Big Big Update

A few things! First The Suns of Charybdis is complete!

woot.

Also, Suns and all the Obscure Tales now have their owns space on Obscurius.org. There is also an Obscure Tales index page. It looks a great deal better than the original. Man, that was so ugly it had people, including myself, asking me: "you did say you were a graphic designer, didn't you? Are you sure?".

Please let me know what you think. Andre prefers the cover thumbnails to the titles, so, I'd be curious as to anyone else's thoughts.

Today Sweet Enemy and I went for a long walk in the snow around the wooded ridge we live on and found a tent someone had been using as a deer blind. It hadn't been visited in at least four days and I wondered if it was as old as the seven cords of abandoned wood that was left when the farmer sold the pasture back in the seventies. I didn't open it. It was just too creepy. Unfortunately, I didn't bring a camera. So, as a consolation prize here are two photos of deer in our yard yesterday morning.





Listening to while posting: Guy Noir on Prairie Home Companion on Vermont Public Radio

Emergeny post: Buy this album!

Thanks to Pandora.com, I turned onto a song buy a band called Artichoke. I sent them a check and in the mail today, two day's shy of Darwin's birthday, was said album. Why is Darwin's birthday important to an album?

The album is called:

26 Scientists: Anning to Malthus


And it rules. The link has a sample of the song of Mary Anning, the Englishwoman who was the first woman paleontologist.

I'd really like to post an MP3 of the Darwin song, but I feel weird about piracy. So much, that I bought two, so I could give one as a gift (rather than ripping/burning). Also, Vol. 2 is on the way! Joy!

So, if you like indie music and you like science, get this.

Listening to while posting: Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). For the third time tonight.

A naked American man just stole my baloons

Last night, for the anniversary of our first kiss (when you're together for 9 years before getting married, the wedding anniversary doesn't mean quite so much), Sweet Enemy and I bought a good local pizza and watched An American Werewolf in London. It's both on our top ten list of films, and it's been a favorite of mine since the late eighties.

Re-watching it, I was happy that it held up. Not just the effects (which are still astounding), but the whole film. It really is one of the best overall horror films. It's got just the right amount of comedy to keep it from being relentless (like most modern works); it's got just enough romance to give the character's shape and drive; and it's also still pretty darn gross (while maintaining the comedy, go fig). The ending is also one of the more delicious film endings. SE pointed out that it seemed to be an early film that really used popular (though not contemporary) music effectively within the film.

So, overall, what we have is a good, say orchestration, of a film. No one element stands out to overtake the film and the cast is a real ensemble. This allows it to work on more than one level and creates a subtly complex, yet elegantly simple film. A lot of artspeak for a horror movie, you say? You're probably right. However, so am I.

If you're interested, Amazon is getting rid of their stock of combo HD-DVD/DVDs for $5 each (that's how we got this). It's got a pretty good amount of extras for a 28 year old film, too.

Listening to while posting: The washing machine gurgling

Suns update

Wow. We're really trucking. Almost done. We're so close that I'm going to hold off updating until all the pages are ready. I think this is becoming SOP.

In other news, I spent a few hours yesterday and today airbrushing the main coat of paint on my current mode. Then I coated it with Future floor polish. This is a standard method of adding a gloss coat to the model so that decals will adhere properly. It's supposed to be self-leveling and dry evenly with no brush marks. This time, that was so not true and the paint job was now sub-par. I debated washing the paint off, but then fate made my decision for me when I accidentally knocked over the big bottle of future on my desk, myself, my floor (and, yes, it was carpet not lino.) and the cowling for the model. So, after a few hours of work, I then spent a half-hour washing the paint off of the plane. Luckily (?) this was sort of easy as it came off with Windex.

Still. It sucked.

This was on top of Saturday when I ran my car pretty low on oil by forgetting a leak that must have gotten worse. Joy. I only checked because the CHECK ENGINE light came on and began flashing and I had pretty massive hesitation when accelerating.

Here's hoping it isn't too bad. I added oil and it didn't seize up when I re-started it. That should be good, right?

Listening to while posting: "Alarm Call" by Bjork (which, according to Bjork, rhymes with 'jerk')
So, how was your weekend.

Suns update and some minor ranting

An an update! We're almost there; eight more pages. AndreZero has already finished the first draft of Obscure Tales 5. He's got big ideas and I hope I can pull it off!

Ranting:

I like words. I'm not all that great at making them dance, but I like them. Just this weekend I suddenly thought of two word... things... I hate.

1) anything -GATE. Oh, man, this really bugs me. Monica-gate. Trooper-Gate. Plame-Gate. For the last time, people, WATERGATE WAS THE NAME OF THE HOTEL! What would we call scandals if Liddy's crew had broken into the Raddison? I wonder if in the 90's if some journalist somewhere almost wrote or said "White Water-gate"? Now, that would have made it almost worth it.

2) anything-aholic. Shop-aholic. Work-aholic. Stop it. You're basing new terms off of an existing word, that's fine. But the word is alcoholic; someone addicted to alcohol, right? Break it down: ALCOHOL-ic. So, technically someone addicted to shopping or work is a shopic or a workic. Sure, it doesn't have the same ring, but any word ending in "aholic" is a hateful, annoying little word anyway.

So. Here I am, well on the way to being a curmudgeony old man. I knew it was coming last year when I went to help a high schooler jumpstart his car and he used a slang word I'd never heard before.

Oh, and if anybody cares, I'm documenting the process of a model I'm currently working on. I'm really pushing my skills and the potential for failure is pretty high. It's like a slow, boring reality show: will he succeed or will he have wasted $30? Tune in!

Listening to while posting: "Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)" by Pixies