Irregular Giggling

In related news...

2011-08-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a few illustrations to fill in gaps on "Dreams," but when that's done if you want a PDF of it or whatever, let me know.

In related news (get it, that's the title?) do you know what's really really good for your mental state only not really, but the opposite? Sitting at home all day watching a Law and Order: Special Victims Unit marathon with a migraine. Something about the combination of the physical sense of doom created by crushing pain and the psychological sense of doom created by watching everybody be really really not nice to each other leads to severe paranoia and a craving for bread pudding. Check my Tumblr tomorrow for the consequences...

Dreams: The conclusion

2011-08-10T07:22:00.000-07:00

*****

Roger and David put an ad in the paper. "Vintage Thrift Store Finds for CHEAP!" it claimed. They gave their phone number and their address, and people came from all over the city to buy the "classic" trash until the apartment was nearly empty. David was saving his Keebler Elf for last, and after three days they were down to a Barbie lunchbox and a green plastic flamingo besides.

On the third day they began to receive menacing phone calls about the "value" of their items, and they disconnected their phone. On the fourth day, a knock came at the door. David stood, motionless, and stared at Roger. Roger stood motionless and stared at David. Slowly, quietly David crept to the door and put his eye up to the peephole. He took a step back and looked to Roger, who nodded in return. David opened the door.

*****

Finally, Barbie Lunchbox’s dream came true. One day the crack of light came again, and instead of a thump or a thumpthump or even a thumpthumpthump, she heard a rustling. Every day after that and sometimes more than once, the crack of light appeared and piles of junk disappeared.

And finally, she herself was brought out of the bedroom and allowed to sit with an elf, a plastic flamingo and two men at the supper table. Just then there was a knock at the door.

The door opened, and miracle of miracles, the lovely Queen of the Plants entered. She ran from the door to the table, scooped up her beloved Barbie Lunchbox in her arms and spun around three times, laughing. Barbie Lunchbox laughed as well. Barbie went home with her beloved, and they lived together happily ever after.

*****

David stepped back from the door to let in a tiny tornado that spun toward one of his last relics, grabbed it, and spun away again, just as fast. He looked at the woman in the door. Karen looked at Roger. "How much?" she asked.

“Two bucks," answered Roger.

"And you can have the Elf for only a dollar more" added David.

Karen paid the men and left. Roger and David threw the flamingo out their fourth floor window, and they lived together happily ever after.

*****

Karen took her purchase home, and set him on her coffee table. She cocked her head to one side and said "Hey there."

The Elf smiled and offered her his plate of cookies.

The End.

Part 11: Lonesome

2011-08-08T05:16:00.000-07:00

Part XI: Lonesome

"Whaddya want?" growled David as he opened the door. Before him stood a very rumpled man in a brown suit and a white hat that read "SweetMan." David chuckled despite himself.

Roger began to cry. "I don’t know!" he sobbed.

David stopped laughing. He stood back from the door to let Roger in, and directed him to the couch.

Roger looked around the room. Nearly every inch of floor space was covered with decaying, decrepit, broken, busted junk, and on the coffee table stood the Keebler Elf, smiling sarcastically at him. Roger shuddered.

"What’s your name?" asked David.

"Roger," sniffled Roger.

"Mine’s David," said David, and shook Roger’s hand.

*****

When they left the store, Karen’s car was gone. She stood in the spot where she had left it, looking down at the iridescent puddle of oily water and wishing she had put on shoes. When Karen looked up, she saw a handwritten sign on the tree in front of her. "Vintage Thrift Store Finds for CHEAP!" it read, and it listed sample items, one of which was a pink, plastic, Barbie lunchbox.

Intermission

2011-08-03T20:17:00.000-07:00

Karen drove with her tiny guide into the heart of the city where they wandered for three hours without finding Elm Avenue. Finally, the little Queen turned to Karen, and said, "STOP!"

Karen sighed. She looked down at the Queen of the Plants and said, "This is ridiculous." The Queen looked up at her and frowned. She stomped her foot and said emphatically, "stop Stop STop STOp STOP!!"

Karen stomped on the brakes. She looked down the street. She looked up the street. She looked across the street. Then she looked beside her and saw, to her surprise, The Warehouse Thrift Store.

Karen parked and walked in, and her tiny companion followed.

The two walked up to the elderly clerk, and Karen stared at her with her mouth hanging open. The woman stared back with two of her chins on her chest.

The Queen of the Plants piped up, "WHERE’S MY BARBIE LUNCHBOX?" she demanded.

"Look fer it yerself," warbled the clerk, and turned away.

Up and down the aisles the Queen wandered, and Karen shuffled behind. Through 43 dumpsters of clothes and toys they sifted and came up with nothing.

The Queen (predictably) pouted. She stomped her foot again, and said, “GO!”

Karen left the store, wondering where she was to go, and the Queen followed close behind.

Part 10: The Barbie Lunchbox

2011-08-01T05:24:00.000-07:00

Intermission

2011-07-28T05:35:00.000-07:00

The Queen of the Plants stepped over the naked woman in the doorway and entered her bleak house. She looked over the white couch, white curtains, white blinds, white carpeting… she walked through the white hallway, past the white living room and the white kitchen and up the white staircase. She looked into the white bathroom and the white bedroom, then descended the white staircase and laughed.

Just then Karen woke up. She lay motionless on the floor and stared up at the Queen of the Plants in terror and disbelief. Her mouth dropped open.

The Queen laughed again. "You’re the boringest yet!" she cried, and laughed some more.

Karen was silent.

Leaving off laughing, The Queen of the Plants demanded, "Get up!"
Karen obeyed.

"C’mon!" smiled the Queen (for she was nothing if not gracious), and led the way out the door.

Karen grabbed a trench coat and followed close behind.

Part 9: A Stalker

2011-07-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

IX. A Stalker

Roger followed David back to his apartment building on North 34th Avenue. He followed him up the stairs to his apartment and continued on to the landing above. Roger didn’t know why he was following David, but he knew he had nowhere else to go.

He lay down on the landing and looked through the bars to David’s door below. David entered the apartment with his purchases and the Keebler elf, and closed the door behind him.

Inside the apartment, David set the elf back on his side table, and emptied his shopping bag onto the floor. Just then, there was a knock on the door. David stood, motionless, and stared at the Keebler elf. The elf stood motionless and stared at David.

Slowly, quietly, David crept to the door and put his eye up to the peephole. He took a step back and stared again at the elf, which only stared silently in return.

David opened the door.

Part 8: The Plan

2011-07-22T01:49:00.000-07:00

Part VIII: The Plan

The Queen of the Plants was an exquisite planner. She made beautiful maps and long, involved lists, and she delegated the work so that, in under three days, she guaranteed the safe and joyous return of the pink, plastic Barbie lunchbox.

First, the Queen decided that she must (rather against her wishes) attend school the next day, carrying her lunch in a frightful brown paper bag. She walked to school with a serious look, but just a bit of a bounce in her step. She greeted the plants with her queenly (though subdued) greeting and carefully accepted their browning leaves into her backpack (ashamed to have them see the paper bag). She counted every step along the walk to school, careful to avoid stepping on the cracks (though the Queen’s mother hardly seemed worth the trouble).

Arriving in the classroom, she stowed her lunch and coat in her locker and strode into the 5th grade classroom with her backpack on her back. The offending bully was standing in the corner, looking enormously tall and disgustingly fat. The Queen of the Plants marched forward until she stood (all 3 feet of her) beneath the bully’s nose.

"GIVE ME BACK MY LUNCHBOX," she demanded, calmly but firmly, in her queenliest voice.

The boy stared down at her in disbelief, his mouth gaping and his eyes bulging nearly out of their sockets. He coughed, sputtered, and said, "What lunchbox?" in a low, hoarse whisper.

"MY LUNCHBOX," the Queen replied, not lowering her voice, "MY. BARBIE. LUNCHBOX." Her eyes flashed with all the fury of a woman scorned.

Looking carefully around the room, and discovering that none of his friends were present to witness a moment of weakness, he bent low and whispered, "I sold it to a warehouse thrift store on Elm Avenue." Straightening up, he bellowed, "GET OUT OF HERE YOU MISERABLE, PUNY WORM!!"

The Queen ran. She ran back to her classroom, ran up to her teacher, clutched her stomach and cried, "I think I’m going to puke!" and ran from the room. She ran to her locker, retrieved her coat (abandoned her lunch bag) and ran from the school. The Queen of the Plants ran 3 blocks down the street before she had to stop to catch her breath.

Three blocks from the school, the Queen sat down on the curb in front of a white house. There was a white house on one side of her, a white house on the other and a white house across the street. She sat down to think. "Overall," she thought, "that went quite well."

Looking around her, she wondered whereabouts Elm Avenue might be. Looking behind her she saw the white house and its white curtains and white shutters (both pulled tight) and wondered again where Elm Avenue could be. Standing up, she brushed the dirt off her royal garment and stared up at the windows, watching for a sign of life. The Queen of the Plants saw a shadow behind the blinds.

The shadow gave her courage, and she shuffled quietly up to the thick, imposing door and knocked.

*****

Karen awoke and it was daytime, but dimly shadowed inside her bedroom. Her answering machine still showed a big, red "0" which reminded her of jelly doughnuts, which reminded her that she hadn’t eaten in several days. She had no idea what day it was, nor how long she had been asleep. Her pajamas and bedclothes reeked. Stepping out of bed, she shed her white nightgown, pulled the white sheets from the white mattress, and threw the lot in the washing machine. Walking, naked, past her large oak front door, she heard a light knock.

Karen did not bother to find anything to cover herself, but opened the door unashamed, looked down at the tiny visitor, and passed out.

Part 7: Encounter

2011-07-20T06:44:00.000-07:00

[Once again, this is part of a larger story I wrote many years ago and am just now illustrating. Tell me it's stupid, tell me it's boring, tell me I should be on medication... just tell me something in the comments, please!]

VII. Encounter

When Roger the SweetMan awoke, he began to run. He ran down the cracked and overgrown sidewalk, around the corner and down a narrow, dirty street. He ran and ran until he could run no more, and then he stopped.

Then Roger felt the cold wind, and he looked around him for somewhere to keep warm. He found himself outside the Warehouse Thrift Shop where he had begun his first reincarnation. His only suit was soiled and torn, and all his bones ached.

Entering the store, Roger wandered the rows of dumpsters full of clothes and tables strewn with broken toys, blenders caked with food and torn and soiled books. He roamed around the Warehouse for three hours, watching the customers pick through the rubbish, and wondering what he would do.

While leafing through the second half of a ripped romance novel, Roger was bumped from behind.

"'Scuze me," growled a short little man with a goatee growing to his chest and a life-sized cardboard cutout of the Keebler Elf beneath his arm. The man seemed to stumble under the weight of the decoration, nearly as large as himself, and half fell off his ridiculously tall shoes.

"Oh…Sorry…" said Roger, following the little man with his eyes as he furtively stole through the aisles, picking out odd bits of junk and adding them to a basket he carried on the same arm as the elf.

Now and then the man cocked his head towards the elf and listened, then whispered a few words back, looking around suspiciously to catch any lookers-on.

But the man did not catch Roger, who began to follow him around the store, often turning his back in order to appear to be heading the other direction, sometimes ducking down to hide behind dumpsters, sometimes crawling beneath them to get to where the elf man was going.

When David (for of course it was David) left the shop, Roger followed close behind.

Part 6: Investigation

2011-07-18T06:08:00.000-07:00

VI: Investigation

The Queen of the Plants, upon discovery of the theft, burst promptly into tears, and no one could console her. After 45 full minutes of red-faced, runny-nosed, painful, gasping sobbing, the Queen of the Plants was allowed to call home. After 2 hours of repeated calls, attempted consolations, maniacal screaming and no end to the crying, the Queen of the Plants was sent home. Shuffling, head down, along the sidewalk, the Queen stopped for no greetings, salutations or otherwise. She contemplated her loss, reliving the past three weeks of incomparable bliss. Her plant subjects were crushed by her slights and drooped their branches in disbelief.

When the Queen reached her home, she sat despondently upon the porch and began to sing to herself. Eventually, the Queen’s mother came out to greet the Queen, handed her a mug of chocolate milk, and said, “There, there, don’t cry anymore. We’ll find your little lunchbox,” then exited again, satisfied with her attempts at comfort.

The Queen of the Plants was very displeased. Knocking the milk into the garden, she put on a powerful pout and stomped into the castle, up the winding staircase, and into her chambers.

*****

And still Karen slept. She unplugged the phone and the clocks, pulled both blinds and curtains, locked all the doors and slept.

Part 5: The Queen of the Plants

2011-07-15T06:07:00.000-07:00

V: The Queen of the Plants

The Queen of the Plants had a brand new lunchbox. It was pink and yellow with a big picture of Malibu Barbie on the front, and it was plastic so if she dropped it, it would not dent. She swung this lunch box from her left hand on her way to school. This lunchbox did not hide inside her backpack. And this lunchbox had been safely emptied of any lunch.

The old Oak tree bowed to her on the path from her house, and the mulberry bush gave her a (sufficiently humble if a bit too quiet) "Good Day." The Queen was careful to touch every branch within her reach of every plant along her walk.

She whispered encouraging words to them and gave them each a (condescending, but really very sweet) smile. Every wilting petal or brown-edged leaf was carefully plucked and deposited into her (brand-brand-new) lunch box. And Barbie seemed happy to have them.

The Queen's old lunchbox had been made of cheap tin, handed down from her 10-year-old cousin, with a picture of GI Joe on the front. That lunchbox she'd kicked from her home to school and back every day. That lunchbox carried bruised bananas and bleeding jelly and peanut butter sandwiches. And, finally, that lunchbox had been stolen by a (kinder than he knew) bully on the playground.

But now the Queen of the Plants had a beautiful pink plastic Barbie lunchbox. And now that lunchbox held the offerings of all her adoring subjects (the sweating milk and crushed crackers were stored in her backpack). For three full weeks the Queen of the Plants was the Envy of the School, and for three full weeks her life was an 8-year-old's heaven. She slept with the lunchbox, bathed with the lunchbox, even watched TV with the lunchbox, and it became her closest friend. She named it Head of the Cabinet and Advisor to the Queen, and the lunchbox was next in line for the throne, should she fail to produce any heirs.

Then, after three happy weeks, the lunchbox disappeared. The Queen of the Plants had taken to keeping the lunchbox at her side at all times, more out of comfort and love than fear of it being stolen. But Sir Brownbottom, Lord of Gymnasium, requested that she leave it in her locker during Track and Field day. As he was a dear old friend of the King, the Queen assented.

The Queen of the Plants performed poorly on the long jump out of worry for her friend, alone and lonely. She could not reach on the sit and reach, lest the lunchbox be hurt or sad in her absence. And when she returned to the locker at the end of the ordeal, her worst fears were confirmed; the Barbie lunchbox was nowhere to be found.

*****

This was too much. Karen had slept for 36 hours. When she awoke, the light on her answering machine was blinking. She pressed “Play” and there was 1.5 seconds of silence, followed by a rustling, and then a click. She pressed “Delete” and a red “0” winked at her three times. Karen couldn’t remember if David was one of her bosses or not. She couldn’t remember if she had a daughter who was the Queen of Plants whom she sold to an ice cream man for baby stew or not. Karen’s head hurt. She pulled the curtains and went to bed.

Part 4: The Elf

2011-07-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

David finally left the apartment the next morning, carrying the elf beneath his arm. He returned to the Warehouse Thrift Shop, and slammed the cardboard cookie man down on the wide wood counter. "It’s defective,' he growled, his voice unused to speaking, 'I want my money back.'

The elderly clerk stared at him, her folding jowls wobbling in disbelief. "We don’t do refun’s" she warbled. When David opened his mouth, she pointed nonchalantly to a sign at her elbow that read, "This is a class ESTABLISHMENT: Please conduct yourself Accordinly"

David stalked out of the store, elf in tow, and tromped back to his apartment.

That night, David cleared out a section of the bedroom floor and curled up amidst the piles of thrift store rubbish. He slept only fitfully, rolling back and forth between the precarious walls until a relic finally came crashing down upon his head. With a terrified scream, David threw the Keebler elf across the room, and sat down in the corner to rock himself and cry.

As his sobs subsided, David heard a gurgling murmur from the other corner of the room. Stifling his sniffling, he cocked his head to one side and listened. Through the smothering heaps of trash, he heard the sounds of a wee elf’s wails of misery. Suddenly, David felt guilty for hurting the poor thing, and he crawled over to where the cookieman lay.

"Don’t… uh… don’t cry… little man,” stuttered David, “I’m sorry…"

"Fat Bastard!" cried the elf, and smashed David in the nose.

"OW!! Fuck!" whined David, recoiling into a toaster oven and a Barbie lunchbox. "What the hell’d you do that for?"

"Fat bastard…" whimpered the Keebler Elf.

"Why do you keep saying that??"

The elf sat up, wiped his eyes and shot a glare at David. "I’m just trying to point out that you are fat, and you’re a bastard."

David was silent.

*****

On the morning after the third night of these new and awful dreams, Karen did not get out of bed. Karen lay and stared at the blank white ceiling or the blank white walls or her blank white comforter (which brought her no comfort). She ate neither breakfast nor lunch that day, and no one at the small café on the office building’s second floor missed her. For dinner she ate a bowl of Cap’n Crunch before returning to her bed. At 9 p.m., Karen went to sleep.

Dreams, Part 3: Roger

2011-07-11T07:02:00.000-07:00

When Karen woke up she was an hour late for work. She did not shower, she did not eat breakfast, and she drove faster than usual in the end-of-rush-hour traffic. When she got to work, she did not pour her cup of coffee; she went straight to her cubicle, slid off her shoes and went to work. She entered data for two hours, then went to lunch at the small café on the office building’s second floor (egg salad sandwich on white bread with pickles, Lay’s potato chips and a diet Pepsi), then returned to work. After work she went home, microwaved a frozen dinner, opened a can of beer and watched television until 9 p.m. At 9 p.m., Karen went to bed.

III. Roger

On morning of the fourth month, Roger woke up and realized that he was tired of the Day Care biz, and even the babysicles were not what they used to be. So, that day he took his leave of the other ice cream men and their burgeoning business, and went on the road, wearing his polyester suit, white suede shoes and SweetMan hat. He traveled on foot, eager to explore the far reaches of the country, seeing sights he had never seen.

But he when he reached the heart of the city it was dark and he was tired, and Roger soon realized that these streets were nowhere for a retired ice cream man to wander unprotected. As the night closed in, so did the walls of the buildings; from doorway to doorway, the former SweetMan bounced like a lost rubber ball. Finally, sometime after 10pm, he collapsed on the stoop of a tumbling down apartment building and fell asleep.

Part 2: David

2011-07-08T04:33:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder: for the next month I will be sharing with you a story I wrote more than a decade ago, but am just now trying to illustrate. Please yell at me about it in the comments!

Part 2: David

In a claustrophobic building in a tight little neighborhood of a large and angry city, David Alexander found his first apartment. It had three rooms: a bathroom, a living room and a bedroom. In each room there was a round, yellow overhead light powered by a 60-watt bulb. In the living room it flickered. The walls were papered yellow with dusty orange flowers, and the floors were warped wood. David dropped his solitary suitcase on the stained green rug and muttered, “Furnished my ass.”

The living room held a sunken foldout couch, the rug and a plastic wood end table. In the bedroom was a matching chest of drawers and lamp stand, and the bathroom was empty except for the toilet and a shower head protruding from the opposite wall. “Great,” growled David, “I can take a shower while I piss. How efficient.”

That night David slept on the foldout couch, his belongings still unpacked. The next morning he left the apartment to look for a job. For three days straight he left his home to explore the angry city, and for three days straight it turned its back on him. Every morning he opened the neatly packed suitcase, dressed, folded his pajamas and placed them inside. Then he reached into the inside pocket, removed a plastic pencil box, and counted out his money for the day. Finally, he replaced the box in the suitcase, and latched the case shut.

On the fourth day, David quit his job search at 1pm. He entered a warehouse-sized thrift store and wandered the aisles. With the 20 dollars in his pocket, David bought a poorly matched 3-piece suit, platform shoes and a Barbie lunchbox. That night he put the lunchbox in the empty bedroom, and the next morning he wore the suit to look for jobs. With his platform shoes, David reached the height of 5’5”, and he felt much more confident.

For three more days David Alexander looked for a job. He entered every shop, restaurant and bowling alley with a “Help Wanted” sign in the window, filled out an application, and never heard back. The three days stretched to nine, fourteen, twenty-three… David took to visiting the Warehouse thrift shop every day. He bought a plastic flamingo, three plastic roman-style pillars, nine broken vacuum cleaners, several dirty blenders, a Roto Rooter, innumerable flowerpots and six Slinkies. He stored all these things in the tiny bedroom until, soon, he could not open the door.

On that day he visited the thrift shop and used his last two dollars to buy a life-sized cardboard cutout of the Keebler Elf. This he placed on the fake wood table next to the couch. It was 3 feet tall and supported by a length of half inch dowel. When David stood next to it, the Elf standing on the table, and David standing in his platform shoes, the two were nearly the same height.

The next day David Alexander did not go out to look for work. That day David did not get off the couch. He did not get dressed, he did not fold his pajamas or take out the empty pencil box or latch the pitiful suitcase. That day David stared at the wall. The next day, David stared at the wall as well. On the third day, David stared at the Elf. And on the fourth day, the Elf spoke to him.

"Fat bastard," the Elf said.

Dreams: Intermission*

2011-07-06T04:57:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder: for the next month I will be sharing with you a story I wrote more than a decade ago, but am just now trying to illustrate. Please yell at me about it in the comments! This part is un-illustrated on purpose.

Intermission

The dream came back to Karen in vivid black and white while she sat at the breakfast table pouring milk on her Cap’n Crunch. She promptly dropped the carton, spilling its contents across the bright white tablecloth left from Christmas. Karen had never had a dream before, not in twenty-three years of a silently bored existence. Every night she had gone to bed, and every morning she had woken up no more interesting, imaginative or exciting than the day before. Now suddenly this living man and his baby-cooking lifestyle was running around inside her sparse, if not unintelligent, mind.

Karen went to work that day. She poured her cup of coffee, sat in her cubicle’s twisting chair, slid off her shoes and went to work. She entered data for four hours, then went to lunch at the small café on the office building’s second floor (egg salad sandwich on white bread, Lay’s potato chips and a Pepsi), then returned to work. After work she went home, microwaved a frozen dinner, opened a can of beer and watched television until 9 p.m. At 9 p.m., Karen went to bed.

Dreams Part 1: SweetMan

2011-07-05T02:38:00.000-07:00

Just a reminder: for the next month I will be sharing with you a story I wrote more than a decade ago, but am just now trying to illustrate. Please yell at me about it in the comments!

Part 1: SweetMan

Once there was fat, white ice cream salesman who grew tired of bomb pops and began to eat babies.

The old man had been peddling icy treats to kids for 40 years, driving around in his square white truck, listening to the ten second jingle on infinite repeat. Day after day he had bent his face toward them to take the sticky nickels and dimes, and day after day he’d handed them ice cream and a pat on the head. Their joyful grins or spoiled pouts were the same each year, a source of comfort to the childless old man.

Then one day he reached mandatory retirement age and was asked to turn in his pressed white jumpsuit and the keys to his cherished SweetMobile. Roger (the ancient ice cream man) now sat in his little white house with the short, white picket fence and ate Blue Bunny vanilla ice cream from the carton with plastic spoons. He no longer bothered getting dressed in the morning; every day he wore the same sweaty underwear and soiled “SweetMan” hat that he had refused to turn in with the rest of his uniform.

Finally Roger snapped out of his waking coma, dressed in his bathrobe and bunny slippers, and walked to the nearest thrift shop.

With the last of his retirement fund, he bought a dark brown polyester suit, khaki shirt, white suede shoes and a lawn angel. Roger straightened up his apartment and hung out a hand-painted sign that read “SweetMan Ice Cream Man’s Day Care Center.”

Men and women who had bought creamsicles and popsicles from him in their childhood recognized his house and the name, and they sent their children to be cared for by his ice-reddened hands and round rosy cheeks. They left their toddlers to his olive shag carpeting, their preschoolers to his cardboard box jungle gym, and their first graders to his library of 30-year-old Reader’s Digest Magazines.

The babies however… the babies were left to the dark shed behind the garage and his ever-expanding kitchen. Somehow, the mothers and fathers did not notice their missing babies. They scooped up the toddlers, preschoolers and first graders and blithely went home to their pot roast or meat loaf dinners, never wondering why the family seemed that much smaller or there was an extra crib in little Johnny’s room.

So for several years Roger lived on the frozen corpses of stolen infants and the little money he got from the Day Care Center. Soon, however, other ice cream men nearing retirement began to come to him for advice on dealing with the change, and, after careful consideration, he let them in on his secret. The men then flocked from all parts of the country; retiring, near retirement, or simply quitting the sweet-pushing business, they came to him, and in three months the Center had expanded to three buildings with a state-of-the-art play center and two computers equipped with Teaching Tools for Young Children. And for those three months, Roger slept as soundly as a baby.

Daily Animal Doodles for July

2011-07-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Daily Animals Doodle challenge started by Paper Sparrow continues in July, and I'm going to try to throw a few in there when I can. I'll mostly be focusing on "Dreams," so I hope no one is offended if I kind of half-ass it here and there.

To start off, I'm catching up by combining some animals. Here are days 1 and 2: Aaardvark and Badger.

Zinnia is an aardvark and she is only 6 days old, but she has already made a new friend: William the badger. William is only 4 days old, so Zinnia tells him all the time how things will be when he grows up. For one thing, he will have to start eating ants, because that's what the big people eat. Zinnia hasn't actually eaten any ants yet, but she assures him they will be delicious, nutritious, and make them grow big and strong.

And here are days 3 and 4: Chameleon and Deer

Growing up in Minnesota, I've seen my share of whitetail deer, but since I'm not a hunter or an animal whisperer, I've never gotten really close to one. Who knew they had so many colors going on? Maybe that's why Gertrude, the chameleon, likes Frank here so much. Gertrude is a world traveler, and she has seen 23 countries so far. She's a fan of the U.S. because there are so many different kinds of animals and terrain and things to imitate. However, despite Frank's indisputable beauty she does not like Minnesota, because it is too cold and most of the beaches don't have sand. Frank wouldn't mind if Gertrude moved along either because, first of all, she's kind of clingy and it makes his antlers hurt, and second of all he doesn't like people hanging around his home town talking about how it sucks.

A little about the story you will soon read

2011-07-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

Starting Tuesday I'll be sharing with you (hopefully) a story I wrote when I was in college called "Dreams." This may be the only story that I ever felt like I finished writing, and to punish myself I have been trying to illustrate it now for twelve years and failing.

When I first wrote it in a creative writing class in about 1999, the Internets were still the Wild Wild West and also I was 20 years old and didn't think about things like "copyrights" and "long term plans" and whatnot, so for my final project I took a mix of my own drawings, pictures I took and photos I downloaded from the few web pages that were not dedicated to porn back then and cut them up and literally pasted them onto pages. I then took these collages to Kinkos and paid $1 a color copy to make it into a book. I kept forgetting about putting them front to back and what order they should go in, but they also didn't have the copier cards back then, they just let you make your copies and then carry them up to the register to pay, so I probably made about $100 worth of copies but only paid about $35. Still, that was a lot of money for a college junior. I have since lost that copy. Has anyone seen it? Doesn't matter, it's completely unpublishable anyway.

I'm not a very good drawer, but when I focus I can do all right, and I figured out that Paint now lets you sort of cut and paste in a way that's like a collage, so I'm trying that out and not investing in any more glue sticks this time. I also have a scanner now, so hopefully I can do this without destroying any originals.

Another important thing about this story is that it's really too long to be a "short story" (about 13 pages without illustrations, maybe 3o pages with them), so you'll be getting it in sections. Also, that gives me a chance to actually draw them, since I only have about 10% finished right now. Here's hoping I stick with this, and if you like it or hate it or just are concerned for my sanity, please leave comments because I have a feeling my commitment will wane if you don't.

Okay, see you Tuesday!

Daily Animal Doodles Review

2011-07-01T02:14:00.000-07:00

Here they all are! I can't believe I made it to the end!

Day 30: Cat

2011-06-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

I could see how "cat" would be easy. I really can. But apparently my drawing skills completely fail me when it comes to doing animals I know and love. Maybe that's why I suck at people too. Anyway, here are my real-life cats, Duane and Lew (kind of):

Lew (a.k.a. "Fat Cat") is the one on the back of the couch, and Duane (a.k.a. "Neurotic Cat") is the one that looks like a dog, which is too bad because he's really very pretty. In real life he's kind of Egyptian-y, but he's also one of those totally black and white cats, so coloring him was a challenge. Lew is fat, hence his nickname, but he's also a Maine Coon cat, so he's about three feet long, which makes him kind of like Shaq in the off-season... big frame with a little jiggle around the middle because of too many Doritos and not enough free throws. We got Lew from a Chicago alley as a three-week-old, not yet weaned kitten, and back then he fit in the palm of my hand and I fed him with a bottle and wiped his butt for him. He's dumb as rocks except when it comes to getting what he wants: he figured out that the best way to get all the food is to eat the dog's food first because she's the pushiest, then Duane's because he's the nicest and then his own, because everyone else has some kind of antiquated notions about not eating other people's food. He also figured out how to get the shiny things in my jewelry box by prying open the lever, opening the doors and pulling out the drawers. Most importantly, he figured out that he doesn't really have to clean himself because Duane or the humans will do it for him. Duane, on the other hand, is a very clever cat, but he's too nice to put it to good use, so he mostly likes to be picked up and held like a baby, to sleep on people's faces at night and to chase the laser pointer, which is his oldest and most deadly nemesis. We found him outside our college dorm living on mice and cans of tuna from the R.A., so he almost even pre-dates our relationship.

Tomorrow, you'll get to see all the drawings next to each other, and then I will embark on a project I've been trying to get started for 10 years: illustrating my "short" story "Dreams." I wrote it in college and at the time just used pictures of the Internet to illustrate it, but found out afterwards that that probably constituted copyright infringement and have been trying and failing to illustrate it myself ever since. With my new-found confidence bought from this challenge, I'm going to give it a shot. Characters you will meet include a retired ice cream man, the Keebler Elf and a Barbie lunchbox. Teasers!

Also, the Daily Animal Doodles continue in July with some truly awesome animals, so I will definitely be joining up with that, just maybe not every day, depending on my ability to actually get this other project going.

Day 29: Hippopotamus

2011-06-29T08:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the penultimate day in the Daily Animal Doodles challenge!

This is Ned, and he is trying to catch that balloon in his mouth. He's a full-grown hippo, he just has an overgrown sense of whimsy. The idea is that he will catch the balloon without popping it, but as you can see he has very sharp teeth and he's in danger of choking if he's not careful. Ned has already been to the emergency room twice for this, and he has been warned to stop it, but he just can't help himself. Ned is what you'd call a special hippo. In addition to extreme sports, Ned likes the Crayola 64-pack of crayons that comes with a sharpener, French poetry, ham radio and crickets.

Day 28: Otter

2011-06-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

I went for a river otter with this one, because they have them at the Minnesota Zoo and when I was a kid they were my second favorite only behind monkeys.

This is Paula, and she does not live in the zoo, though she has friends who do. She lives on the banks of the Mississippi river, way up by its head in Lake Itaska, and her favorite thing to do is to run to the top of a hill, fill her mouth with dish soap, surf down into the river and then come up blowing bubbles. That's what she's doing right here. She also likes eating sunfish, but only if they are breaded and fried, because she's trying to build up her layer of fat for next winter already. On weekends she plays in an Uno league with other otters, in which she is the reigning champion, and works at a pizzeria busing tables for extra cash. She is saving up to go back to school to be a chiropractor, specializing in marine mammal adjustments.

Days 25 through 27: Croc, Tortoise, Flying Squirrel

2011-06-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry for getting behind here, but none of you read blogs on the weekend do you? I totally stole the three-animals-in-one idea from Eef, another participant in the animal-a-day challenge. She's a good draw-ist, so I figured it doesn't count as cheating.

This is Clint, Jennifer and William. Clint is a crocodile, and don't think he's not aware of the alliteration; he is, and he hates it. His best friend is Jennifer the tortoise, and she knows that he loves flowers, so she's bringing him this orange daisy in a pot for his greenhouse. Unfortunately, William thinks that Clint is about to eat Jennifer, because he doesn't know either of them, so he's about to dive bomb Clint and try to scratch his eyes out. Luckily he will probably fail because he thinks he's tough, but he's really not. William gets himself into problems like this all the time trying to protect the ladies, but he has still never had a girlfriend, even though he is already two years old. Jennifer likes the white knight type, though, and she and Clint are really just friends, so it might just work on her.

Day 23: Rhino and Day 24: Owl

2011-06-24T09:33:00.000-07:00

I really was very excited for drawing a rhino, but then I got all busy and stuff, so he remains half-finished:

This is Mark, and he is a baby rhino: he's only about 1 year old, but that's about 10 in people years. He really wanted to have his suit on for his drawing, since it is his first one and he just got it last week, but we ran out of time. He has heard all about poachers stealing rhino horns and thinks that if he paints his green maybe they will be less desirable, even though he thinks it looks rad. He painted his toenails to match, just for this picture. Anyway, Mark lives in Montana, where his parents are ranch hands and have been ever since they had him and escaped the cult they had been living in in Utah. Mark doesn't remember the cult, but it really turned his parents off religion, so he has to lie to them when his friends invite him to the Lutheran lock-in and tell them he's going to an all night concert instead.

For "owl" I decided to see if I could still paint at all, and the answer is: Kind of.

I went for traditional colors on Madeline here, not only because that is what color she actually is, but also because most of my paints, which hadn't been used in half a decade, were all dried up, with the exception of the browns. Anyway, Madeline is an owl model, so she was more than happy to sit for my "doodle" here. Unlike the owl stereotype, she is not very smart at all, and she dropped out of school after the 8th grade to go to New York to model. She's doing pretty well in this market, which is kind of mad for owls, particularly cute ones with giant eyes. Madeline was a very sweet owl before starting this career, but now she has gotten a big head and sometimes throws temper tantrums when her iced coffee is too weak or they accidentally get her cheddar instead of mozzarella cheese sticks. She's very particular about her cheese.

Day 22: Flamingo

2011-06-22T06:41:00.000-07:00

Yeah, no pink pen. Sorry.

This is Melissa, the green flamingo. Did you know that flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp? Melissa didn't until she became a vegetarian. Now she eats mostly lily pads and wheat grass smoothies, which is really eating up the salary she earns playing professional Flamingo Soccer. It's just like regular soccer (they don't have hands to use to grab the ball anyway) but the ball is more colorful, because flamingos love color. Melissa is the goalkeeper, so it's okay that she's a different color than everyone else on the team. That's it for Melissa; I'm very psyched for tomorrow, which is Rhino!

Also, guess what, there was a button for the Daily Animal Doodles project all along! I'm very observant!

Day 20: Dog

2011-06-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

Holy Mary, mother of Christmas, drawing dogs is way harder than anything else. This might have something to do with the fact that they are my very favorite animal, or that there are approximately 7 billion different kinds of dogs, or that my current dog is a terrible model and also white, which is a hard marker color to find. Anyway, after about 100 attempts of everything from cartoon dogs to realistic portraits, here's a sketch of Olive:

She's my real-life dog, and that's her favorite position, which we call the "Falcor." She is afraid of cameras, sleeps about 20 hours a day, is 90% deaf and half blind so she does smart things like take flying leaps at the couch and bounce off of the laundry basket she didn't know was there. Also, if I leave the room and she wakes up to find me missing, she will run around and around and around the apartment looking for me, often passing me several times in the process. When we adopted her, she had been in foster care for several months, and her foster mommy was a big fan of dog clothes, so she has a large collection of pink doggy dresses and sometimes I think she wonders why she never gets to wear them anymore. When we were back in Minnesota last week, she terrorized my parents' beagle Bonnie by following her everywhere and sniffing her butt nonstop.

Tomorrow is "flamingo," at which point I promise to have a real finished drawing... assuming I can find an adequate pink pen, or justify a green flamingo.

Check out Flickr and Paper Sparrow, where I'm sure people have actually drawn complete dogs!

Day 20: Beaver (again?)

2011-06-20T07:18:00.001-07:00

Some people might be unhappy if they had to draw the same animal twice for this challenge, due to their own stupidity. Me, I'm happy to have the chance to do better this time. Except for the crappy cowboy hat, I'm pretty satisfied.

This is Barry, he's Ellen's American cousin, hence the cowboy hat, which doesn't fit him and is falling off, but he really wanted to wear it in this picture so that Ellen wouldn't forget what Americans look like. He also wanted to wear blue jeans, but he has an unusual body type and couldn't find any that fit him right. Part of the reason he is so concerned with proving that he's American is that he has actually moved to Canada, where the weather is more beaver-friendly. He has become one of those annoying people that point out that Canada is in North America too, so Canadians are also Americans, and completely ignores the fact that the United States of America has it right in the name, so kind of has more of a right to the "American" title. Besides proving that he's American, Barry likes silk neckties, birch bark (the candy, not the actual bark), hot tubs and Crest White Strips (TM).

Flickr Group and Paper Sparrow

Day 19: Cheetah

2011-06-19T06:31:00.001-07:00

As I was drawing my cheetah today, Houseboy asked me how I was going to show that she was fast. "She's a slow cheetah, actually," I said. "Then she'll need roller skates," he said. That's the whole explanation for the roller skates. It has nothing to do with trying and failing to draw cheetah paws.

Brooke is a slow cheetah, but she makes up for it by wearing roller skates and mostly only meeting other cheetahs at the roller rink. Today is 70s Flashback Day, which is her favorite, because the disco ball really goes well with her green hair and pink roller skates. Obviously, she dyes her hair, but a leopard can't change its spots, as they say, and the same is true for cheetahs. She tried once to bleach them out, but even that didn't work. Besides roller skating, Brooke likes sugary cereals, Kafka, and Mexican wrestling. She hates being called a hipster, polo shirts and posers.

More at Flickr and Paper Sparrow!

Day 18: Monkey

2011-06-18T07:00:00.001-07:00

Remember when we had orangutan, and I was like, "This would be so much easier if it were just a monkey?" Yeah, I was wrong. Do you know how many different kinds of monkeys there are? My favorite is Curious George, but I figured plagiarism was discouraged, so I picked my favorite real monkey, Agatha the tamarin. Not to be confused with tamarind, which is a tree/bean/flavor.

Agatha is yelling at us in this picture because she's pretty much always yelling because she is ill-tempered. She doesn't like when people try to pet her, when it's windy outside, when her beans touch her peas, or when people use the word "irregardless." She also hates reality shows on television, thunderstorms, pleated pants and getting groomed. The only things she likes are chocolate, which she's not allowed to have, and when other monkeys fall out of the tree.

Day 17: Platypus-ish

2011-06-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

One of my very favorite characters from Mr. Rogers when I was little was the duck-billed platypus family, so I was disappointed to find out that I can't draw one to save my life. I can't draw a beaver either, but Ellen really wanted her 15 minutes of fame.

Ellen is a beaver, but she lives in Australia among the platypus (platypi?) and wears a duck bill mask a lot of the time because she is self conscious about her tiny nose. The platypuses that she knows are actually very kind about it (they are well known for being an accepting species), but she just feels more comfortable with the mask, even though it makes it hard for her to eat. Ellen introduced her platypus friends to the beaver lodge, and they liked it so much that she makes her living chewing down trees and building lodges for them. In her free time she is in a band, in which she plays the clarinet, because percussion was already taken by a very talented platypus. Sometimes she misses North America, because television shows and movies take so long to get to Australia that she can hardly talk to her friends back home for fear of them telling her what happens in the season finale of Chuck. On the other hand, she loves the weather and she's hoping to go see the famous opera house some time this summer.

Go check out the Flickr Group and Paper Sparrow!

---

P.S. - I just realized Monday's assignment is a beaver... whoops?

Day 15 and 16: Panda and Horse

2011-06-15T06:39:00.000-07:00

I'm going to blame both my lateness and the lameness included herein on travelling 1800 miles in the last week, which has made my brain and everything else all full up of McDonald's french fries.

This is Lamont; he is not a superhero, but he wishes he were, so he drew an L on his chest with permanent marker, and he's thinking about getting it tattooed. He also paints his nails green, and he thinks if he were a superhero maybe his power could be Nuclear Nails, which would be something like glowing nails that can start fires or something. He is also morbidly obese, but that is okay for a panda, so mind your own business. He loves giant suckers because he can eat them all day (this one is watermelon flavored), but sometimes he gets panda hair in them, and that is no fun.

This is a rocking horse because I can't draw horses and even getting a horse face to not look like a dog was a big challenge, and hooves just seemed impossible right now. Because this is an inanimate object, it does not have a story, because I'm not crazy.

She does look like she knows something though, doesn't she?

Day 14: Elephant

2011-06-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

Elephants are one of the few animals I can sketch without looking at a picture of one, though I messed up this guy's ear and had to go into Paint and fix it, which probably counts as cheating, but luckily I don't care.

This is Brian, and he is a four year old elephant and he just got a new blanket and is doing a little dance about it. It looks like he's walking, but he's actually dancing, it's just that elephants aren't very good dancers, since they're so ponderous. He also has a hat, as you can see, which makes him just about the fanciest elephant in town, not counting circus elephants, which only come through town every now and then and so don't count. He found the hat hanging on a pole outside a person's house and it fit on his head, so he took it, because he's still a little too young to understand stealing or how it is bad. He also has a little plastic pipe that blows bubbles (not pictured), and he is looking forward to getting home and blowing bubbles around his yard while wearing both the hat and the blanket. When Brian grows up he wants to move to Montana, because he likes mountains and he heard they have a very big sky there and he wants to know what that means.

I am on the road once again this week, so I will try to schedule some animal doodles to post while I'm gone, but if not you'll get a panda and a horse (eek!) when I get back to Nashville. In the meantime, check out the Flickr group and Paper Sparrow!

Day 13: Sea Lion

2011-06-13T06:34:00.000-07:00

I don't actually know the difference between a seal and a sea lion, and no amount of Google image search could really help me, and I looked at the Wikipedia articles and was like "I ain't reading all that," so I didn't, but here is Len anyway.

Len's full name is Leonardo Da Vinci Jones, but he goes by Len, because he's unpretentious like that. He lives in California, and he likes watching the surfers and the sunbathers and sometimes he yells out to them, but they can't understand him because he only speaks Sea Lion. Still, he shares their ice cream cones, and his favorite flavor is pistachio. You might not be able to tell, because I suck at drawing backgrounds, but he's enjoying a beautiful sunset on the dunes, and he's saving up for a dune buggy, which he will ride around to all of his favorite beaches and maybe sell bottles of water or icey pops to make extra money, but mostly to get to hang out with the people at the beach. Len is also a surprisingly good singer and he thinks that he could sell more icey pops if he makes up some songs about them, so he working on that this summer, along with growing a mustache.

Don't forget about the Flickr Group and Paper Sparrow!

Day 12: Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler!

2011-06-12T04:59:00.000-07:00

I really, honestly can't even hear the word "donkey" without thinking of that episode of News Radio. I don't know if you can read it, but Cyril here is saying "Feel my skills, donkey, donkey, donkey, donkey!"

Cyril doesn't even want to say that, but it's a part of his job. Cyril is a sideshow donkey, mostly because he has green fur, which came about because of a chemical spill in his area when he was just a baby donkey (colt? foal?), which tragically killed many of the chemical plant donkeys, but only turned Cyril green, because he lived downriver and likes to go swimming. Cyril sees that spill as a blessing because it closed the plant, so he never had to work there, and it made him a pretty color and got him a job traveling with the circus. On the other hand, he really hates the circus because all the other sideshow animals are mean to him, and he doesn't even know why. He really wishes he could be a swimmer in the Olympics or maybe a pack donkey that helps people get to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He heard that they only take burros for that job, but he thinks that a donkey is pretty much the same thing, and he is learning Spanish just in case.

Don't forget about the Flickr Group and Paper Sparrow!

Day 11: Whales and a vocabulary lesson

2011-06-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

Today's word of the day: symbiotic! As in, whales and remora (remoras? remorai?) have a symbiotic relationship. Don't you love it when the example sentence doesn't help you at all? Maybe a picture will assist us:

This is Lurleen the Baleen Whale and her best friend, Jeremy the remora. Jeremy attaches himself to Lurleen and lets Lurleen carry him around sometimes. Technically, that's called a "phoresic" relationship, but Lurleen and Jeremy are closer than that, because sometimes he gets her milkshakes from McDonald's and sometimes she scratches his fins for him and in a lot of ways they are very close and would probably get married if they were from the same religion, but they are not, and Lurleen's parents are very strict. Lurleen is in school for information technology, and in a year or so she hopes she can move out on her own and she wants a loft-style apartment where she can float around with really high ceilings.

Day 10: Killer Giraffe

2011-06-10T06:06:00.000-07:00

How many of us are surprised that it took me nine whole days to draw one of these animals as a psycho killer? I really held out because I think the giraffe is the most deadly of the animals. Also, they have the same number of neck bones as humans! Fun fact!

This is Victoria. The tooth is an implant that she got put in on her 10th birthday because she found that when she was biting people it wasn't drawing as much blood as she would like. She doesn't eat people, she just bites them and them laughs at them because they're bleeding. She got kicked out of the zoo for being anti-social and ejected from the circus for, well, biting people. So, now she just travels the country like a hobo and occasionally biting folks for fun. In addition to torture and murder, Victoria likes cream of celery soup, basketball and the rumba.

Don't forget to check out the drawings of sane people at Flickr and Paper Sparrow!

Day 9: Lions are Bada$$

2011-06-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

Do you like how I used the dollar signs to protect your delicate sensibilities? You're welcome.

This young man's name is Kevin, but he likes to be called K-Dog, because he thinks he's tough. He loves his tattoos ("They're tribal!"), so he keeps his arms shaved all the time to show them off. He also put red streaks in his hair with Manic Panic, and his mom is totally pissed about it, but he doesn't live in her den anymore, so she can't do anything about it. He has always gotten compliments on his blue eyes, but it makes him wonder if maybe he's adopted, or half husky or something, because lions don't usually have blue eyes. He likes to listen to Andrew W.K., Odd Future, and Beyonce, because she's hot, and his favorite dessert is a chocolate souffle if it's done well and otherwise Oreo cookies.

See more drawrings:

Paper Sparrow

Flickr Group

Day 7: Sheep is singular AND plural! and Day 8: HEDGEHOG!

2011-06-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

Since I'll be in the car for the next two days, here are your Daily Animal Doodles early!

Day 7

Somehow I thought one sheep would be too easy for what I've taken this challenge to be this month, and a herd of sheep would be more fun:

These little dudes are still waiting to be sheared, and wondering why Emelda got taken care of two days ago already and they're still laying around in a big heap, too heavy to move. They are pretty happy anyway, though, because they got dyed last week, because at this farm they dye the sheep and then shear them, instead of dying the wool or the yarn or the cloth. It's very revolutionary, and it makes the sheep happy, because everybody likes to be colorful and pretty. Their names are Jim, Jack, Jerome, Kallie, Karen, Krista, Bobby, Bobbie, Belinda and Kostoglotov (he's the one that's upside down).

Day 8

The hedgehog is one of my favorite animals, and not only because one of my best friends is a Hedgehog.

Her name is Lisa, and she is fiercely loyal, dangerously smart, and looks smashing in a tutu (probably). She knows all kinds of things about sociology, and can use words like "cultural capital" and "structural functionalism" in a sentence, without even sounding like a total asshole. She has smart opinions about important things, and if you cross her she'll scratch your eyes out with those little sharp claws, but if you're respectful she'll give you a little nuzzle. She likes home improvement projects, Isabel Allende novels, helping others and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

If you like these, don't forget to go over to Paper Sparrow and Flickr!

Day 6: Kangaroo

2011-06-06T05:59:00.000-07:00

This kangaroo is a superhero, but this is a picture of his secret identity, Bernard:

He doesn't have to wear glasses like Superman or Spiderman or anything, because he's a kangaroo, so who would suspect that he's a superhero? Have you ever seen a kangaroo try to move slowly? It's painful to watch. They're not really made for leisurely strolls, so no one is suspicious when he jumps at super speed to the rescue. He does have to pretend to be interested in football though, and he's even in a fantasy league. His team name is "The American Football Champions," because he couldn't think of a good pun, since he doesn't actually know anything about football. Anyway, he's smiling a little bit here, because he's on his way to save a bunny rabbit that is being held prisoner by his nemesis, Captain Evil, and he just likes knowing he's going to get to lord it over the rabbit, who thinks he's a really good jumper, but has nothing on a kangaroo.

Don't forget to check out Paper Sparrow and the Flickr for more animal doodles!

On another note, have any of you ever checked out the search terms that lead to your blog? It's a frightening undertaking. It seems that the thing I'm most famous for is that one time I talked about the earwig in our bathroom... sorry everyone who searched for that, I don't think I had any advice besides "get your husband to stomp on it for you." The second thing I noticed is that it seems like some people just type whatever they're thinking into Google, like "Your [sic] grinding your teeth it's so discusting [sic] I can't never sleep." Was your computer grinding its teeth? Were you only interested in articles on tooth-grinding that contained this exact complaint? Or is there some kind of artificial intelligence out there that I have completely missed? The third thing I found was by far the most disturbing, and almost caused me to shut down my blog entirely. This phrase: "How do I get my sister to sleep with me?" led to my blog. Just in case the same (or another) person ends up back here because now I've typed that exact sentence, here is my advice:

You don't. Shut up. Please leave the internet immediately before we have to get the bouncer out here. Gak. Wait, before you go, please tell me you don't actually have a sister, and then show me proof of the intensive therapy you're about to undergo and then you can leave.

Is mohair made of llama?

2011-06-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

I know, it's the kind of thing I could totally Google, but I guess I just don't care enough. Minions! To the Internet!

Anyway, here is my Llama for Saturday:

Her name is Emelda Burkis, and she has just been shorn for summer, her wool made into sweaters, possibly of mohair, possibly not. Either way, it is still a little cool in the mornings in Montreal, where she lives, so she bought one of her own sweaters. Orange and green are her favorite colors. Her friend Nathaniel is sitting on her back. He is a bluebird, but he thinks he's a llama too, and he's wondering how long it will be until they come back to steal his wool.

For Sunday, June 5th, the assignment was "orangutan." Man, do I suck at orangutans. Monkeys are one thing... you can give them big pitcher ears and fat lips and maybe even a tuxedo, and you're done. Everyone knows it's a monkey, they're not stupid. An orangutan, on the other hand, doesn't seem to have any ears, if Google image search is to be trusted. The babies look just like our babies, if our babies were slightly deformed by some kind of post-apocalyptic fallout. I kind of wanted to draw one of them, but kept failing, and then I wanted to draw a fat old one squatting down, but it kept looking more like a person in a gorilla suit than anything else. Anyway, this young lady finally showed her face:

Her name is Crissi, and she is a cheerleader for the Warren County College Bears, which is a community college she attends, where she majors in fashion design and actually started the cheerleading squad because before her their Division III wrestling team had no one at all to jump up and down on the sidelines saying things that rhyme. She writes a lot of the cheers too, but she is shy, and self-conscious about her enormous guns, so she has never expanded the cheerleading beyond wrestling, where her boyfriend Brent is the captain.

Don't forget to check out the one and only original Paper Sparrow for the genesis of this whole idea, as well as Flickr for the contributions of many more talented artists than me (like that's hard).

Narwhal-pig

2011-06-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Day 2 of the animal-a-day challenge is a pig:

This is George, and he is a magical uni-pig, though he prefers to be called a Narwhal-pig, because he is real and not imaginary, like a unicorn. The main magic he can do is shoot stars from his horn, though he used to be able to fly before he got so fat that he can't even stand up on his tiny legs. Next week he's being shown at the State Fair, and the week after that he will be magical bacon.

As a bonus, you also get a warthog, because I like them better than pigs because they're good at fighting:

Lucy's not that into fighting though, because she is lavender, and a pacifist. Though she does like to work out, which is why she has rockin' pecs. Lucy is a vegan, whose favorite board game is anything by Milton Bradley, because he is also her favorite baseball player, even though he is most definitely not a pacifist. She just loves the bad boys.

You can see everyone else doing this here, on Flickr.

Animal-a-Day, a day late

2011-06-02T12:14:00.000-07:00

So, I mentioned already that Paper Sparrow is doing a "Daily Animal Doodles" Project, and I did the bear, but already mailed it off. Well, here is my fox, so I'm in only a day late:

His name is Chester, and he has a little sunburn because he forgot his umbrella yesterday. He is in high school and all the other boys make fun of him for his sensitive skin, which makes him a little prickly. I was going to make it raining toasters, but it turns out I'm not very good at toasters. Actually, I'm not very good at foxes either, but on the third try I think he looks at least a little like a fox. And the umbrella is downright umbrella-y, if I do say so myself.

Up next: PIG!

Pictures I'm not showing you

2011-06-02T05:14:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Houseboy and I went to the DMV and got our new driver's licenses, officially becoming... ugh... Tennesseans (no offense). On the way over there we engaged in what he called "urban anthropology," as we drove through downtown. Have you ever noticed that it's the same people who work in every downtown in America? There are about 100 times as many of them in Chicago as in Nashville, and the proportion of heavy-set black ladies with too many bags to young white men in suits and mirrored sunglasses seems to be smaller in DC and larger in the south, but overall you can always pick out the types.

Anyway, I would totally show you my driver's license picture, because it's actually not half bad (particularly when compared to Houseboy's, which makes him look like a serial killer), but I don't feel like scanning it in or whatever it is the kids are doing these days. Likewise, I actually did day 1 of this challenge, and drew a morbidly obese superhero bear, but I already mailed it off to a friend, so you don't get to see that either.

So... thanks for reading a bunch of words with no pictures, I guess?

Spazz-aholic

2011-05-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

So, two things: first, the apocalypse has descended upon Nashville in the form of red-eyed minions of Satan:

About which I was totally being cool, even enjoying their weirdness and laughing at everyone else's disgust. But then they went from a couple hundred to a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands to the point where you can't walk down the street without ending up with one in your mouth and you can't drive with your windows down and you can't walk on the grass, and they make this horrible screaming sound when you try to politely discourage them from sitting on the sandwich you are currently eating. Basically they're proliferous assholes, and also very creepy, as they crawl around on the ground among the carcasses of their friends and family.

Second thing: I went from working about 80 hours a week on project work and homework and data collection and studying for and taking PhD comprehensive exams to having only about 20 hours a week of work, and I think something broke inside, because I made two shirts and a skirt and a pie and crab salad and I cleaned the house and committed the perfect murder, all except the last one (probably). Here are some pictures of what I cooked:

Yay!

Misses and Kisses

2011-05-15T19:12:00.001-07:00

Hello out there? How has everyone been? Let's discuss and compare notes! I recently discovered that the internets are like every other relationship out there, which is to say that most of the time I want nothing to do with you because you smell like cough syrup and sweat socks, but every once in awhile you throw a party that I'm not invited to, and there are balloons shaped like owls and a make-your-own-sundae bar and it goes late into the night and ends with you all lying in the grass looking up at the stars, and then I wish that I hadn't ignored every email you sent, even if they were all forwards and mostly either pro-something or anti-something-else, even though you know that I am staunchly under-everything and also don't find babies to be cute unless they are furry or look like old men.

Anyway, all that is to say that I'm ready now to hear about your vegan no-cook cheesecake recipe and the time you stubbed your toe on the cast iron door stopper at Crate and Barrel and the ensuing lawsuit and how you really think you might be psychic so you need to borrow $150 for those DVDs that will help you harness your power, but you should still know I don't have $150, even if it will pay off in immense dividends in years to come.

We invented something and now it can't be uninvented

2011-01-20T18:02:00.001-08:00

This is a Toad-in-a-hole grilled cheese.

What the hell does that mean? You might ask, and I might ask you to tone down the language because there are kids listening, because there are always kids listening, because you know how kids are with bugging our shit.

In our house "toad-in-a-hole" refers to the egg and toast dish, not to the disturbing-looking Yorkshire pudding and sausage dish that the hegemonic Wikipedia has declared to be the normative definition. And since I prefer my food to be named after animals rather than made of animals, I'm going to keep using toad-in-a-hole for this, rather than their preferred nomenclature of "egg in a basket," because who wants to eat a basket? And everyone wants to eat a toad because it is well known that they cure both the hiccups and acne, even if they're just metaphorical toads.

Anyway, Houseboy took two of these and put cheese in between them, and this is what came out:

P.S., that is ketchup, not blood, so don't freak out on me.

It's awesome and yet I fear for us all because just like the robot revolution and the invention of that game in Tron, this is probably going to change all our lives forever and possibly lead to the end of civilization.

But really, who wants civilization if you can't have fried bread, eggs and cheese all in one package?

Tacos from a truck.... but not

2011-01-16T16:29:00.000-08:00

So, every time I complain about the Mexican food around here, someone goes: "You should try the Taco Truck!" and I go: "I'm not into drugs."

But really, I have no problem with foods served out of trucks and/or trailers, it's just that this one actually uses its wheels and drives around town. Which means that no one can tell me where it is right now, they can only tell me where it was that one time or where they've heard it goes often, and to me that sounds like one of those cool kid parties I heard about on Veronica Mars where you have to know the code and even if I happened upon it they'd recognize me as an undesirable and I wouldn't get any tacos.

Lo and behold, however, the "taco truck" of Nashville also has a permanent, brick-and-mortar location and is actually called "Mas Tacos" (that link is to their Twitter account, by the way, which was almost a deal breaker for me, as I prefer not to Twit in any way). So, Houseboy and I braved the Saturday traffic through downtown and over the river and picked up some tacos:

My selection: fried Tilapia with a dill sauce, red cabbage, cilantro and some other stuff.

YUM!! The picture of Houseboy's didn't turn out as well, but he got the breakfast taco with chorizo, and seconded my "YUM!"

So, I have joined the chorus. If you're in the Nashville area, and you have any idea what Mexican food is supposed to taste like, I suggest you head to the taco truck (or its more convenient building analog), bypassing all other tempting options that will most likely feature Queso Sauce.

Hockey in Tennessee

2011-01-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

So last night for my birthday Houseboy took me out to see the Wild play the Predators, and I talk more about the sportsy part of that here. The most important thing that happened that YOU should know about, though, is this:

That is nachos topped with barbecue sauce and chicken. And what's great about it is that 1) they smoosh all the chicken together in the center so that vegetarians can share it with their omnivore husbands and have reasonable belief that no flesh will touch their gullet, and 2) turns out that nacho cheese (or "queso cheese" as they call it here) and slightly spicy mostly sweet dark barbecue sauce go together reallyreallyreally well.

MMMMMMMMMMMM.

Volunteer Fail

2011-01-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

So, in honor of my birthday I volunteered to go help build cots for homeless dogs at a shelter in Madison, Tennessee because that seemed like a safe way to help without accidentally bringing home 12 dogs and thus beginning my inevitable decline into animal hoarding. I woke up this morning and there were about four snowflakes in the air, and so Houseboy and I joked about how maybe they would cancel. You know where this is going, of course. We drive out there and stand around for about 5 minutes trying to figure out where to go before finally the barking dogs roused a man in sweatpants and Crocs* who informs me that they cancelled due to the weather, seeing as how it is so cold. From that I gathered that they intended to do this work outdoors, which brought up the question: which was more of a Southern moment, that they planned a four hour outdoor project in January**, or that they cancelled it when the temperatures dropped below 40 degrees?

---

* Totally not judging, if you run a dog shelter you should wear what's comfortable, I'm just fleshing out the story, you know.

** Not that us Northerners won't do the same:

Exponentially Older

2011-01-05T06:59:00.000-08:00

It doesn't happen that often, but this birthday I actually felt my age coming. Last night I went to bed with a shoulder pain, so I put a heating pad on it. After a little while it was still uncomfortable, so I lifted my head up to adjust the heating pad, and the pain in my shoulder shot out in every direction kind of like when you're in a water balloon fight and you squeeze the balloon too hard and there's a flaw in the plastic and it explodes all over you and then the water balloon fight is no fun anymore, except in this case the water is pain and so it was never fun in the first place. Anyway, now I feel like a very old person because moving hurts and I walk hunched over. Even Denise Austin yoga couldn't solve it. However, it did make for a good beginning to my birthday since I decided to take this 15 year old VHS tape and finally dub it onto DVD (just in time for DVDs to go completely out of vogue... another sign I'm old), and it turns out that after the credits there is an advertisement for all the other Denise Austin workout tapes, in which she wears pastel unitards and steps rhythmically to some very late 80s / early 90s bowchickawahhh music. That was pretty awesome.

Also awesome were the scones and tea that Houseboy made for my birthday breakfast, which looked just like these, but with butterscotch chips in them! Happy birthday to me!

Moving day!

2011-01-04T07:16:00.000-08:00

So, I got the new "Fancy Pants" blog all set up and moved all the so-called fashion entries over there:

http://notastylist.blogspot.com/

Check it out!

In other news, who saw How I Met Your Mother last night? I totally didn't notice the numbers thing (I only wondered why they kept showing close-ups of props) until Houseboy pointed it out, but this person managed to even get screenshots of each of them: http://himymcountdown.tumblr.com/. Pretty awesome.

I also read books

2011-01-03T10:42:00.001-08:00

So, in addition to watching much tv, I also managed to read a couple books over my break, most particularly this one, which was a present from Hedgehog:

I'm sure I've written about an Isabel Allende novel before, since I lovelovelove her, and her books are the kind where you might actually learn something, or at least you will if you know practically nothing about what she's writing about, like I do. This one is about Haiti and a little about Cuba and also about New Orleans, all in the late 18th and early 19th century, and the only historical thing I actually knew going in was that at some point there would be something called the Louisiana Purchase, which is what made most of Minnesota part of the United States, so there's that. Because I'm really bad at history and stopped paying attention to it sometime in Junior High, it had never exactly occurred to me that lots of people were living in those areas at that time, and not everyone was necessarily happy about it. Imagine that. Some people would actually rather be French.

Anyway, that's not at all the point of the book, just a little aside that makes me sounds stupid, which I know you all like. The point of the book is more or less about freedom and humanity, or lack thereof and of course about race and what defines it and what it means and all that. It's very very good and so you should take my recommendation for once and go read it.

Yes, I watch television

2011-01-02T08:58:00.001-08:00

In honor of trying to return to posting about things that are not clothing-related, I thought I'd tell you about all the TV I've been watching recently. We figured out how to connect our Wii to the Netflix, so we have been having self-imposed marathons of TV shows we weren't cool enough to watch most of the first time around, like Pushing Daisies, The Guild, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and now Dollhouse.

Pushing Daisies was just my kind of weird and bizarre, but I can also see why it got cancelled after only one midseason-replacement season and one strike-shortened season. By the end of it, the repetition of the "I'm sorry I got mad at you, it's just that I'm sad that no one knows I'm alive, but I'm happy you made me alive again, even though it means you can never touch me or I'll die again" and the "I understand why you're sad and I hope you're not upset that I made you alive again because I'm not even though I can never touch you or you'll die again" stuff got a little weary.

The Guild is a web series that started off just wretched, particularly in terms of the acting, which I suppose is to be expected from a web series, but actually did get better over the course of the show. Plus, I just love Felicia Day, because she is adorable and hilarious and altogether awesome.

We watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog over Thanksgiving, and it was amazing, as expected, but also terribly sad which I did not expect, but all-in-all reinforced the awesomeness of both Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris and is definitely the best thing to come of the Writer's Strike, in my opinion.

Finally, we're now in the second season of Dollhouse, which we actually did watch some of in its first season back when it was on the air. I remember liking it then (again, Joss Whedon, how could I not?), but recognizing its flaws in terms of the pacing and the not-great acting of the dolls in their "doll state." Watching them all back-to-back definitely improved the pacing, and the "doll state" parts get fewer and further between, and also get more depth. Now the problem in the second season is that we watched the episode at the end of Season One that never aired, but was shown at ComicCon or something, and it puts a very different feel over everything that happens in Season Two, so it's much much darker. Actually, come to think of it, that's not a problem at all, it just makes it so I need to take more breaks between episodes or I descend into utter madness. You know... like that.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T07:43:00.001-08:00

So, it finally occurred to me that perhaps the "Fancy Pants" project is not exactly in line with what my "loyal" "readers" might have come to expect from my infrequent and illogical blogging, and so I went ahead and started a whole new blog for that stuff: http://notastylist.blogspot.com/

I wanted to use http://fancypants.blogspot.com/, but of course that was taken, and even more of course, it was taken by someone who is afraid and threatened by the internet and was only using Blogger to stave off the inevitable advance of the machines, and luckily she clamped down on the "Fancy Pants" corner of the internet before they could use it against her, as you can tell by the fact that she has four blogs, all variations on "Fancy Pants," and only one of which has any content. Oh, also, the last time she posted was 10 years ago.

Ten years ago. How incredibly frightening is that... some part of my brain doesn't really acknowledge that the internet has been around that long, and suggests that I head into one of those tirades about how old I am and how quickly time moves and the two roads that diverged in the woods and how I should have taken the one that headed to Disney World, because I've never been there.

Anyway, as a result of starting that new blog and also continuing the folly that is a PhD program, you might not hear from me much at this spot, but I'll do my best to keep you updated on my inevitable descent into madness and how it is being staved off with macaroni and cheese...

Would you call me bubbly?

2010-12-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

So, as of today I am totally done with finals and project work for the next TWO WEEKS, which is an awesome feeling, especially when combined with a warm, happy and healthy dog cuddled up next to me in her camouflage fleece sweater, now at least mostly recovered from scary deadly illness. I learned something new about how I am perceived by people outside of my head during this time, which is that I am normally "bubbly." I had no less than two people comment on the fact that I was not my "normal bubbly self" and ask what was up, and if I had been my normal bubbly self I might have asked if they were being sarcastic, but instead I just kind of stared at them.

Which is also what I did to our cat sitter, who is a nurse at the vet's where we brought Olive, when she was telling me about something and said "Well, you know, you're a nurse." That probably would have been a good opportunity to right what is apparently a long-running misunderstanding, which explains why all summer she kept asking me for recommendations for allergy medications and I kept explaining to her that I don't have allergies, so I have no idea. It unfortunately came up again when she came by for the keys since she's looking after the cats over Christmas, as she took the opportunity to explain the medication that Olive is on, and turned to me and said "You've heard of it of course," and I kind of stared at her and was like "Um, no..." and she was like "Oh, well they use it in humans too," and Houseboy pointed out afterwards that I haven't gotten any closer to making it clear that I'm not a medical professional, but now she just thinks I'm a shitty nurse. I suck at my imaginary profession, so that's good.

Anyway, we also went out last night in celebration and saw the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which really was Spectacular when it came to the parts with the Rockettes, especially the part where they were dressed like nutcrackers and did this:

[Click for source]

But was pretty unspectacular when it came to the parts with Santa and Mrs. Claus, and also had an unexpected, long and poorly conceived Nativity Story at the end, which actually kind of offended me, even though you all KNOW I love me some Jesus, just because the rest of it was pretty obviously designed to never mention God or even use any of the Christmas carols that reference the Christian part of the holiday, so it seemed very divorced and preachy, rather than entertaining. Though there were live camels and sheep, so I spent the whole time hoping one of them would poop and then wondering how they guarantee they won't poop and whether those poor sheep were really hungry because they haven't been fed in days to ensure the lack of poop. It's possible I have a recent obsession with animal poop.

Dogs > Clothes

2010-12-13T17:50:00.000-08:00

So, finals week plus a dog in the hospital = same dirty sweats and slippers for three days, which I would totally take a picture of for you except no I wouldn't because no one in the universe looks good in sweatpants.

But, look at this sweetie:

And send your happy thoughts your way, because she's super sick and not liking it.

How long does it take to fix a water treatment plant anyway?

2010-05-12T06:19:00.000-07:00

See, if it were me, I'd just be down there with some duct tape and maybe the leftover tube of caulk that a handyman left in our apartment in Chicago and somehow made the move to Nashville with us, and it would be all jerry-rigged in no time. Hey, is jerry-rigged racist? It sounds like it's about the Germans, and they just got a shout-out in my last blog, so I'm going to call it even.

Anyway, we're still supposed to be conserving water by trying to use half our normal amount, which is difficult when you already take 5 minute showers, don't water your plants and haven't washed your car in the five years you've owned it. This weekend it involved not showering for three days, grilling out and eating on paper plates, which was kind of like camping so that was okay. On the other hand, we already had dirty dishes in our sink when we heard about the shortage, so now we have an ant problem that I've been solving by obsessively wiping down the counters with paper towels and putting everything edible in ziploc bags, so between that and the paper plates and plastic silverware, we've really just replaced a small amount of water with a very large amount of paper, so all of you out there who are "learning lessons" from this water shortage and thinking about carrying your new practices on into life after the flood, goody for you, but I'm looking forward to not having to take the trash out three times a week.

----

Irregular Giggling

In related news...

Dreams: The conclusion

Part 11: Lonesome

Intermission

Part 10: The Barbie Lunchbox

Intermission

Part 9: A Stalker

Part 8: The Plan

Part 7: Encounter

Part 6: Investigation

Part 5: The Queen of the Plants

Part 4: The Elf

Dreams, Part 3: Roger

Part 2: David

Dreams: Intermission*

Dreams Part 1: SweetMan

Daily Animal Doodles for July

A little about the story you will soon read

Daily Animal Doodles Review

Day 30: Cat

Day 29: Hippopotamus

Day 28: Otter

Days 25 through 27: Croc, Tortoise, Flying Squirrel

Day 23: Rhino and Day 24: Owl

Day 22: Flamingo

Day 20: Dog

Day 20: Beaver (again?)

Day 19: Cheetah

Day 18: Monkey

Day 17: Platypus-ish

Day 15 and 16: Panda and Horse

Day 14: Elephant

Day 13: Sea Lion

Day 12: Jimmy James, Macho Business Donkey Wrestler!

Day 11: Whales and a vocabulary lesson

Day 10: Killer Giraffe

Day 9: Lions are Bada$$

Day 7: Sheep is singular AND plural! and Day 8: HEDGEHOG!

Day 6: Kangaroo

Is mohair made of llama?

Narwhal-pig

Animal-a-Day, a day late

Pictures I'm not showing you

Spazz-aholic

Misses and Kisses

We invented something and now it can't be uninvented

Tacos from a truck.... but not

Hockey in Tennessee

Volunteer Fail

Exponentially Older

Moving day!

I also read books

Yes, I watch television

Happy New Year!

Would you call me bubbly?

Dogs > Clothes

How long does it take to fix a water treatment plant anyway?

Things to Do in Denver When You're Only Half Dead

Jesus wants me to fail

Thoughts from my day so far

Self Plagiarism keeps our country strong

Don't Say the R-word

Do I use the word random too much?

Psychotic break

Joe Joe the Monkey Catcher

Getting to know me

Because I am old

Why we don't have neighbors

Like a good neighbor...

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Spring has Sprung

My terrifying view into the future

Benjamin Bratt was overrated

Like, totally

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

If it's not one thing, it's fleas

Rain in December

I'm creeping myself out

In which I talk like a dork about math for a bit