Tiffany

• I think I might start volunteering with a group that assists emancipated youths in their new independent lives.
• I bought sooo many pairs of false eyelashes and press-on eyeshadows today, because Halloween is the best time to buy supplies that make people wonder if you're a transexual. I plan on hitting it again, after Halloween, when everything is on clearance.
• I switched titles at my job and I now work under processing instead of sales, which doesn't change anything, just exposes me to the backend instead of ... oh, I'm sorry, did that put you to sleep? Me too!
• I'm planning on going to visit Ashley and Travis in Berkeley before the end of November. No, but really. I am. I want to go to that bone store for some new hair accessories.
• This is what I look like at work. Notice the dark circles and my headset.
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• That Mountain Goats cd is pretty good, huh?
• I went to a wedding the other day and it made me really want to never have a wedding of my own. Ever.
• MC Chris thing on the 30th, Patrick and I are going.
• This is the longest blog ever.
• I'm just making lists now, what are you gonna do about it?
• I'm going to make a list inside this list now, I hope you can handle this. I used to specialize in keyword research, you see, so take whatever meaning you want: beer, showers, loan modifications, pets, vegetables, sex, Bellevue, bones, neon, X-Files, 81 Toyota Corolla, seasonal items, cubicles, purple shampoo, silent talks, Danny Trejo, curses, self-satisfied, unsatisfied with everything else, metallics, inner monologues.
  

The Boat Lullabies

• I spend a lot of time in a cube, daily.
• I bought a car that looks like this.
• As adults, we still act like a bunch of teenagers when the office is having tech problems and we can't do our work. Rather than sit quietly, we all converge to be as noisy and annoying as possible.
• I have two Otter Pops, still connected, that I am eating at the same time right now. Name brand, even!
• I'm home on lunch break, but now I have to go back.
  

FACT: When I was just a child, we had a pet raccoon. She was simultaneously the best and worst pet.

Octopus cookie jar bday pressie from Latisha.

Yeah, I own something with Comic Sans on it. Typography snobs:
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Rape-like bruises, acquired while moving a couch. No, really.

Did I mention it was hot over the weekend? I know up in LA it was well, on fire, and all... but it was 104 degrees down here. Patrick was in Vegas and I had to go to a bar and watch the fights by myself. It was lonely and sad, but where there's a cover charge and a sports bar, there will be douchebags to talk to during which, so it was ok. I drank a really expensive x-rated mojito and left that bar angry as hell and went to the Mule. Glug, glug, I have decided to lay off the beers for a little while and concentrate on eating fatty foods instead, as a hedonistic way of killing myself slowly.

It's like a real game of playing house now. Chuck is back in Banning and we're left to deal with each other alone now. We're even going to start our own business. Cakes and I are partners now, through and through.

My cat, Wile E. Cyrus, has been gone for three days now. He's disappeared for a day at a time before, but never this long. I think my roommate let him out, because he always does that on accident and is too lazy to go bring them back in. It's bummed me out so much, I've tried not to really talk about it. Every weekend, the boys I live with manage to lose a pet that I really like. Now I've pretty much given up and I basically am just crying.

I keep having this Audrey from Little Shop Of Horrors-esque fantasy, minus the kids and tv dinners. Patrick and I are moving into an apartment together, and I have been daydreaming of this sweet pad where I'll be able to have people over for bbqs sometimes and watch movies and stuff... but no. It will never be that way. I'd spend so much time cleaning up after Patrick, there's no way I'd ever have the energy to entertain. Not to mention, he's sort of not my favorite person at the moment. I'm in a place right now, where if I saw him step on a nail, I'd probably laugh really hard at him, rather than encourage him to get a tetanus shot.

It's another one of those weekends where I'd rather be at work reading about other people's hardships, instead of sitting around sulking about my own. Sometimes I wish you could tweeze certain elements out of your life, like a stray eyebrow hair. Out of your life, out of a decent appearance.

• I met the owner of my favorite bar. He's a hillbilly, so naturally we got along real well. I knew that bar couldn't be owned by a true Californian.
• My lappy is still lacking a charger. I'm using Patrick's at the moment, but he usually forgets to bring his home. I would buy a new one, but I think I'm going to buy a new laptop in a couple months anyway.
• I finally went to court and got this mess cleared up. Major load off my back, but now I have to go to the DMV at some point and actually reinstate my license, but the DMV is no longer open here on any Saturdays and barely any Fridays. I'm too new at my job to be taking off time willy nilly, but I might just do it anyway. It's so important!
• I have been watching a new Nic Cage movie every weekend. When I run out of Nic Cage movies, I'm gonna watch a new Danny Trejo flick. This is what my life has evolved into.
  
• Patrick and I are going to try to switch to a one-bedroom within our own apartment complex. Now that I'm making a little more money, he's not being such a jerk about the whole thing. Making more money is the key to our love, I suppose.
  
• Barney got lost the other night. Stupid immature irresponsible boyfriends + pets = staying out until after midnight searching the hills of Foothill Ranch for a chubby beagle. Turned out, Oakley Security had him the whole time and put out flyers the next day.
• There is a no cursing policy at my new job. This is difficult for me, but I am trying really hard. Have you noticed? Search this post and my future posts for swears, you won't see many.
  
• Oh, my new job... it's alright. It keeps me busy, pays a little more than my old job, makes the day go by faster, located next to my precious Mule and my coworkers are sweethearts for the most part. And really, really Christian. Even though I'm not religious myseld, I'm not one of those militant anti-Christian jerks you normally find on the internet, so I actually enjoy it. I can talk about God with anyone, or the Universe, whatever... so long as I don't feel like I have to go to church with them on the regular...
  
• The fights on Saturday destroyed my crush on Forrest Griffin. I was ok with him being sort of a puss about losing, but "dislocated jaw" or not, in a situation where you get knocked out like a cartoon, you gotta laugh a little bit. Just a little. Then you can cry and run off, I suppose.
  

On the way to the interview I was thinking about when I was first hired at the bank, three years ago. While I was pondering this, Throw Some D's the Kanye remix, came on the radio and it reminded me of one big Filipino guy in particular. He had moved up to San Jose years ago and I hadn't seen him since. Tonight I ran into him at Ralphs, while buying my bus pass. He was at the lottery scratcher machine.

The plot, from wiki:

Set in the seedy parts of New York City, Killer Condom follows gay detective Luigi Mackeroni (Samel), who has been hired to investigate a series of bizarre attacks at the Hotel Quickie in which their male guests have all had their penises mysteriously bitten off. While at the crime scene, he enlists the services of a beautiful young gigolo named Bill and invites him up to the crime room. Before the two men engage in sex, a carnivorous, living condom interrupts them and bites Mackeroni's testicle off.

Now on a personal vendetta, Mackeroni begins his lone quests to not only bring a stop to the rash of condom attacks, but also face his true feelings towards Bill the gigolo. Soon, the detective learns that the pernicious prophylactics are actually genetically-engineered creatures, part of a vast conspiracy of a religious cult bent on ridding the world of sexual deviants.

Some of the thoughts and occurrences rushing through my head, making it difficult to sleep tonight because my head WILL NOT SHUT OFF:

• How long to you have to kiss up to your cat after accidentally stepping on his tail?
• The new Firefox is an improvement, speed wise. I'm even using it instead of Chrome right now. I missed Greasemonkey, Foxytunes and FireFTP so bad.
• O Mio Babbino Caro makes everything so cartoonishly poignant, just like my dreams.
• I keep dreaming that people from my past are coming back and harming me, in ways. But in the dream, while the gunshots to the head and the shackles and entrapment against my will only seem to be hilarious, sad, somewhat minor annoyances. Until I wake up, all shaken and jittery.
• People are so dysfunctional. Sometimes I sit with my legs out and stare at them and really recognize what a large ape I am and it is almost comforting remembering what a simple mammmal I can really be.
• Why do I feel like I'm on the drugs right now? I'm not on anything. I think my brain is deteriorating. I'm gonna end up like Robert. The one that lives in San Bernardino. Not the one who associated with my alter-ego.
  
• I get headaches in my eyes and I think it's because of computers. I also have a red blotch on my right eye that never goes away. It's been there for probably a good 7 months or so. I also bet I have hairs wrapped around my eyes.
• I want to hear Ian Bavitz sing the Humpty Dance.
• I used to plug Zicam so hard to people. Maybe someone listened and lost their sense of smell.
• All Hail West Texas is such a good CD for night time.
• Employment, employment, employment.
  
• Do people still throw themselves off Ponte Vecchio?

I recall that back when I was in college a lot of my fellow students were spending time I would have spent deep in the library instead working with various complex and expensive exercise machines with the aim of making their toned and fit selves even more toned and fit.  So it’s with no small pleasure that I can now pay tribute to their efforts by writing a scene in which Jill Keeney, already an athlete at Gnosis College, gets in training for her espionage mission with appropriate machines.

The sex machine is of course its own kind of thaumatophile vision, and it has inspired an entire site and at least one entire book, as well as coverage in Agnès Giard’s Le sexe bizarre:

A sex machine featured in Le sexe bizarre, p. 91

There’s even some fantastic video art on sex machines, such as “Noosphere,” by the sci-fi eroticist Yann Minh.

This topos too has a long and distinguished pedigree.  Dare we ever forget Duran Duran’s famous Excessive Machine, which was so singularly unable to overcome Barbarella?

Sort of the high point of Jane Fonda’s career, if you ask me, so I am happy to be able to pay tribute to it.

Estoy por hacer un muñeco de nieve.

DoubleM2 has added a photo to the pool:

1920

Sean Connery promotes Thunderball. Terence Young. 1965.

“Oh hai, I’d like to make a deposit. Ehn!” [shoves coin forward]

Another quality foraged link from Ant! [AQFL]

Love these ‘words’ from artist Julia Chiang – she uses sweet dummies in the place of here pixels bigger for this “Ring Pop Art” installation seen at Miami. I am a total & utter romantic at heart (if a failed one) so I love these sentiments.

She has also done some other really dream like installations like these below:

Food rings from SouZou – it should be against the law for anyone over the age of 13 to wear ‘quirky’ jewelry. Specifically students wearing it in an ironic way. That said if these rings were pretty solid (which I doubt) then I am sure they would be a fairly handy personal safety device – you could poke someone in the eye with the gravy boat for example…

You may be aware of Nathan Fowkes’ painting blog (Adam mentioned it back here), but have you seen his sketch blog? Years worth of gouache and watercolour landscape sketches and a few tutorials, like the one (partially) shown here.

Posted by Matt Forsythe on Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog | Permalink | 3 comments
Tags: gouache, landscape, nathan fowkes, sketches, watercolor, watercolour