TheSorrowAndThePity's Xanga

Christmas with my new friend Lomo

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 06:13:00 GMT

Here are some shots I took with the Lomography Oktomat camera Amber's family got me for Christmas. They shall remain unembellished with comment from me. I invite you, the viewer, to invent your own caption for any of the photos. Best caption wins a dollar*.

Photo #1:

Photo #2:

Photo #3:

Photo #4:

Photo #5:

*No purchase necessary. Must be 18 or older and a current/former spouse of the giveaway organizer to win prize. See store for details.

Monday, December 25, 2006

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 16:27:45 GMT

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

99 wolves hurling themselves into a glass wall.

Merry Christmas.

Sketchy Artwork

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:16:35 GMT

Here's a few drawings I've been working on lately. Most of them are sketches done in an hour or less, and all of them are of real things I saw in the real world with my real eyes. All but one. Can YOU guess which image came entirely from my imagination?

The Legend of Cat Delicious

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 05:31:34 GMT

The following is something I wrote for a friend. He wanted a description of his band for their new MySpace site. He sent me this track so I would know what they sounded like.

This is what I came up with.

In 1987, the Sony Corporation commenced development on what was to be the greatest breakthrough in commercial music technology since the invention of the gramophone. Literally translated from the Japanese as “Cat Delicious,” the product’s ultimate purpose was to create a stereo capable of producing its own music, requiring only the subconscious brain activity of its end-users both to power the system and to contribute the musical aesthetic. “Dreams + Music = Profit” was Sony’s guiding equation. It was affirmed during the morning exercises, written on every inspirational poster, and served as the postscript for each piece of internal correspondence in the department.

Hoping to capitalize on America’s growing market of economically independent children, the so-called “dreambox” creators out-sourced the research and development aspect of the project to Boy Scout Troop #342, based in Bellingham, WA. As Sony’s in-house development team fine-tuned Cat Delicious and its various components, dispatches from the Troop #342 arrived bi-monthly in manila envelops. Over the course of a decade, Sony received a warehouse worth of the troop’s daydreams, summer catnaps and sugar-addled nightly respites.

With an abundance of American subconscious material and the technological know-how of Japan’s most skilled engineers, Cat Delicious was set to both create and conquer the dream-powered novelty stereo niche. Only one thing halted its imminent success. Of the 1,300,000 units Sony hastened to manufacture, not one worked. The project was a dismal failure. The Sony Corporation went bankrupt, recouping its losses only after signing an agreement to develop a line of stereos capable of playing the then-unknown compact disc music format. One of the Cat Delicious units was kept in the office of Sony’s president as a reminder of the ultimate consequence of attempted innovation. The other 1,299,999 units were delivered to Troop #342’s doorstep the following Spring.

The arrival of the Cat Delicious units was met by the scouts with excitement first, then confusion, and finally tearful frustration. The boys, each yearning for the musical stardom they witnessed on MTV, dreamed nightly of becoming the next Billy Ocean or Rick Astley. When the morning brought only disappointing white noise from their Cat Delicious units, the boys abandoned their dreamboxes. They grew up spiteful and bitter, and soaked their once so visceral hopes of stardom in many hundreds of bottles of beer until their dreams became as washed and faded as their Bugle Boy jeans.

Only two scouts proved impervious to the lures of fame and fortune all others saw in Cat Delicious. As the rest of the troop busily bulldozed the mountain of Cat Delicious units into Semiahmoo Bay, Ryan Paul and Conrad Slater cradled their Cat Deliciouses and warmly assured the units of their indestructible fidelity. Over the years, the boys played constantly with their units, taking them to the park, pushing them on the swings, exploring condemned property with them, all the while expressing the deep well a love that so often blossoms between a boy and a quality Japanese product.

And Cat Delicious loved them back. Every morning for nearly two decades, the boys have woken to a rainbow of sound and music, as pure as the dreams of uncorrupted youth. Recently, word has reached Sony that two of the Cat Delicious units are functional. Sony was quick to contact the boys, pleading with them to reveal the secret behind their operational units. The reply Sony received was at once an illuminating revelation and an utter blow to their rekindled hopes of releasing the product. Written on a seagull’s feather and sealed in a manila envelope it read:

DREAMS + LOVE = CAT DELICIOUS

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Sat, 02 Sep 2006 18:32:56 GMT

Er, I guess I should have explained a while ago that those last two posts were actually lifted from discussion group postings perpetrated by Christo deKlerk who has, heretofore, not expressed the intense, obsessive affliction he once had for all things sci-fi. My reposting of them was an attempt to "out" a fellow ex-trekkie.

Do you guys really think I'm the type to hide their dorky past? Come on! I put my four years of being president of the Napa High Sci-Fi Club on my resume!

TOS in THX

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 05:02:43 GMT

Okay, here's something else I've been thinking about a lot lately. What if... wait for it... what if they revamped the special effects and sound of the original Star Trek series (TOS)?! Why not? They could keep everything the same except change ship scenes to nice new model and light and majic effects and re-dubb the sound again AND fix up speacial effects such as hand phasers and recolor the film. Just don't add stupid plots like the DS9 things. And don't use crapy computer graphics as the ship and other space things. PLEASE keep the Enterprise white not that ugly fake grey/gray that was used in DS9.

BB OO OO M M !!
B B O O O O MM M M      !!
BB O O O O M M M M      !!
B B O O O O M M M M
BB OO OO M M    M    O

The whole 70 something episodes could be re-aired! And I think it would be fun to remake them as well. IF ANYONE AT PARAMOUNT IS LISTENING! I was not even living during the time of The original series and I personally like itbetter than any other star trek series.

Well I think that would be cool, don't you?

I know, I know... sorry again for posting about Star Trek. But I gotta say, I'm REALLY getting into this. And I really appreciate the positive response I've gotten from you guys! You know, I thought that if I let people take a peek at my dorky past, that they'd all make fun of me. All those Federation blueprints I memorized, those solitary Star Wars marathons I held in my bedroom, those webpages I developed where people could send in their Star Trek/Star Wars crossover fan fiction and artwork... I thought these were all just social liabilities.

But now I see that I can speak openly about all this, and not be abandoned by my friends, or my lovely wife. HECK! Now I can reminisce about all this "dorky" stuff with my current friends who had similar interests growing up! I'm so glad I fessed up to being a Trekkie/Star Wars fanatic. Of my own free will.

Ahem.

Possible reason for Klingon Forehead Ridges

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 05:09:24 GMT

Hey guys, you know what? I've been thinking a lot about those forehead ridges that Klingons sport. You know what I'm talking about? Klingons had forehead ridges in DS9 and ST:TNG but not in TOS! Sorry if this comes out of the blue, but, you know, when I was a kid, I was a REAL dork. Like, SUPERDORK. And I thought about this stuff, ALL THE TIME. Stuff like antimatter's effect on planets (did you know that the US had 5ml of the stuff? Pretty Cool! I read about it in a book from NASA about the future), and how that relates to warp drive technology, etc. I covered that all up when I went to Trinity. Anyways, I've been thinking about this stuff again, and I MUST SAY, I think I've discovered a pretty nifty reason why the Klingons have those ridges:

In TOS, the Klingons had a policy of wearing artificial skin over their ridges as a undercover makeup or as a protection from the tribbles, which may have had a bad reaction to the Klingons' foreheads. Later, in ST:TNG and afterwards, they were taken off, as new ways of immunity against the tribbles' disease was invented.

These are my thoughts. Let me know what you think.

Still learning.

Dispatched from the USS Arachnid!

Think of a funny caption AND WIN

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:59:19 GMT

...my graditude.

And now we are unemployed...

Tue, 09 May 2006 02:09:08 GMT

Above you will see the fruit of my past seven months of contracted freelance illustration for the historical boardgame Rivalry (not counting preliminary sketches, research, and waiting for the company to return my e-mails and tell me what I should be working on). My visual work on the project is finished. Ta-da.

So. Anyone need an illustrator?

Illustration Friday: Robot

Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:02:33 GMT

This is a little fellow I drew for something called Illustration Friday. Every Friday, they pick a topic, and everyone's supposed to draw something appropriate. This past week's topic was "Robot". Hence the robot.

Enjoy it!

But don't enjoy it so much that you make illegal copies of the image and distribute them illegally on some kind of illegal pirate file-sharing program for illegal pirates. Don't be like that.