet. If I tried to block my door they’d bang on it and meow. Somehow after an hour of that they managed to wear themselves out and I finally got to sleep. Then I had some really weird-ass dreams about taking a vacation to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, with zrath and some other fans, and getting lost on the tourist bus.

Current Mood: drained
Current Music: KFI radio

Pre-Con stuff
Continues to be hideously hot here. Like, don't want to go out during the day, horribly uncomfortable and sweaty at night hot. Yes, we have AC, and no, we don't use it due to how expensive it is. Luckily the house usually doesn't start heating up until later in the day.

Gandalf began eating again as mysteriously as he stopped, and managed to add half a pound in a day. We still have no clue what was wrong or what caused it. He still seems to prefer crunchies to wet food, which is fine, as long as he eats a healthy amount.

To add insult to injury, for some reason the cats decided to keep me awake for a good part of the night. First Gandalf and Fluffy were wrestling on the bed and bothering Sugar, who would hiss at them. Later Jaspurr came in and walked all over my face and chest because he wanted me to let him out back. If I threw him out of the room he'd meow and bang on my door. Eventually I put in earplugs and managed to fall alseep.

Tomorrow...the joys of LAX (long lines, fifty billion people, crammed into an airplane like sardines, no decent food, and they won't let you bring your own sodas.)

I managed to whip up half a dozen of those ACEO cards; the first I've tried. How much does one charge for these things? I did full-color, finished peices.

Still need to do:

Mat artwork and make out paperwork.
Make up packing list
Make up pet & lawn care list for

titanic
finish laundry
Print out packing list, sales sheet and pet care sheet
Pack

Luckily my mother said my two packages of books and cat cards arrived, so I won't need to pay extra for a second or overwieght bag.

I will be in touch with the pertinant people with my cellphone # and schedual.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Music: KFI Radio

Where were you?
Yanked (and expanded) from a

matthigh . Inspired by the death of MJ, of course. X-posted to my FA Journal.

1. Where were you when the space shuttle exploded?

At home (Cleveland). It was working on chapter 5 of Jet, and had school (Cleveland art inst.) later in the day. I was listening to the radio and heard the announcement. My brother was upstairs alseep, so I went and woke him up and we watched it on TV.

2. Where were you when the Twin Towers in NY fell?

At home alseep. No one bothered to call me, and it was over by the time I turned on the radio (Howard Stern) and heard him talking about it. Remember 3 hour east/west time lag.

3. Where were you when Reagan was shot?

High School.

4. Where were you when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait?

Don't know.

5. Where were you when the OJ car chase was going on?

At work.(Vortex) Everyone at the office watched it on the TV.

6. Where were you when the earthquake/tsunami struck Sumatra/Thailand/etc?

In Cleveland for Christmas.

7. Where were you when the World Series Earthquake occurred?

At work. (Phillips)

8. Where were you when the Branch Davidian compound burned?

At work (Phillips)

9. Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?
Not a clue.

10. Where were you when the LA riots started?

At work. This I remember clearly, because we could see the fires burning from the roof of our building.

11. Where were you when Princess Di...died?

At home (Los Angeles.) My mother was in town visiting and we both saw the announcement.

12. Where were you during the Oklahoma City Bombing?

In Cleveland getting my marriage license!

13. Where were you when John Lennon was killed?

At home (Cleveland). I even remember I was sitting watching the old black and white TV in my mother's room. They had a news "crawler" on the screen announcing it.

Current Mood: nostalgic

Various Stuff
Just a couple more days until I'm supposed to leave for AC. My usual pre-trip anxiety has taken the form of obsessing about things not directly related to the trip. I really wish I could just go on a trip without having to go through weeks of alternating severe anxiety and depression beforehand. I go through this every single fucking year, and I hate it, but it's something I just have to endure if i want to go anywhere more than a day's drive away. This is why I don't try to get to more out-of-area conventions. It's bad enough having to go through this once or twice a year (depending on if i fly to visit mom or dad as well as go to AC), without adding more cons on top of it.

One of the things I've been worrying about is Gandalf (the tuxedo kitten). His behavior has taken an odd turn this week where he seems to have mostly lost interest in eating. he's never been a chow-hound like Fluffy, but this week he seemed to stop eating altogether, and would just walk away from his food. But he doesn't seem to be sick or in any distress; he still plays and drinks water and acts perfectly normal-- he's just not eating. At this point Fluffy outweighs him by more than a pound, and Gandalf is looking very skinny. Today and yesterday I saw him eating some dry food, but he still has no interest in the canned stuff. The vet said to try and get a stool sample, but with 4 cats it's hard to tell who's poop is who's. I did once have a cat that would eat only dry food, but she ate plenty of it and wasn't skinny like this. It's very odd, and of course I'm worrying excessivly about it.

Summer is in full swing and it's been very hot here the past few days.

I'm still hoping to get a few of those artist cards done to put in the art show. For the past few days I've been doing some long-overdue pencil work on another Dave Hopkin's project, but i should be done with that today, and hopefully can squeeze in a few of those cards between now and the con.

Also worried about con sales, due to the crappy economy and the humongous dealer's room (huge dealer's room usually = sales thin for everyone due to people's buying dollar being stretched between dozens of dealers.) But I'm hoping if I'm diligent about working I can make some buxs.

Current Mood: anxious
Current Music: a frying hamburger (lunch)

MJ quick thoughts
I'm kind of skeptical of the 'heart attack' scenario. While it's not unknown for someone that age to keel over from a 'widow-maker' sudden coronary event, I'd also heard that he'd had a thorough physical recently as part of his agreement to do those concerts in England. Unless they falsified the results (which is certainly possible) they didn't find any lethal coronary disease.

I think the COD will probably turn out to be perscription drugs, probably accidental. I was expecting him to off himself back during the trial-- if he didn't do it then, he probably didn't do it now.

The one good thing out of it is hopefully those kids will go to their mother, or someone who will be able to give them a reasonably normal life. If they're not irreperably damaged already.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Cat Trials
Joys of pet ownership: Fluffy eats so fast at breakfast he promptly vomits everything up in another food dish. At least it wasn't on the carpet.

Jaspurr keeps meowing to go out the front door. If he gets out the front door, he promptly jumps over the front wall and takes off down the street. God forbid he actually be content with the run of the back yard.

Last time I went to the dr. I was given a perscription, and now I can't find it. Probably one of those cases where I was planning to 'put it in a safe place,' and then forgot where that was. Now i have to call the dr. back and hope they'll be willing to phone the perscription in.

Current Mood: annoyed

Kitty Prison

Since I've gotten a few questions, this is the company that i got the kitty prison from. The brocure should give a pretty good idea of what it looks like installed.

What i would like to do in that mythical time when I'm financially solvent again, is to get some outdoor cat furnature, so they can climb and look into the neighbor's yards and into the back field. I really like this one.

If I had any kind of handyman bent I'd try to construct some kind of A-frame climbing platform, but since I can barely hammer a nail in straight there's not much chance of that.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: KFI News

Various Stuff
I have to laugh that the artwork I've been posting on FA that seems to get the most comments, views and favs are the various vore commissions I've done recently. It's a particular sub-set of furry I really don't get, but I don't have a problem with it either. And I guess I must be doing it well, to get so many favs!

I'm reading a book where the author has taken info-dumping to a new level. I'm less than 100 pages into it (and it's a short book, less than 300 pages) and I've already gone through at least 4 multi-page info-dumps. It's really too bad, because otherwise it's a decent book, but the author seriously needs to find another way of getting information across. So far I've been treated to the story stopping dead so the main character can explain the history (background) of the setting, religion, his own history, and the history of his species. There's also been lesser (less than 2 pages) dumps on the backgrounds of other characters as they're introduced. And this is a pro book by a major publisher.

This is actually a book that was written in 1992 and I've had sitting around the house in my 'to read' stack for quite a while (not since '92, but nearly as long). Maybe I'll look on Amazon if the guy ever wrote anything else, and if he got any better about those info-dumps.

Current Mood: curious

Music, EFBC
Muse announced the date for their next studio album as Sept. 14. I will be waiting on pins and needles for that. Hopefully they'll release a couple of singles before then.

I also read that Jeff Lynne is finally doing a follow-up to his Armchair Theater solo album, to be released 'sometime later this year.' It will be curious to see what this one sounds like, since George Harrisson, who played on Armchair Theater, Traveling Wilburys and Zoom, is dead.

Me and

titanic went to the EFBC (a wild cat sanctuary/breeding center up by Lancaster/Edwards Airforce Base.) Twilight Tour yesterday evening. Unfortunately it was very very windy, and a lot of the cats were not out because of that. The wind was so bad on the freeway in spots it was tricky controlling the car. The Geoffrey's cat was out pacing around, and I did see one of the Pallas' cats huddled outside it's concrete pipe. It is very pretty, if desolate, up there, so even though it wasn't a fabulous time I didn't regret going. One nice thing about the Twilight Tour is they don't allow children, so at least i didn't have to contend with that. The food (prepared and served by the Rotary Club) was kind of awful, so i had to still fix dinner when i got home.

titanic was complaining about how bad the lemonade was when an older woman seated near us chimed in with an agreement. I just had water, myself.

Current Mood: bored

The Dead Lizard that would Not Die
Someone (it's a toss-up who, but probably Sugar or Jaspurr) killed one of the common fence lizards we have here. Gandalf discovered the body and has been carrying it around and playing with it for two days. It's been well over 100 degrees for the past couple of days, and by now not only is the lizard body mangled, it also smells. Today Gandalf has brought it in the house 3 times. If I see him with it again, I'm burying it in the garden. Blah.

Current Mood: hot

Art
For those who don't frequent FA, I put up a fairly elaborate cast picture from The City of Ice. That is here. I will also be posting more finished commissions shortly.

I can has hate speech?
Someone went around the parking lot of the local grocery store putting anti-gay fliers on car windows. And here I thought only resteraunts and politicians did that. It was specificly targeted at California residents, warning that "homosexual billionaires" have given millions to stop Prop 8 because "They knew if California went gay they could expect the rest of the United States to go homosexual also!"

It was a little more articulate than most of the anti-gay scrails, and the author gets a nod for never mentioning "think of the children" or God once, although he does go on about "Traditional Californians" and "our community." The real give-away to the source, however, is the statement that Europe emerged from the Dark Ages "through the principals of Christianity." Obviously someone didn't do any reading on European history, or they would have learned that it wasn't until Europe threw off the absolute iron grip of the church that it began to move out of the dark ages.

I'm not terribly surprized at this, since I would see pro-prop 8 people picketing on the corners here, although their specific affiliation is unknown (I suspect Mormons, since there's plenty of them here. Probably not Catholics, since most of the ones here are Mexican. Possibly generic fundimentalist Christian.) Whoever it was, I think the 51% victory margin on Prop 8 was very worrying, and they're trying to jump the gun on the next election.

Here we go again!

Current Mood: grumpy
Current Music: John & Ken Show

Various Stuff
The heavy fog and marine layer that has been holding on for most of last week is finally gone, so we're into the normal 80 or 90-ish temps and sun during the day.

Continuing to plod through my pre-AC commissions; should be done with them in the next few days. I'll be doing an art dump with the ones I can post probably over the weekend.

The wife of the elderly couple that adpoted Shawn and Bogey likes to write letters, so I got a couple brief letters from her this week. The kittens seem to be doing OK, but I still get sad when I think about them so I just try and keep it out of my mind. Now let's see if I can get my act together enough to actually send her a postcard back.

Looking forward to the AC trip, even as I have my usual traveling anxiety. I've become much too house-bound. I've (for the most part) stopped taking day-trips, partly to save on gas money and partly to save wear-and-tear on the car. I don't want to become one of those people afraid to leave the house, but I already find myself having problems with that, like anxiety whether I've locked the door or forgotten to turn off appliances.

When I was at the post office the other day I nearly ran over a woman carring a baby when she stepped out from behind an SUV . Scared the poop out of me. Hopefully it scared her just as bad and she'll now start to look before she wanders out into traffic lanes.

While going through a bunch of boxes in the garage yesterday, I found my ancient Phillips interactive CD machine, plus a bunch of the games. They gave one to all the employees way back when. There's apparently people who like to collect dead technology, so up on EBay it goes. Another thing for me to feel sad/nostalgic about...when i was working there that was the most financially solvent time of my life. i had tons of money, a good job and health insurence. Is it impossible to hope I'll ever be in that situation again?

Hope i can find a good book to read on the flight. decent reading has been pretty sparse recently.

I saw a job on Craigslist that seemed to fit my skills. Unfortunately it's out in Riverside...

Current Mood: blah
Current Music: Howard Stern

Weekend wrap-up
I had my first pre-con anxiety dream this morning. Rather than the usual one of not having my art ready for the show, I instead had one where I was unable to get to the airport on time, and then couldn't find the counter I was supposed to check in at. I guess because I'm not really doing any art specificly for the show this time around, I don't have that to worry about.

Went to see UP with

ruggels yesterday. We watched the 3D showing, and while the 3D wasn't bad or anything, after a while I ceased to notice the effect. Not sure if that's bad or good. The movie itself was a lot of fun, if you didn't worry about the physics of it too much (could a house take the strain of floating like that? If all the cords were attached to one anchor point, wouldn't it break? And what about Air traffic Control?) But if you don't think about stuff like that, it is a great movie. The dogs were wonderful.

The one low point was the idiot teenagers sitting next to us, one of whom was compelled to asnwer his cellphone in the middle of the film, and spend 5 minutes telling whoever it was he was in a movie. I guess he never heard of "I can't talk now, call you later, goodbye." I was also perturbed by the amount of people who immediately pulled out their phones and started texting as soon as the movie ended. Unless you're a doctor or a judge, I can't imagine they had anything so important to say that it had to be said instantly.

Bogie and Shawn went to a new home Saturday. As usual I made a fool out of myself and cried the entire time I was with the people adopting them. Because this year has been an unrelenting assault of stress, depression and anxiety, I'm starting to cry at the drop of a hat any more. It's pretty disconcerting. I think I made the people feel bad for taking them.

The LA Lakers won the championship yesterday, and as per usual the 'fans' went out an rioted downtown, vandalizing stuff, rocking cars and generally making a nuisance of themselves until the riot police moved in. Makes me glad we don't have a football team any more.

I finally got around to posting the old Rowrbrazzles and RaLV cards. They are here if you're interested.

Current Mood: sad

Surprize find
A couple interesting things turned up in the garage this week. I found a bunch of sealed (and a bunch opened) decks from the Rage Across Las Vegas card game. It was supposed to be the sucessor to the original Rage game, but game mechanics that were even more convoluted than the original game doomed it.

I also found an old shopping bag full of Rowrbrazzle issues circa 1999-2000. I have no clue where these came from or why i have them, since i was not a member of Rowrbrazzle at that time. Even more bizarre, the some of the issues are not complete (missing one of the 4 sections). Well, in any event, both the cards and the Rowrbrazzles will be going up on EBay Friday. I will post a link when i have them listed.

Mixed in with the magazines i found a copy of the Bronzebear Media catalogue, winter 2000. This was supposed to fill the void left when Ed Zolna originally retired from the mail-order business, and I think it lasted a couple years before quietly dying. The two current mail-order houses are Rabbit Valley (which originally took over from Ed Zolna) and the ressurected Ed Zolna mailorder site. Unfortunately, there's little in the way of decent hardcopy material being published any more, so i have no idea how those places are doing money-wise.

Current Mood: surprised

Seperated at birth

Does anyone else think Phil Specter without his wig looks a lot like Gollum?

Current Mood: amused

More Kitten pics + misc stuff

The past two days have been very cloudy and cool. Nice because the lawn isn't getting baked, but kind of weird, because it feels like November in Ohio.

At Sepulvida Dam today i saw a raven raid an oriole nest and eat a chick. The parents (+ another bird, maybe a 'helper' from a previous brood) put up a vigorous defense, and finally drove the raven off after it ate one chick. At one point one of the orioles landed on the raven's back as it was flying and began ripping out feathers.

When people post those "ask me anything" memes, if I ever ask anything, it's invariably stuff people don't want to answer. I guess I've listened to too many Howard Stern interviews, because instead of the fluff questions (what's your favorite color/food/whatever, which no one really gives a shit about) I ask the utterly tactless (but interesting) stuff. On the other hand, there's tons of stuff i sure as hell am not planning to talk about publicly, and for that reason I will not post one of those "ask me anything" memes.

For various reasons (partly trouble coordinating with the Cat clinic) we did not take the two babies in this week. However, it looks like we won't need to, because a couple of the clinic's customers are looking for a pair of kittens, so Bogey and Shawn should be going to their new home Saturday.

Here's a bunch of recent pics:

Left: Gandalf and Shawn out back. This picture makes them look much larger than they actually are.

Right: Shawn mountain-climbing my leg. Yes, I realize the carpet is a mess. We will be getting it shampooed when we're down to our final four cats.

Left: A very wonderful person sent us some money to buy catfood with. So here is Shawn in front of all the catfood I got with those funds today. He says a big "Thank you" to the one who helps keep him fed. And believe me, these guys eat a ton.

Right: Bogey inside the cat condo in the garage.

Left: Shawn, Bogey (with demon eyes) and part of Fluffy, in the nest on top of the kitty tree.

Right: Fluffy hanging his head off the side of the kitty condo.

Current Mood: blah

A Scare
I came home from running some errands and couldn't find Shawn. Both him and Gandalf have learned to get out through the cat door into the back yard. they can't get out of the yard due to the kitten jail, but we also have a resident pair of red tailed hawks that I see all the time on the power pole out back. I know the hawk's usual prey is ground squirrels, gophers and rats, but I think a 3 pound kitten is still in danger. Usually I sit outside when the babies are out, but I didn't bother to close the cat door because they were both sleeping inside when I left.

After a half hour of worrying Shawn turned up sleeping in my room, but from now on i will be more diligent about locking the cat door when I go out.

Spending most of my art time working on various commissions, with priority given to the ones that are going to be delivered at AC. Some of these pics look very nice, and i'll be posting links to them when they're done and up on FA.

Current Mood: relieved

Various Stuff
I had to blow CaliFur off completely this time around, due to: No money, no gas, a bunch of crap I need to do around the house, most of the people I wanted to see are not going to be there, two of the babies are going to the adoption center tomorrow and i wanted to spend a last full day with them, and lastly but definitely not least--

titanic took the car.

The Gabble Ratchet show last night was pretty good. This was the "Selling England by the Pound" show, where they played the whole album from start to finish. I was very amused when the lead singer came out dressed in a vintage 1973 outfit (complete with striped bell bottoms.) The show had some equipment glitches (the keyboard player's microphone kept falling down, and there were some speaker feedback issues during one of the numbers.) But overall it was very professional and well put together. After the Selling England set they played another set of misc. songs, including The Lamia, One for the Vine (yay!), Can-Utility and the Coastliners, and An Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers/ In the Quiet Earth/ Afterglow. The musical arrangement for Unquiet Slumber was so complicated they didn't quite have it perfect yet, but who cares? It's not like Genesis themselves is ever going to play it in concert. Now my world will be complete if they can add Blood on the Rooftops at the next show.

They had a printed program for this show, which was an annoted article written about a lot of the (British) cultural things in Selling England, which would go over the heads of 99% of us Yanks. So it was interesting to see the depth and multiple meanings in a lot of the lyrics.

As mentioned above, two of the babies are going to the vet clinic's adoption center tomorrow. It's going to kill me to do it, but there's not much of an option. 6 cats in a small house is too many, and they're already going through a ton of catfood, not to mention trying to keep litterboxes clean for 6 kitties, or inter-cat conflicts as they get older.

When I asked the vet how old they had to be before they were 'tutored,' she didn't even bat an eye. I guess that euphenism has entered the public lexicon. At least for people who used to read The Far Side.

Current Mood: hot