Bears And Dreams

When I am sick, I tend to have pretty vivid dreams. Last night, I dreamt two entire stories - the second one being a sequel to the first. Many of the details have been lost, but some remain clear. I figured before they all were lost, I'd at least put it down for posterity. Here's the opening scene to the sequel:


PROLOGUE

"I think it's eight three three."

The boys were trying to buy a bear using their stepmother's credit card, but having trouble reading the three-digit code on the back.

"It's either eight three three or eight three eight."

"Can't he try them both?" the younger one asked.

"Shut up!" Casey hissed, covering the phone with his right palm and jabbing his brother with the elbow of the same arm.

The older boy removed his hand and spoke again, attempting to sound as adult and collected as the fictional Game Preserve Director he was purporting to be.

"Y'know, my wife... she's constantly taking this thing in and our of her purse, using it for everything from jewelry to tampons, it's worn down... Go ahead and try eight three three. Without my reading glasses, that's the best guess I got."

Casey was pleased with himself for thinking to mention tampons. Though he'd recently turned 14, it was the first time he'd ever spoken the word aloud. It had seemed to him a subject that men would joke about to establish camaraderie, and appeared to have worked. The man on the other end had chuckled, made an unintelligible statement of commiseration, and ran the card.

"Looks like we're a go," the broker said. "The card went through, and you're the proud owner of a new black bear. So now if you or someone on your transportation crew want to get ahold of our Distribution Manager, that'd be the way to make arrangements for picking it up."

Casey wrote down the staffer's contact information, thanked the man, and hung up.

"Did we get her?" Mason excitedly asked his brother. "Did it go through?"

"Yeah, it went through, but we don't have her yet. How are we gonna pull off picking her up? It's not like we can glue on some fake mustaches and say, 'Throw her on the back of my bike," y'know? We're only halfway there."

In truth, the boys were nowhere near the halfway point of their journey to rescue Beagan the black bear. Before it was all over, one of the three would find freedom... one would enter manhood... and one would die.

Artful Weekend

With it being so cold outside, and a tattoo cancellation opening up my schedule, I spend the day creating art.

It's been awhile since I did any of my surreal computer stuff, but I knocked out three of them today:


"Swoar To The Light"


"Poison"


"Arise Oh Phoenix"

I've been trying to learn to use Poser 7 - not an easy task. These three were created with a combination of Poser and Photoshop:


"Skeleton Drummer"


"Hellish"


"Cross Skeleton"

Lastly, there's always good old fashioned pencil:


"Predator Going Invisible"

Danger Blog

I'm pretty sure this is the first blog I've written while driving. I'm on my way to Indianapolis to pick Lindsey up from the airport. Holy cow, I'd forgotten how cold zero degrees is! At first my car didn't even respond to the turn of my key. It finally began to slowly turn before - much to my relief - actually starting.

Broken trees are everywhere, and a deadly cold gray has enveloped Fort Wayne. Craig windham on NPR just reminded me that this is the first day of winter. Along interstate 69, foot-thick trees look like snapped toothpicks, the gods of the earth appearing to bow in submission to the gods of the air.

Concrete bridges and roads merge with nature, creating a monotone world, save for the occasional green road sign or blue mile marker.

Gusts of wind have their way with me, batting me from side to side as if I were a toy between feline paws. I question the wisdom of continuing to type on this phone with my left thumb, but disregard the thought. My sense of self-preservation has been dulled by thirty months of regret.

Now blowing snow creates the illusion of driving in fog. The gray remains constant, yet the visible world shrinks to just a few dozen yards in every direction.

This long stretch of higway always reminds me of the drive from Cheyenne to Denver. Much of the scenery is nearly identical, though the absence of the Rocky Mountains to my right reminds me I am far from home. I wonder if home is the right word? A case could be made both for and against.

The sun is nowhere to be seen, though the darkening gray tells me it is setting. I come to the realization that I have forgotten my glasses. The drive back tonight will be more difficult because of it.

Three motels, two gas stations, and a McDonald's populate the exit leading to a tiny rural town, nameless in it's obscurity. A sign tells me I am 88 miles from Indy.

I stop typing for several minutes to consider the value - or lack thereof - of writing. It is an inherently selfish act. Oh, maybe not all forms, but certainly this essay. I also realize that my stream-of-consciousness narrative seems to possess an artificially highbrow tone, a voice I dislike reading. Even the self-serving blog has lost its luster.

Oh look, more golden arches ahead... I think I will use their facilities...

Normally I Like Ice

Thursday night we were told to expect a pretty brutal ice storm. I awoke Friday morning to a beautiful sight - snow on the ground, and everything covered in a half inch of ice.



But when I looked out another window, I saw that my trees had all been devastated by the extra weight.








Last night, the wind kicked up and even more limbs have been breaking. It's pretty sad watching my only serene place being injured and disfigured like this. So much so that I'm tempted to go out and babysit what remains, keeping watch over the few branches left unbroken. But it's 1°F outside. And were I to act on instinct, I imagine I'd eventually be found like good ol' Jack Torrance...

Breaking The 4-Month Silence

The most articulate complaint I've received about my failure to blog these last four months has been, "Do you really want 'Golden Poop' to be your blog's swan song?". The short answer is a horrified "No!".

However, other than art and music, there has been little to fill anybody in on.

Regarding art stuff, developing my skills as a tattoo designer and artist has been an amazing challenge this year. Just last week, I was approached with a request to re-create this angel "pretty much as-is, only without the flower, and put her hand in water and have it coming up around her."



I flatly refused. I don't want to be responsible for any more crappy jail-looking tattoos than already exist in the world.

With the negotiated agreement that I could do a redesign as long as the elements all remained the same, I came up with this:



Somewhere along the line I picked up a nickname of "The Tumor Doodler" by some at work. Can't imagine why, unless it's that my cubicle usually looks something like this:



Even since I snapped this photo, my style changed again. You see, I recently discovered the beauty and strength of thick lines (thanks to a new friend who does AMAZING tattoo work). Here's what my legal pad sketches have looked like lately:



Lest you think I only draw tumor-like blobs, I am actually very busy trying to develop a number of art styles. Unfortunately, it feels like I'm going in too many directions at once. But at least I'm creating - there have been many seasons in my life during which I stifled that flow.

And speaking of creative ventures, I made another Christmas song submission (the same contest for which I created "Christmas For A Dragon") last year. I'm a better engineer now, and there were fewer entries this time. However, there are enough great ones to prevent me from thinking I'll be even close to the second-place level I hit last year. (And truth be told, I wrote and recorded it in the two days before it was due, so it's pretty much my own fault.)

Anyway, it's as done as it's going to be. Click the link to hear "Christmas Economy A.D.D.".

That's about all for now. ...And I'll try to make the next four months a little more interesting.

Golden Poop

Words fail me. I took this photo the other day in (where else?)... a Wal-Mart parking lot.

Mystery Bug

So the other night, I happened to see on my patio door a minor monstrosity of the entomological world. I hoped it would not depart before I had the chance to get a picture. This is the best I could do at night on short notice:



At the risk of sounding like a moron, does anybody know what this is?

Just asking the question reminds me of my first day's work at Unicover Corporation. I arrived early and asked my boss if he'd seen the herd of odd-looking goats grazing on a nearby property. He said he was busy, and told me to ask him again during the morning department meeting. It was only a few minutes later when his office was full of people that the question elicited a torrent of laughter. Being brand new to Wyoming, I was not familiar with the appearance of antelope.

Day Tripper

A lot of people have been writing and calling, wondering why they can't reach me. There's a number of reasons, but it's mostly because I am on the phone and emailing nine or ten hours a day, and I'm understandably not very motivated to do more of it when I get home. Other reasons include procrastination and just plain ol' not knowing what to say.

As for not updating my blog much, I just kinda figure people aren't interested in hearing my day to day events unless I make it humorous. And sometimes that takes a lot of work.

But to prove I'm not dead, here is a blog entry.

Today I took a quick trip up to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Though grossly overcrowded, its well designed and full of a diversity of creatures. I took over a hundred photos, and here's a few random samples:


Shedd Aquarium and Chicago skyline on Lake Michigan. This is a panorama of three photos I put together in Photoshop. Not quite as good as the guy in Iran who added the extra missile, but you get the idea.


A 14-foot anaconda. I was told by an employee it's very rare to get a picture of her face, so that was nice.


Water. It's cool.


I'd never heard of a Blue Iguana. That's not redeye from the camera - it's really like that.


This bird has really big feet.


I like Bottlenose Dolphins better than Pacific White-sided Dolphins. But this guy is cute.


Beluga whale. Sort of like if an Orca and a Slug mated and had an albino child.


The starfish at Sea World are constantly picked up and show practically no signs of life. The starfish at Shedd are never handled, and are very active. I was impressed.


This is a weird thing that I don't know the name of.


The deadly and huge Komodo Dragon. Ten feet long, runs 12 mph, and kills you with even a minor bite because of its bacteria-laden saliva.


This is a fish. I think it might be related to Ellen DeGeneres.


And that's my girlfriend Lindsey, and my buddy Brian in the background looking gravely concerned about the earth's oceans. Or something.

Okay, so that's all for now. Sorry I don't return calls and emails.