Parenting

It’s good for Jack to be able to kick around Ahnonay with Dragonia and I.  Just as long as we make it back to Sealand for dinner, and a reasonable bedtime.

This Is Not A Pipe

Drawing is stupid.

OK, maybe stupid is the wrong word, in a global sense.  There must have been a point (or a long stretch) in human history where the ability to create two-dimensional line representations of three-dimensional objects seemed nothing short of miraculous.  And that can still be the case.  I’ve stood in front of classrooms full of fidgety schoolchildren who became transfixed, just bowled over by the fact that I could conjure up an army of their favorite cartoon characters with a piece of chalk and a few quick strokes of my arm.  That’s gratifying.

On the other hand, though, here’s a sketch I did sitting at the counter of a diner, while I was waiting for Gloria’s engine to be repaired:

Now, what the hell good is that?   It isn’t a terribly accurate representation of what the cup and saucer and spoon really looked like over those moments (which I guess you’ll just have to take my word for, being as how I was there, and you weren’t.)  It serves as a mnemonic for me of what it was like to sit at that counter at that moment, in front of that cup of coffee, but the greater part of that experience has nothing to do with the drawing (or the coffee) and is not communicated by it in any way:  you can’t divine by looking at that drawing what the smell and taste of the french fries with mayo that were sitting right next to it were like, or how I was starting to feel washed out because I was about to come down with bronchitis, or perceive what the head waitress sounded like bitching out the other waitresses about how the coffee in the pot was too old, or get the general sense of daily life’s minutiae that I did as old men ambled up and took seats on other side of me, placing small variations on the same orders they’d no doubt placed a hundred times before.  You can’t even really tell too much about the objects the drawing is supposed to represent, other than some bare suggestion of their physical arrangement:  whether the cup and saucer were white or beige;  whether the spoon was clean or dirty;  whether the coffee is hot or cold, flavored or not, or if it even is coffee.  If you think you can, it’s because you’re bringing your own experience to it;  reaching into your internal database of coffee-china-warm-beverage-related associations and calling them up in your own head, at the drawing’s instigation.

I can type this:

COFFEE ON A DINER COUNTER

…and it does the same thing.  With the same efficacy.  And that only took me two seconds.  The drawing took 10 minutes.  Maybe more.

—

On the third hand, I kinda dug these creamers:

I Like Guinea Pigs

Car Jewelry

Pigbristles’ comment on Tainted:

I don’t know about Gloria, but my bike always responded well to bling. To make up for pinching her #2 carb boot, I replaced the the boring black ABS side panels with carbon-fiber. She’s been lovey-dovey ever since!  But maybe Gloria’s more of a “spa type” – you might go for the full detail, that might get you back in her good graces.  You can’t put it off though – otherwise, the next thing you know you’ll be into her for a new set of alloy rims or something!  (Oh, and get the O2 sensor fixed, too!)

I’d totally go for the detailing if I knew a place around here I thought I could trust to do a good job and not fleece me.  She’s overdue for just a wash, after toughing it out through her first Sealand winter.  Back in the fall I was washing her by hand, with Jack’s help;  then Flora’s freaking son-in-law ripped the hose off the side of the house and turned off the water to the spigot.  New landlord hasn’t replaced it, or turned it back on.

The Empress did get her those Union Jack valve stems for my birthday (kinda like earrings).  That went a long way.  And I’ve been threatening to take her back in to the dealer and have white bonnet stripes put on her since the day I got her.  (She came with alloy rims.)  Gotta spread the love around, though.  Dragonia needs bling, too!  ;)

As for the O2 sensor:  the diagnosis was “277x”:  “high pressure fuel pump fault, causing misfires across all cylinders & engine stall out”.  The techs removed and reinstalled the intake ducts, and replaced the pump, and she was good to go–  all for free, since she’s still under warranty.  That was particularly delicious, as D’s car had just stalled out the night before, and she feared a malfunction in the fuel pump, and a costly repair.  But it was actually just out of gas, and there was nothing mechanically wrong with it.  So it’s kinda like I got to take the bullet for her.

(You know, I’m a “spa-type”…)

Apartment Hunt: Hell With It

Forgot to mention:  I took the Widow Heathcliff’s place two doors down.  There’s a lot of levels on which that’s dispiriting, if only because I simply don’t feel as if I’ve ever succeeded here in Sealand, not in the way I was looking to.  Staying loses me an opportunity to force some change in that.  But honestly:  my neighbors, by and large, like me; Sealand and Fifth Street are safe–  physically safe, I mean, I don’t have to worry about myself or my son getting mugged;  I keep my insanely close proximity to the City of Mists, keep my proximity to Jack in Shadetree, and I don’t have to go berserk under the crushing stress of trying to find a whole new place to live, by myself, under a time limit, on top of working a full-time job, and then paying exorbitant amounts of cash to get everything there.  At the moment, that seems like a win.

And besides:  the new place has a small room that Jack can use as his own bedroom.

And a tub!

Tainted

I struggle to pick apart the plastic and cardboard layers of the decal, searching in vain for a seam that doesn’t seem to be there.  The wind howls down the alleyway between the houses, numbing my wooden fingers, blowing into Gloria’s open back hatch.

“Hey,” says Carmine. “I think you better check your car.”  He thumbs down the street towards Widow Heathcliff’s house, in front of which I have left Gloria.  “You got a ticket.”

“What?” I say, turning on my heel.  “For what?”

“Residential Parking,” he replies, sniffing.  “I seen they marked the tires, and I said, ‘Uh-oh’.  But I didn’t see you to tell you.” Read the rest of this entry »

Battling Entropy IV: End Days

The plumbing that I repaired myself after the Year of Ruin has suddenly started spraying jets of water across the bathroom again, out of every joint.  (This is not an exaggeration for dramatic effect;  it’s cartoon-like, and tends to hit me in the face, or the eye.)  The drawer facing that I glued back onto the drawer by the stove three years ago has also fallen off again, with no advance warning, managing to land squarely on my foot while doing so.

I am convinced that with my spells gone, a few moments after I remove the last object belonging to me from the attic of this house, the entire structure is going to compress into a shrieking, twisting pinpoint, Poltergeist-style, possibly taking much of Fifth Street with it.  Maybe I should have moved farther away…

Swish

Left to themselves, the women I draw always have an intensely sad chasteness.  They never look as if you could take them to a bar and get drunk with them, or have sex with them, or as if you’d really want to.

A long, long time ago, my friend Hawk was looking at a storyboard I’d done (it was a variant of the Daphne myth, for a private project I was thinking about), and said, “Dude, I’m so jealous.  Everything you draw goes swish.  Everything I draw goes THUD.”

I’m not sure if the two are related.

Goodnight, Lucky

The virtual world of There shut down last week.  (Great name;  hell on one’s syntax, I realize as I type.)  I had an avatar within it, although that was something I never mentioned in this space;  I was logging into it frequently for a little while, then stopped because of the real life events associated with the death of my father, and because I began to feel very keenly the absence of my closer friends from Myst Online: Uru Live, most of whom had gone to Second Life.  But I always enjoyed the time I spent there.   It had certain conventions that appealed to me, ones that I felt made it more accessible and appealing than SL, at least in the short term.  I’m sorry to see it go.

I logged in one last time before the shutdown, after almost a year and a half of absence, for what most people would consider a very strange reason.  My avatar within the world, you see, had owned a dog:  a sort of comical, Muppet-looking golden retriever named “Lucky”.  I had been intermittently troubled over the time of my absence by the idea that Lucky was somehow continuing to have an existence apart from me, and was alone there;  waiting faithfully for me to return, yet not having any idea that I never intended to.   The thought of him going to whatever his final reward was locked in that state was too much, so essentially, I went back to say goodbye.  I rezzed him out of his doghouse, let him run around and played with him, petted him, fed him a few treats I still had left in my inventory (while I drank a mug of spiced coffee I still had left likewise.)  I had intended to Delete him myself, but there was no way to do that;  my only option was to “return” him to There Central, receiving in exchange a fraction of the purchase price I had paid for him, which felt unspeakably tawdry.  So at the end, I just petted him again, and put him back in his doghouse, and told myself that he was asleep, and content.

You’re laughing.  I know you are.  (Or maybe just shaking your head.)  Why?  Are you sure that you’re any more real than he is?

Who’ll come to see you the day before the world ends?  And who will remember you the day after it does?

Moral Relativism

I wonder how the snakes felt about it?

“Signs” by Patrick Hughes

I could rave on and on about how utterly perfect this short film is, but it’s far easier to simply give you the link and let you see for yourself:

http://www.moonwalk-films.com/patrick-hughes/signs/

Don’t be fooled by the image they chose to put behind the Play button.

Thanks to Pigbristles for the link.  Made my day.

Cafe Poulard

The nook is a full ten feet above the floor, formed by a corner where two soaring bookcases meet, and on a level with the yellow glass lamps that hang from the ceiling, each shining with a gentle radiance.  There is a ladder to climb so you can reach it; pillows there for comfort, and thick books to read.  We sit side by side in it, touching each other, cradling the books in our laps, and I can feel her breathing, smell the scent of her.  I know what she’s going to say sometimes, before she says it.

She closes her book and slumps against me, lets her head fall to my shoulder.  “I have to go,” she whispers, pushing a strand of white hair out of her eyes. Read the rest of this entry »

Blueprint

Since NOW I’m home…

Apartment Hunt: the Fear of God

Searched Craigslist for a while and came up with three potential apartments I deemed worthy of further inquiry:

The first apartment was actually a whole house.  It listed at a price that couldn’t possibly be correct and did not specify its exact town of location, but there were pictures, and it looked nice, so I sent an e-mail (through Craigslist;  no other contact information had been provided.)  I received an immediate, courteous reply, in perfect English, discussing the property and the evaluation process for prospective tenants at length.  The reply had weird paragraphs full of punctuation symbols at the top and bottom, came from a random-letter Hotmail address, and contained a number of plausible reasons why the Craigslist ad was short on such specifics as the property’s exact address.  It asked me to submit to a pre-certifying credit evaluation and search for prior evictions before meeting with the evaluating agent, by going to a specified website, using a link they provided, and filling out a quick form there.  (It also mentioned that some people were not comfortable with this process, and if so, they certainly understood, but that they wouldn’t waste time showing me the apartment without it.)  The website had a very similar name to another credit-check organization, but generated no hits or identification itself when searched on Google.

My friend Pigbristles did a quick search or two on my behalf, and by all accounts, this is almost certainly an identity theft scam:  had I provided any information on their “credit-check” site, it would have been used to open accounts in my name, etcetera, and I would never have heard from them again.  Or perhaps they would have shown me the place the pictures were of, then “corrected” the price to something outrageous, so I would’ve gone away angry at the misunderstanding, oblivious to their true purpose.  Either way, I didn’t bite.

The ad for the second apartment provided a direct-contact e-mail, so I sent them a letter, too.  I received an animated reply the next day, heaping blessings upon me and revealing to me the actual address of the property–  but also discussing at length how they were looking for an upright soul with the “Fear of God” whom they could count upon to treat their house as their own, and whom they looked forward to becoming not only their tenant, but their “future friend”.  I sent them a brief response claiming that I had found a different location that better suited my needs, and wishing them luck.

The ad for the third apartment allowed one to contact through Craigslist, or call directly by phone.  I sent an e-mail through Craigslist.  I haven’t heard back from them yet.

In the meantime, I have discovered that the widow two doors down the street has a nearly identical apartment to the one I am living  in now at her house, and is losing her tenant on Saturday, and is looking for a new one.

Surprise!

Got back from my vacation to discover a hand-lettered envelope with my name on it taped to the door with blue painter’s tape.  Inside was…

[drum roll]

… a legal notice!  I’ve been served!  The landlord is kicking me out on April 30th!

Kinda sucks.  But thank the Goddess, I’ll finally finally FINALLY get to leave Sealand.

I hope…