Musings on a Phlegm-Filled Evening

You know, I was thinking today that I should try subsidizing my addictions with other addictions. Like trading commissions for geological cabinet specimens. I can't afford to add new stuff to my rock/fossil/gem collection, but I can afford to draw for hours every day. The question would be how to quantify the value of any particular specimen compared to the art, since both are very subjective. The same fossil that will sell for $6 on eBay will go for $100 at a metaphysical shop--it's all about the value the buyer assigns to each piece when it calls out to them.

Hmm. It is a pretty interesting idea, but I have such a particular taste in shinies that I would feel bad turning down offers. But really, I dislike money and the idea of trading with other rock fans does appeal to me. Maybe I should keep pursuing this. If nothing else, it would be funny as shit to try.

Meanwhile, Kagerou is migrating to www.kagerou.org as its permanent home. Adjust bookmarks as necessary, folks! Electric-Manga.com will not be going bye-bye, but Seebs has written a hell of a good piece of code for a webcomic browsing site and I've offered the domain for it. It's by fans, for fans. No aggregating comics, it's just like having a bookmark folder that you can send to friends, write and rank reviews, add your own discoveries and find similar strips to read. It'll also keep track of where you leave off in any given story. When beta testing is done and it goes live, I plan to erase my comic's hideously outdated link page and just post my electric-manga account page instead.

Tomorrow I need to make an appointment with the doctor. I am fairly sure my tonsils weren't this red-streaked and bumpy last time I looked. The cold appears to be going away this time, so there's something to be happy about. It's no fun being falling-down sick during an influenza panic.

Hey Everybody! I'm Updating My Gay Blog!

HUGE update to my Etsy store.

Holy shit! Look at all them fuckin' buttons!

Moar Moar Buttons

Another batch of nature-crafty buttons, this time 1 inch size. I think I'm getting the hang of this.

The rainbowy swirly bits are silk fiber. Jesse gave me the pick of the bowl because he wanted to see how they'd look in button form. The answer: BOSS.

A bunch of them have a small amount of that pearly shiny flash stuff, but you can't see the sparklies because of the camera lighting. BE AWED ANYWAY.

Night, y'all.

The Stones of Autumn

I made some buttons from some early Autumn leaves I found yesterday:



Also yesterday I saw the Doc again for another round of diagnostic tests. Good God.

I mean it's one thing to suspect there might be a number of things very very wrong with me. Having a psychologist read off a laundry list of diagnoses and tell me I should set up an appointment to see a psychiatrist in October because a physician would be overwhelmed trying to find the right med combination in my case? Different. Definitely an experience.

We did confirm that I'm fairly fortunate in one respect. My issues are, as a group, utterly catastrophic--but taken individually, they wouldn't be nearly as crippling. This will make treatment less of a tightrope walk, from what I gathered talking to Dr. D.

It eases my fear of going out the way Mom did, my OCD and anxiety getting worse and worse and worse until finally modern medicine can't even keep me stable during an induced coma because I'm so anxious I fight the damn ventilator no matter what magic mushroom mega mix they put in my IV.

Preventative care FTW, I reckon! (Even though I'm broke again.)

Ogrish: The Exhibition

I've been following the Bodies: The Exhibition scandal off-and-on for a few years now, ever since I heard where their cadavers actually came from (torture voyeurism squick). Looks like there have finally been some developments:

May 29 (Bloomberg) -- Premier Exhibitions Inc., a leading provider of museum exhibitions around the world, settled a probe by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo over the origin of the cadavers in ``Bodies ... The Exhibition'' in New York City.

Premier will put $50,000 in escrow to provide ticket refunds to customers who say they wouldn't have attended the exhibition if they had known the questionable origins of the bodies and parts it displays, Cuomo said today in a statement.

The agreement ``brings an end to Premier's practice of using bodies of undocumented origins in their exhibitions,'' according to the statement. Premier must obtain documentation of the cause of death and origins of any new cadavers and body parts displayed in New York City, along with proof of consent. For any human remains already obtained, Premier must let people know it can't confirm they didn't belong to Chinese prisoners who may have been tortured and executed, as some advocacy groups have charged.

``Premier Exhibitions has profited from displaying the remains of individuals who may have been tortured and executed in China,'' Cuomo said in the statement. ``Despite repeated denials, we now know that Premier itself cannot demonstrate the circumstances that led to the death of the individuals.''

Katherine Morgenstern, a spokeswoman for Premier, said that Cuomo subpoenaed the Atlanta-based company in February seeking information on how the bodies in the exhibit were obtained.

Good times, good times.

Body Worlds is where it's at, anyway. Ten thousand clamoring pre-cadavers on a waiting list can't be wrong!

The Core: A Fan Comic

Or click here for non-DA file: BOINK

Watched the movie yesterday, in case you can't tell. Suspension of disbelief was a strand so close to the breaking point with the Core that I witnessed a spider actually refusing to climb it for personal safety reasons. Fun, though.

Hurf Durf Simpsons Did It

HURF DURF SIMPSONS DID IT.

Creepy Photo

I love how the ruins photoset came out. This is just the first of many, once I have the time.

It's insanely windy outside. First I noticed that my wind chimes hadn't stopped tinkling for an hour or so. Then the chimes were blown away. Then the screen door started rattling around and I had to get out of bed and remove the stick that was propping it open.

Then I had to get up again an hour later because the wind started blowing the door open and closed, to the point where it was shaking on the hinges. I had to fight to get it to swing closed and latch for good.

From then on, the wind just rattled the windows and hissed along my wall and generally startled me awake at regular intervals. Finally there wasn't much point trying to tell myself I could get decent rest with all that racket going on, so I got up and wandered around like a zombie instead. Utterly useless.

Over the course of the day, our rain gutters have been blown off and sent flying across the yard. So has a rubber bumper from around one of the trees and the stick from my screen door. My bike was knocked on its side. At several points, a gust hit my wall so hard it shook my whole computer desk.


Now back to the comic. If I have to die in a hurricane, I want to be at my post when the moment comes.

Recycled Death Note Buttons

I'm using this series of 2" buttons to test out my Etsy account.

These are not fanart. They are hand-made from actual pages cut from an actual copy of Death Note, Volume 2.

Imported, untranslated manga has very limited re-homing prospects in the US, so I've decided to recycle this book and its incredible artwork by turning it into a collection of buttons.

Interested in buying a set? There are six left! Etsy store is here. 1" buttons coming soon!

Today: gotta finish 2 pages of the comic, quit my fitness club membership (don't have time for the hamster wheel anymore because I'm getting plenty of exercise outside with the Captain) install some bike handlebar grippy thingies, wash the household laundry and dishes, pick up for the visits of both Spider and Rah's mom, shop for supplies and make more signs for the protest this weekend.

Oh, and I need to send in my registration info for Kumoricon. They have a table for me! FUCK YEAH! It's going to be my only con this year, I think.

I'm actually excited about it, because it's Oregon and I fucking love the west coast. And all the lovely little roadcuts on the way there and back *rockhound gleam*.

New Prints!

I did some toolin' around on my Studio Whipping Boy Store page. A lot of it was internal stuff (filenames, duplicate images, quality control) but I also dumped some truly lousy art out of my print page and put about 2 years' worth of good stuff in its place. Quite a bit of the finished full-page art you can find on my featured gallery is now available for sale as high-quality prints. Huzzah!

I still have a lot to do before I should call the store 'updated', but this'll have to do for now. Not bad for a weekend's frenzied work.

I'm trying to earn money to fix a crumbling tooth, which is hellacious good motivation to get off my butt and make stuff people want to buy. Not great for my update schedule, though, which sucks ass. Sorry!

A few people have asked, and yes, we accept PayPal and snail-mailed money orders.

OH MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF COMMERCE!

Suicide Shirts Available!

I have finally figured out PNG transparency, and as such, I have been able to upload the "Dong Suicide" image:



to my shirt store! On black shirts, even!

From the ones I've purchased, Cafepress stuff is decent and the shirts can last quite a while if you actually follow the washing instructions. I forgot and washed mine with the design facing out a couple of times and learned my lesson--but the same thing happened to my expensive FMA tee last month and it was much worse. The white fabric also tended to get a little dingy after a while, though I doubt that will be a problem with black fabric.

I intend to buy one of the black shirts and test it out so I can be sure it's good enough to ask people to pay for. Sight unseen, I can still promise you the product is better than anything I can make with my own crippled, flopping hands.

The Dong Suicide pic is up for a limited time only, since I plan to rotate my stock until I can afford to buy the privilege of having more than one design per clothing item.

Not into shirts? Give someone special in your life the Gift of Dongs! They'll never speak to you again.

Edit: BTW, I have no idea if the design will look good on any color other than black. Caveat emptor on that front while I order a couple and find out for myself.

Buttons: The Great Addiction

I kinda went on a button spree tonight.

There would be 15, but the leaf one sucked too much to share without an overhaul, and the Wicca button somehow managed to not save at all.

Buttons are available now from the awesome and sparkling Studio Whipping Boy Button Store!

Life could be worse, I reckon.

Art Post - Political Cartoon Tiem

To anyone interested: go forth and spread this around. No need to ask permission, but I would like to hear about where it ends up. The hi rez file can be downloaded here.

I know I'm only dreaming

No art for like two weeks, then suddenly BLAM, I just HAVE to do two time-intensive pieces in 24 hours or I'll just plain bust. Go look for consistency in midwinter Lukas, I reckon.

The other night it got down to -20 fahrenheit, -26 if you count wind chill (and you really should, because HOLY FUCK LIPS ARE SUPPOSED TO MOVE!).

On the night of my Mom's death anniversary, my roomies took me out for dinner. It was really cool of them to drag me out of my head for a while. Came back home, got kinda weepy, watched some YouTube videos, got the giggles. Around 5 AM I drank two wine coolers back to back and within 20 minutes I was too dizzy to sit up anymore. Sadly I had to pee every three minutes for the next several hours as a result of said wine coolers, which interfered with sleeping a bit. Woke up 11 hours later still very drowsy. Spent the entire day half-asleep, watching Azumanga Daioh and then got into a flurry of arts that took out the rest of my night.

The strange thing is that, now that a full year has passed, I have lost that horrible feeling that Mom is somehow still alive and dying all over again. I think that was the worst part about waiting for the date to roll around--the feeling of it happening over again, even though I knew it wasn't really. Now my heart seems to know she's gone for good, and that gives me a little bit of peace.

Called my brother because he was worried about me and couldn't find my number. Tried to call my sister since, hey, it's the anniversary. But her cel number belongs to a guy with an accent now, or something, so that's out. Oh well. If she needs me she can just email or something.

Successful Cat Is Successful.

I finally finished the first Kagerou keychains!

Clickety click for the order page if you are interested.

Meanwhile, today was a crazy bad-luck day. My dog peed on my foot in fear, I almost dropped my iPod into the toilet, the speaker jack on the back of my computer failed, and every single art project I tried to work on blew up in my face so cataclysmically that I almost threw a tantrum. Plus it's -15 degrees out there with windchill and the doorknob burned my hand when I put the dog out.

Smelling the danger on the wind, I stayed in my room all day and did not handle any hot liquids or sharp objects. Since I finally accomplished one task of paying goodness (I hope) after 13 hours of running around in circles, I have decided to take tomorrow OFF.

Beware the wrath of my slack!

Art Post - Christmas 2007

art post

Long past time I tested out the Embed feature on DA:


Okage: Shadow Molestor by *AtomicFireball on deviantART

Art Post

I have posted the warm-up art for today! It is a horrible little cartoon titled Scrubs - Then And Now:



Spoilers obviously.

Belation

Belated raffle results will be up tomorrow morning. Belated update sometime thereafter.

Meanwhile, here's some belated Halloween art!



Real life is neato. Or will be when I have time for it.

WHOOSH!

Art Post, Macro

My room is full of box elder bugs. The dog is dreaming growly dreams on the floor. My knee is bad but Aleve knocked the pain out for 8 solid hours. The comic is coming along, and while it isn't my best work, it's better than the alternative.

That's pretty much it for tonight.