Yesterday Was A Pain In The Ass (And Locations Further South)

Sometimes it might seem like I don't like anything. That's not true. I've been fortunate enough to have been given a few trips to the tropics -- these were drawn on a Caribbean cruise to which the missus's father treated the whole family. Which I loved.

I was no more alienated from the people on the cruise than I am from the rest of the livestock in the world (although the palpable misery of the people in the casino was a bummer) and my daily routine was dee-fucking-lightful. Three edible meals a day that someone else cooked.

I'd go snorkeling in the morning, nap after lunch, in the afternoon I'd drop a couple of Lortab (which was my painkillor at that time and the best so far), then retire to a pleasantly empty bar and listen to Billy Holiday and such while drinking two Guinness (the Guinness was a different beer than I was used to -- same bottle, same brewery, but it was so much better than I expected) and a double Knockando.

The missus said, "Actually, I like your drinking this time. It makes you witty at dinner." Which I was -- I walked that fine line that separates the outrageous hilarious oaf from the disturbing oaf with great skill, frequently provoking gales of laughter.

I would sometimes sketch in the bar -- these are the best of those lazy afternoon sessions. At that point, though, I was going through one of my periodic, "My art sucks, I can't draw, I hate myself for failing the muse," phases. I kinda like these, though.

The only drawback was that I came back fat. Of course that may have had something to do with Cortisone and the sixty pounds of muscle I lost while bedridden with my back and hitting my middle years all at the same time.

Yesterday was a pain in the ass, for the most part.

Lessee. First off, there was the whole bar story debacle as covered in the last post. This left me feeling crappy -- my most widely-available stories were flawed by nature due to my laziness-inspired cluelessness. Which gave me that shame of craft feeling.

Which didn't go away when I started in on the day's art. First, I found that the image that I posted yesterday had been converted to 72 dpi. For reasons I do not know. I'd created it at 300 dpi -- and suspected that I should have gone higher, to give me flexibility in case I wanted to use it in a print at some point. Now? All those hours of cleaning and darkening the pencil sketch went into an image fit only for the internet.

So I go back and look at some of my other images to make sure the same thing hadn't happened to them. In the process, I found a tiny flaw in my big imaginary landscape. Since I want to print that out large, the file is about a gig and a half. Working on it gives me nostalgia for the old days -- opening it takes forever, saving takes forever, you have to go off and do something else while doing either.

So after finding the flaw I started going over the thing a pixel at a time. This is an image that's four feet long at 240 dpi. It takes a while.

And I find something mysterious. There are these little scraps of hard-edged color -- it looks as if someone's tossed a handful of cellphane confetti onto the damned thing. And when I track down the Photoshop layer where those bits of color lived I found another mystery.

They were on a file that had been converted for smart filters. Once you do that, you can't do anything but filters on that layer. No drawing, no smudging, nothing. And the filter on that layer was a blur. So there was no way for that layer to have anything on it that wasn't blurred.

But there they were. Like I said, a mystery. And one that took me a looong time to track down.

I think I've figured out how to fix it. Wish me luck.

Then I went to prepare the piece I'm printing on canvas tomorrow. (Oh, that's gonna be pricey. Oh well.) Blowing it up to size -- 3' by 4' -- went smoothly. So did adding the overlap at the edges.

But bearing in mind my experience with the landscape, I went over it one fucking pixel at a time.

I found a bunch of stupid little flaws. Which I fixed and the thing looks better. But I've already printed out two of these and one's been framed.

Again, craft-shame. Kraftschaden?

(A quick aside -- I was just called downstairs to field a phone call from my dad. In reference to this news story the following conversation ensued.

The Oaf: I wish I could find a way to get to Washington and punch that cocksucking idiot's heart out because punching him in the fucking head isn't gonna do a goddamn thing.

The Da: Fuckin' A right.

The Missus: Who's an idiot?

The Oaf, for the ten millionth time since the start of their relationship: Please, sweetie, I'm on the phone, I can't talk to you when I'm on the phone.

The Da, as heard by the non-multitasking Oaf: Blather obbla woadle schnuck! Phlabber. Glot.

The Missus: Who's the idiot?

The Oaf: You are, for talking at me when I'm on the phone! Will you cut it out?

The Da: Faolin tchotchke schlab I can't believe the Democrats aren't just saying, "Go ahead and filibuster, assholes, see how your voters like that."

I did apologize later -- but why does she keep doing this? There seems to be no way to stop her.)

So I wake up at midnight. My back's not as bad as it was earlier this week; this was just the regular insomnia. I stay up until nearly five, then come back to bed and try headphones and melatonin. I've been taking it easy with the sleep aids lately and the melatonin hit me hard, got some good dreaming and visuals out of it. Hallucinations are the funnest part of being crazy.

(The best were a series of Frazetta drawings [which were, of course, imaginary] of, um. Lady's bee-hinds done Frazetta-style. What can I say, I've got a vulgar subconscious -- and yesterday I saw a comic with his The Moon Maid painting on the cover. And I just got the pun in that painting for the first time in my goddamn life and I first saw that one when I was eight or nine...)

The bad news was that when the melatonin relaxed my body my fucking back went out again. Now I feel that delicious electric barbwire tickle all the way from my hips to my toes, both sides, and I had to get out of bed while still able to sleep because of the pain.

So I am a grumpy fellow. A very grumpy fellow indeed.

Let's Hate!

Say it again! With feeling this time!

It is four-forty four and I've been up since one. The melatonin didn't work -- my head was too crowded to allow me to sleep. I've got a bitch of a day ahead of me. Had an ugly fight with the missus yesterday and while my points were right I was still wrong. I've been displaying dick behavior and I'm sick of me.

But you know what? It's time to put the pedal to the metal. Fuck it; I am a dick. The words 'fuck you and everything you stand for' are perpetually cradled on my lips. My feelings about humanity? If it swarms, exterminate. Telling me not to hate is like telling any given musical performer not to dress like a dildo. It's not the only thing they have going for them but where would they be without it?

Stand back, everyone! It's hating time!

I hate stupidity. I've known stupid people that I've been fond of but I've known hermit crabs and guppies I've been fond of in pretty much the same way. Fucking a stupid person is the lowest imaginable form of bestiality and should be punished by death.

I hate people who don't walk right. I know I've bitched about drivers and cyclists before -- well, I hate pedestrians too. I hate groups of people who block the entire sidewalk and don't even flinch as they force you into the gutter. I hate people who walk on the left side of the sidewalk. I hate people who walk against the light. I hate people who walk slowly. I hate people who are in my way!

I hate a lot of Obama's staffing decisions. I know he's doing this for reasons I am not privy to; still, the difference between intelligently working the political game so as to maximize personal effectiveness and whoring yourself out to the shits who put the country in the crapper is a thin one at times.

I hate seafood for the same reason I hate bebop -- my inability to take pleasure in it makes me feel defective.

That goes double for dancing and flirting.

I hate stars and celebrities and heroes. If your face has been in People or Us, why not die in horrible twisting agony? If you need help, just ask.

I hate our dog Roxxie. Her bark hurts and is incessant and my failure to love her the way she loves me fills me with guilt. Also, she's been known to shit in the bed.

I hate guys named Mark. What is it with them? Is it just me or is every goddamned Mark on the planet a trembling puckered asshole in bad need of a wipe? (I did know a Marc who was cool, though.)

I hate people who park across two spaces. What was that phrase I used earlier? Fuck you and everything you stand for -- that was it.

I hate rudeness and discourtesy of any kind. If it were punished by instant death -- maybe a forklift could be involved, maybe some cinder blocks -- the world would be a better place.

Speaking of instant death, I don't know what I hate more; the death penalty or the fact that I'm not allowed to execute at will.

I hate people I don't know. I keep trying to explain this to the missus -- warfare is the only acceptable form of communication with those who are not of the tribe. Any other interaction diminishes one's soul.

That 'we're fighting for your freedom of speech so shut up' line you get from the occasional military dude? I hate it.

I hate parents who feel that they are oh! special bunnies just because they've decided that the perfect pet is a poorly-trained bald chimp, and that this decision entitles them to control the behavior of others. Kids are frequently swell -- but we don't fucking need any more of them, do we? And it's not like we're taking proper care of the ones we've got.

Mothers who love babies so much that they have one after another of the goddamn things get an extra helping of hate with a side order of disgust.

And now that I remember that injudicious fucking is where crowds come from I hate parents even more. Tell you what -- when the world population drops under ten million we can renegotiate.

Of course this particular flavor of hate spills over onto purebred cats and dogs. The part where I said we've already got enough humans? Dogs and cats fit into that as well. When the shelters are empty and you just can't find a dog anywhere then I gues you can start breeding again. Until then, cut it out.

I hate religion. It's got the worst possible combination of characteristics -- it's booooooring and yet it induces people to kill. (And I fucking well regard Marxism as a religion so don't hand me any killer atheist bullshit -- Marxists buy into all kinds of Easter Bunny stuff like the withering away of the state. When you believe in magic, religion is the box in which you are placed. You dipshit.) Worst of all, I hate the smugly religious, the bumper sticker religious -- God said it, I believe it, That settles it. In case of Rapture this car will have no driver. (What a beautiful expression of the teachings of Christ.) Fucking drag those idiots out of their cars and put a fucking bullet in their fucking brains and let them enjoy the afterlife they so look forward to.

Even worse, I hate the fear and unhappiness religion generates in those I love. Ever see someone in tears because they think you've going to hell? There's no graceful way to handle that one.

I hate the smell of cooking liver. Of canned fish. Of cologne.

I hate cute girls. I hate all guys.

I really, really, really hate the kind of guys that cute girls like. The fact that I'm not allowed to change the shape of their faces in order to benefit my own standing is a constant source of bewilderment.

I hate sex. I hate living in this constant stew of frustrated desire. I hate the fact that the lure of breeding is such a motivating factor in my psychology -- that if I didn't feel the need to impress the ladies, particularly the missus, I could comfortably drink myself to death instead of trying in vain to be a halfway-decent human being.

Plus, as I said before, crowds are essentially a venereal disease.

Interestingly, I hate Paris Hilton even though she isn't a cute girl. Hey, if I don't break it up every once in a while I get bored. And it's not so much Paris Hilton I hate as much as the fact that I know who she is.

Any movie with Whoopie Goldberg in it. Robin Williams, too, unless he plays a psycho killer.

Of course I hate every person in congress and on the boards of directors of all major corporations. Let them grow like onions, with their heads in the ground. I mean, have you ever heard these people talk? Jesus!

I hate current standards of feminine beauty -- sinews and silicon do nothing for me. Movies would be a hell of a lot more entertaining if the person who told Christina Ricci to lose weight had been smothered by a housecat in his or her crib.

I hate Tom Bombadil.

I hate comic book continuity -- why can't you just pick up a fucking copy of the X-Men and read an X-Men story? Why do you need fucking maps that show you which order to read the thirty fucking comics that contain this month's episode of the latest over-arcing big event storyline? I gave up on mainstream comics for more than a decade after running across the Merry Marvel Mutant Massacre Map and realizing that I was reading snuff porn for twelve-year olds.

If you understood that, I would like to ask you not to read fucking comics while standing in front of the fucking shelves, thusly blocking the way of paying fucking customers like myself. I hate that.

On the other hand, don't fucking move me out of your way while I'm shopping. I'm gonna be moving on my own in a matter of seconds so fucking wait your fucking turn.

I hate crap that hangs down. Ceiling lamps, trees over sidewalks, that sharp metal edge at the top of the back door of the bus -- the world is not entirely populated by Smurfs and I am fucking sick of head wounds.

I hate not having enough curse words. English can be so limiting.

I hate bad prose, neighbor music, eating out and getting food I could have cooked better myself, the tiny hair that's been trapped in the corner of my mouth for the last month or so, art cars, piercings and tattoos, the words 'nigger' and 'cunt' (which latter, interestingly enough, comes from an attempt to describe people who drive Volvos), modifiers, people who oppose eating horses (when a species is simutaneously unpleasant, loved by girls, and tasty it belongs on my plate), unsustainable agricultural practices, the Fanta Girls, the very idea of clubbing, shag carpet, I said stupid already but it never hurts to be absolutely clear, most of my personality traits including hatefulness, not having access to an accurate skeletal diagram of Deinochierus, the kind of towns that you drive through and sense that there's nothing good to read anywhere, people who walk right at you and expect you to move, barking dogs at night, fucking cats likewise, the limits of human perception, unrequested hallucinations -- especially the one where I smell dogshit two to four hours before I have a dramatic episode, my growing caution in the use of butter and bacon fat, any attempt to control my behavior, not being able to conveniently fix the lives of those I love, having to be the one to do all the fucking mercy killing of animals, the passing of the Skeleteens sodas, being a creepy gross old guy, and being disappointed by the beloved canned meats of my childhood. (There is a word for this emotion in German.)

Mostly, though, I hate insomnia.

Oh, Boy -- Here Comes The Winter Crazy or Don't Bother Reading This One -- It's All Complaints

So I went to my first life-drawing session in years a few months back. Loved it, loved it, loved it -- but the room was too crowded for me to be able to shift between standing and sitting so afterward my back was a disaster.

This was a blind contour drawing -- keep your pen on the paper at all times so as to draw with one continuous line while never looking at the page.

Since I could only carry materials in my knapsack I worked on a small pad with pen and pencil and wound up longing for charcoal and a larger piece of paper -- I wanted to work with tone instead of line.

After all this time I was pleasantly surprised when some of my sketches were halfway decent. Having a good model really helped. That does it -- next year I'm taking a life-drawing class.

Okay, here's how it works.

There's a certain mood that sets in at our household when winter really hits. I get moody, the missus gets bossy, and we both get sensitive about the way the other person is treating us. Things hit a peak in February, when we have both of our birthdays and our anniversary and thus feel entitled to nice treatment from one another.

For the past few years it hasn't been bad at all. That's because the drama of the situation is my problem, not Karen's. The reason things have been better is that I've been able to track my mood and keep my emotional state under control. But this year my support system is sucking and I'm in a more volatile state than has been typical.

A big part of this is that I'm taking actions to move my life forward and I'm experiencing some success and it's freaking me out, man. But there are some other things going on in my world (birth and death and divorce and mental illness and on and on and on) that are raising my stress levels past the point where I can stay cool. They're peripheral in my life -- the real issues belong to other people and I'm just catching fallout.

The main sources of emotional comfort that I have when the missus and I are at odds are not there for me now. They may come back, they may not, who the hell knows what's going on? But right now I have no-one that I can talk to about what I'm going through that isn't directly affected by by the circumstances, who won't have feelings of guilt, resentment, or legitimate irritation with me if I try and unload. And since they're dealing with things that are far more serious than my emotional stability I feel like a shit for wishing there were more support for me, me, poor little me.

When I start getting weird, the missus starts gets heavy into compulsive controlling behavior, constantly telling me what to do. And since she's extra-sensitive as well, when I complain about it she feels hurt. Hey, if you're reading this you've probably read a lot of my blog. Imagine me complaining at you -- loud, long, and lucid. It really is awful.

When we were talking about this last night she explained that she can't help trying to control situations that make her frightened or uneasy. This is something I can understand. I can be more patient with her now that I really see that her behavior is a compulsive reaction. She has flat-out told me that I can't ask her not to do this because she can't help it.

But she's steadfastly refusing to see that my reactions to being bossed around aren't any more subject to control than her compulsions. When she tells me to do something -- and this is Queens-style bossing, rude and peremptory -- it hits a node at the base of my brain and I'm jolted with fight-or-flight rage.

See, I was raised in a metaphorical Skinner box that taught me a very bad lesson -- if someone disrespects you then it will eventually escalate to physical violence. I react to disrespect as if it were a physical threat -- accelerated heartbeat, hyperventilation, muscular tension -- my body prepares itself for a fight.

Which can lead to bad behavior on my part. Look, it's not like I hit or threaten people. But I get very loud and emotional and sometimes there are things like stress-puking and wall-punching and suchlike.

Since I recognize this pattern I can usually stay on top of it. But right now I'm vulnerable and so it's difficult for me not to explain to her how and why she's contributing to my problems. Which makes her feel shitty. Which makes her try and control me.

So I'm the one who has to play grownup. And I do not want to. But I can't control her behavior, I can only modify my own. So that's what I'm doing.

But she's driving me nuuuuuuuuts! Last night after we settled down and talked things out and were in a pleasant space of forgiveness she fucking started in on it all over again.

She says she knows it's micromanagement but she thinks I should listen to the Pachelbell Canon on headphones, my latest treatment for insomnia.

So from now on I'm gonna think about that moment every time I think about that piece of music -- this is part of my crazy, these things imprint on me -- and I'm gonna get that rush of pissed-off adrenaline. So a real tool for dealing with my sleep issues has been taken away from me by someone who only had my best interests at heart.

Then when I reach for the melatonin so as to have a shot at getting to sleep, she wants me to take these pills her doctor recommended to her for insomnia. They're calcium pills with "something else in them, I don't know what." So she has no fucking idea of what the pills are going to do or why but if I don't go along with the program the fight starts all over again and I'm the bad guy. This is an example of control for control's sake, of her using me as a means of soothing her neurosis. (Which, admittedly, I've triggered.)

I reluctantly agree. She bring them to me along with a glass of water, bless her heart, and I take them and I wait. And they do not do a fucking thing. So I reach for the melatonin and she tells me not to take it because she wants to know if the new pills work.

Remember, this is taking place in the aftermath of a spectacular fight over my criticizing her over her control issues. When she rudely bosses me around it's out of love and when I complain about it I'm a psycho and/or a prick. It's her refusal to admit that what she's doing is out of line that drive me nuts and it's my bitching about this that makes her defend her actions. So I'm in the wrong no matter what.

That catch twenty-two, it's a hell of a catch.

I've got a ton of stuff that I should be doing. But I'm fucked up and miserable right now. I slept some last night but not much, I puked up my dinner as a result of stress, I've got the horrible hangover that accompanies an emotional fit. (I honestly suspect that an EEG would show some kind of seizure going on when I get that way, no fooling.)

I'm blowing the day off unless I can find a way to make work a release. I've got business at school this afternoon but after that I'm gonna resort to booze. I shouldn't do this but right now my options are limited. Hopefully that'll relax me enough to think about eating, which would make it easier to sleep tonight.

Which means that when I plunge into someone else's drama over the weekend I'll be in a better position to be the good and supportive person I wish I had been last night.

Damnit.

A Truly Horrid Idea and Applebee's Is Just Plain Nasty

You used to be able to get these Japanese felt-tip brush pens -- they had a terra cotta-colored rubbery exterior and a fine brush on one end and a thick brush on the other. When they started going dry you could pull them open and dose 'em with more ink. I loved those pens. Where did they go?

This piece was fun to do -- just whip it out in ten minutes or so. Working fast was the point. No sketching, no preconceptions -- just let the hand do what it will. I need to start sketching again.

It used to be that the words used for verification of hominid status for purposes of spam blocking -- the kind you find on comment pages and so forth -- were usually just smears of random consonants.

But a while ago they started sounding like words -- usually the kinds of words you'd see used in really bad fantasy or science fiction novels, the kinds that come with a map and a glossary.

When I mentioned this over on Glendon Mellow's site he called me on it and said I had to write that book. God help me, I think he may be right. So I've started saving the verification words in a document on my desktop.

I've got four words so far. Bactrin, Flediton, Plogu, and Pulas. See what I mean?

This can't possibly lead anywhere good. And it's not like I need another project -- but there are times when something reaches out and beckons to you irresistably. God only knows I read enough of the bad old stuff in my youth -- I've always loved pulp fiction and as a youngster I wasn't what you'd call discriminating.

This could be the start of something terrible.

Speaking of repulsive messes, I had one of the worst meals of my life today.

I cook. I'm a good cook. My food tastes better than what you can get in most restaurants. My grandaughter won't eat eggs unless I make them, when my sister was married she asked me to make stuffed mushrooms even though the event was catered. The caterers ate almost all of them before they got set out for the guests. My brother-in-law has been known to call me the day after he's eaten one of my meals and try to talk me into going into the restaurant business.

So today when I was taken out to lunch at Applebee's it was, quite literally, the first bad food I've eaten in years.

I mean, I had forgotten what bad food was like!

It's going to take me a long time to forget this.

The missus has a broker. Her old broker would send her chocolates and champagne every year. Her new broker just sent her a twenty-five dollar Applebee's card. When we walked in the door there was a sign on the outside of the building that said that the purchase of one of those twenty-five dollar cards would get you a bonus five-dollar card. Which figures.

Jesus, it was disgusting. I knew I was in for a disaster but I'd hoped it would be like eating a sack of chips -- you don't feel good about yourself but you keep eating it for the taste. Nasty, regretable, and yet oddly pleasing.

There was no pleasure. There was no taste, aside from the buffalo wings, which were actually frozen chicken nuggets bathed in this sauce... plastic? Cigarette butts? There was a harsh chemical tang to the red-orange glutinous paste that clung to the horrid little wads of breading and the look on the missus's face when she took a bite of one justified the entire meal for me.

The midget bacon cheeseburgers were utterly without flavor of any kind. No onions, no mustard or mayo. No flavor to the bacon. How do you get bacon with no flavor?

The side salad came with stale croutons and a huge mound of cheese and more of the soul-free bacon. The whole thing was assembled as if the people working in the kitchen hated food. When they were kids they saw food kill their dad and they've been seeking vengeance ever since. Or something. You couldn't get food that bad without a motive! And a can opener. I swear, the lettuce was from a can. Every dish was assembled from packaged processed foods. It wasn't a meal, it was a fucking industrial byproduct.

The idea that we were surrounded by people who had come here expecting a good meal was depressing. The idea that they thought they'd been served one was appalling. Partway through the meal I whispered to the missus and granddaughter, "Hey, do you think our waiter would eat out at a place like this?"

NO.

It doesn't matter how many Rachel Ray recipes they put on the back of Triscuit boxes, it doesn't matter how much truffle oil they have at Costco. If a restaurant like Applebee's is flourishing in America then our national palate is a shame, a sham, and a disgrace.

Time to slowly sip a quart of water and reflect on tomorrow's lunch -- which, with luck, will be at Bo McSwine's barbecue. Brisket, blues, and Belgian ale will wash the last pasty oligineous taint of Applebee's from my mouth and restore my parched and weary soul. And if it ain't at Bo's, it'll be at a decent burger joint, Al's Big Burger or The Red Onion.

Please, oh please let it come to pass.

From The Valley Of Lost Projects: Cyberskunk!

So I was attending Laney college in the mid/late eighties when I ran across a fellow named Angel who wanted to do a comic book. He'd gotten a lot further down this road than I had, to the point of having been to conventions and so on, and he had an idea. A funny animal cyberpunk comic called Cyberskunk. (His name's Cyril -- get it?) It's important to remember that at this time there was no internet and funny animals had not yet been smeared with semen. Angel had the basic ideas, I came in and did some designs and made some writing suggestions...

This is all that remains. A bunch of designs were done, some layouts, some scripting -- we had no idea how to approach a large creative project and this was one that was eventually going to need some kind of financing to get off the ground.

I really want to do comics and it seems as if the better I am at writing and drawing the further away I get from cartooning. This is as close as I've come... I want to address this situation over the summer.

There were a lot more hippy designs than this. 's funny -- the big conflict was greasers vs. hippies and not a punk in sight.

I think I like this guy's boots more than anything else in the whole shebang.

Well, He Started It.

So Rob sent me this letter that was sent to Swill inquiring about our pay rates. I'm not going to print it here; you can probably figure out everything you need to know from my response. I am so going to hell for this.

Dear Mr. -------,

I’m not sure what the appropriate response to something like this would be. Part of me wonders if in your innocence you’ve gotten the impression that a display of brash vulgarity would impress us; part of me wonders if you’re as arrogant as your letter makes you seem, which would be unfortunate for both you and those around you.

If my first guess is true, please. No one responds positively to this kind of rudeness. If you aren’t an asshole don’t play one for effect; from the outside there is no difference between someone who pretends to be an insufferable dickwad and the genuine article. And unfortunately you simply are not gifted in your chosen arena -- this letter doesn’t just give the impression that it was written by a jerk; the incompetence with which it is riddled eliminates any strength of provocation you may have intended. Rather, it falls under the category of ‘irritainment,’ something simultaneously laughable and annoying. I love it because I hate it. Of course the appropriate response would be for me to ignore this but hey. It’s not often I get an opportunity to let someone know exactly what I think of their writing; thank you very much for the opportunity.

(Incidentally, when you say that your fiction is better than that of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald two thoughts immediately came to mind. One is that I dislike the work of both writers; the other is that I doubt you’ve read much by either. Or by ‘others of their ilk.’ Or anyone else. And I guarantee you that there are a lot of ‘candy asses’ in the world who are better writers than you are – and quite possibly better human beings.)

Allow me to make a few suggestions that might prove useful.

First, learn to swear properly. ‘What the piss’ is the kind of thing you hear from a child first experimenting with profanity – by starting out with this phrase I immediately pictured you as a strutting fourth-grader who’s just figured out how to give people the finger. ‘What the fuck,’ or ‘what the hell’ are, though timeworn, still sturdy expressions. To insert a random word into a familiar phrase is a gesture in the direction of creativity, I will grant you. Perhaps further study and experimentation may produce results – let me know if your research along these lines progresses usefully.

One suckles at his mother’s breast, one sucks at his momma’s tit. (I wonder if this is your problem – were you breast-fed? It is important to an infant’s physical development and ability to resist disease. Perhaps you suffered an early fever or a diet deficient in protein?)

And it’s interesting that you chose to capitalize Goddamn but not hell. Consistency is important; pick an approach and stick with it.

In the non-cuss category of errors there is the issue of exclamation points. Good writers use them sparingly. Some very good writers such as Joe R. Lansdale never use them at all. Your ratio of periods to exclamation points is one to four. And to use two exclamation points in conjunction with a word written all in capitals gives the impression that you were taught to write by one of those diseased imbeciles who write hateful anonymous messages on the Internet. I assure you, they are not good models for anyone with literary aspirations. Perhaps you should consider text messaging as your medium of choice.

‘Layout’ is a noun – you meant ‘lay out.’

And finally, when you say that ‘most lit mags’ list their pay rates in their submissions guidelines, well. That would be true for paying markets. The literary small press tends not to pay. It is either a calling or a hobby, depending on your perspective. I put a considerable amount of work into Swill and have not seen dime one nor do I expect to. I’m not sure if we break even on our sales. And that’s what it’s like for the little magazines such as ours.

If you want pay, I’d suggest submitting to magazines like Granta or The New Yorker. LET ME KNOW HOW YOU DO!!

Thank you very much for your letter; it was a real pleasure.

Yours,

Sean Craven

But Is It Art? Part Two: Ego, Identity, And The Big Question

Here's a thought for the future -- the next time I'm looking around for a project, why not do linoleum cuts, scan them in and enlarge them to show the paper texture and the way the ink goes down in high-contrast detail? Treat the image to bring out the physical qualities of linoleum cuts. Get into some good paper. And work small, blow up large to enhance the contrast. Possibly mount the linoleum cut in some relationship to the print -- perhaps on an expanded border.

(As an aside, I decided to see what happens with this approach so I'm scanning this in at high resolution to try experimenting. Right now the scanner's running and the motor grinds away and every so often I hear a series of taps. They are great -- the rhythm has a jazzy quality, a lot of weird syncopation but it all hits the rhythm. It sounds so organic -- there must be some component of randomness to whatever's making the noise. I should record it, put it on a loop.)

(This post was inspired by my initial on-line encounter with Glendon Mellow and by a conversation in my Digital Drawing class.)

Is it art? This is a question that gets asked a lot. I've asked it myself. It leads inevitably to the big question -- what is art? Here's my opinion.

Art is what you can get away with.

Or to put it another way, art is a word whose strictest definition is totally negotiable.

But if you want to know whether something is fine art or commercial art or illustration there is a clear definition -- and that is determined by the nature of your participation in the marketplace. If your art is a commodity used to enhance printed works you're an illustrator. If your art is used in advertising you're a commercial artist. If your work is displayed in galleries and museums and if your clientele consists of museums and private collectors you're a fine artist.

Like it or not artists seek validation and they have to eat.

Because of this art is almost always associated with the marketplace. Art that isn't -- truly private art created for its own sake -- is almost never technically proficient. This runs against the romantic image of the self-propelled artist whose inborn genius dominates his life.

Tough shit. If art never enters the marketplace then we, the audience, never see it. The idea of art for art's sake is true in that many of us are compelled to create and many choose not to market their work -- but there are very few Henry Dargers around whose creations enter the public mind through discovery following death.

If a living artist wants to make his work known -- especially if he wants to be able to devote himself to his work rather than give it the dregs of his time and energy -- he has to be willing to go to the market. And like it or not, all markets for art are two-cylinder engines, one cylinder being trends, the other novelty.

But the market shapes the artist. As I take my first steps toward being a working artist I'm already finding that out. My creative process is already being shaped to a degree by the needs of the marketplace.

One thing that I find fascinating about the relationship between fine arts (which are frequently not particularly fine -- the word's intent no longer suits its meaning) and commercial art is that the world of fine arts perceives itself to be degraded by proximity to commercial art while commercial art looks to fine art for inspiration. As a result the world of fine arts has to look for areas of novelty and outrage to try and keep ahead of their imitators in the commercial art world. Since commercial artists are frequently art students and fine artists are frequently teachers this little Red Queen's race gives any fine arts trend no more than a few years before its influence hits the commercial arts. Sometimes less.

Okay, I'm an outsider to the fine arts, someone who tries to understand the fine arts while being in many ways ignorant of and alienated from them. But to me this seems to be one of the two reasons why the fine arts keep running off the rails.

The other reason stems from a stance that is one of the root appeals of fine art -- the feeling that someone is in on something good that a lot of people don't know about and don't appreciate. I'm not going to denigrate the pleasure but it isn't healthy for the actual work.

(A related aside. There is also a close link between fine arts and the academic world. The academic world seems actively hostile to one who would be a practitioner of the arts. This is because in the classroom there is a strong bias for work that needs to be explained and against work that is self-contained and self-explanatory unless it can be placed in a cultural context -- which needs to be explained. There is also a strong desire to make the critic or observer of the arts a more important figure than the artist. As a result the aspects of art which call to the creator and demand devotion are frequently regarded as essentially meaningless if not actually degraded. These attitudes are to a lesser degree a component of the fine arts world as well.)

As an outsider I see many of the excesses of fine art to be examples of outrage tolerated by an establishment whose authority is partially based on a perceived ability to see significance where lesser minds are unimpressed. Let me give you two examples.

When I was going to school at Santa Rosa Community College there was a show of drawings at the campus gallery. It was gorgeous, with works ranging from exquisitely observed pen-and-ink works to a huge abstract in color. Figures, landscapes, shapes and patterns -- it really gave you a feeling for the sheer possibilities of working with marks on paper.

But one of my teachers was very, very much a maven of the fine arts. He took me to see two drawings. They were by the same artist and each consisted of a few scratchy, shaky lines drawn perpendicular to one another so as to form a very loose grid.

"Just look at the composition," he said. "These are the best works in the show. By far."

Now to my mind they failed the 'chimp could do it' test. I've got a decent eye for composition (admittedly, much of it came from this teacher) and I could not see anything attractive or interesting about these pieces at all. Period.

What if he was right? This really really bugged me -- if these actually were the best works in the show and they were totally lost on me what did that say about me as an artist? As a person? I asked Maurice Lapp, a really good painter and teacher who was a bit of a mentor to me in those days, what he thought.

"The man is an ass," Maury explained.

Still, there is that lingering doubt.

Years go by and I find myself reading a magazine on the arts. There was a fascinating article about a company whose business was restoring art. Not paintings, drawings, or conventional sculpture, though.

The Sweet & Low example I gave above was not a sarcastic mocking of fine art. It was one of the pieces this company had to reconstruct after someone gave the pile of Sweet & Low a good kick. (This I could understand.) Working from photos they were able to reconstruct the appearance of the pile -- but as I recall there was some doubt about the integrity of the reconstruction due to the inability to duplicate the hidden layers of the work.

Another example involved a sculpture from the Netherlands who took an eighty-pound wad of butter and jammed it in an upper corner of his studio. A Spanish collector visited him and saw the butter wad.

"I must have it," he said.

But when it was transported to his place in Spain guess what. The butter melted and he called in the art restorers. After much effort they found that due to the way cattle were fed in the Netherlands their butter melted at a higher temperature than that of Spanish cattle. In the end, the collector was forced to refrigerate the room with the reconstructed butter sculpture.

Maybe if I saw that butter sculpture I'd understand. I doubt that I would if I saw the Sweet & Low. Sometimes that there Emperor really is naked.

Trying to introduce myself to a world that sees significance in such things is terrifying. What could they possibly see in my work?

Won't know til I try.

One thing that's been really damaging a previously-invulnerable sense of disdain for the fine arts is the reaction in both myself and others to my prints. I went in assuming that when you printed something larger it was bigger and that was it.

It's not true. When you present something in the context of fine art it does change it -- and this is where I have to admit that fine art isn't just a marketplace. My prints have a power to them that my illustrations never had -- even when they are the same image. If they were displayed in a gallery setting that power would be further enhanced.

So I'm forced to consider the possibility that I know a lot less about this than I thought I did. That many artists whose work I've judged on the basis of reproductions may carry a weight I won't be able to recognize without seeing the actual pieces. Maybe Jackson Pollack paintings are stunning when seen live. Maybe Gauguin's colors just don't print well.

Look, I am a straight-up gutterboy. I am far more comfortable having a fight bounce off me in a ghetto liquor store than standing in front of a canvas in a gallery. But the human need to feel a sense of understanding has allowed me to be judgmental about things I really don't know about and I'm becoming very aware of this.

As a result I'm having to let go of a lot of firmly held judgments. This is one of the reasons I'm so intimidated by my Digital Drawing class. The teacher is strongly affiliated with the fine arts and right now my opinions on the subject are in flux...

All I can do is roll with it and try and grow a little.

If you look at the image above you'll notice smudges, stray lines, all kinds of minor but correctable flaws. I thought about fixing them in Photoshop but then it struck me that I hadn't fixed them in the original print. This isn't a rough print out of a run; this is the only print I did from this cut. I put the baren down, slowly peeled the thick soft fibrous paper free and turned it over and looked at it. I decided it was a complete failure and I put it away and never looked at it again.

The biggest obstacle I face as an artist is the difficulty I have in showing respect for myself or my work. Physically my pieces are creased, smudged, in some cases stepped on. This is part of a larger pattern. I try and work hard on my art and writing but I flat-out fail to do the kind of hardcore driven labor for myself that I have always given to employers and managers. Why should I have so much trouble thinking of myself as an artist when it's what I do?

Am I an artist? Is this art?

The only way I can answer this question is to take the work to the marketplace...

Anomalocaris canadensis Part Three: Start of Illustrator Shapes

Well, Illustrator is being uncooperative. Note the two shapes in the above sketch that are just hairlines? I can't select the things. Probably have to draw them over again. And I got the direction of the curves wrong in the sketch of the far 'jaw.' And I don't have time to finish the other 'jaw' before I head out to class in about fifteen minutes.

And I'm almost done with the next chapter of the novel -- and I had to send out this weeks submission a few minutes ago.

Nothing like petty frustrations. Think I'll take some time out this evening and really start flagellating myself over my inability to perform up to my self-imposed standards. Thankfully they're impossible so I'll never have to stop beating myself up.

I'm thinking about doing a little hit-whoring as well. Since the Jurassic Fight Club review is the thing that's gotten me the most attention I'm thinking of doing another TV show review just to see what happens. I'd hate to make a habit of it but hey. If it works...

Look at the time. Guess I better go pull my boots on and hop on the bike...

Jurassic Fight Club Epilog: Apologies, Clarifications, and Ponderings

Protoceratops andrewsi. He heard something and popped his head up out of the brush...

Note to self: Stop drawing 'em with their mouths open all the time.

Well, this Jurassic Fight Club thing has been a real eye-opener from an number of perspectives. As someone new to the blogging sphere it's given me my first taste of... well, fame certainly isn't the right word. Let's be optimistic and call it the start of an audience.

Here's how it worked for me. On Sunday I installed a hit counter and was surprised to see that there were five visitors and they'd seen eighteen pages. Wow. People are coming and they're actually reading stuff. Cool!

Then on Monday there were fourteen readers and then twenty-nine on Tuesday. This was the audience I was writing for at that point. I figured it was probably friends and relatives for the most part with a sprinkling of people I'd linked to and a few folks who got here through search engines.

Then yesterday I posted what I thought was the last piece on Jurassic Fight Club. A link went up over at Laelaps (see my blogroll) and all of a sudden the numbers started piling up. I had a brief idiot flicker of inspiration and posted links on the Jurassic Fight Club site.

Honestly, this started to feel like cheating -- like I was getting the hits not because of what I had to say but because I was talking about a TV show. By the end of the day I had a hundred and twenty-seven visitors look at two hundred and seventy pages. Mostly in-and-outs but here and there someone took a good chunk of time to look things over. And there were hits from A&E and Warner Bros...

And on the Jurassic Fight Club site a frustrated animator who had worked on the show posted a comment about the reviews that gave me pause to think. While he was kind enough to allow that he agreed with me about some of what I said it was pretty obvious that he had been offended -- offended to the point where he felt obliged to make a statement about the role of criticism in the arts. (And the popular arts are arts in my book.)

Here's where I make my apology. In my review I used some vulgarities in reference to the creators of the show. That was uncalled for and inappropriate and I will attempt to refrain from similar behavior in the future. I thought I was sitting around the living room sharing beers with some like-minded friends when in actuality I was standing on a soap box on a street corner. This may be my site but it is also a public forum and that does put me into a position of responsibility rather than license.

To those who were involved in Jurassic Fight Club, I apologize. I was rude and that was wrong.

So how would I have handled it differently if I'd considered the possibility that someone who worked on the show would see the review? I mean, aside from avoiding terms like 'dipshit.'

I wouldn't have come into it with a load of anxiety and resentment and used it as a means of blowing off steam. I would have focused more on what was right with the show. I would have been more clear about why I didn't like the aspects of the show that bothered me, even if it meant being a little harsh. And I would have been more specific in suggesting what could have been done to make the show more to my tastes. In other words, I would have written a critique rather than conducting a petulant frenzy.

So.

I find the concept of the show absolutely irresistible. The format of alternating interviews with researchers and animation is a good idea. While it doesn't go with the name I think that the decision not to limit scenarios to the Mesozoic was very solid. The people appearing on-camera are well-spoken and likable and while this has nothing to do with paleontology it makes for a more enjoyable viewing experience. And as I said in the earlier sections of the review there is some wonderful animation work here, notable not just for the animation but for the choice of shots, the lighting, the composition, and the use of focus.

My main issue with the show is the way that speculation is presented as fact. Given the audience for this show it's a genuinely irresponsible stance to take. Let me explain why I take this so seriously -- why this actually arouses an emotional response in me and in others.

So far as I can tell -- and this is speculation on my part -- this is the result of a little conceptual confusion in the show. It seems to have a hard time deciding if it's entertainment or education. And as a result the entertainment part of the show is presented on the same level as the more educational elements. If you do have present the show as educational there are responsibilities that go with that stance; to claim to represent scientific thought while dishing out fantasy is a form of dishonesty. If you do not clearly distinguish between fact and fancy the audience will have the same level of belief in both -- and when that happens you are not educating.

Right now science education in America is terrible. The average citizen's ignorance is frightening in that we live in a quasi-democracy and many of the conditions we have to think about have scientific aspect to them. Even non-scientific issues would benefit from the kind of rigorous rationality that science teaches. So to see something labeled as science when it isn't does have serious ramifications. I'm not saying you're destroying our nation -- but when you do this you are in a small way putting weight behind forces that are acting against all of our best interests. And that is something I take seriously.

And on a more simple level, to present speculation as fact is deceptive. It's dishonest. I am not arguing that the creators of JFC are dishonest -- but a lack of discipline here produces dishonesty. I don't think you want that.

Even at this point in production it is still possible to put a notice at the start of the show indicating that it is speculative, that there are a lot of unknowns, and that what is shown is by no means conclusive. This would not only be honest; it would also greatly reduce the amount of resentment directed at the show by those with a serious interest in science.

And while it's much too late, if another season is produced it would be wonderful if each speculation could be debated -- if we could hear the arguments against Gastonia cutting bone with scutes or pack hunting in maniraptorans as well as the arguments in favor. That would very effectively raise the credibility of the show.

This is the central source of antagonism toward the show that I've seen in the online communities I frequent. While the details of how the animals have been presented are occasionally frustrating (non-feathered maniraptorans with curled-up hands for instance) they would seem much, much less problematic if they were not presented as fact.

I honestly did have trouble with the writing on the show. I honestly did have trouble with the pacing, with the jump-cuts, with this that and the other thing. If I were to do a serious critique of the show -- the kind of thing I'd do at a table discussion if I were a member of the staff -- I'd also go over those in detail. But I ain't.

Now here's the quote the animator gave me in reaction to my pissing and moaning about JFC. It's from Ratatouille --

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so." -- Anton Ego

There's truth to this but there's more to the question than that. Let's consider three aspects of criticism. First of is the simple opinion piece and I'd say the above quote fits the opinion piece neatly. An opinion piece is only of interest to those who share the opinion. And I am ashamed to say that what I wrote did have some big chunks of opinion piece in it. Mea culpa, and I'm going to try and avoid that in the future.

Next is the review -- this is useful to the consumer who can find a reviewer whose tastes are congruent with his own, or who is able to tell when someone's negative criticism indicates something he'd like. This is just barely removed from the opinion piece -- but it does serve a real function. Still, its only meaning for an artist is in how it affects his career -- an artist is right to be concerned about a bad review and wrong to be concerned about the reviewer's personal opinion.

Criticism is something else entirely. A critic is genuinely knowledgeable and works with the intent of furthering the art. (Oh, how I blush to describe dinosaur television as art -- but it is, it is!) And this is something an artist would do well to pay attention to. The best criticism is done by practitioners of the art. Ruskin, for example. While I disagree with much of what I've read by him it is still worthy of respect -- respect he has earned not simply through words and erudition but also through his drawings and paintings.

For an intuitive creator, one who is self-taught and self-motivated, even this level of critique can be damaging. But for the creator who studies and practices his skills, having one's work analyzed and commented on is an essential part of the process of education. And I speak from experience.

For years now I've sat down every Monday night and critiqued writing while having my writing critiqued. This is why my writing has improved. When I'm in an art class and I get a chance to find out how people respond to my work I learn. This is the level of critique I'm interested in receiving.

So if I write any more criticism I'm going to try and write at that level.

If.

Art Failure

I believe I will try and hide my shame behind a Coelophysis entirely rendered in Illustrator...

Well, the missus has her father staying with us right now and when I brought home some of my prints to show him he was taken by the bare tree visible in the Print Lab Ego Boost point.

He offered to buy it; I had no idea how to price it so I let him and the missus work it out. I was told that I had to sign it so I did.

I have some of the ugliest handwriting in the world. People have told me that once you become accustomed to it, it's quite legible. But it is ugly, ugly, ugly. And when I signed the print I used an India ink brush and it was big and I made a spelling error in the man's name, for chrissakes.

So I'm going to print him another copy and sign it again. After I practice. I mean, that's fucking ridiculous, practicing a signature. But I need to. I really do.

I don't want to be the only person in the history of art who can reduce the value of his work by signing it.