for illustration

send:

• in-depth character descriptions


• examples of styles i like / want used


• if in existence, photographs of people who remind me of the character-- individual or mix of people


• sketches, if any exist


• a medium recommendation-- watercolor, ink, pencil?

taken from IM conversation with Abbie on 2004-01-20 at 14:21.

In explanation for that cryptic note to myself: when I last started working on a novel, I was chatting to my friend Abbie (who has been my friend since kindergarten, when we pretended to be dinosaurs; she was also my original co-author and deserves much of the credit for keeping me interested in writing for the early, formative years) and she said, "You know, my degree is in Illustration and I'm bored. Do you want illustrations for your novel?"
"Oh YES," I said.
The two of us (in 1990, when we were eleven) used to collaborate, and we were both writing and illustrating novels. She, though a not inconsiderable writer, went on to study art; I, not much of an artist, went on to study writing. I don't know why reconvening a collaboration had never crossed my mind before.


But anyhow, she's kindly agreed that perhaps the illustrations, so long delayed, could be begun for this newer project instead. I think it would be lovely to have drawings.

I was looking for some examples of her work to put up here, but I only have two sketches, and as they're very rough they don't really convey what she's capable of.

weather

Argh.
It's sort of almost raining again.

For the last twelve days running, I have been absentmindedly intending to go out and finish the yardwork awaiting me-- resetting some stepping stones and a garden border, turning over a wide patch of earth to make a new flowerbed, and finally planting the last of my bulbs.

And every single day it has been raining, or threatening to rain, or too wet from having rained.

So finally, today, I went to the National Weather Service website and looked up the forecast.


Rain as far as the forecast extends.


God! This climate doesn't do anything by halves.


If anyone needs me, I will be making Huge God Damned Mud-Pies, because it is NEVER going to get dry out there until the frost comes and it's too late to plant any more.

dave's addiction

Dave loves McSweeney's. If I hear him giggling in the next room, I know he's reading McSweeney's.

I like it too; as Internet humor sites go, it's certainly different. Some of it is just weird, but much of it jives with my sense of humor.


But sometimes it's just too wistful to be actually funny. This story made me sad: Have you heard the one about President Bush? A series of reinterpreted bar jokes, highlighting the fact that there are times when nothing's really funny.

ugh

digging in wet clay is HARD WORK.

voting

Well, I just filled out my absentee ballot and stuck it in the mail slot with a stamp on it. Good for me.


I have a general policy of voting against incumbents. Particularly in New York State. We have the single most corrupt, under-performing state government in the entire nation, according to statistics I read during our annual budget crisis.
(For the non-NYS-residents on my friends list, I will explain briefly. The primary function of a state government is to pass the state budget. It's pretty much All They Have To Do.
For TWENTY YEARS now, New York State's state legislature has failed to do this on time.
Their record is something like FOUR MONTHS LATE.
During this four months, state employees and all organizations that recieve state money must pay their employees with borrowed money.
The interest is paid by who? Taxpayers.
This year the legislators WENT ON VACATION instead of passing the budget. I shit you not. Dozens were ARRESTED for trying to blockade the legislators into the building to make them stay. I speak in caps because I am ANGRY.)

So I went into this with my "when in doubt, vote 'em out!!" pen poised.


They were all running unopposed.





Motherfuckers.

So I added a write-in candidate under my favorite unopposed asshole, Joseph "Pork Barrel " Bruno, whose favorite pastime is to construct things for his cronies using taxpayer money and then name it after himself. There's a stadium, a highway, and innumerable amphitheatres. He even dictated that the baseball stadium (built two miles from an existing stadium also paid for with taxpayer money, that then went bankrupt and had to be closed) should be nicknamed "The Joe". Come ON, you arrogant pigfucker! Give us a goddamn break!

I wrote in:
ANYONE BUT JOE. And drew a box. And put in a big X.



I also refused to vote for the unopposed state Supreme Court justices. Come now, they'll win without me, and I saw no reason to vote for them.

Give me a CHOICE, NY. Don't make ME be the one to finally run against Joe. I'd lose, but you'd have a CHOICE.

unrelated addendum

Also, I see that my website is up again. How? Not because I had any confirmation that others could see the pictures I posted. No...

Comment spam. I'm getting comment spam again.


You know what? I'm abandoning that fucking MT blog. No more of this goddamn spam. No more goddamn ads for Viagra. I delete them immediately; it does not bring them greater Google PageRank. (GOOGLE, FIX YOUR GODDAMN ALGO AND PUNISH COMMENT SPAMMERS, IF YOU LIKE BLOGS SO MUCH.)

That's just it. RRRGH.


While I'm in an enraged mood, what else can I go after?
Hmmmm....

giggle

IM quote of the day:

Andreas (5 am Oslo time): I think I'm getting tires
[Andreas: d]
me (11 pm Buffalo time): But you don't have a car.
Andreas: You have to start someplace.

We had been discussing what it's like when the sun never comes up. He had spent only a little time above the arctic circle in Norway, during his mandatory military service. "The sun came up only a little over the horizon, and then only for about an hour a day," he said.
"Ugh," I said.
"Well, it's worse than that," he said. "I was stuck inside a mountain the whole time and only ever saw it on surveillance tapes."
UGH!!!
"I got really good at polishing my boots," he said.

But in the summer, it's fun to go to summer camp up above the Arctic Circle, because the sun never goes down, so you never have to go to bed, and so you spend about two weeks awake, and you come home and you're an absolute zombie.

I asked where Trondheim is and he sent me to this site: kart.norge.no. I think my favorite thing about the site is how the little buttons below the map say "ZOOM INN" and "ZOOM UT". Also, another button says "KOMMUNE", which would be an awesome name for a metal band. (Sadly, that button is a Javascript that doesn't seem to work, more's the pity. I wanted to Kommune!)