A series of unrelated images...

"Using the bones of my adversaries to build a ladder." - Hank Green

My contribution to the little Hank Green Out Of Context project over on tumblr.
Here's the recap post with all the entries.
Super cute!

Happened to see these two mourning doves gettin' it on in the backyard a few weeks ago. Ha! Get a room!

We're gearing up for a garden. Hadn't spent much time out with the birds through the wet winter. A few days ago I noticed one of the Scrub Jays has a bum wing.
Hanging awkwardly. And the poor thing isn't able to fly very well. It was extremely windy the last couple days and I didn't see him. Hopefully get out tomorrow to see if he's around/better.

D:

Took me forever to crack open the Nvidia Shield Tablet replacement after the recall. Just kept putting it off. Then I had all the Windows 10 troubles and didn't want to deal with it. I was planning on rooting it so I could format my SD as internal storage and do all that. It was daunting, so I procrastinated. 

But then there was a huge update around the new year, which integrated everything I would have wanted to do into the Nvidia... no need to root. So that spurred me to get the replacement going.

I've been using it since and it's perfect in every way for my needs. That update freed up an enormous amount of space and made the SD formatting super streamlined and easy. Woo!
I expected the old one to shut off much sooner than it did. It continued to work for like three months until it bricked itself. Thus ended the life of my first tablet. I gave it a ceremonial burial in the 'ship this tablet carefully so it doesn't blow up in transport'  box that Nvidia provided.
Bye, tablet! I barely knew ye!

ONE BERNIE, PLEASE!

The election was already ridiculous, but things have really escalated into madness over the last month. The DNC is totally effed. The fraud, the rigging, the voting problems... it's all gross.

I imagine it will only get worse closer to the convention. I'm appalled by how Clinton is representing herself through all this.

It's going to be Hillary vs. Trump and that's...

... ugh...

... uuuugggghhhhh...

We need election reform, news media reform, all the reform. Good god. It's bad.
I'd like to think Hillary can get a landslide over Trump.
I'm genuinely paranoid this could go very differently.

UUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

In happier and vastly more entertaining news, the end of the Premier League season was an absolute delight.
Leicester won by 10 points. No one was touching them.
But the runner-up positions were still in tight contention up to the end. Tottenham, having their best season... ever, could have pulled off 2nd and finished above Arsenal for the first time in 20 years. The rivalry runs so deep that this had Arsenal fans shitting themselves. But then Tottenham choked in their last few games allowing us to gain on them.
It came down to the last game of the season.

Arsenal played Aston Villa (relegated)
Tottenham played Newcastle (relegated)

These games were played simultaneously. Tottenham only needed a draw to hold 2nd.
We had to win.

And beautiful beautiful Newcastle, playing purely for the yucks, absolutely destroyed Tottenham. They even went down to 10 men... and still destroyed Tottenham. 5 - 1.
Each time they scored, Arsenal fans went absolutely nuts, getting the results through social media.
And Arsenal won. 4 - 0.

Thereby, Arsenal popped above Tottenham into 2nd and the 21st St. Totteringham's Day in a row was celebrated like we'd won the damn league ourselves.



IT'S HAPPENED AGAIN! IT'S HAPPENED AGAAAAAIIIIINNNN!
TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR, IT'S HAPPENED AGGAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNNNN!

Being an American who really doesn't care all that much about clubs and their local rivalries...
This was just far too comical to not enjoy in every way.

The narrative. THE NARRATIVE.

This season was so damn strange anyway. Very amusing.
It'll be interesting to see if it gets crazier next season, or if things get back to something more normal.
Euros over the summer though! That'll be fun.
I'm determined to stay relaxed and detached this time so I don't have a total anxiety meltdown like I had during Germany's run for the World Cup.

Gotta be chill.

Sweetly scented, highly poisonous...

A gift from my Aunt a long time ago. A Lily of the Valley teacup for May.

It's been a minute.

Say you stumble in the middle of the night and fall into a well.
And whoooooshcrunch there you are broken at the bottom.
And you shred your hands in the effort to climb your way out.
And it takes a very long time.
It's not until you can look back into the well in full daylight that you realize just how deep it was.
You can't fathom how you were ever able to make it out.

I know I'll have setbacks. I recognize I'll stumble again. The truth is it doesn't always get better. Sometimes it gets vastly worse. All you can do is try to prepare yourself for when it gets bad so you can get better on the other side.

I've had this feeling before. Especially when I've recalled school, mostly 7th through 12th grade, I wonder how I did it. Getting very little sleep at night from anxiety. Early morning. Every day. Overwhelmed by too many people and too much noise and chronic stress and illness and no relief. Objectively, I know I got through it by being a suicidal zombie, which isn't any way to be. But I can look back and awe that I didn't blow my brains out every day. I got to the other side.

Here I am on the other side again.
For the last few months I have noticed, in small ways and big, that my sensory experience is vastly different than it was for roughly the last four years. My 'normal' during that time was to have a panic attack if I felt too cold or too hot or needed to burp or felt hungry or full or from watching a movie or for seemingly no reason at all.
My nervous system was on a hair-trigger for every tiny little bit of stimulation. And every response was a grenade going off in my ribcage, ripping my limbs from my body, sending me in a terrorized scramble to collect them... even though they were right there where they should be, attached to me just fine.
But surely they couldn't be when I felt like I'd been blown apart.

I know things about myself now. I know that when I'm totally fucked up and in a panicked state, but trying to hold it together, my right arm twitches involuntarily. My elbow swings away from my body, pulsing by my side. I know that the smaller anxious moments make me yawn compulsively and grip and massage my collarbones and neck without thinking about it.

I yawn a lot still.

But the grenades are gone.

So now I can eat full meals. And have seconds!
And I can watch an icky scene in Orphan Black and laugh through it.
I can go through the majority of my days feeling stable. The steadiness is so palpable. It's remarkable.
It's so distinct that I know even a year ago I was nowhere near this.

I turn 30 in a week and I'm a total failure by normal people standards.
But hey, for the first time in four years, I can eat seconds!
Win!

Got hired for a temporary little job creating questions for a trivia app... the Kpop section. It pays to be knowledgeable about an obscure niche of a niche bit of pop culture.

Got asked to contribute to a tumblr typography project for Hank Green Out of Context, which will probably be posted within the week. Mine will certainly be the least competent of the bunch, in the typographical sense. It's not something I've studied/practiced. But I did a playful Illuminated Manuscript dealio, which is kind of hilariously stupid.

JUNSU IS MAKING ONE MORE ALBUM BEFORE ENLISTMENT.

Bless goddess Hani for dating him so he would delay military to be with his lady-love for a little while longer. I mostly just want to marry her myself. I usually don't take much interest in female idols, but she's the anti-idol and I love her dearly.



EXID has a similar rapport to what DBSK had back in the day. Their company is less strict though. Would never have gotten a drunken, spastic, performance like this from an SM group.
Hani is fucking precious.
And Solji's voice is fierce af.

Arsenal's season utterly fell apart for the 2nd half of the season. Lol. And Leicester have had this fairytale, planets aligning, prophecy fulfillment of a prophecy that never was. And while most everyone hates little Leicester now, Arsenal fans are rooting for them to beat Tottenham... because Tottenham. If Chelsea beats them tomorrow, I believe it becomes impossible for them to beat Leicester for the league.

That'll be a fun game.

Back to work!

Winter Meditations

Winter Meditations (formerly Winter Zen)

It poured rain at times over the last couple days. Come at me, El Niño!
Above: Refreshed the doodle I did in February '14. Now available for purchase.
Working on so many things that I've just gotten to completion... took a bit of a break to make a metric fuckton of Ikea furniture for the family office/room. And to watch how my hand does.
I procrastinated too long on the Project for Awesome Art Perks. Did a ton of long-term preparation since last year, but was in such a psychological funk this year that I couldn't find the motivation until really late. Got it done though. I'll cover that in the next post. Anyway, got a couple swollen spots on my fingers, but only slight, and I've wrapped/taped them so diligently from the start that I think I've prevented a full-blown episode. Woo! Means I'll be able to keep working on things.

Once the furniture situation is handled I'll focus on end-of-the-year Kpop stuff. The annual re-coding Kpoppy.com, this time with the new Bootstrap, finalizing my 2015 Best Of playlist, and getting started on a History of Kpop piece I've had in my head for a while... aiming to finish it sometime next year.
Also a couple of commissions to crank out before the New Year. Fun stuff. 

---

Arsenal was having a nice start to the season. Mesut has been on fire. Broke a record for assists in consecutive games. And a few goals to boot. Really rough November for the team though. Got hit with the curse of injuries again. Almost the entire starting 11 with knocks. Mes is the last man standing. Lol. *Knocks wood*
Been a weird season. Leicester kicking ass and Chelsea in an epic downward spiral of failure, both quite delightful to witness.



Jae and Chun serving well in the military. I'm more comfortable with all that now. Junsu released a mini-album (awesome), just finished a tour with it (awesomer), will feature at the upcoming Epik High concert (even awesomer), will have 3 days of his Musical/Ballad concert to end the year (awesomest), then will have a 2nd run of Dracula early next year (awesome x infinity), and probably wind down around then to start his service. We'll see. Jaejoong will have his pre-enlistment album out in February. Also the 'JYJ Bill' passed, which is attempting to make blacklistings of that nature punishable by law. Many folks celebrated that they'd be able to be on TV again. But those who are better informed know that it mainly just reiterates and confirms the current situation as illegal and corrupt, but you can't force broadcasters to have JYJ on TV. They'll just continue to make arbitrary/creative excuses that they can't get in trouble for... and the exile will remain. It's nice to have it out there though. On principle. And that it's named after them.

PSY had his first proper comeback after Gangnam Style.

Took a screencap when I first watched it. 328 views. Just checked and it's currently 25 million views. In 4 days. Ridiculous. Lmao. I prefer Napal Baji, which is just shy of 7 million currently. Been looking forward to what he might do for a long while. In the lead-up to the album he announced the collabs, one of which was Junsu. Nearly peed myself from sheer glee. Their track turned out to be my favorite on the album. It's a lovely tribute to the late Shin Hae Chul. And Junsu sings the hell out of it. His tone is great for it--both emotional and bright. It's called 'Dream'. Touching lyrics.

Mad sleepy. Off to bed.

Stars, death, and Death Stars...

I'm re-reading the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. I first read it in... 8th grade? Which was... 15... 16 years ago? Oh my. Ahem. I loved them. Super interesting books. The major over-arching theme is science vs. the church, but it's a fun adventure story along the way. It also gets very dark. But it's very visual and imaginative, which always gets my brain pumping. I'm also looking forward to when the larger religion/science stuff gets bigger, because when I first read these books, I was still a 'believer' at least in a pantheistic kind of sense. I wonder what I'll get out of it as an atheist. They really could have made great movies. The Golden Compass adaptation was beautifully done, up to a point. The anti-church themes were diluted and then the plot was chopped right before the most critical point in the narrative at the end. Strange decision. The Catholic Church railed against the film enough that the rest of the series will probably never be made anyway.

This is why we can't have nice things.

So, I'm reading that and I've been watching some space-related stuff and some CERN studies and I'm trying to watch through the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series on Netflix. I guess I'm just in a space, physics, celestial kind of mood. Spent a few hours drawing last night and pooped out this piece above. Not that it's good, it's a mess, but I had fun just starting and finishing something in one session. I'm working on so many other long-term projects right now, it's making me a bit nutty. I should do this more often. The one-night sessions.


Lots of star deaths recently. There was Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall and Joan Rivers... among others. And lots of 'holy shit I'm terrified of the world' deaths with the ISIS beheadings and Gaza and Ukraine. And something I've been dreading since I got into Kpop--a girl group, Ladies' Code, was travelling by van  after midnight, in a rainstorm, after finishing work... car accident. Three of the girls were in the car along with some staff members and I believe their manager was driving. One of the Ladies' Code girls died almost immediately it seems. EunB. And after a few days of risky surgeries, another of the girls succumbed to her injuries and passed away. RiSe.

South Korea doesn't have strict traffic laws or seatbelt laws. Many idols have gotten in wrecks over the years. Some with pretty brutal injuries. It's almost always the case that they're racing to their next scheduled activity, exhausted, driver exhausted, at odd hours of night, in bad weather. But after all those times, nothing was done. The industry doesn't change to protect these kids. And now two of them are dead.

I've personally lost a couple friends in car accidents, not their fault at all, in their early 20s, just barely beginning their lives. Being at the funeral of one of them was a gutting experience. Hearing parents beg for their children to be returned to them... distraught siblings... there aren't words really. You experience it once and it's too much. And that's just proximity. I could never have kids. I just couldn't do that. Whatever the balance of risk and reward. I couldn't. I can't stop thinking about the parents of those girls. The Sewol Ferry disaster. It hasn't been a good year for Korea and Kpop. The Ladies' Code girls really tore me up, because I so closely follow everything nowadays as I maintain Kpoppy. A lot of those idols are like friends to me. They have that kind of familiarity. One-sided, of course, but brains don't really register much of a difference. And selfishly and sickeningly I think of the JYJ guys and what I would do if something happened to them It's a miracle they've had only minor scrapes at this point. They travel so much and have stalkers following them dangerously all the time. Ugh. I don't know what I would do.

Ugh.

Should I not care so much? Am I not supposed to? How are you supposed to manage that line. Go through life uncaring of anything so as never to be hurt. Or care so much about things that the loss of them destroys you. What the hell do you do?

I'm still so shaken. I won't say anymore on it.


Clone Wars is getting slightly more interesting now. I'm nearing the end of the 6th season. One more season to go. I still don't know how I feel about Star Wars. I was raised on Star Trek. Star Wars always felt so cheap and simple by comparison. Still does. This animated series hasn't improved my opinion much, but it is nice-looking. BUT! I am excited about the new Star Wars movies forthcoming. Five in total slated, I think? A new trilogy and a couple stand-alones for Han Solo and Boba Fett. I like what JJ Abrams did (mostly) with the new Star Trek movies. I think he could do a good job with Star Wars. Well, there's no way he'd do worse than the prequels. Right? Lol. Star Wars could be something really beautiful and expansive. I always wished for that. The idea is there. Maybe we'll finally have something that meets it's potential.

Still struggling to get through the Star Trek original series. Oh gawd. I drag myself through one or two at a time and then have to avoid it for a couple weeks. The sexist stuff is just unbearable. Lmao. I'm clinging to Nimoy and Takei to get me through. XD

The Seamstress returns...

From this mess of an etching that I abandoned... to the new graphite version above. It'll probably go through another iteration at some point. The figure still has proportion problems that annoy me. And color. Maybe. I kind of dig the sepia though, even with it overpowering as it is. I should do something more with fabric. I like drawing fabric.

Finales and comebacks...

Orphan Black is the shit.

So many epic finales in TV shows.
It's a shame how much the Game of Thrones show-writers have put GRRM's complex characters through the trope-factory treatment, especially when it comes to the women whose stories were altered to lift up male characters... to then turn the women into evil traitors to make the male characters seem like noble victims at their hands. Happens so much in media generally, but it's a special kind of frustration when the source material very skillfully doesn't play into any of that shit. Still an epic show.

Orphan Black though. Orphan Black. HO-LEE SHIT. Orphan Black. What a great fuckin' show.
All day errday I'm here for the Clone Club.
Orphan Black.

My scanner decided to check out a few weeks ago for seemingly no reason. And yesterday suddenly decided to work perfectly with no intervention from myself. M'kay.
Thusly, got to complete the tribute to THIS finale...

Which was such an insane game. A terrifying affair. A heart-attack inducing comeback. So pleased for Mesut that he got some kind of trophy in his first season at Arsenal. Real Madrid finished up their season by winning the Champion's League, which  similarly made me happy that those guys got their shit together with Mourinho being gone.

I may or may not continue the Mesut sketches through next season. Probably not for every game at least. This project has successfully gotten me back to art-ing with confidence in my fingers and taping methods. Maybe I'll do highlights? That would be fun. I've loved doing it regardless.

On the topic of football--the World Cup has been an explosively compelling tournament thus far. Only one game has been a crap game really. Everything else has been wildly entertaining. And sooo many goals! It must be the heat and humidity putting the balance of play in favor of offense. Beautiful goals! And so many that certainly the total amount of goals in the 2010 cup will be well exceeded. I couldn't watch the last 30 minutes of the Germany vs. Ghana game. Brutal nerves. There's no way I'll get through the US vs. Germany game on Thursday. No way. I won't watch until I've seen the results. Lol. Too invested in the success of both sides. Brilliant tournament though. Absolutely brilliant.

More comebacks...

I'm re-investing a ton of time into webdesign code stuff. Working on getting HTML5 on lock. I'll be re-forming kpoppy for the third time to be much more compliant to the best coding practices. It's all valid as it is now, but a lot of it is archaic in nature.

JYJ's comeback next month will be followed by an Asia tour. Surely will be their last before military enlistment. I'm sooo curious what the sound of their album will be. Jae posted a clip of a piano piece he has been working on to Instagram. Beautiful new ballad. Gosh... I just can't wait!

And finally, a comeback that made me weep in the midst of gardening. Sora is back! SOOORRRAAAA! Came right back to her favorite branch of the wisteria and chatted at me. I went to get some peanuts and burst into tears when she hopped down right next to me to grab one. The only difference is that she is now followed around by TWO SCREECHING CHILDREN! Hahahahaaa. So clearly she has been nesting. Her little fledglings are all puffy and grey with the typically incessant screaming of new scrub jays. They're hilarious. And momma is very patient.

Also have seen less of GeroGero since she returned, which makes me think he's one of those nesting assistants like Chibi was last year. In fact, after hanging out with Gero a bunch and him getting very comfortable I realized that he might be Chibi. Chibi's distinguishing characteristics were that he was immediately at ease around me and liked to break open peanuts in my presence. Even if I was standing or walking right by him. And he stood very tall compared to the others. That's why I called him Chibi... sarcastically. This jay I was calling Gero ended up displaying exactly these traits. Got some great video footage, too. It would be cool if it really was Chibi, back to the neighborhood to help Sora nest again. Their social system is really fascinating.

So fucking happy to see Sora again--happy and healthy with her new babies.

Another ding...

Not much new to add. 28. Another birthday accompanied by a sad little *ding*. Ha!
As per tradition, the weather turned grey and drizzly for me today, which I appreciated. That's not sarcasm, btw.

I sprained my right ankle... let's see... two weeks ago. While jogging. No good deed goes unpunished. Lol. It's not terrible. I could walk on it pretty quickly. Iced/elevated it immediately, which helped a ton. Just been bummed out because I was doing pretty well with the running. So I've been doing lots of weight-lifting, abdominal stuff, and careful squats while it heals. Probably won't feel comfortable with normal ankle-use for a few months still. At least. Blaaargh!

The above sketch was a meditative stream of conscious thing for The Art Assignment on Youtube. Still want to do a few of the other projects. Love all the educational stuff Vlogbrothers and Co. are always working on. Fun to participate.

Been watching a metric fuck-ton of shows. Mad Men has been good. Game of Thrones has been excessively rape-y, which is obnoxious and gross, but most of the other plots are great. Just started watching Orphan Black a few days ago and marathoned it in record time. That is a faaaaassst-moving show. Incredibly hard to stop watching. Love it, but I'm concerned it will go the way of Alias or Lost before long. Still trying to get through all of Star Trek. I have come to the much-dreaded original series. The women characters are insufferable. Every plot thus far has been focused on a woman. And the women are all fragile, whimpering, incompetent, decorative, seductresses, who are humored by the men. A show like Mad Men puts a lot of these old sexist ideas on display to bring the awfulness of it to the viewer's attention. But Star Trek is actually from that era and it's nearly unbearable to watch. Dammit. I'm hoping it will improve in the 2nd and 3rd seasons... if I can ever push through the 1st.

Saw Frozen finally and have mixed feelings. It looks pretty. Not a fan of the music. What I pulled from the overall message is not like anything I've heard in any media review until I just now googled it. To me, it was a metaphor... allegory? Ahem... I'll use metaphor... for dealing with mental illness as a society. Elsa's innate nature is unique to her, but potentially dangerous and just generally foreign and scary to everyone else. So she is told to hide it away. She is isolated and conditioned to fear herself and the outside world. She is a problem that must be suppressed and kept away from other people. It's confirmed that she's dangerous when she accidentally hurts her sister.

The reaction of the community is to help her sister heal. True love kisses and all that. Put a bandaid on it. In the end, her sister finally breaks the mold and instead of going for the expected fixes, sacrifices her own comfort to save/reconnect with Elsa. This helps Elsa 'heal', which heals everyone in turn and then happily ever after yada yada figure skating.

I don't know how obvious this was to anyone else watching it. It jumped at me immediately because it's my own experience. I started sobbing and had to pause the movie when her father gave her the gloves as a small child. Holy shit. Yeah. Kinda close to home.

Anyway, I have mixed feelings, because the media and everyone has been so obsessed with the movie and the song that we've all heard a million times too many, and I haven't seen a single serious discussion about the underlying story being related to mental illness. Lots about sexism, pressure on young girls to conform, that kind of thing. But that's not what I got out of it at all. Not sure how to feel about that. It also made me hate the song more. All the associations are about empowerment and being a badass, but in the mental illness narrative, the song is Elsa's desperation to isolate herself further and this choice nearly destroys everything.

Wow. I had no intention of rambling on about this.

GeroGero has quickly become very friendly. Almost enough to make me think it was Sora, but with totally different routine behaviors, unlike any other Scrub Jay I've seen. Definitely a different bird. Cool.

Loss...

Took a bit of a drawing break for my hand. All good. Didn't talk about it last time, but Sora the Scrub Jay is gone. Haven't seen her since a storm we had a few weeks ago. Almost exactly a year after Aoi left the same way. Her offspring, Tasu is still here, but uncomfortable around me. Two new jays have been hanging around ever since. One that won't come near. The other I'm calling GeroGero, because there's a unique croak to their voice. GeroGero is bolder and intrigued by me, but very cautious.

Gotta admit that losing both Aoi and Sora after such long relationships kinda killed me. Sora especially has been really important to me during the last couple of years. Extremely glad I took some video and did drawings of her recently. We never had pets growing up... well... we had fish, but yeah. I realize I'm feeling the pain of losing a pet for the first time. She just happened to be wild.

Maybe she's just off nesting somewhere else, but I'm not keeping up any hope that she'll return.

...

So I was already kind of low. Then a fucking ship full of children flipped over and sank in South Korea.

Fucking fuck.

Been following that story for the last few days. It's just... fucking fuck fuck fuck fuck... etc...
My attachment to Kpop stuff is irrelevant. It's just another fucking horrifying senseless tragedy and it's agonizing to look at the pictures and know that the missing are RIGHT THERE and yet unreachable and I'm just angry and sad about the whole thing and feel totally deflated.

As I sometimes do when I'm feeling sad and brain-numb, I went to Youtube and watched a tragic ballet. Romeo & Juliet. Drew Ferri and zoned the fuck out...

Fuck.
I'm sad.
I'm okay, but I'm fucking sad.

Arsenal made it through to the FA cup final after a white-knuckle anxious semi-final that went to penalties. Exhausting. Mes might be back in the team for the PL game on Sunday. Positive things.

I'm gonna go eat an apple with some peanut butter.

A little limbo...

/r/sketchdaily submission to the Ballet theme  -  Guillem, Lopatkina, and Zakharova.

I'm both entrenched in and fascinated by in-between-ness. Alleyways betwixt buildings. Stuck in ruts. Spinning wheels. Transitions. Limbo. Liaison. Breezeways and corridors. Bridges and tunnels. Unable to move forward while trying to not look back. Waiting.

Waiting for a couple of currently de-swelling fingers so I can get back to drawing projects and I'm thinking about the major news of the week. Malaysia Airliner MH370. Now, most likely the fate of this plane and those on-board is already determined, we're just not informed yet. But all I can think of when I see some new report or counter-report is the families and friends of those passengers.

It's awful enough to experience the common tragedies of car accidents or heart attacks. Lives lost quickly. And you grieve. You'll think of plans to make with that person and remember with a violent shock that they are gone and suddenly you're crumbling and swaying like gravity is pulling you in all the wrong ways. But the days pass and the waves crash a little less hard. You finished that chapter and you must read on.

Unless you're caught in the footnote on that page and you find that the rest of the book has been torn from the binding and lost. And you realize it must have torn off in your friend's bag, which is at their house, or with them at school, or maybe it's actually in your room somewhere. You can't be sure. And you don't know if there are twenty chapters to go or twenty pages or if you've already read the end and only the back cover is missing. But surely there must be more?

I keep thinking about how their families must be caught in the deepest and most sickening part of grief. Where there are too many questions and variables and maybe you can still see your loved one again... or not? Or maybe yes? Or no? And I can't imagine waking to that everyday or attempting to sleep or functioning... at all. If hell were a real place I think it would be that. Being endlessly caught in an unsettled place with no possible closure.

I've felt like I was there for much of my life, but it's mostly a passive and gentle thing. Not even a molecule of what they're going through. And dammit I hope it's solved soon.

Then there's Ukraine and Venezuela, Turkey and even Australia now. Transitions and unsolved issues of their own.

"MOM! CAN I KEEP HIM!"

And on the much less serious side, Mesut's first season with Arsenal. Had an absolutely brilliant game against Everton. Then screwed up his hamstring in the opening minutes against Bayern and continued to play on it gingerly for the rest of the first half. D'awww. Poor kid. Out for a few weeks with the press ripping him to pieces. Just like Madrid. Lol. At least there were really ridiculously adorable pictures from Everton to hold us fans over. XD

Giroud is quite a character. If only he could finish as competently as he cuddles. Lol. I'm an asshole.

Arsenal have wildly exceeded my expectations. Freaking everyone but the center-backs is injured now. How the hell are they still near the top of the table?!??!!! Incredible. I know the long-time fans are super depressed and angry, but geez, I'm all pleased as punch and shit. So that's fun. Good chance of the FA Cup and placing decently for the league. No shame in that! Also really happy to see Real Madrid doing well. Seems like Ancelotti kind of swung back towards using a lot of the older team rather than the newbies. And DiMaria has managed to do well waaay out of his position. Fine job! I hope they win the league. Too bad Sami hasn't been able to play after his ACL. I still want him to get a trophy! And Benz, too!

And the little nephew is getting his first teeth in. That's a fun transition. Ha!
I better stop typing or my fingers will actually fall off my hand.

Maybe movie stuff next time?
Out.

Sky...

Sora. Loves peanuts. Never squawks. Sits next to me out back and warbles like we're in conversation. Just the sweetest. Scrub Jays are the sh*t.

It's mid-January, the days are over 70 degrees, not a drop of rain in sight, and the skies are blue.
While the rest of the country is apparently under a frozen blanket, we're in a warm drought. Climate change, dude. Climate change.

KPOPPY 2.0 has been up for a couple weeks. The old site is gone. Seems to be working smoothly.

Arsenal are STILL top of the league and won the FA Cup match against Coventry yesterday 4-0. Mes got an assist. ^^

Helped out a Gunner on reddit and designed a logo for his Swedish Arsenal fanclub. Fun.
Working on like 4 pieces that will be prints.

My eyes are burning from need of sleep.
Peace.

ASPARAGOOSE

:P

I do art things sometimes...

Sometimes...
Not of the greatest quality.
But sometimes.

Thusly, a little set of zentangle doodle experimenty thingy-mabobs:

Electric Paisley

Lil Tangles

Oceania

Exploring some odd color combinations that I would otherwise not choose.
Playing. Satisfying.
I've actually begun drawing again. Not just simple zentangles, but some proper graphite renderings. Sketchy still, but my fingers have been resilient through each test. In that regard, I had an idea to make a little Özil sketch after every Arsenal game during the season. Could be an amusing series. Mostly just amusing for me, but I might post them to my art tumblr if I can keep up with it.

A little preview. The actual series will be only greyscale... I think. Mesut played his first game for Arsenal last Saturday. He had a stomach bug. Poor kid. Wenger wouldn't have played him if the team wasn't so thin due to injuries/illness. Despite being sick, coming off of two successful International games, being slammed by nasty Spanish press, and having his life turned upside-down... he made his first assist for the club after just 11 minutes. And it was a beauty. Great long pass from Gibbs as Mesut took off down the left wing. Timed his run to have the ball come down over his left shoulder, split-stretched to slow its fall with the perfect touch of his left foot, passed it with an exquisite nutmeg to Giroud, who knocked it into the goal with a perfect finish.

Jokes were made that he adjusted rather quickly to the Premier League. I couldn't stop laughing. Partly from how great it was. Mostly from relief.

His debut at the Emirates (Arsenal's home stadium) is in... about 2 hours. My schedule is a bit screwy again, but NBC has full game replays online, which is amazing.

Alright. That's all. I'm off.

All tangled up...

Four to tangle...

A series of wins...

Same ol' same.
Working on a painting of a hen for my mom's kitchen and building a K-pop website for the giggles. For now, more distractions of the positive kind. Video fun, too!

Politics are so frustrating, but at least there can be relief this time around. Obama won. Thank Odin! Romney inspired enough fear in me to vote Barack instead of my true choices... Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. As a Californian, I should vote my conscience. The Democratic party is a guarantee. But still, Mittens scared the hell out of me. Hopefully, Obama will be encouraged to take more risks in his last term and push for what he really wants. And Congress... well, that's a clustercuss. Meh.

Ronaldo botched a free kick earlier in the Borussia game. In the dying minutes, Real was down 2-1. Crispy let Mesut take a kick and he saved the day with this pretty little curl.

I shrieked and jumped for joy. DAT LEFT FOOT! M1Ö ♥ 

My favorite person singer in the world was awarded with something that neither he or any of his fans thought was possible. The popularity award is a guarantee, because it's a public vote and he's won it three years in a row. But this... this was an incredible surprise and honor...

Best Actor for his role as Death in Elisabeth. Wow. A former boyband idol winning Best Actor. Definitely a first. And he rarely gets emotional in public unless he's singing, but there's no way he'd hold it in for this. Yeesh. You can hear the girls sobbing in the audience in fancams. Lol. I sobbed, too, I admit it. Dude has been been shat on and betrayed by his own industry for the last three years. That after more than 9 years of dedicated hard work under a slave-like contract. Musicals were something he tried on a whim to challenge himself. Three musicals later... this happens. ALL THE FEELS!

Speaking of slave-like contracts. Within the same week of Junsu's win, the KFTC came out with new standards for entertainers. Companies have to make financial records available, pay artists within 45 days, provide records online, and can't whore out their idols to shows without paying them... to name a few. Pretty basic stuff, but a huge step forward and success for JYJ



This is validation that the sacrifice of their careers was not in vain. They made the corruption public knowledge, stood up for what was right, persevered despite being blacklisted by the industry, and three years later, the gears of change are in motion. And Junsu won Best Actor.......... definitely still flipping out about that.
I still wonder if the pink hair was a dare--having played Death. Lulz.

It's raining. ^^
We didn't have the heat on for the first few days of freezing nights. Had to jog around the house for warmth. XD
A bit toastier now.

Mmmm. Toast sounds good.
I'm tempted to post about Hiddles soon. *snort* We'll see.

In search of Zen...

ひさしぶりですね。
I'd like to say I've improved. The truth is I just don't know. After a month I was feeling more settled and went out to buy frames for artwork. A store I've been to dozens of times. Picking out frames for my own work. No social obligation or challenge. Positive and empowered.
I started having a panic attack not long after walking in. That damned white-knuckle careen into an abyss. I've barely been out of the house since. I'm a coward.

While the anxiety monster keeps me in its grips I'm occupying myself with various distractions. Late nights traipsing through Netflix instant-watch. The 'new' Sherlock season for one. Re-watching the entirety of Star Trek: DS9 for another. Splitting my attention to the 2x5" scrap printmaking paper leftovers with some cathartic Zentangle-ing. See above... and below.

My dad remodeled my room... years ago. Had to box up a ton of my books at the time to put into storage. Eventually, said boxes ended up in the depths of our garage with the rest of the stored things. My mom valiantly dug out my treasured novel-hoard while looking for her own stuff--my Tolkien collection included. WOOO! Made it through The Hobbit and am just diving into Fellowship. Wildly excited about the first movie. The new trailer is beautiful and fun. Some fans are peeved with the humor. I'm not. I hope for the level of silliness present in the book. Balin looks beyond fabulous.

An interesting thing has occured in Kpop over the last few months. I keep up with new pop videos coming out of Korea on a daily basis, so I saw Gangnam Style when it had less than a thousand views. I've always liked PSY and thought it was brilliant and hilarious and an expertly handled commentary on Seoul society, but never imagined it would reach beyond international Kpop fans and their immediate friends... like every other video we see. And then it exploded in unimaginable ways. Right now it has over 270 million views, got a Guinness Record for the most liked video in Youtube's history, and PSY has been touring the media circuit here in the US. The dude was on SNL. Insane. It likely won't amount to much more than a crazy flash in the pan, but it really doesn't matter. What most Kpop fans love is that the Korean music industry has been trying to 'break into' the American industry for a long time, investing a lot of time and a whole lot of money, unsuccessfully... and PSY, with minimal effort, and no intention of doing so, became a worldwide viral sensation. Glorious.

The only thing keeping me from a truly vampiric schedule is rising early for soccer games. The football season is under way, which is great fun. I mostly keep up with La Liga and Bundesliga. I never miss matches with Real Madrid and the German National Team for my favorite footballer. That brilliant German bug-eyed freak with a magical vortex of a left foot, Mesut Özil. I never tire of watching him. He moves like a freaking gazelle. Real Madrid has been kind of a mess thus far, but Germany is doing alright. Frankly, Mesut could play like crap every match (though he never does) and I'd still watch him. It's the Beautiful Game at any rate... it calms me and I can certainly use some calming these days.

More tangles next time, perhaps?
'Til then.

For Science!

Drawing drawing drawing drawing...

Lots of drawing happening recently. My method of finger-taping is thus far keeping things fully functional and therefore inspiring a lot of work. Multiple plates taking shape, multiple drawings, sketches for paintings, and projects ongoing. I'm in over my head, but for the first time in a long time--it feels really good.

------------->
This is the idea I'm building for my 'Science' plate, minus the color I added in Photoshop. It might be too daunting to make it an etching, but I would like to try. I still want a DNA double-helix in there, so there will be some erasing and re-drawing before I move to metal. It would likely need a line etch first for the linear stuff, soft-ground drawing for everything else, and an aquatint with super careful stopping out to get what I want. Eek.

The Shamisen drypoint is going well. She has some simple background architecture behind her now and a few alterations. We started doing a pale yellow-ish transparent roll on the plates to give a slightly Chine-collé effect. The prints look great. Our Prof was feeling restless about the double-drop with aquatint color and decided to forfeit that part of the project. I'm alright with that. Ha. I'll scan one of my Shamisen editions next week.

Lots to do this weekend. Drawingdrawingdrawing and the first quarter of my HTML/CSS class is wrapping up, which means coding my site for the final. The recent rain has also uplifted my mood, but the forecast-ed sun for the week will also be helpful as I walk to and from class with plates and art stuff.

The King Ridge GranFondo was lovely. Volunteering at packet pick-up late Friday night and Saturday morning (4am) was hard. Half an hour of sleep between those shifts and the overall fast-paced social blitz were brutal on me. Haven't come down with a cold from it yet, but it really wouldn't surprise me. It was fun watching thousands of cyclists take off at the start though! As long as I'm able I'll keep volunteering for the Fondo. Great event.

Oh yeah... my 23" monitor is so glorious I can't even describe it. I have essentially doubled my workable screen area. It's incredible. *weeps with joy*

Peace.
じゃね！

arid.2

Continuing...

wine bottle still life
graphite pencil

Stovetop
bristol paper with a layer of acrylic paint for color
b/w prismacolor pencil for the drawing

Sushi Bro
similar process with acrylic paint to the above
b/w conté crayon for the drawing

arid

As much as I enjoy painting, dry materials also strike my fancy. Blackened fingers give soap and water a lovely challenge.

Matisse's 'Laurette in a White Turban'
graphite pencil

fruit still life
vine charcoal

Beach. Figure drawing class project
Conté crayon

JC prop closet still life
graphite pencil
(sorry for the bad picture quality)

abalone shell and branches still life
graphite pencil