only tuesday

Hell. It was one of those days where everything started happening before I'd got a chance to feel my eyes open, to breathe the air of today. And a difficult day to get started on the things needing to be done; namely because I didn't want to get started. But all went well and here I sit slugging through some of the less interesting bits.
I had so many words in my head earlier today. Good ones, I mean. They've gone.

The end result of last evening did not follow the plan of last evening.

To my great surprise one of the networks began a series tonight called "Empire," in which the rise of Octavian (Augustus as he would later be known) is followed, complete with the dramatic insertion of a fictional ex-gladiator as his protector after the murder of Julius. Why do they do that shit? As if the history of the Roman Empire just wasn't goddamn interesting enough or had too few dramatic figures in the non-fictional telling of it.
Wankers.

saturday

Three things today: invitation, painting and poster.
minor: digitzation of cds for the electroPod, grocery shopping, morning pages.

painting in sunshine makes such a difference.

The show on the Science Channel™ entitled "Hot Rocks: Geology of Civilization" is a new favorite; an example of the potential of consilience within the sciences- social and natural. The two are inextricably linked, and the overriding tendency to teach them in alienation serves only to mislead, or at the very least to paint a very incomplete picture.

summer speeds quickly past.

graphic noise

Got the news yesterday: electrofork posters shall be included in the Museum of Design Atlanta "graphic Noise" show. Cool. So that makes it one proper gallery and a southern leg of the Smithsonian™ in one summer. Perhaps this signifies the start of my gradual weaning off the work-for-hire circuit of freelance design. Oh I hope so.
:: must paint more ::

but for now, back to logo designing and Gorillaz™ listening.

new site

the boy with echolocation powers

Though I'm late in the telling here, the *spankin' new* electrofork site is up and running. I was planning on spamming all of my email contacts but have thus far been, at turns, too busy or too lazy to do so. There's always time. I only spam about once a year so another week or two can't hurt. If you're seeing this page having not linked from electrofork,, go there now.

In other news, I finished the above piece of artwork for the Echolocation project by Canopic yesterday afternoon. More info to come on that, I'm sure. While I'm linking, here's the blog of Allan Lorde- fellow illustrator and gig poster designer, who kindly linked to my blog today.

Hmmm.... blank. There will be more paintings soon, but I will probably post them at electrofork where they more rightly belong. Mean time, I will try not to be so neglectful of this, my dubious online presence known as blog.

6 x 6

So, kevin and i worked away at converting the inner frame of the Holga™ from 6 x 4.5 to 6 x 6 yesterday. It takes way too many scores with the blade, and took awhile for kevin to get the replacement baffles to fit properly, but with luck the resulting images will be even more interesting. I need to shoot a test roll to see if any further mods will be needed.

sink

washing dishes- the sink was filling up with water and suds, but the sink strainer device was not in the drain- confusion. i reached down through the water but all i could feel was a smooth metal dip where the drain should be, and i thought the sink had healed over somehow. it turned out simply to be the lid from the sugar dispenser; fitted in the drain hole perfectly, upside-down.

so strange.

strange day

brilliant thunderstorm light

Today feels so like a sunday. This evening during sunset the light went strange and otherworldly, and we knew the sky was about to open. And so it has. Cold and wet again, and now it is dark. Such brilliant light for a few minutes though! Well, back to Minerva, my next Mythological.

in the works

Busy, busy, busy.
That's been how it's been around here lately. Things to look forward to: a new toof record, Kat's salon opening very soon, and a brand new site overhaul for electrofork. (That last one's almost finished, it will be announced here officially as soon as it goes live, so keep your eyes open.)

I believe I may have at long last relocated our favorite photo processing center! The address puts them not far from here, on fifth avenue. If it's them, I will be so happy. I have rolls of film from thanksgiving and an even older roll of 120 (from the Holga) which I've taken nowhere, as nowhere around here did any good with film and prints. (It really pisses me off, for example, when some fuckwit at the photo lab decides to edit the roll himself- leaving out prints that he thought less than perfect- especially in the Holga film; the whole point being to get strange unexpected results! grrrr)

Well, this is terribly uninteresting to read, I'm sure, so here is where it ends.

milk paint

painting in progress...

Well I began painting this canvas today at long last. It had the drawing of this man on it for months, literally months. finally started messing with it. what inspired this? well, to be honest it was doodling on this digital artpad. It's pretty fun. And you get to watch it again after it's finished.
So, round one was just white and burnt umber, but then later I was working in more color, including overpainting his hair with pthalo blue. The casein pthalo blue i have is so infectious-- it thoroughly overtakes the brush and all other colors to the point that one has to wash the brush with soap several times after using it. Kind of a pain, really.

In other news I have been working with Marty on a treatment, soon to be a script (hope!) for a zombie story. The idea actually started from my retelling of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago involving a recently deceased novelist and his newly released "novel," which secretly contained a code for a reduction recipe in which the body of a dead horse is rendered into a nasty viscous material which can then be used as a vehicle (a body, really) for souls raised temporarily from the dead. Something like, the memory of his or her own self-image serves as a blueprint to which the material applies itself. Magic! Our collaborative story, however, involvse neither a novelist nor horses. Nor magic.
It is very scientific. In a fictional sort of way.
Ha!
That is all you will find out for now.

Oh- and read this transcript of Bill Moyers.

bits

Untangled,
hanging at the nape
of a season’s last memory.
The pages hereafter
are blank.


(my etruscan exit sign was inspired by your existential trash can.)

and
my fork haiku:

sterling tines reflect
light from faraway systems
tiny solar flare

le coeur

What can anyone offer- what has any of us to offer- the Universe or even each other? Anything less than the weight of one’s own heart is too little when one weighs it against History. Against Humanity. And that leaves us with: our dreams. What best we can give to one another amounts to that one word; little reckoned, seldom taken seriously; Dreams.

But-- read your history and connect the dots. Follow the threads as they occurred. The Dream has been the single most powerful tool in the history of our species. Dreams turned out to be the space in which all our wondrous leaps have occurred. Our leaps. The precise ones which made us “human.”


(True story.)



(more or less...)

Rare, and Never

(those are trains on the subway line)

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”
- Chekhov

HUGE.

stamps from malaysia

So, i won a copy of Van Helsing on dvd from ebay (for about 8 bucks) and it finally arrived. When the man said media mail, he failed to mention it was media mail from Malaysia! Although the dvd works fine and it is labeled for region 1 (that's U.S. and Cananda), it was not in a box (just a plastic sleeve). The funny thing is the spelling of Mr. Jackman's name on the printed materials-- he is billed as Huge Jackman. Now that's funny. I suppose someone didn't catch the typo before they were run, then some enterprising employee nicked a bunch and put 'em on ebay. Incidentally, when I tried to leave feedback, ebay could find neither the item number nor the seller's ID in its system, so I'm assuming that means he was caught. Or just sold a bunch then booked it. Who knows? Hilarious.
The upshot is that it was really fun to get mail from so far away (i had no idea what it was or who it was from 'til I got it open), plus I got these beautiful stamps. Oh, and a pretty good deal on the dvd.

NYSIT

So, I received a letter about a week ago from NY State requesting proof of the amount I owed New York State last year, as it was used as a deduction. Now, you'd think they would have this information in their big evil tax database, wouldn't you? They certainly had no trouble telling me how much I owed last summer, when I had yet to pay it. Hell, they called and told me that more than 180 days past due can result in an arrest warrant. An arrest warrant! So why the hell can't they sort it out now? No, they must set me to work digging through old files, scanning, printing... wretched! Nasty, mean accountantses!