This is Not the Gencon Post!

Gencon post will be up on Dark's Carnival shortly; I'm trying to resurrect that blog from the dead a bit. Might start posting pictures of minis over there too. If you find it annoying that I have three different blogs, well.... too bad. I like to keep things categorically seperate; I realize I could tag my posts, but it's partly about appearences. I like that the backgrounds/template styles are different for my different types of writing. I'm thinking of turning Wax Lion into my professional blog as well, the one I link back to when I'm commenting on other museum industry blogs (yes, there are such things) and the one where I babble a bit about philosophy of museum display etc. But don't worry, coworker who reads my blog--I've got no intention of making any remarks that might get me in trouble with the Powers that Be, even on my "anonymous blog." I'm not so deluded as to think that anything on the internet is truly anonymous.

Blah blah blah, this is quite a long post for a post that was intended just to tell you that I'm not actually posting about anything.

Perfect Days

You could argue that life in Indy is somewhat wanting lately. We've been slogging through day after day of 90 degree heat and not a drop of rain for nearly 3 weeks; the canal has dropped about a foot, and the mosquitos are many and vicious (even I'm getting bitten, and I usually don't fall prey to the little boogers much; right now I've probably got 10-20 bites in varying stages of itch.) I returned from my business trip to San Diego to a hot, stuffy, humid, and incredibly messy home. The window a/c unit is barely making a dent in the oppresive atmosphere around here, and it's too hot to cook or clean effectively.

So where's the upside? Well, the mornings are nice. I've been going for bike rides at 7 am, since it's too hot by the time 8 rolls around for me to bike to work right now. My house has a new resident--a female turtle named Harriet, who will be released back to the wild as soon as she's healed up from a mild trauma to her shell. It's fair time, and my dad and I spent a pleasant, if sweaty, couple of hours this morning at the fairgrounds. (While I'm grateful for the air conditioning that was added to the Home and Family Arts building in recent years, I must say that the culinary displays were far more entertaining when they fell victim to the heat and humidity after the first 3 days of the fair. Nothing has ever equalled the spectacle of the "Murder in the Cathedral" wedding cake, in which the red sugar windows of the church-shaped cake had melted and run down the inside of the structure and out the doors, pooling around the feet of the bride figurine like a gory testament to the value of pre-marital counselling. Later in the week, the icing under the groom's feet softened and he fell over into the red puddle, as if some jilted former lover of the bride had shown up and redefined the term "shotgun wedding.")

And I've been going out bat-watching in the evenings. The high mosquito population means that the little brown bats around here are very active and visible; I can go out and sit by the canal with a beer at twilight and watch as every few minutes, der fledermice flit past. I can't complain.

"Have Mercy!"

So in browsing the program for the San Diego Comic Con next week, I found a session that purported to examine the work of the worst comic book in existence. "Ha!" thought I. "How bad could it be?"

Nothing could have prepared me for the sheer awfulness that is Fletcher Hanks. Sure, the art is cheesy in a kind of crappy Golden-Age way... but what really marks this comic as beyond dreadful is the scripting. Not just stilted and dull, but actively, indescribably crappy. If you can stand it, I strongly recommend going to all three of the scanned comics on the Links page and reading them in their entirety. I am particularly drawn to/repelled by "Space" Smith, whose name is always spoken in quotes, even by his girlfriend-copilot. In the issue in question, they visit a planet called "Bloodu," where the evil inhabitants want to drink their.....wait for it....their.....BLOOD! Hooray! 10 points to you. Anyway, I had a great time reading this crap. All you Harry Potter fans out there can keep yer Book Seven tomorrow; I'm going to run out and buy a copy of "I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets: The Comics of Fletcher Hanks."

Not Dead, but Sleeping

I found a newspost, with a little effort, that states that Enetation is "temporarily offline" and that accounts won't be affected by this. We shall see--perhaps when they resurface they'll have improved their comment spam protection. At any rate, things are ticking along at a surprising rate. People keep asking me how the job is going, and I say, "Great," but that doesn't really convey a picture of what I'm really doing. In the last week, I've interviewed a Holocaust survivor with an amazing story to tell; I've written labels about Indiana Ponds; I've tried to condence the Civil Rights movement into a 25 word paragraph; I've watched seemingly endless media coverage of Ryan White from the late 1980's; I've firmed up plans for the work-sponsored trip to the San Diego Comic convention at the end of the month (we've got an extra day! we can go to the zoo!) and I've been firing hilarious emails back and forth with an AIDS activist who we're hoping to focus on in the big exhibit. Busy, exhausting, fun. yeah.

So I'll give entetation another week or so, and then we'll look into Haloscan.

RIP Enetation?

My comments feature seems to be down, and enetation.com is rejecting my browser. Could it be dead? Are all my old comments lost? Will I be forced to look into Haloscan as an alternative? (No, not using blogger comments. I have them on my other blog, and they're irritating.) So much for my "lifetime subscription," perhaps. If it's not back in another couple days, I'll start investigating the alternative...

Blargh!

It's been a while since I let a month go by without posting anything at all--kind of shocking, really. Anyway, here is what I have been doing instead of blogging:

1. Going to Wiscon, where I ate much food, drank much drink, friended around with friends, and even listened to a few panels and readings. I even went to the hotel pool, which was a new experience--those who know me know that I have a completely unreasonable fear of swimming pools. A mild fear, to be sure, I don't run screaming from them but I also never go out of my way to get in one. ANYWAY, it was a great weekend in Madison despite the sinus headache mentioned in the prior post.
2. Starting my new job. S'wonderful, s'marvelous, s'kicking my ass. I'm having some trouble adjusting to being on a schedule again; I'm not complaining, it's just that after 5 years of irregular work, it's a big transition to be someplace for 8.5 hours per day, in clothes both ironed and color coordinated, and be organized enough to efficiently accomplish all the stuff that has to get done after work. I'm more in the groove now than I was 3 weeks ago... It's just taking a bit of time.
3. Going to my college reunion. 15 years, holy crap on a stick.
4. Going to visit my 93 year old grandpa for Father's Day. He utterly rules. So does my dad.
5. Watching the family of beavers that has built a lodge up the canal about a mile from my house. I can bike out in the evenings and watch them swimming around and eating plants and stuff. I haven't seen them cut down a tree yet, but that would be awesome.
6. Watering my tomatoes--we've been having hella hot dry weather here, like much of the country lately. It rained for the first time in ages this morning, thank god. i still haven't put my A/C unit in, so I'm relieved the heat broke, at least for now.
7. Sleeping. All this work and travel and stuff wears ya out!

So what have you all been doing while I was gone?

Damn Right It's Better Than Yours...

So I made it to Madison (and MLE, where the heck are you??) and so far I've been to a couple nice readings, one panel that jumped the shark faster than you can say "Elvis," and a panel about fighting with people at cons that did not, sadly, involve an actual fight. (it was the sequel to last year's panel on flirting at cons, and while it lacked a lot of the hilarity value it was still pretty entertaining.)

I had a sinus headache when I woke up this morning; it was partially alieviated by going for coffee up the street, and hearing the Milkshake Song over the PA while eating my scone and caffiene. Feminist sci fi in one ear, her milkshake bringin' all the boys to the yard in the other. Too great.

Yayyyyy! Shiny Toy!!!!

In the first of no doubt several major purchases with the fever of "I've wanted this for 5 years and now I have a paycheck!" I finally did it. I bought.....

THE BIKE.

Yes, the bike. The bike I've been wanting. The bike I drooled over way back in this series of blog posts. Well, not exactly that bike, but it's been 3 years; the Trek "Adventure 4000" is no longer available. In point of fact, the cool burnt orange color is no longer available--they switch colors each year, and burnt orange metallic is soooo 2006 apparently. So I went in the bike store, and there was this orange bike, and I was all like "ooh, shiny!" And then I discovered that it was a 25" frame. (if you are unwise in the way of bikes, which I was right up to this moment, I will tell you that to ride a 25" frame bike I would need to be about 6'4" tall. Sadly, I'm not.) So I sez, do you have this in a smaller size? And they sez, no, it's Last Year's Bike, that's the only one left. Too bad. Rat Girl sez, how about this one? It's pretty, it's blue! I proceed to pout... but I wanted orange.... sniffle. In that moment, I go straight from being slightly interested in purchasing a bike sometime in the near future to being completely obsessed with obtaining a 17.5" 2006 Trek 7.3 FX in burnt orange. Because that's the way I am. I comb the internet that night, I call up stores all over Indianapolis; I call a store in Oshkosh Wisconsin on the vague promise of a lead. Things look grim. Then I check the store locator on the Trek website, and find that there is a bike store way out on the west side of Indianapolis that I've never heard of before. I give them a call, ask them my question, knowing full well that the answer will be no, and Lo and Behold! They've got one! It's on clearance! Hooray! Off I go to the bike store, and an hour later I roll back home with a new Trek 7.3 FX and a sweet bike rack for the car as well.

Sometimes, being obsessive compulsive can be downright fun.

We Sang Shang-a-Lang, and We Ran with the Gang
Going Do-wop, Ba-doobie Do-ay...

So suddenly tonight, while emailing my oldest friend to tell her about the job, I remembered that I'd also been meaning to tell her about being thwacked with the 2 x 4 of nostalgia a few weeks ago while shooting pool at Chumley's. I'm standing there, waiting my turn, and all of a sudden what should come on the MP3 Jukebox but the Bay City Rollers 1975 blockbuster hit, "Saturday Night." Said old friend and I literally wore out the needle on her record player on that album when we were 8 or 9. I was stunned to even think that it might exist in electronic form (and even more stunned to learn that Rat Girl, a full decade younger than myself, had heard the song before. "Bay City Rollers, right? Yeah." Well, I'll be damned.) So anyway, remembering it tonight and needing a few more items off iTunes to make my next car mix CD, I looked up the BCR in the Music Store. Even better than Saturday Night, the above tune--whose lyrics are utter fluff and nonsense, and I freely admit it's the worst kind of 70's Brady Bunch style crap--is now my favorite song in my iTunes library. Yes. I am in full regression mode. Next thing you know I will be buying the Partridge Family full season collections on DVD. Gah. It's not easy being a child of the 70's.

But It's Saturday.....

Friday Five, ganked from Jane:
What am I....
1. Wearing? New jeans and my bear totem shirt.
2. Pondering? How I can be really intellectually happy, yet feel inexpressibly sad at the same time. (The answer, for those of you playing at home, is HORMONES. In two days I will be wondering what the hell was wrong with me, as usual.)
3. Reading? Perry Mason and the Case of the Baited Hook.
4. Dreaming? Anxiety dreams--see #2 above. But at least it's not The Alligator Dream. Which freaks me out every time it happens, because I love alligators and if I really did see some in the canal in real life I'd be all excited. But in the dream they are always Angry Alligators.
5. Eating? Coffee and toast. Pumpernickel, with butter and basswood honey.

So if you didn't already know, my long jobless drought is finally at an end, and I've been offered an excellent gig at Large Local Museum. I'm pretty damn excited! Adding to #2 above, of course, is the sense that everything in my brain has been rapidly shuffled in the last 2 weeks and now I am playing 52-Pick-Up trying to sort it all out. But I will, no fear. I think my parents are even more excited than I am; they've done a good job of hiding their fear that I might never have a real job again for the last 5 years, but the sigh of relief was so profound that I felt a substantial breeze right through the phone line. My dad is already listing all the things he thinks I need that I should buy once I have a paycheck again. I must admit that one of my first thoughts was, hey, I could buy a new computer! Because my old one is covered in toast crumbs, honey, and coffee stains....

Wow! I Don't Even Know What This Is, But It's Spot On...

Ottava rima? Me? That can't be right!    Too frivolous? But tut, there's no such thing! Let others ponder thoughts of wrong and right,    Or sit and think how much they love the spring; I'd rather spend my time in gleeful spite,    Or maybe laugh, or maybe sit and sing. Besides, it might be fun to be inspiring - But surely it would get so very tiring. What Poetry Form Are You?

For those, like me, who had no idea what Ottava Rima is, you may check the Wiki entry here. Apparently it's a Roman form of poetry, originally for long heroic poems, but eventually adapted for humorous parodies of epic works, a la Boccaccio! That totally rocks.

Anchors A-Whey

Lately my work schedule has been fairly complex. (Not as complex as getting an old blogger template listed on Technorati, mind you.) I'm teaching in the mornings Mondays and Wednesdays, and Thursday afternoons; volunteering at the zoo still on alternate Thursday mornings; working at Crocodile on Tuesdays and Fridays; and now contract working pretty much all the rest of the time at the museum, which is in a high state of panic about an upcoming exhibit. So I was kind of shocked to find that I had Thursday afternoon completely free after finishing up with the baboons. I got a call from Rat Girl around 11, saying she wasn't going in to work until 2 because they were doing repairs at the dairy; all she had to do was drive a truck full of whey to Monrovia in the afternoon. I figured, cool, we'll go for lunch downtown and hang out. Then over lunch it occurred to me that I was already wearing smelly, zoo-stained clothing, and that I had absolutely no other commitments for the afternoon. "Want company?" sez I. "Well....sure!" sez she. So I got to ride along in the truck while RG demonstrated her skillz at driving a cranky behemoth of a stickshift on the highway for the drive out to Monrovia. Why whey, you say? The dairy she works for makes cheese (though they don't have a cheesecam, sadly) and a byproduct of cheesemaking is whey--lots of whey. We had 2 enormous tanks of it in the back of the truck, and we were taking it to a pig farmer who uses it to feed his pigs. It's high in protein.... and also utterly repellant, it smells vile and includes chunks of semi-solid curd stuff that looks like vomit. The pigs love it. So we got out there and backed up the truck, and basically just attached a hose to each tank and used it to fill up about 8 oil drums of muck, while the pigs were all "ooo! ooo! can't wait!" We still had about half of one tank of whey left when the drums were full, so the farmer had us just dump it out in the middle of a field, making a sort of small swamp of grossness--thank god it got cold, or the smell would have been unimaginable by the following day, I expect. Naturally I got whey on my shoes, and RG almost "accidentally" sprayed me in the back with the barf hose, and it was stinky and gross and involved heavy lifting. And I loved every minute--it was a TOTALLY AWESOME way to spend an afternoon!

Well, THAT Was Insanely Complicated.

I finally got Technorati sorted out. They certainly don't make it easy--it had to do with the fact that Blogger automatically indexes and feeds all blogspot posts to Technorati. But because I use an old template (and I'd like to thank Eliza Wee, designer of this marvelous template, before something tragic happens) it didn't have the proper code imbedded in the page for full indexing of posts. So I went around and around with adding bits of random code supplied by both Blogger and Technorati; I managed to screw up my link color briefly, had about a week when my Technorati profile was visible, which I did NOT want, and finally now seem to have it worked out. Bleh. I think I'll try indexing my other blog later today--since it's a newer template, maybe I won't have this problem.

Is That So Wrong?

So I got into a bidding war on Ebay today. See, when I was a kid, I had these posters that I got from Burger Chef--one of those "Collect All Four" kinds of things, and of course they were Star Wars, so I HAD to have them. Over the course of time and adolescence, the posters got demoted and finally I think got moldy in my parents' wet basement and were pitched. Now, in true midlife crisis fashion, I happened across them on ebay and decided I must have them--a Set of Four! Mint! Never rolled or folded! And only $15 for the set plus shipping. So I threw out a bid over the weekend. Then this morning I got the dreaded "you have been outbid" notice in my email... so I upped my bid to $20. Still only $5 a poster, that's pretty awesome! Then another outbid notice in the afternoon, so...er....$22? $25? $30?....Dude wants these posters worse than me! By god, then, he'll PAY FOR THEM. I nudged his bid up over $40 before finally deciding (with about 2 minutes left) that I didn't want them that bad. It's only me regaining my carefree childhood, nothing really important or anything. But then, as I was letting go of the thought, I remembered that my boss at the game co had mentioned he'd got these same posters from a guy who had a store on ebay--as opposed to an auction. So as the sand drains away on the final seconds of the auction, I go searching on Ebay stores. Look, there they are--for $20 a set. Clicked "Buy Now" so fast I may have broken my mouse, and now they are MINE. For $20 less than I was willing to bid. And.... I admit to a moment of pure, unkind pleasure when I looked back at the auction and found that the final selling price was over $50, a third bidder came in and sniped it during the final seconds. And all I could think was "Ha! Suckers!"

Is that so very wrong?

TechnoRama!

I'm experimenting with Technorati. Anyone have any opinions on its usefulness?

***update: already I'm confused. I've tried searching for exact phrases from recent posts (such as "experimenting with Technorati") to see if this blog picks up on their search engines, and so far nada. I must say they're not really helpful with the info on exactly how the engine works, so I'm a little challenged in troubleshooting. Moved the bit of code up into my page header, we'll see what that does.

I Do All My Own Stunts....

I saw a t-shirt that said this not long ago, and I think I need to own one. My stunt for the morning was getting my mental clock wonked by an hour, and arriving wayyyy too early to work; so here I blog.

Last night's IFS selection was Double Dare, a film about two women in the movie stunt industry. It features Jeannie Epper, a member of the biggest stunt-family in Hollywood whose best-known work was doubling for Lynda Carter on "Wonder Woman," and Zoe Bell, who doubled Lucy Lawless on Xena, and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, among other things. When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to be a stuntman (gender divisions for me were indistinct then as now) and spent a lot of time practicing falling off of things and pretend-punching my friends. Sadly, a complete lack of physical talent or coordination stood in the way of this dream, and it didn't come to pass. (Some might say the fall into the penguin tank counts as a professional-level stunt, but it wasn't on purpose, and I didn't make it look good.) But I have an eye for good stuntwork and fight choreography, which probably had its birth in years of watching Epper on Wonder Woman. As I think I've said before, my fondness for Xena/Hercules is rooted partly in the writing of the early seasons and the general campy silliness of the show, but also largely a result of the complex and intricate fight choreography. This fascinates me still; so it was a real treat to finally see this film and "meet" the woman behind all the harness and wire work. Would have liked a bit more from the stunt coordinators about what goes into stunt design and prep, but really the movie was less about the mechanics of the whole thing and more about the difficulties of being a woman in what's essentially still a very male-dominated industry. It was almost painful watching Epper make phone call after phone call--"Hey, it's Jeannie. So.... You have any work for me? Anything at all? No? Well, keep me in mind..." Then again, watching the spontaneous joy-fest when Bell gets the Kill Bill job was pretty damn exhilerating--YAHOO! WAHOO! She deserves to be successful, she's fantastically talented. I look forward to seeing her work in films and TV for years to come; while I may not ever have mastered falling off of things for money, I have a great admiration for them that do it every day.

Stegosnowrus Approach

Stegosnowrus Approach
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Attack of the Stego-Snowrus!

When the weather turned warm a week or two ago, I had a day when I should have been doing something much more productive, but figured that a foot of soft sculptable snow was something I don't have access to every winter.... So instead, I made this in my yard. The snow-sleet-snow combination during the storm resulted in a wet snow layer on top of about 2" of an icy crust, with more dry powdery snow underneath. That crust fractured nicely into pieces suitable for Stegosaurus plates, as well as his fingers and toes.

Two more pics of him over at Flickr, and I'm sorry to say it rained the day after I made him, so his life was brief but wonderful.

Stealth Mode

Stealth Mode
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Just in Case You Were Wondering.

Yes, I am in that part of the midwest that was hit with a substantial snowstorm on Tuesday the 13th.

***Breaking News!!***

Nooooooooooooo......

I Take It Back.

I would cheerfully trade several of the "It was a bright sunny day at the museum" papers in exchange for the one I just read that was fine except for two significant problems. One, it was completely unrelated to the assignment. And two, it was copied and pasted directly from Wikipedia.

What the hell, people? There was not even a crude attempt to disguise the theft--I just scrolled down the Wiki entry, and look! There's the text of the paper, verbatim! Why, lord? Why do they risk their entire academic career for one dumb 2-3 page paper assignment? And why do they think I won't go check the Wiki page myself? Do they think I'm sitting around here going, "Eh? What's this newfangled 'internet' I keep hearin' tell about? I hear it's a bunch o' tubes, or somethin'."

To be fair, this has only happened once in the 500 or so papers I've graded in the last year. Occasionally we get students who don't know how or when to cite sources, and of course we have lots who think Wikipedia is a good source for a research paper (bzzzt--wrong) but this is the first time I've actually had a 100% rip off the internet. So my faith in humanity is not completely destroyed. Just a little dinged.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night....

Why do some of my students think it's ok to start off a formal analytical paper with paragraphs like "It was a bright sunny day when I started out for our field trip. The wind was blowing, birds were chirping, and suddenly, on the horizon, I saw the museum! It was like a big brown building with no windows. Cautiously I entered, and was confronted by the coat-check girl, a pretty blonde about 25 years old..." This goes on for nearly a full page of a 2-3 page paper, before they actually get to talking about the art! Who teaches them to write a formal paper like it was a creative writing assignment?? Gah.

Several years ago, I had a Superbowl party, and my pipes froze the night before. This made for some cautious use of beverages during the party. This year, my party went without a hitch... and then my kitchen tap froze while I was at work yesterday. Sigh. Such is the peril of living where I do, and at least my shower and upstairs tap still work. I've had the oven on in the kitchen all morning, hoping it might thaw the pipe that runs behind it, but to no avail. So I've been running up and down the stairs to get water for coffee and cooking.... but I draw the line at washing my dishes in the bathroom sink. It better get up above 10 degrees tomorrow, or I could get mighty irritated....

There, but for the Grace of Booze....

Last night at Film Society, I finally saw American Movie; if you've not seen it, it's a movie that holds much of the same fascination and horror of a train wreck. Not just a regular train wreck, either, but one of those ones you see in movies where the trestle is out and the train just peels off down into the ravine car by car by car.... It's truly amazing.

It's a documentary, and I can sympathize with the basic motivation of its subject--it's about an ordinary guy who wants to be an independent filmmaker. I've dreamed about making films since I was 8 or 9, wrote scripts in middle and high school with every intention of committing them to celluloid... and never quite managed to do it. (Though my dreams of being an on-camera star were finally realized in 2006, thanks to MD Hearts!) So I know a little of how Mark, the guy in American Movie, feels.... But oh. My. God. The guy is obsessed with making a horror film--but also with writing craptastic scripts, worming money out of his mentally infirm but rich uncle, and drinking huge quantities of peppermint Schnapps and Labatt Blue. He's just the kind of guy who would have come into the game store and talked to us for hours about his movie/game design/RPG character, whatever, while we took turns hiding in the back room. A telling moment is an interview clip with one of his brothers, who says, "Yeah.... I never really thought Mark would be a filmmaker. I kind of thought he'd turn out to be, you know, a stalker, or a serial killer or something. Seriously." It's like the reverse of when they interview the serial killer's family and they say "Oh, no, he was always such a nice boy, and so polite!" Here, Mark's own family thinks he has stalker potential. His best friend is a recovering addict who is really kind of sweet, always very agreeable, not very bright--and he's like a poster child for what happens when you drop acid/drink/get high to excess, because it's apparent that certain areas of his brain are no longer functioning. He was my favorite person in the movie, actually... But the main thing about Mark is that he will not give up on his dream. Even though his dream seems like a really bad idea--even though his movie looks kind of awful--even though he has no money, and a complete lack of good sense--he knows what he wants, and he goes for it. And strangely enough, he gets it. He makes his awful movie (called "Coven," with a long "o" sound) and has his premiere, and then this documentary about him was a huge hit at Sundance in 1999, and he's sold over 5000 copies of his film and has moved on to make more movies and realize his dream. You gotta admire that.

My pal with the camera is talking about starting to shoot his first film in May, and I am on board 100%. But if I have to drink that much Peppermint Schnapps and Labatt in order to be a filmmaking success, I think I'd rather be a loser...

One Froggy Evening

Oh man....YouTube has EVERYTHING.....

Oh Please Oh Please!!

It's supposed to (maybe) snow tonight. And maybe stay below freezing tomorrow. Come on, snow....this winter has SUCKED so far. I like the occasional unseasonably warm day as much as the next guy, but my bulbs are coming up, dammit! This is not the January I've come to expect from Indiana. Having 50 degree days in midwinter is just lame. If it doesn't get cold, how I am I supposed to appreciate it when Real Spring comes?

SNOW. SNOW. SNOW. SNOW. SNOW.

Hoosier Pride

I just had to post about how proud I am that the single dissenting vote on the massive lobbying ethics reform measure was cast by Dan Burton, my former congressman. Apparently he is the only member of Congress who was brave enough to admit that he doesn't WANT to give up free travel and lavish gifts from lobbying interests! Way to go, Dan--honesty is always the best policy.

And really, I did look around on the net and on his official website to see if there was any official explanation of his opposition to this much-needed reform. Nothing. Nada. The local newspaper was unable to reach him for comment; however, they do note that while Indiana lawmakers severely curtailed their lobby-funded travel in recent years, Dann-o took the single most expensive trip of any of our delegates in 2006, a $15,500 jaunt to Taiwan. (The next most expensive was taken by former rep. Mark Souder, Mr. "Homosexuals want to destroy YOUR marriage," who got to go to Madrid with his son for 14 grand.) Coincidence? I think not, my friends.

But...But I Liked Lorne Greene....

As you might be aware if you too are a Blogger-o-Phile, Blogger has been in beta-test for a brand new version for several months now. The Beta is finally over, and now every time I log on I'm exhorted to "Switch to new Blogger! Switch now! NOW, dammit! Or we'll come to your house and rip all the labels off your canned goods!" Naturally, I'm suspicious.

What I decided to do instead was to start a brand new blog over on Blogger2, using my google ID. (Yes, that makes 4 blogs I have now. Each is a discrete entity serving an entirely different purpose. Really. Shut up and stop laughing.) While Cautionary Tale strives to be funny, the new blog is a bit more serious and a dumping ground for personal introspection--so I won't be offended if none of you want to read it. But anyway, it's giving me an opportunity to check out New Blogger's format without risking the old blog falling into chaos. It's got some nice features--it's certainly easier to tinker around with the look of your template than Old Blogger ever was. But the best thing about it, so far, is that when I log on I get all sorts of messages telling me how cool New Blogger is, including the following analogy:

"Let us put it this way: Old Blogger = Battlestar Galactica with Lorne Greene. New Blogger = Battlestar Galactica with Edward James Olmos!"

So...you're saying....Old Blogger had Daggit? Damn! I always wanted one of those!

Ringin' It In, Yo!

Happy Grue Year, everyone and sundry! I'm cleaning my house today, and making room for the stationary bike I have promised myself I'll buy with any leftover holiday cash I might have. It's time I got off my ass. I'm also making corned beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. So what rituals do you perform on New Year's Day?

And Now, A Musical Interlude....

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from my pal Andy, inviting me to a concert that had, in fact, already begun when he called me. "It's Paul and Storm! You should come!" he said. Now, Paul and Storm are one half of a now-defunct acapella band who I deeply love, and my feelings about them were a little mixed--they're not DaVinci's Notebook, after all, and while they've got a lot of good comedy material going, as a two-man band they're a little more limited musically than DVN. But still, I felt an urge to be supportive, and I went to the show, enjoyed it a lot, and bought their new album, Opening Band. On that album (among several other gems and one extensive running joke) is a song called "The Ballad of Eddie Praeger." It's a song about the death of a urinal cake; imagine Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," only with a urinal cake instead of a boat. (And if you'd like to hear it, go here and scroll down.) I found this song utterly hilarious--mainly because I am convinced that "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is one of the primary selections in Hell's Jukebox. I hate that song. It just goes on, and on, and fucking on. So this brought to mind the question of what other songs are on the jukebox in Hell. "Sherri Baby," by the Four Seasons, I'm pretty sure. Possibly "Dust in the Wind." There must be more.

At any rate, since it's Christmas Eve, I got to thinking about the Christmas selection on Hell's Jukebox. Everyone has Christmas songs that they utterly hate, and those of us who've worked years in mall retail have more than most people just because we heard them on infinite loop during stressful moments of our lives. My special nemesis is "The Little Drummer Boy." There is NO version of this song that is anything other than plain awful to me. It strives to be a religious carol, and fails utterly. (My favorite carol is We Three Kings, so it's not that I prefer the secular ones. It's just that I hate the Drummer Boy.) So that's on Hell's Christmas PA System. I can think of a few others, but rather than descend even further into holiday cynicism, let me tell you instead that Grinchy ol' me made a Holiday Mix CD of GOOD stuff, with the help of iTunes and the spirit of the season:
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Barenaked Ladies
Christmas Wrapping - The Waitresses
Jingle Bells (banjo instrumental) - Earl Scruggs
I Saw Three Ships - Sting
Father Christmas - The Kinks
Backdoor Santa - BB King and John Popper
Carol of the Bells - Mannheim Steamroller
Winter Wonderland - The Eurythmics
We Three Kings - The Roches, who mess up the fourth verse but I forgive them
Baby Please Come Home - Joey Ramone
The Dreidel Song - DaVinci's Notebook
Wizards in Winter - Trans-Siberian Orchestra
So, are any of my faves on YOUR personal Christmas Hell list? What's in your mix instead?

To Fret, or Not To Fret.

I can't decide if I'm stressed or not. On the up side, I finished all my holiday shopping in plenty of time, I didn't run out of money before the end of the year (a distinct possibility, what with the new roof and all) and got my grading done and grades posted by the end of the day last Saturday. And all my art app students passed, except for the dude who stopped coming to class back in October but inexplicably didn't bother dropping the course. Which incidentally boggles my mind--IUPUI, unlike my own college, allows you to drop a course without penalty practically up to the last day of class. Why in the name of god wouldn't you do that rather than take an F on your record?? Amazing. Anyway, so they all passed and most did quite well, and some of them liked the class enough that they sat around after the exam to talk about art and eat the homemade fudge one student brought as an end-of-semester treat.

On the downside, I'm working a contract that has to be completed by December 31, so not much free time; the house is a horrible mess post-semester, with piles of paper and dishes everywhere that I can't seem to make myself deal firmly with; and I seem to have had a bout of the norovirus that is working its way around Indy, which peaked over the weekend but has left me feeling tired and unhealthy in its wake. Also it's raining a lot, which means fear of flooding in my neighborhood. So far this winter hasn't been bad in that respect, it helps that it's been warm, and that there hasn't been a ton of snow to suddenly melt off in a warm snap and swell the river. But after the last two winters, it's pretty much always at the back of my mind.

So am I stressed? Hmmm..... I wonder.....

Oh well.

Life Lessons

Last year's lesson from art history TAing was, "Don't smoke pot before the midterm." A lesson we can all learn from! This year's ancillary lesson: "Don't drop acid before you write your final paper." Remember this, folks. The grade you save might be your own.

While I may occasionally bemoan the writing skills of the average student at the art school where I'm an adjunct, may I just take this opportunity to say how much I love teaching at this school? It's the end of the semester, student projects are due, and I walked into the main hall this morning to find three of my past students nailing together what appeared to be an enourmous teepee, made of gauze and a metal armature of some kind, with lights inside it, standing in a pool of water. The entire back hall was full of the most amazing damn woodwork/furniture projects I've ever seen, shelves and benches and tables that leave The Jetsons behind in their space-age, retro coolness, all waiting to be photographed for the students' portfolios. I passed a girl was sitting chatting on her cell phone, who had next to her an angel sculpted entirely of matchsticks (the long ones) and straw. I went to get a drink during the exam I was proctoring, and found one of the two drinking fountains had been enveloped in soft, velvety fabric--it was like Christo came and did a surgical strike on the plumbing at Herron. Went out to the parking lot, and there's three people in a cherry picker hanging round sculptures on the large sycamore tree outsdie the door; they looked like blobs of colored melty wax, or possibly a giant homage to Wham-o's late, lamented Superelastic Bubble Plastic. What can I say? Pure joy.

Oy Gevalt.

So I'm thinking about purchasing a menorah of my very own. Indianapolis not being a mecca of judaica (so to speak) I did a quick internet search. Now I am flooded with possiblities. I am particularly drawn to this Ceramic Turtle Menorah, mainly because the idea of a ceramic turtle in itself is so random; sticking 9 candles in his back just makes it all the more surreal. And I don't even see where the candles are supposed to go on this one.... Really, I was looking for something a little more traditional, simple, and.... ok, well, cheap. Not super-cheap, but cheaper than Mr. Flaming Turtle up there. I'll probably go with the basic brass model--simple, but every bit as effective for setting my house accidentally afire. I'll make the quick rounds of possibilities here in Indy before I pony up for shipping. But if anyone has any recommendations for "best menorah ever," I'll take 'em!

Couldn't Stand the Weather...

On the whole, it was a good trip to Chicago; it was the getting there and the returning that left a lot to be desired. And considering I'd been expecting to have to drive part of the way in snow conditions, it oculd have been a lot worse.

I'd originally planned to go up to Chicago for an alumni event--a reception and a talk by the new president of my college, which sounded worth a drive. Then I realized I could add a trip to the King Tut exhibit before it left the Field Museum, so I combo-ed up and bought a ticket online (for which I got charged a $3 service fee, and another $3 delivery charge--for having it held at Will Call. Yes--to "deliver" it across the desk at the admissions gate is $3. Chiselling %$@*#^...) Finally, I realized a friend of mine from the MA program here is now working at the Chi Historical Society, and so I made a lunch date with her. Perfect plan.
When I wake up, it's raining and dark, and so I get a slow start out of Indy. Finally hit the road in just enough time so I can make the lunch date if nothing goes wrong... Which is no doubt why I blew out a tire an hour into the trip. In the pouring rain. In the "Bermuda Triangle" area of I-65 several miles south of Lafayette, where cell phones don't work. I got out to change the tire in the cold pouring rain (in my nice clothes, because remember I'm going to a reception later on. My college does fancy receptions, there are canapes and stuff.) Got the car jack out, which required me to unload several cardboard boxes of leftover floor tiles which I've not yet returned to Lowe's, and with much struggling managed to remove 3 of the 4 lugnuts from the offending tire. The fourth one wouldn't budge. I strained, I pulled, I pushed, and finally put my entire body weight on the jack, only to notice that the hex nut was actually warping rather than coming loose. Reattached the other nuts, got back in the car, and rolled forward inches at a time while staring at my cell phone until I got an intermittant signal. After shouting through a wall of static at several various people, I managed to get hold of Triple A. And a mere 3 hours after my breakdown, I was on the road again with a new tire from McCord, a fantastic and friendly tire dealer in Lafayette who got me in and out in a half hour, and a new cell phone car charger from Pep Boys (who had a 2 hour wait before they'd even have looked at my tire, but since I'd burned out the phone on the road I was grateful for their vast acreage of auto electronics.)

So lunch was out, but I made it to Tut and enjoyed it very much. Then went up to the Arts Center, parked, and killed the hour before the reception walking up Michigan to the Girardelli store for hot chocolate. Had dinner at a fantastic deli called Eppy's, and if you ever have the opportunity to eat there and you pass it up to eat at the Subway next door instead, well.... you deserve what you get, is all I'm sayin'. The proprietor read his sandwich boy the riot act for asking if I wanted mayonnaise on my corned beef sandwich. "This is a Jew deli, Robert! You don't OFFER to ruin their meat for them by putting mayo on it! She asks you, then you can put it on, but you just ask her 'What kind of mustard would you like on that?' " Robert countered that maybe they should just stop serving ham while they're at it, which got the response "Hey, I said we were a Jew deli; I didn't say we were kosher." The soup was 27¢ a bowl, because it was 27 degrees out when they opened that morning. If it's below zero, they give you money back with the soup. What more could a person want in a deli? I almost didn't have room for the canapes. The alum program was nice, and when I left it was only just starting to freezing-rain out. Roads weren't slick, everything was fine.... Until I hit northern Indiana, at which point the heavens opened and i drove home in pouring rain the whole way, with low visibility and high wind.

At least the tire blew on the way up and not on the way back.

Andy Warhol Makes Me Sick.

Actually that's not true--of the artists I lectured about yesterday, I rather enjoy Warhol's take on our consumerist society. But this doesn't change the fact that I was overcome by nausea during the course of my lecture on contemporary art, and barely managed to finish the class before I became violently ill. But I don't blame Warhol for this. Or even Christo and Jean-Claude. Remember, 20th c. art isn't about end product, it's about process....

I seem to have gotten some kind of weirdo comment-spam in the prior entry, which causes the comments window to immediately forward to a new web address when you open it. Or, at least, that's what happens when I open it. Beats me. Hopefully it won't happen again.
And in other news.... hmm. I have no other news. The dining room completion has been delayed because the woodwork we cut doesn't quite fit perfectly; after two more weeks of frantic activity, the semester will be all over but the cryin' (or the gradin', as the case may be;) and I have another bunch of contract work at the museum I work for, which should make the holiday season a bit brighter in a financial sense. A plus, considering the New Roof is about to eat the entirety of my bank account....

Post-Modern Modernism?

I'd just like you all to know that I'm writing a lecture on contemporary art tonight, and if I had to choose between this and a root canal, well.... let's just say I'd have to think about it.

It's GROUT-TACULAR!

Yes, the dining room project approaches completion. Tile is laid; I came, I saw, I grouted. I sealed. This last weekend I spent painting the woodwork (which my father generously bought, cut, and primed for me.) New furniture has been purchased and assembled. I am on the cusp of having a real, usable room downstairs for the first time in over a year.... So, go me!

A "before" picture of the old room is here, and here's one of the walls, and here's one of the new tile (pre-grout.) I'll post a final completion photo once the woodwork's on.

Robert Altman died this week, which makes me sad. I love his films. So do yourself a favor this holiday weekend; go out and rent "Short Cuts" or "The Player" if you haven't seen them before. Those two movies are masterpieces--two of many from Altman. They pack a whallop, though, they're not light film. But totally worth your time. Have a good holiday, everyone--

No Sugar Tonight....

In the wake of last week's Halloween binge, I've put myself on a no-sugar diet for the forseeable future. This mainly applies to processed sugars like corn syrup; I'm still allowed to put a little honey or maple syrup on my cereal in the morning, and naturally occuring sugar in fruit is fine. I'm back on my fruit kick, eating lots of dried fruit, juice, and those expensive yet tasty health food smoothies from the refrigerated section. I have a theory that a lot of the reason I feel like crap a good deal of the time is nutritional (yeah, I know, and didja know the earth is round too? it's a big duh, but at the same time it's easy for me to blow off these things on a day-to-day level even as I say "I should eat better!") So I'm drinking a lot of "Superfood" and "Green Machine" and "B Monster" for lunch these days--I should probably buy stock in Odwalla.

In other news, hooray for the national elections, and a bit of a boo for our local ones; somehow, the Republicans lost seats in the Indiana House but swept the state Senate. They now hold a Senate majority so large that they can conduct business even if not a single Democrat shows up to work in the morning. That just seems bad to me on principle... hopefully the Democratic majority in our House will force some bipartisanship on divisive issues. They're already discussing rescinding daylight savings time--woo hoo!

ooooooouuuugggg......

I have to give a lecture in 12 hours on the baroque period, and all i can think of is how much I feel like barfing due to the overpresence of Halloween candy in my system. This year it was mini-Heath bars and peanut butter cups. Jane has already asked about favorite Halloween candy.. So I put it to you--in the comments, tell me the one kind of Halloween candy you were always disappointed to see in your tricker-treat pumpkin. What was the worst thing you ever got? It could be a one-time thing or a yearly "ew" that the old couple on the block always handed out--name it!

Mine were twofold. The consistant one was Smarties; I hate those things, they're like a crappy, chalk-like imitation of Sweetarts (which I love.) I also occasionally found one of these in my bag, and they filled me with horror.... I find artificial maple-flavored stuff pretty disgusting, and that combined with the unappetizing name ensured that I never actually ate one of these. I mean, come on--BUN? What the hell kind of name is that for candy?

Say, That's a Nice Double Helix You Got There....

Benevolent Inventor

Here's my full Personal DNA Report, if you'd like to know what that thing actually means... This was a pretty interesting test, though I admit I have a few issues with it (such as how they define "masculine" and "feminine" traits.) I liked the different mechanics for expressing how strongly you felt about a question; the x-y grids etc. were a nice tactile way of conveying data.

Speaking of conveying data, I had to give a lecture last week that covered 1000 years of art history (late antique, medieval, byzantine, islamic, jewish, christian, and secular) in 75 minutes. It was horrible. Would have been much easier if that weren't actually my area of expertise; as it was, I had to try to figure out what NOT to say in order to rein it in under 75 minutes. And while I'm not entirely sure, I think I may have spent a lot more time than usual gesturing wildly at the slide screen and going "Um! Yeah! Sooooo..... Where was I?" Tomorrow it's the Renaissance in 75. Frankly that's a lot more managable, you toss around a few of the big names, talk about the revival of Classicism and boom, you're done. Nothing like the challenge of explaining the stylistic difference between Romanesque and Gothic churches in 20 words or less. Meh. I'll be glad when we get to modern art, I'll have a lot less to say....

I Always Knew I Was Special...

HowManyOfMe.com

There is: 1 person with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

When this first turned up on LJ a week or two ago, it was so popular the server crashed before I got a chance to try it. Now it's up again.... though it did tell Carl that NO ONE in the US has his name, so I'm pretty skeptical of the accuracy.

And in other news, Smallville has already lost me. They fell back on trick arrows and a stupid computer animated compound bow that folds up into a pocket pouch.... It's like Silver Age Green Arrow married Batman, and they had a kid. Plus, Lois is blonde, Lana's a creep, and Clark is displaying some seriously wooden acting skills this week. I have confidence he can do better--but if we were supposed to get that he hates Oliver Queen just for being rich, it might have worked better to have him act that out instead of just having Oliver say, "You hate me because I'm rich, don't you?" Er... what? Maybe his eyes were smouldering, and I missed it. Likewise, when he realizes Lois is all into Ollie, he just looks kind of "Meh." and Ollie also looks "Meh." And then Lois says something about them marking their territory (ie, her) and my response was "Huh? Did I miss the part where they expressed some emotion?" So anyway... drat! Curse you, Smallville, raising my hopes like that! Though the ending was pretty good, and they did sort of recapture some of the longbow hunter feel in the ends-justify-means speech. I dunno if I'll keep watching or not--but they did bring GA into 3D, and I'll always be grateful for that!

Longbow Hunters #1

Longbow Hunters #1
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Unexpected Joy

OK, so this is a totally nerdy post. You don't like it, you can go read Doonsbury or something and come back later. But I've been having a hard couple weeks, in a life-stress sense, and today I got a little glimmer of sunshine, completely out of the blue. Or the green.

My pal Brian called me up to let me know that I should watch "Smallville" tonight. I never watch "Smallville"--in fact, I never watch any network TV, or really anything that could be described as a series these days. I can't handle the commitment. If I had TiVo, I might feel differently--but right now, I'm happy with my TV interaction being pure brain-candy that I flip on whenever I'm in the mood to vegitate. But Brian shook me out of my TV torpor with the information that "Smallville" tonight would feature the one comic book character I love more than any other--yes, more even than Nightcrawler. (Only just.) I've never been a Superman fan, although I enjoyed the first few seasons of "Lois and Clark" with my mom when I was living at home; so I never really even considered watching Smallville--gee, Superman again? Only now he's an angsty teenager? Gee, that sounds great. The one thing that could really spark my interest would be the introduction of a new character--specifically Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow. He debuted tonight.

So now that I'm watching, may I say first that I really like the dude playing Clark? He's cute, he's sincere without being irritating. I do like him. And I like the Chloe chick--though it took me most of the episode to figure out that I shouldn't be trying to match her up with any character I know from the DC mythos.... But WOW this show has some plausibility issues. I have a big hangup with shows that test my suspension of disbelief; other people say "oh, come on, lighten up, it's fantasy!" but I really feel like writers of shows like this should challenge themselves to write plots which actually make sense, and work around obstacles rather than just letting the main characters do stuff like....say..... walk unnoticed into an intensive care ward and take pictures of the patient's X-rays? WTF? I had several moments like this. Isn't Smallville somewhere in Kansas? Do the producers not know that Kansas does not sport forests full of ferns and cyclopean redwoods? It's like the mountains of Chicago... Etc., etc. ANYWAY, the point of my post was that Oliver Queen has finally hit the screen in something other than the occasional animated guest shot on Superfriends. As a hard core fan, I have to give it pretty good marks. The guy they picked to play him is H-O-T, there's no arguing that. And completely ripped, they've already had his shirt off for an entire scene (Lois is supposed to be falling for him, which is a little goofy but oh well.) He's a little smarmier than Ollie should be, I think, but they're doing the millionaire playboy angle which had more or less been dropped by the time I fell in love with the character. I have to say that his final scene in this ep--in which he has not yet been revealed as the Emerald Archer--was nothing short of fantastic. Apparently, next week we get to see him in full Green Arrow mode, and it looks like they're taking a bit of the Longbow Hunters look with him in that ep, as seen here in the glorious pencilwork of Mike Grell. I'm relieved to note that they're going the straight-up longbow version of him rather than Silver Age trick arrows and goofy costume. It was cool. It was very cool. And now, dammit, I have to remember how my VCR works so I can make sure I don't miss next week's installment.

Whiter than Sour Cream...


Got this from my pal, the Coyote. I'd post more, but I'm grading over 100 exams this weekend. If I don't survive, tell my wife I love her....

Zahara!

Zahara!
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

See the Elephant...

NOW don't you wish you were me? Coz I got to meet the baby elephant at the zoo last weekend! She is more than cute as hell, as you can plainly see. I took some little movies of her too.

While we're on the topic, check out my new favorite YouTube video, Peanut's Great Escape! Peanut is my new personal hero; her trip down the stairs is a metaphor for life. Or something. And the title of this post comes from a James McMurtry song I'm rather fond of, from his latest album. I can't figure out if the whole song is a metaphor about going to war; but even if it's not (or especially if it's not) I like it just the same.

Days of Wine and Monkey Crap

Never has an 11 hour drive each way been less onerous than on this past weekend, when I dragged my lazy self to Ithaca, NY for a wedding of one of my college buddies. It was splendid.

I enjoy living in Indiana (a fact many of my out-of-state friends find hard to comprehend.) I don't long for the mountains or ocean beaches per se. But I did go to college near the Catskills, and I haven't been back in that direction very often in the intervening years; so the Finger Lakes region had a pleasant, familiar autumn groove going on that awakened all sorts of college nostalgia in me. Got to spend the weekend with nearly all my buddies, including (but not limited to) Upyernoz and Mrs. Noz, Dr. Pretentious and her husband, Cthulhia, and of course the Groom Himself. The drive turned out to be 11 hours long; when I got to Erie PA, I thought, "hmm, according to mapquest it's only 2 more hours! yet when I examine the road atlas it looks more like FOUR hours...sonofabitch...." The experience was enhanced by the fact that it started to rain, was pitch dark, and the route from the big highway up to Ithaca was missing its center line and shoulder lines due to repaving. So I ticked along at about 35 mph for a good long way, no doubt infuriating the driver behind me... But he didn't hit me, and I made it there in plenty of time to refuse to play Ticket to Ride with jeremy. We hit the Ithaca farmer's market both mornings, and I must say it's a fabulous market. Plenty of excellent food, including blueberry wine, lemon turnovers, and apple cider doughnuts (which I liked so much I might actually try making them at home.) Saturday afternoon there was a catered BBQ at Taughannock State Park, where we ate, drank, played frisbee and hiked up a shale-y path to see an amazing waterfall. Saturday night we managed to steal the groom away from his groomly duties to spend quality time and play board games, about 10 of us crammed into Dr. P's room. Sunday we drove out to a winery for some tasting, and I bought a bottle for my parents. So it was a winey weekend... The wedding itself was lovely, a combination of traditional Jewish matrimony and new age commitment ceremony. I can't express how happy I am for Josh and his new wife; they seem to fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. After coffee with the remaining 4 of the gang in the morning, I hit the road for a beautiful drive home. (Well, beautiful until I got to western Ohio... but we won't talk about that.) It was a glorious weekend.

Then I got home to a maelstrom of student questions, papers to grade, and my new volunteer assignment at the zoo, which involves baboons. LOTS of baboons. (And wild dogs, and lions. But mostly baboons.) I now spend 4 hours every other thursday morning becoming intimately familiar with several different kinds of poop, and the vast number of locations a troop of monkeys can put said poop in their enclosures. Don't you wish you were me?

Cold Showers

They say cold showers are good for you, on a number of different levels. I beg to differ; when my water heater died over the weekend, having cold showers did not in fact improve my health in any discernable way. I'd go so far as to say they had the opposite effect. I'd planned to call in a plumber on Monday, but my father in his infinite wisdom pointed out that after the plumber showed up, moved my refrigerator to get at the water heater, and charged me for the visit, he'd just tell me to get a new one anyway. So I skipped the middle man and headed out to Lowe's instead to order up a 30 gallon gas heater from Whirlpool. They promised delivery the next day (good, as they charged me through the nose for it--I have an uneasy suspicion that they offer free delivery if you're willing to wait a few days, but they didn't specifically mention it. They probably saw that look of cold-shower desperation in my eye.) Unfortunately, I was scheduled to spend the next day shooting the sequel to my much aclaimed turn on the parody soap opera "MD Hearts." (The ANC Movies news page has a nice still of me looking all evil for the new one.) Fortunately my mom kindly offered to babysit the arrival of the new appliance, and hot showers are once again mine! So is a badly scraped kitchen floor--the fridge didn't move without a fight, apparently--but it's a small price to pay.

I'm about to embark on a lengthy weekend road trip to Ithaca, NY. Here's hoping that all my breakdown karma got used up on the water heater, and that my elderly Saturn will survive the drive.

I Already Miss Steve Irwin

I think this easily qualifies as the most depressing celebrity death since Jim Henson.

Nearly everyone who knows me knows that I have had an abiding crush on Steve Irwin for about a decade--since he first started showing up on Animal Planet with his enthusiastic love for every living thing no matter how crawly or bitey. That passion for wildlife is something I completely identify with. When I was 10, I wanted to be a Greenpeace warrior. I wanted to chain myself to redwoods, drive my boat between the whale and the harpoons, do whatever it took to champion the cause of the voiceless masses. (And somehow, I ended up with a liberal arts degree instead. Ah well. These things happen.) But Steve realized that the key to environmetalism is education; all the Zephyr boats and tree spikings in the world won't make ordinary people give a crap about saving spotted owl habitats, or saltwater crocodiles, or whales, or whathaveyou. The only thing that will do that is education, and Steve Irwin was first and foremost a fantastically talented educator. I know others will take up the torch behind him... but it'll never be quite the same.

He was also cute as hell. Think I'll go buy some Foster's and watch the Croc Hunter movie again. Sniff.

Warping Young Minds Since 1993....

I've been teaching, in some capacity or other, since shortly after I graduated from college. Substitute high school teaching (resulting in the Great Math Test Debacle of 1994, and the Underpants Incident of 2003.) TAing for World History 101 (in which a booming Jesuit father informed the class that "An OCEAN is a BODY of WATER...surrounded by CONTINENTS!" If you didn't know what an ocean was, kids, maybe college wasn't such a great idea for you) and Art History 101-102, the highlight of which was test review with silly prizes from Archie McPhee for anyone who answered a question correctly. But today marks the first time I have had a class of my own--my syllabus, my grading standards, my ability to mold young minds. Though, this being IUPUI, a considerable # of the minds in the room are actually older than I am. I can live with that. They're mostly elementary education majors, which means I might well be warping two generations of learners for the price of one. It went ok today, I just went over the syllabus and then talked about "What is art?" for a few minutes before letting them go. Next Monday's topic is "Good Art, Bad Art, Not Art," and I have some choice pictures from the Museum of Bad Art for the powerpoint...

In a full circle sort of a thing, I got my diploma for my Master's Degree in the mail today. It's shiny, in the bright red folder favored by Indiana U, and will look lovely on my shelf. Next to the other 3 degrees. Which I'm also not really using. Woo hoo!

It's a gun! It's a guitar! It's.....patriotism!!

It's a gun! It's a guitar! It's.....patriotism!!
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

There's Nothing Like The Fair.

Well, first of all, thanks to everyone who expressed their sympathies (in comments, email, and in person) about the zoo truck wreck. I'm happy to announce that I ran into one of the keepers I work with at the grocery the other day and got an update; contrary to initial reports, we had a near 100% survival rate on the fish. This despite the fact that they were being carried in foam picnic coolers, inside plastic baggies full of water. I'm amazed. We did lose 4 penguins--3 of the gentoos, which are my favorites, and 1 rockhopper. We also lost a couple anemones, but considering how many fish were on that truck I am utterly stunned by the minimal loss. In addition, I was relieved to learn that the dwarf caimans, the anaconda, and the giant amazon catfish were on the OTHER truck which didn't wreck. A good thing, as I'm sure if the 15' long anaconda had gotten free on the highway, a state trooper would have just shot it without thinking twice.

Did I mention I got to help hold her during the pre-ship vet exam? That officially qualifies as one of the coolest things I've ever done at the zoo; I was there helping bag up all those fish that Monday, and I got to be one of the 10 or so people who held onto the anaconda while the vet checked her for bumps and lumps before we put her in the crate. Have you ever held onto a snake with a nearly 12" diameter body? It was freakin' incredible.

Anyway, Gencon went quite well, and I'll post a blow by blow of True Dungeon on my other blog sometime soon. Suffice it to say it was glorious victory yet again. Pics are on my Flickr account. Then it was State Fair time again, and I hit it twice--once with Rat Girl and Duder, once with my coworkers. The winner of the "WTF is THAT?" contest in pro art for this year is seen above. The winner of the horrifying cake award is pictured HERE, and the winner of "most hilarious non-pro watercolor" is HERE. I think the sheer quantity of kitchy stuff in the Home and Family Arts building may have been one of the highlights of the fair for our overseas guests.... I didn't get a photo of the eyeless purple teddy bear. Maybe I can get a copy from them.

Gnnnarrrhhhhhhhhh......

OK. I am almost human again.

First of all, yes, this was about my animals. I knew all of them. At last, an animal accident story from me that isn't funny. No, I don't want to talk about it.

Second, Gencon's over, I'm still alive, it had its good points and bad points, and now I have weapons with which to take out the frustrations of the day on the people I love.

Brace For Impact

This week is GenCon, and my workplace is already becoming snappish and unpleasant. As always, I'm restraining myself from saying "The reason you've got 8 million things to do in four days is because you didn't do any of this shit back in June and July, when you had some time on your hands..." and am quietly going about the things I need to get done before the show. This includes:
1) Cleaning my house so my houseguest Charles doesn't see what a foul pit I normally live in.
2) Cleaning my shower, because I looked at it the other day and I was all like "holy crap, how long has it looked like that??" the light in there is busted, and I tend to shower in the dim twilight of the morning, so I hadn't really been fully aware of the scum-tacularness of the wall under the soap dish til yesterday.
3) mowing the lawn
4) Weeding my former advisor's garden for fun and profit
5) Making up a syllabus for the class I'm teaching this fall, which is approaching with uncomfortable rapidity
6) Going hiking
7) Packing miniatures
8) Eating a balanced diet
9) Painting the dining room
10) Blogging (not really.)
Obviously, not all this stuff has to do with Gencon itself, but it's all part of the not-having-a-moment-to-breathe experience that's going to suck away the next 7 days of my life.

Last year my car and I both had a breakdown right after the con. (The car cost me about $1500; the personal breakdown passed when I realized I wasn't going to have to buy a new car.) I'm hoping both of us can hold it together this year--but I suppose we'll see...

Hooray!

Hooray!
Originally uploaded by hamaker88.

Happy Shark Week!

In honor of Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, I offer you yet another thieving--this time from Fafblog's Friday Pie-Blog from a month or so back. I know I want to be a pieologist at the National Pie Institute of Pies, when I grow up.

And my wall is now plastered, but I'm not. Maybe I should remedy this.....

Annual Birthday Post

Go me, it's my birthday! Go me, it's my birthday!

OK, I'd planned a cunning sorta post about getting older and not wiser, and all that stuff.... but now I'm tired, and I got a sunburn at the baseball game, so the tops of my feet are all itchy and owie. So the sage musing upon the symbolic meaning of birthdays will have to wait. I'm actually not depressed this birthday, which is saying a lot! Usually birthday and new years are my two big mood potholes; but I had a great weekend. Got my fingers crossed for a good week. And now, I bid you goodnight.

Star Trek TOS - Knights of the Round Table

Cheerfully ripped from Upyernoz.

Battle of the Dining Room: Round 1

At the risk of boring my gentle readers with home DIY posts, I'm actually sort of excited about my dining room at the moment. Over a year ago, you might recall I had a major plumbing backup which demanded that my septic line be dug up and re-laid; it also meant that I finally ripped out the crappy nasty wall to wall carpet in the downstairs. But, things being as they are, I didn't have the time or the ability to do anything else about the situation until this Spring, when I decided to repaint the walls and look at new floor options.

Nothing like deciding to start a project to make the whole thing infinitely more complicated. I found out first that my concrete floor is not flat. Second, that the tiny crack in the wall, which I thought I could just scrape and spackle, was actually the harbinger of massive plaster damage. I scraped, and scraped some more, and then suddenly i was looking at a glimmer of daylight through the hole in my wall. Caulk fixed the crack where the water had been seeping in, but the interior damage was daunting, and I've spent the last 2 months trying to figure out how to fix it myself. The answer, of course, is that the way to fix it is look up "Plasterers" on Angie's List, and have a professional do it. That's finally happening later this week. The floor, on the other hand, is doable; my father and I spent a couple hours this morning learning the joys of self-leveling cement compound, and tomorrow I'll be sanding off all the lumps left by our inadequate mixing skillz. I'm actually pretty excited at the prospect of having a functional dining room in the next month-due to the nasty carpet, it's never been a room I wanted to spend much time in even when I first moved in. So you may be subjected to occasional Dining Room Diary entries in the coming weeks, just because it's so damn cool to finally get something done! You have been warned....

Binding Games??

Binding Games??
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

You'd Think Paradise Island Would Have a Bigger Tourism Industry....

OK, I can't help it. I'll stop, I promise. But isn't it sweet of Wonder Woman to be all concerned about safety in a bondage situation?

Oh crap. Now I'm going to get google hits on "WW bondage"....

Oh, How They Chortled...

Oh, How They Chortled...
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Can't....Stop....Laughing.....

OK, this is purely a link post, and I already posted it on my pathetic excuse for a livejournal.... but this site, revealed to me by Upyernoz has given me literally hours of fun. Superman Is a Dick apparently went viral a year or so ago and I missed it; but I used to buy these 50's and 60's era DC comics by the handful out of the sale bin at Comic Carnival. To see them collected here in all their absurdity is nothing short of wonderful. The Seduction of the Innocent gallery features unaltered panels and covers from a time when "boner" just meant "embarassing tactical error."

Prosecution for Illegal Posses...uh oh.

borden
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

On the Run from the Borden Police

I decided that one of the things holding me back from being a true Bike Commuter Type was that I didn't really have a good way to carry stuff--like a change of clothes, or my notebooks for class, or the groceries. I have a backpack, of course, but I have a tendency to sweat like Niagara Falls at the slightest provocation (sorry if that was more than you wanted to know about me) and so whenever I get anywhere and take the backpack off, I have to wring it out before unzipping it and removing its slightly dampened contents. Not ideal. I looked at snazzy panniers and saddlebags at the bike store, but the whopping price tags on those babies is a little more than my mostly-jobless state can handle right now. I tried tying my backpack onto the bike rack with a bungee cord, but bungees can slip, and I almost did a header into the canal when part of my backpack escaped and threw itself into the spokes of my back tire at the end of last semester. My final resort: Operation Stolen Milk Crate.

I hasten to point out that I didn't steal this milk crate. I got it from a friend of mine who works for a dairy, and her dairy presumably stole it from its rightful owners behind a supermarket at some point. But now I have it, and it's tied to the back of my bike with brown twine (because if you're going to look like an utter dork, you might as well do it up right) and I've been assured by one of my cool friends who bikes that the milk-crate-over-the-tire look is hip. At least I think that's what she said. Anyway, so now I'm living in fear that some official of the Borden Patrol will spot me peddling sweatily along the canal path toward the health food store, and call in their team of expert dairy snipers for the takedown and recovery. I'll never know what hit me.

The Giant Brat of Madison

The Giant Brat of Madison
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

NIce Buns!

As promised, here is Kelly's picture of the giant walking hot dog and its handler. Sadly, it appears to be without condiments of any kind. Note that it's smiling bravely, belying its inner sense of mustardless sorrow and desolation.

I got turned down for another job, so I'm also trying to smile in the face of mustardless sorrow. Oh, wait, I do have mustard--this must be a different kind of sorrow. The kind with no money and lots of bills..... Ah well. I'm revamping my painting website, maybe people will start throwing money at me in exchange for tiny nazis and little space elves....

I Saved Christmas!

Well, no, actually I didn't. But I did save my fishtank from being dismantled, which was about to be my last ditch recourse to solve my water chemistry problem. I was all set to net out my one remaining tetra (we'll call him "Mr. T") and the catfish, put them in a holding tank, and take the whole thing to bits, when lo and behold--the lord spoke to me. He spoke, and he said, "Try checking your CO2 levels. Dumbass."

I won't bore you all with the details, as Jane's the only other aquarist I know and we already comiserated on this topic. (We're each other's fish confidants--strictly monoichthyous, of course.) But the upshot is, ripped out half my plants, and *gasp* added some new fish to try to raise the CO2. Mr. T was stunned to have company, after all these months; but the two new serpae tetras are now totally his groupies, they're following him deferentially around the tank and apologising for living, and occasionally he'll smack up one of them to remind them who's in charge. I added 4 miscellaneous danios as well... but when I got back from dinner, one of them was missing. He turned up in the filter box; I gave him FPR (fishiopulmonary recessutation) and he came back for a bit, but I think he's really checked out for good now. Sigh. Stupid danios. I've never had any fish go up the filter but them, and it's happened twice now. Anyway, we'll see if I've really saved Christmas or not. I ordered the parts to put together a CO2 generator from a science supply company, which turned out on examination to also be a supplier of creationist science materials for homeschoolers. I'm really hoping they don't share their mailing list--I'm happy to buy some 30¢ rubber stoppers from them, they shipped fast and get aces for customer service so far. But I'd just as soon not get emails advertising books with titles like "Fossils: Fact or Fiction?" or quality dinosaur books such as this one, which came highly recommended on their website....

Olivia

Olivia
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Why My Life Is (Occasionally) Cool Beyond Belief...

Because I get to feed this gorgeous beast every Thursday morning, give or take a few. She's a giant pacific octopus named Olivia, and after an initial period of shyness she's gotten very friendly with me. Octopi are extremely intelligent and curious; I never get tired of watching her and her neighbor, the huge-ass cuttlefish. I've uploaded pics of them all on flickr if you want to see them, along with one of the very selfsame penguin who caused the entire Penguin Incident back in 2003. Check 'em out, yo!

Coming in to Land

Well, back again and none the worse for wear. Adventures continued as we left the hotel; Jeremy and I on a road trip are a unique experience, as Becky will tell you. It's kind of like Kermit and Fozzie in the Studebaker.... But with a lot more yelling and rude gestures. Apparently my inability to successfully pull over at Terminal 2 at O'Hare on the first go-round nearly caused him to miss his plane. Which I think would have been fuckin' hiLARious, but I suppose I might have felt differently in his position. Still--ha haaa!

Then I spent another 2 hours driving through construction around Chicago. Dammit.

High spots of the con included the aforementioned giant hot dog; a women in gaming panel; a panel on autism/Asperger's and its relationship to fandom; a panel on successful flirting and pickups at cons, which was pretty damn funny; and a number of readings by authors I'm vaguely aware of. (My usual sense of literary lameness was carried over to yet another con--I don't think I've read a fantasy book in over a year, and the only sci-fi was the new William Gibson. I swear, I'm really cutting edge, just in a non-fiction sort of a way. really. Totally cutting.) The autism panel was particuarly good, although I sat there with my hand up for a good 30 minutes without getting called on and finally gave up. Back when I worked in game retail, I noticed (it was impossible not to notice) that a significant percentage of people in our hobby show a lot of the key markers for autism and Asperger's. It was interesting to hear the issue discussed in regards to sci-fi fandom, as it doesn't really get talked about within the game industry... Also made a connection with one of the guys who was on the game panel, he apparently wants to talk further about women in the miniatures hobby for some research he's doing. I'd link to his website, but apparently I already lost his business card. I suppose that was predictable.... Maybe he'll email me.

And speaking of painting, I finally finished the commission that's been hanging overhead for 3 months and mailed it Friday before leaving. Yaaaay! Now I can start all the other projects that were lying in wait for that one to be done. I'd do it tonight, but it's way damn hot in the house, and the laptop has raised my body temperature to a dangerous level. So it'll have to wait.

Because Nothing Is Ever Typical

One of my problems with this con, as I've said before, is the sort of strange inner-circle/outer-fringe atmosphere that pervades the place. It really is lovely and friendly and warm and kind, but some people take the con very personally and seriously, and are extremely gushy and sentimental on the topic. There was an essay in the newsletter this morning that waxed sappily poetic on why Wiscon is so very special. Now, I look tremendously forward to going to Wiscon each year (despite a lot of foot-dragging around registration time.) But for me, the finer moments come between the panels and readings and such...
So we're walking down Dayton toward State Street, and see our friend Stephen across the road, and the following shouted conversation ensued:
ME: HEY STEPHEN!!
STEPHEN: WHAT?
ME: HOW WERE YOUR PANELS THIS MORNING?
STEPHEN: WHAT??
ME: HOW WERE--
JEREMY: Look! A giant hot dog!
ME: I'M SORRY, BUT JEREMY'S SEEN A HOT DOG. WE HAVE TO GO.
STEPHEN: ?!?!WHAT??
And sure enough, a guy dressed as a giant hot dog was walking down State Street a block away. Kelly, our instant roommate, (she couldn't find other housing. Just Add Desperation!) was the only one of us possessed of a cell phone camera, and as soon as the pictures are posted, I'll link to them. She ran half a block, in sweltering heat and humidity, sacrificing her own personal dignity to get a picture of a man dressed up as a brat. We salute her. This, then is the true meaning of Wiscon--solidarity, fraternity, and public humiliation.

I'm Evil.

I'm at a sci-fi convention in Madison, Wisconsin right now. That, in itself, isn't evil. But my roommate, Upyernoz, has been so kind as to leave his computer on and available in the room so I can check my email and blog on the hotel's WiFi connection. I have just utterly abused his kindness by taking advantage of the fact that he didn't log out of his own blogger account before leaving the room today, and posting something to his weblog. He really should know better. We've been playing practical jokes on each other for years. I just wish I could have come up with something better to post--but as he has a much larger readership than I do, and some of them actually take him seriously (lord, if they only knew him as I do...) I felt it might be bad to actually post something almost plausible and yet false. Don't think I couldn't have, Noz! I held myself in check! But oh.... what an opportunity.....

I have to go steal some food from the various parties now. And then go to a panel about librarians.Catch you on the flip side.

"Search" Engine, My Ass

If Google were a real search engine, it could tell me where to find my goddamn car keys.

The Way of All Flesh

When I was 16 or 17, I started hanging out at the local game store, as so many young nerds do. Eventually I got a job there as the scullery wench; the co-worker I got on with the best was a heavyset, red-bearded guy in his 30's who looked just like I always imagined the dwarves in The Hobbit to look (only taller, of course.) He got me started painting miniatures; he ran the very first role-playing game I ever tried; he introduced me to the works of H.P. Lovecraft by telling me the story of the Cats of Ulthar from memory one night when we both worked til close. Any time someone would come into the store and say, "Hey Kurt, how are you?" he would respond, thoughtfully, "Well, I'm just perfect." He encouraged my passing interests in history and medievalism, and thus was partially responsible for my ending up a medieval studies major in college. This tickled him no end when I told him about it, and he told me that it was my duty as a writer and historian to write a paper about the Black Plague and title it "The Way of All Flesh." It's too elegant a phrase to waste.

On Tuesday I got a call from Kurt's brother letting me know that Kurt had gone the way of all flesh the night before. He'd been ill with cancer for some time, though he remained confident of his ability to conquer it right up until the end.

He became a teacher late in life, and I expect to see many of his young charges at his funeral on Saturday. But as one of his earliest students, in a joyous variety of topics during those evenings at the game store, I'd like to be among the first to say Yes, Kurt....you were perfect.

Joys in da Hood

I graduated again yesterday. It was my nicest commencement since Vassar; I say this because the Loyola one was nothing short of hideous on nearly all fronts. I was unhappy with the degree, the ceremony took hours, it was impersonal, the chairs were uncomfortable and there was no chance to flee the area at any point during the process. IUPUI, on the other hand, strives for the slick efficiency of a well-oiled machine. The hooding ceremony was at 10, and every graduate candidate (a couple hundred of us I think) was hooded by 11; lunch was done by noon and it was off to the School of Liberal Arts commencement. This featured an actual commencement speaker--the mayor--whose speech topic seemed to be, "Why you shouldn't regret majoring in the Liberal Arts, although you probably will anyway." (Frances Fergusson gave a similar speech at the Vassar Alumni event back in November, and hers was a bit more inspirational and reassuing to me... but it's hard to compare with Fran, really. I don't hold that against the mayor.) The liberal arts commencement took only an hour or so, even with all the undergrads walking across the stage to get their rolled-up piece of paper that isn't a diploma but a letter congratulating you on eventually getting a diploma. The next event was the all-school commencement in the Hoosier Dome, but by this point I was done. Not even the lure of possibly seeing my own visiage on the Jumbo-tron (TM) was enough to get me to stick around longer. I was strongly tempted to keep my Masters' hood--after all, no one was checking them back in, and the rental was $34--but honesty and lack of closet space won out.

Wonder what I'll go back to school for next...?