The Diamond Island

I heard that a certain awesome auntie of mine is 60 today.  Congratulations on making it to the 60 mark.  That’s something to brag about.  K and I didn’t hear the news until this weekend, so you’ll be getting a late special surprise from us.  The image should give you a clue of what to expect.  And if you need another clue, it’ll be done in a style similar to this.

Hope you have a great birthday Duke.  You’re a super duper aunt to the max.

05-22-09 ETA: All done!  Will be sending soon Dukey.

My Bad Ronald left some reading material for me last night.

From the chapbook One hunnbred ghosts and curses:

monster dictuanary

• godzilla can take over a city who kills destroys and breagths fire and lanchs his claw.
• blue meanie is a creature whos blue and takes over to make more blue
• jaws is a creature of death who kills anything for beware his jaws can destroy steel.

to kill a werewolf

• he must be killed by a silver bullet fired by some one who understanding.

From the comic book Shut Up! #1, with the burp people:

Well, looks like my attempts at hanging out with my own personal Bad Ronald didn’t go exactly as planned.  Judging by the spit-out bite of hot dog and the untouched milk, nitrate-based meat products in a bread sleeve with lactose liquids do not equal win.

The invitation to walk in the sunlight, breathe the wind, and look at the flowers was also a dud.  It never occured to me that this stuff is just maximum bummer for the kid.  Boy do I feel like a dummy.  Well, I gotta give the rascal points for trying.  I don’t know if I could try his brand of food or go on his kind of a walk.  Maybe I’ll have to, in order to find out what’s up.

That monster is still out there too.  I get the feeling I’m just going to have to wait until it drifts my way again.  The suspense is proving a little unnerving, brr.

Speaking of monsters, I rediscovered an old classic monster flick called Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957).  Pure hilarious goodness.  Scientists stranded on island inhabited by huge energy crabs that eat brains.  The crabs absorb the voices and memories of those they kill, so they are really good at luring victims away.  Meanwhile, the island is sinking into the ocean.  I love movies with crazy time limits before the locale is destroyed or sinks!  But the best part is the stupid crabs taunting the survivors with the voices of their dead comrades.  Pure B-movie gold.

The social media internet sinkholes have caught my interest.  So yeah, Facebook has got it’s talons into me.  For someone of my age, Facebook has been a goldmine of reconnection and personal enrichment.  It’s an event that won’t happen again, as the youngins will increasingly be unaware of life before texting each other with updates.  I wonder what my life might have been like if me and my friends in high school would have had that superpower.

And I’m on Twitter.  Looking up the few so-called celebrity type people I might be interested in has proved pretty uninteresting.  I just don’t worship my heroes enough anymore to want to follow their every effort.  Reading Bono’s tweets on twitter was an exercise in self-depression.  Looking for mundanes with something to say is just as difficult.  It’s like the Livejournal friends feed — lots of stuff that is mildly interesting, but not much I want to follow regularly.  Oh well, growing my dendrites will take time I suppose.

Meanwhile, on the book front I’m putting the finishing touches on the sixth draft.  Been taking in all the feedback I’ve gotten from folks and making decisions as to what to act upon.  Putting the last call on all that though, as I am ready to move forward.  What will probably happen is I’ll post the whole thing as a PDF here, and when I get the Lulu book all sorted out, make a link to that available for people who want a physical manifestation.  Cafe Press t-shirts and mugs are so far down the line it’s only a concept in the brainstem right now.

Pulled out a Rudraksha seed given to me by a dang dear old friend.  Time for me to do some Shiva work, this time for real.  My friend Xtine has been in the cage with the lions.  Feel like I’ve been in a leaky basement teeming with supersize crocs.  The only light from the mice with charcoal eyes.  Hostile devil child in the dark tunnel with glowing eyes and teeth, all fangs and nails chattering at me with a whisper.  Is the rotting comic book and baseball card collection a clue?  Digging a hole so the scary little guy can escape, get into the sunlight and breathe the air.  Maybe go eat cheap hot dogs with me at the Vienna Inn.

Today, March 17th, is my 40th birthday.  It is also the anniversary of my folks.  Check out these two.  Thanks for hooking them up, BK!

I’m a bit out of sorts right now.  The last few posts were written before Xtine’s friend Josh passed away.  What with that, the slaying of My Mirage, and the departure of UFO Girl, I’m feeling a little extra depressed this holiday season.  So it’s Slow Down Time for a few days while I sit and smoulder over the last calendar year, and the start of the Celtic year so far.  In the meantime, here’s a little bit of text from John Masefield’s The Box of Delights, which encapsulates a little of my wishes.

O Greatness, hear, O Brightness, hark,
Leave us not Little, nor yet Dark.

Ring, blessed Bells, for Christmas Morn,
Joy in Full Measure, Hope New-born.

Posts in the hopper, trying to make sense of them. For now, enjoy your meal!

11-11-08 ETA:  My laptop just croaked, probably for good.  Just as I was finished transferring files for backup.  Guess it’s back to the watercolors for a while.  Let’s see what I can get at Dell-dude with some defecit spending!

I’ve finished the third set of revisions, and am going down the line of my list of weaknesses to double-check if I’ve missed anything.  Maybe another two weeks, and I’ll have a finished draft.

I’m considering the possibility of doing a short comic book series and posting it here.  Got all the materials and the know-how, I’m only waiting for the right signs to take place and I’ll do some work on what it’ll be.  For now, I’m reading and researching.  Must make stuff for people or Hulk smash!

My folks have a bunch of tapes of a quirky truck-driving friend of theirs that might make for amusing listening.  I may turn them into a podcast at some point, or heck, make my own weird audio show for a limited time.  Must make stuff!

As Guy Caballero from SCTV said, “We need programming!”

The garden had gone weird on us.  The weeds won the battle, and we have mice living in the garden now.  Peppers are all a bust, and the tomatoes have gone whacko – either dying out if they are the big tomato variety, or growing all over the place and producing a handful of tomatoes if they are the small version.

The leeks are ready and good to go – they are huge!  The onions have made an unexpected comeback, while the horseradish is looking not so good.  One of the wildflowers went nuts and grew huge, with wonderful blossoms.  Crumbs, the marigolds are doing amazing, and we were surrounded by bumble and honey bees getting busy.  It was a shock.

We planted some autumn lettuce, but we’ll see how that turns out.  Oh yeah, the corn turned out nice, we got about five half ears with maybe three or four to come.  K and I cut up the corn and cooked it, then had it with the small cherry tomatoes.  The bounty was good as a side for our dinner, but it tasted so very good.

I don’t know what to make of the garden this year, it defies my puny knowledge to the +1.  I can’t explain how we got some of one thing, and nothing of most everything else.  Meanwhile, the folks have tons of lettuce growing like mad, along with garlic.  Pump up the jam for them!

My cool dude artistic friend Xtine has a new astrology website, so here’s the plug.  I don’t actually go there as a watering hole, or it’d be in the blogroll.  But I’ml placing her in the classic links section, as that may be of interest to my esoterically minded guests.  I can’t wait to see what she starts putting into her studio website when it goes to the max.

I stumbled upon some interesting explorations of the Minotaur phenomenon by arctangent at this link.  I especially like how she draws the distinction between a maze (a place to mess you up and keep you lost) and a labyrinth (you always meet the center and it’s occupant, because the route is inevitable).

I’ve been fascinated by the premise of the book House of Leaves, a rabbit hole beyond human comprehension, even though I haven’t been particularly interested in reading the book itself.  Puzzle mystery books don’t do it for me, mostly because I’m no good at puzzles and get hung up on them trying to figure out what’s happening.

However, the idea of getting drawn into an exploration of a supernatural house to try and experience its mystery intrigues me.  I’ve always been very fond of the Minotaur myth, and find the background behind it really cool.  Arctangent’s analysis got me thinking about it again, and I can sense more clues to come from out there.

Despite my duties and responsibilities taking a chunk out of my time, I’ve still managed to heat up the creative cauldron of my book’s progress.  A lot of information has been moving through my brain as I organize and put the final touches on the main components of the world.

I’ve been compiling and readying a list of what I believe will be my third and final set of revisions.  I feel I’m approaching that phase where I’ll be fiddling with words more for perfection’s than completion’s sake.  At least, as far as I can tell.  A lot will depend on what my editor tells me.  I could have hidden mistakes requiring more nights of doom!

In the meantime, I thought I’d share the five core characters of my book.  Those of you who’ve been listening to me run my yap for the last year and a half deserve a crumb of some kind.  Barring a horrible error of bias or ignorance, the roster is as follows:

Rordan:  The protagonist.  A bumbling rustic (jack-of-all trades entertainer).  Studying to be a sage at his brother’s insistence.

Ficna:  Rordan’s upper-class foster-brother and constant companion.  A thoughtless gallant (flashy, self-styled gentleman).  Trying to get his life started.

Kea:  The antagonist.  She’s a  sly wanderer with magical powers.  Looking for a job and living off a large group of loyal friends.

Borus:  Deranged beggar Rordan picks up off the street and cares for.  Incapable of speech and tremendously strong.  Most everyone thinks she is a boy.

Glenys:  An ethically-minded student Rordan meets during his studies.  A skilled, fearless fighter and a stargazer (fortune-teller and expert in the occult).  Hoping to go on an adventure.

And here’s the updated plug:

Young Rordan the artist wants to help his brother Ficna advance.
Kea the drifter is doing her best to get Rordan and Ficna killed.
At Regol Coros Academy, magic is leaking into ordinary life.
If Rordan fails to uncover Kea’s secret, he must serve evil or die!
But can either of them pay the price of magic’s discovery?

Looks like my laptop croaked.  Good thing I archived the latest book stuff the night before!  But alas, my latest post material may not be recoverable, so here I am with zip-nada for even a pathetic menagerie update.

I’ve been reading about psychic monsters these last few days, and so of course I’m now looking around nervously in case one of The Unbelievables tries to steal my lunch money.  Could have sworn I saw a black dog meandering around UFO girl’s hill as I was taking out the trash last night.  Several minutes later, whirrr-whirrr-whirrr (hard drive making unhealthy sound).  Thanks for the radiation exposure, ya mutt!

I think I’m going to have to go ghostbusting in retaliation tonight.  I’ll be packing photon milkbones with phrases set on stun.