Quirkblog

I was just in the break room getting a cup of coffee and I met one of the new student part-time workers. He was going through a box of office supplies while I was in there and they found a box of something they couldn’t identify. Thin tissue sheets, plain on one side, covered with greasy looking black on the other. He took one out and looked at it with obvious confusion for a few seconds then said, “Excuse me sir? Do you know what this is?”

“It’s carbon paper.”

“Oh. What’s it for?”

Wow. Suddenly I feel old.

I’ve been doing the “Cough your lungs out” abdominal workout for the past couple of days, and I can really feel it working. Pretty soon I’ll have rock-hard abs and a pair of inverted lungs floating around with me like a pair of grey-pink puffy balloons attached to my mouth.
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I have no idea what that title means. I just kind of like the concept of black-clad Japanese assassins creeping around with lethal sharpened carpet samples.

Andy Ihnatko posted some brilliant words of wisdom that encapsulate why I haven’t posted much here recently. I’ve been thinking too much about what I write. I get started on something and then I find myself re-thinking and re-editing to the point that I just abandon what I’ve written as “Not Good Enough” and wind up posting nothing.

And if there’s one thing that I should have learned by now, when it comes to the Internet, there’s no such thing as “Not Good Enough.”
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I’m having a bit of fun with Adobe Illustrator, using a combination of brush textures, drop shadows and clipping masks to create ‘torn paper’ effects. I was thinking of posting the results, but then I realized that the poster I’m doing this for is full of close up and gory photos of tendon repair surgeries. Probably not the best thing to spring on people without warning.
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I’m having fun listening to a batch of found sounds. The PC that Dirge loaned us to play EQ on had two folders of MP3s on the desktop, one labeled “For Mix CD” the other “Techno Covers Mix.” In some ways, listening to music like this is a borderline invasion of privacy. It’s the audio equivalent of going to someone’s house and peeking in the medicine cabinet when you use their bathroom. Only instead of passing judgment on their Smurf® dixie cup full of q-tips and the store brand deodorant, you can criticize their musical tastes.
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Everyone remember the Thomas Dolby hit, “She Blinded Me With Science?” There’s a line in there, spoken by the mad scientist voice, proclaiming, “She’s tidied up and now I can’t find anything!”

I’m in a similar situation here, with the added complication that I may have inflicted the problem on myself.
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The kid in the striped shirt has obviously been captured some of the less famous Chicken Riders of Rohan…

Just a quick picture from the weekend. These were some of the cutest costumes at the whole Ren Fest. Because, after all, nothing says ‘cute’ like dressing up a pair of overalls so that it makes your kid look like he’s riding a gigantic mutant chicken.