I’m not really, but folks on Tumblr have been talking about a podcast ala radio show from a place called Night Vale, so I gave a listen. Welcome to Night Vale (from Commonplace books) is like some strange combination of Pontypool, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Twin Peaks.
Posts authored by leems
Super heros
Remember how I said I’d been watching a lot of superhero movies? Of, course you do, it was just a couple days ago! So, of course, I’ve been drawing super heroes. And I’ve been drawing my own characters as super heroes. Here are some.
I imagined that if Levi Levi were a super hero he would be kind of like Captain America. If Clement and Rosalie Skitt were super heroes, they would be from an alternate time line where, instead of creating a time machine, they figured out a way to augment their own bodies with super powers. Crazy science kids, you gotta love ’em.
More to come…
Comic book heroes
Richard of DoomedMoviethon and I have been watching a lot of DC animated movies. Not so much Marvel – I think they’re better at live action (though maybe we haven’t found the right one). These activities reawakened in me the desire for an illustrated character manual…lo and behold my purchase.
Sigh. I suppose I didn’t expect competing comic companies to release an exhaustive compendium together, and I am still missing the cadre of Image characters, but this will have to do. (…actually it does really well and I’m crazy excited and won’t let these books wander far from the coffee table).
Levi Levi and the Time Machine
I promise, Levi Levi and the Time Machine will be back to posting every Thursday very very soon. I am almost doing only normal things everyday at home instead of unpacking, hanging pictures, and tripping over the tool box. In the meantime, I give you some cover art.
Some thoughts on Murder She Wrote
Yup, that’s right. It has been my go to background show for all things packing and unpacking and now I’ve just become addicted to it.
NCIS-ers, remember when Timmy got sent to that women’s prison and then trapped in a riot where the only way to keep the peace is for him to solve the murder before the authorities busted everything up? Jessica did it first – with Adrienne Barbeau, no less! So maybe, Jessica solved an Amish murder after Harrison Ford, but she did it before Neve Campbell! She’s uncovered toxic waste, helped Russians defect, gone to the circus, stood in as the madame of a brothel, run afoul of MI6, foiled a voodoo curse, teamed up with Magnum P.I. and she even has a look-a-like Irish twin!
If it’s a murder mystery or a slasher movie plot, Jessica has done it: murders at a snowed in ski lodge, anyone? Hauntings by an executed witch? And, I’m only up to season 7; there are 12 of these duders! I wonder why I hadn’t been paying attention when Mom and I used to watch Murder She Wrote every week. I am waiting for aliens, ’cause they’ve just got to be coming.
Shoes!
Yo! I just bought these shoes:
Amazon.com: Aravon Women’s Maura T-Strap Pump,Black,10 D US: Shoes.
And I have to tell you all the reasons they are so awesome. 1.) I always wanted t-strap shoes. There is an old-time class about them without being crazy stuffy (like patent leather). However, the make of most t-strap shoes and the make of my feet never got along. You see, I have a size 10, maybe 10.5 foot that was born flat (of all the things flat feet means, for me the most annoying is width) and I have gotten used to shopping size 11 because all shoe stores carry whole sizes in medium/narrow width. Sizing up doesn’t help with certain shoe designs, like a t-strap. But THESE SHOES come in wide and half sizes. With the ultimate comfort of leather molding to the foot as it warms and a great insole: these are comfy!
2.) I was already captured by the construction and size options while ‘window’ shopping. I figured I’d save up for the ~$120 purchase (~ for inaccurate memory). A week ago, I was going over my saved shopping list and saw that they had been repriced at ~$36. Holy Cannoli, Batman! I must have those shoes.
3.) Even though I was relatively hopeful because of the sizing and construction (boxy toe for my Birkenstock feet), I have only had few and bad experiences buying shoes online. But they came and they are the awesomest of awesome. I wore them all yesterday with only a couple tiny spots on my feet that will need breaking in.
I am now greedy and spoiled. I need to replace my brown shoes as well with something equally as awesome…and, I am having no luck. Truly amazing shoes are, after all, few and far between.
DuckDuckGo
So, I was trying out a new search engine after reading over some news items examining the amount of advertiser listings in a Google search, and DuckDuckGo is really pretty great. I searched me, of course, and LeEtta Schmidt at DuckDuckGo came up with better results than I’ve had elsewhere.
story book monsters
I cannot now remember what inspired this drawing, but I still like it.
pattern
I think we need some color here, so have some color. I’ve been experimenting…I have these patterns and textures that I made/collected and it’s really cool to see them as a pattern on a character garment. You know, I’ve never ever typed or written the word garment before…
I have to admit, even though Camp NaNoWriMo has begun, I’m still really distracted by what remains of the unpacking. I will fit it all in somehow. And then I will scan drawings, draw drawings and get some Levi Levi back on the Bean.
Doodling
Ono
Some sexy outfits for Ono of Unlikely Bedfellows. And I need to figure out a better comic script for that page.
who
The move is moved. That is, all of our stuff is now at its new location and some of it is even unpacked. Most of it maybe – can I say most of it? I have been alternately hopeful for the final product and overwhelmed by stuff. Liberal applications of Murder She Wrote barely take the sting away.
Even after my initial realization: When what you love gets lost in what you have, I am still stripping away layers. It will be awesome when it is done. I promise.
Finishing off the apartment will have to be on hold while I get my librarian on at ALA this weekend.
This picture accidentally looks like a friend of mine.
Murder She Wrote is the continuous background entertainment of choice for packing and unpacking. And now I may be getting addicted. It’s a TV actor surprise around every corner!
This is now officially rambling.
nature spirit
Camp NaNoWriMo
How could I miss this? No, scratch that, I have been too checked out to make a decent attempt at November’s NaNoWriMo to have paid attention to another opportunity to write together/separately with a host of like-minded story tellers, even if I do love it. For two years now, I have missed this and I will miss it no more!
I will go to Camp NaNoWriMo and I will write in July. And it is not daunting, you lot, ’cause each writer gets to choose her own word limit, and you can work on a preexisting project if you want.
And you can commiserate with me at my profile: http://www.campnanowrimo.org/campers/leems. Only I don’t know if I’m going to try something new or finish something old. I should probably finish something old, but which one: Intervening Variable or 800 Square Miles? And how many words should I shoot for? 800 Square Miles could probably use another 50,000 since the first 50,000 left the action smack in the middle of my idea.
And give! Camp NaNoWriMo is another opportunity to support the good work of the Office of Letters and Light, encouraging creativity in young and old.
When what you love gets lost in what you have
I’ve mentioned that I’m moving. I’ve been packing boxes here and there for weeks now. The moving company I hired has packing tips, a FAQ, and a blog all talking about the best way to move. Getting an early start is on one of those lists, and so is the admission that packing things for one’s self invariably leads to moments of delay and nostalgia.
It’s dawned on me, in my many delighted discoveries amid the jumble of my own stuff, that what I have has been hiding the things I have that I love. It is a myriad of circumstances that has amounted to the stuff I have now and I have been feeling suffocated by it for sometime. I like to weed out the ‘it’s ok’ from the ‘I love that so much’ at regular intervals, and I have fallen behind in this chore. I think utilitarian and aesthetically pleasing should be the same. I think that everyday plates and fine china should be the same. I think a thing is useless if it is not used, no matter how expensive or precious it may be. And I think that useful things are only necessary-evils (perhaps unnecessary) when their form and construction does not delight the user.
I am not a minimalist. I love mementos. I am the kid who could not pass by a shiny object in a parking lot without picking it up and evaluating its potential to come home with me. But I do not simply collect all things teddy bear (OK, I did when I was 10). The things I gather about me are varied in appearance, not easily predictable, and precious because they mean something to me. This goes for a growing personal library as well.
But, how often have I bought a book because it was of passing interest and/or I really did not want to leave the store without a purchase? How many of the things around me am I keeping because someone at sometime gave them to me and I don’t want to run the risk of insulting them? How many things do I have that are precious to someone else and not me? These things that I don’t care so much for have been blocking my view to the things for which I do care very much. They are not rubbish; they are not entirely lacking in meaning, but they could be much better put to use by someone who would like them better than I do.
I have been walking into my apartment and heading for one small corner every evening. My stuff lives in the rest of the apartment, not me. When I bring home any new precious object, I keep it on the coffee table, in a semi-conscious effort to keep it from being swallowed up by everything else. How have I let it get this way?
I am packing boxes, sorting things as I go and making piles of things to go to donation. I am packing boxes, becoming excited at the coming opportunity to use all my great stuff when I unpack it. All my great stuff has been here the whole time, and I had forgotten. My view of it had been blocked by everything else that has been here too.
I have stored things before, boxes that traveled around with my mother because I could not take them to college with me. Extra stuff that didn’t have a place and ended up in a bin in the closet. I have often proclaimed that if I didn’t remember what was in it, then I didn’t need any of it anymore. That should go for drawers and shelves and closets too. Can you shut your eyes and imagine every thing in the cupboard next to the stove? How about the coat closet? If you went there and looked would you say ‘Awesome! I forgot all about that; I gotta use it now!’ or would you say ‘oh, yeah, I forgot about that, I’m always moving it out of the way?’ I found way too many, ‘oh, yeah’ items and I don’t want to move with them. I don’t want them in the way of the ‘Awesome!’ things anymore.
I feel like Sarah in the Labyrinth, with my stuff distracting me from what’s really important (only there’s no hermit woman over my shoulder and I haven’t eaten a wormy peach-’cause that’s nasty).