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Dali Salvador Rorschach: 2000-2010

28 Jul

Dali - Fluffy Child and Best Friend

Dali is now on her journey back to Catatopia. I cried all morning leading up to the appointment but once Mom, Dali, and I got in the car I was pretty put together. Mom cried a little at Dali’s procedure while I stayed strong and held her while the tranquilizer was taking effect. The actual euthanasia was quick because Dali was very weak. It was unbelievable how skinny she was when she stopped breathing as she normally puffs up when she’s being held or petted.

We took off her collar and tied a nice bow around her neck. We arranged her neatly in her spaceship like she was just taking a long nap. On the way out the vet let me hold a kitten that was only a week old and as big as my palm. She was found abandoned and being bottle fed she was such a teeny. It kind of made me feel good about the whole miracle that someone can create such a small perfect life.

Dali's Spaceship

Dali's Grave

Dali’s grave is a little unfinished at the moment. We’re going to put some river rock over the top but it’s 105 outside at the moment. But she’s in there.

A few words about Dali that I likely have said already is she was my really real first pet while living on my own. Granted I had an older cat, Sherman, and Dali’s sister Abbie, but Dali’s care was square on my shoulders since she was a special needs cat right off the bat. She had allergies so bad she licked herself bald, then got diagnosed with a heart murmur that never seemed to slow her down but always made me anxious. Then came the recent diagnosis of epilepsy but we now suspect her more frequent seizures were from the slow growing cancer.

She was originally going to be named ‘Inkblot’ but we couldn’t say it fast enough when she was bad. She became Dali because she was somewhat of an off-kilter kitten. She still looked like a Rorschach Test because you could make out a cross on her back with her grey cow spots. She was sweet, extremely docile, and made me a ragamuffin fan for life. She was a drooler, and part parrot, she’d get on my shoulder to drool on my shirt and fall asleep. We nicknamed her ‘Turkey’ because she was a fat little baby, Abbie was ‘Stuffing’, and Sherman was ‘Gravy’ because they would be our holiday meal when we fell on hard times. It was a joke of course. Kind of morbid. But funny. Now I realize Dali wouldn’t really feed a family much less a person with her scrawny but.

She knew when I was upset, she’d love on me for no reason at all, and she changed her choice in food a million times. She’d escape outside and get as far as the front porch to roll on the warm concrete then run back inside. We screened in the back porch so she could experience the outdoors safely, we only put up the Christmas tree for her to climb and knock all the ornaments off. We’ve long stopped using glass balls.

I called her ‘My Little Retard’ or ‘My Retarded Sprog’ because she wasn’t very obviously bright but she really was an expert at playing dumb. She and I are survivors of a tragic past that grew together with a bright future. She ruled my life with an iron paw and she never wanted for anything. She was my best friend, knew all my secrets, and was very much like my child with four legs, fur, and talked funny. I knew all of her funny faces, ear flicks, and tail twitches. She chewed on paper when she was hungry and plastic when she was thirsty. She refused to drink from a bowl so our faucets always had to be set on a steady drip, heaven help you if you took a shower and shut it off completely.

And I loved her more than anything in my life.

However… This afternoon it all got better when a trip to the Humane Society I found Dali’s long lost twin in temperament yet looks nothing at all like I wanted. When I walked into the Kitten Room, Rembrandt announced herself very demurely by being the first kitten I picked up, then put down, and then proceeded to follow me quietly as I considered my choices. Mom wanted to try and get me interested in a more playful, rambunctious tabby, but I turned around and there was little Remmi staring up at me to be picked up again. She had a horrible name, but that doesn’t matter anymore. She’s home now and has made herself at home.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Internets: Meet Rembrandt…

Remmi's First Close-Up

She kinda has some goop in her eye, but that’s typical baby stuff. She’ll get checked out. :3 Ironically she has Toby’s exact coloring complete with the white toes.

Remmi's First Toy

She had a toy like this in the Kitten Room. This one has more doodlebobbers. She totally loves it.

Remmi's First Nap

Like any infant, at the Humane Society I learned a trick to put her down for a nap. She slept about an hour and a half, waking up intermittently and then flopping back over to sleep more.

Remmi’s got some big paws to fill and Pootie right now doesn’t quite like her but she’s already warmed our hearts.

Rest in Peace, Dali. Have a safe journey home. Your Second Lieutenant has arrived from Catatopia.

 
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Posted in Real Life

 

Oh No You Don’t, I See You There!

23 Jul

So we’ve established repeatedly the original draft of The Promise is so bad I may as well write a whole other book with the characters. So we’re good with that. Greenlight for Rewrite. Now the object of the game is not to think about it for oh… half a decade or something so all the weak bits can fall off into the abyss of forgetfulness.

Only… Only surprise! In the span of two babbling emails the plot, the premise, the tweaks to the world building, the alterations to the characters just fell right out. Aaw hell no. I initially came up with the wafer thin plot of The Promise in two days. And now here’s this fully realized concept in less than 24 hours. I? Am mistrusting of this seemingly rock solid concept. I think because it’s so fresh and so shiny I don’t know how to be objective at it in this point and time. My heart is all oh yay! LET’S GO! and my head is all NO! SIT! STAY! Remember the last time? Do you want a repeat of the last time? :|

The funny part about it depending on the angle taken it can either be a very ‘action/adventure’ with very light romance or it can be liberal ‘romantic adventure’ with chunks of action. Oh hey I did that already with 10-9. Fancy that!

I pretty much have a beginning and middle all ready to be put to paper and I kind of have two diverging ending concepts and I’m kind of unsure which is the ‘Good Ending’ and which is the ‘Bad Ending.’ A writer friend helpfully pointed out to me I apparently have a theme in my work where the characters make the wrong move and get themselves into worse situations. One of my best friends a while back jokingly referred to me as Alan Moore because I do horrible things to my characters such as Mr. Moore.  (May I direct the populace to Watchmen as the penultimate example? Talk about being mean to characters!) I don’t know. Call it a leftover trait of doing comics where you push a character out on a limb over a pool of ravenous frenzied piranhas and start sawing.

Anyway… I’m not saying all systems go for launch on the rewrite. I’m just saying all the parts of the puzzle are there. And save missing a piece here or there the picture is pretty clearly defined already. I’m just going to not think about it. Even if I’ve been having waking dreams about scenes again and it gets me out of bed excitedly at an actual normal human morning hour of WELL before 9AM.

Watch me not think about the vampiric elephant stomping on my head. I have 10-9 to finish editing. :|

 
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Posted in The Promise

 

The Sketchbook Project

10 Jul

So I’ve recently signed up for The Sketchbook Project which in hopefully less than 25 words is a communal project open to anyone held by the Art House Co-Op and the Brooklyn Art Library. Sign up, pick a theme from the list, and they will send you a 8.5 x 5.5 Moleskine Cashier sketchbook for you to draw in and mail back in time for the gallery tour. It looked kinda fun and I thought I’d give it a go.

Last weekend I got my sketchbook in the mail and despite being a teeny little cashier there are a LOT more pages than I originally thought. Also the paper is kinda of that iffy Moleskine quality. Great for writing, not so much for drawing. In searching around about the project, the trick some people do is make works on their normal stock and glue it into the pages in a pretty fashion with origami papers or other things.  Some people get super creative and take the book all apart and rebind it with new stock all together. In looking at the binding technique used on the book I’m not so bold enough to try it for fear of ruining it. Some people even arrange the pages to fold out into giant posters! Or form other kinds of art like accordion folds! It’s pretty cool. :3

The theme I picked was ‘Happy Thoughts’ and initially while I hit a total roadblock called Intimidation I started making a list of things that make me happy and asking others what make them happy. And soon I had a good number of thumbnails as a starting point. Some really promising and some that need a little more development. It’s going to be my challenge to draw a lot of ‘cute’ kind of art with bunches of chibis, kittens, puppies, cupcakes, and on and on. I also have a few ideas for sections of the book that fold out into larger works. Pretty much all of it is pretty literal of happy things because I’m that kind of artist. While there’s bits of expecting people to roll with some of the details, people still look like people and cats are cats.

I’m looking forward to what comes of it. :3

In other news I had a fantastically TERRIBLE day for Weight Watchers. I just didn’t feel good today and while I started out on a good note it had quickly spiraled out of control by lunchtime. I kind of feel a depression creeping in since I’ve been sitting and doing nothing for too long. I need something to occupy my time again with deadlines to meet. I need to get back writing. I can feel it kind of slip from me and I need to keep busy. For me not to be busy it’s the kiss of death and results in me raiding the fridge. D:

 
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Posted in Art, Weight Watchers

 

Keep Calm And Have A Cupcake

07 Jul

Tonight I successfully navigated my way to the end of Round One in the 10-9 edits. Finishing them wasn’t as nearly as difficult as I thought once I had nailed in my mind I was going to take on other issues in another pass. And now I can focus exclusively on those details which need major issues of reworking and less hand-wavery. The details now involve tightening up the action scenes and making them have a bit of a kick. I’ve already caught myself thinking ‘What would happen if this happened instead with the same outcome?’ which would involve a lot of reworking. I’ve already decided that if the outcome of the action scenes are the same then it’s worth exploring some alternate courses of action and picking the most Hollywood Blockbuster worthy. My Moleskine’s been a little lonely without furious scrawling of scenes chicken scratched into their pages. I should definitely get back to that.

My little happy thought of the day is an obnoxious baby pink bookmark I picked up at Barnes and Noble that reads ‘Keep Calm And Have A Cupcake’ I seriously can’t argue with that kind of logic and I will say cupcakes are my tip top tasty thing even if I don’t eat them all that often. How can anyone really refuse a cupcake? So cute, dainty, and happy with their little buttercream swirl. I find myself wanting to scream that at John and Ahimsa when things get hairy between them.  XD There’s a doodle idea for the pile right there.

Today was sort of a continuance of our sendoff to Toby. Mom and I had to go out of town for a doctor’s appointment which included eating many horrible and tasty sweet and salty delights. Needless to say today was a BAD BAD day for Weight Watchers but I decided to only let it be today and then it’s back on the wagon. All of the goodies we brought home are going with Mom to work tomorrow to dump on everyone else and not in my gut. Besides during our accompanying retail therapy I had learned I had apparently dropped three pants sizes recently and had no idea. Way to go~ And way to go five new pairs of jeans wandering home with me~

Now I’ve got another memoir to devour in a day waiting to be cracked open, One Bullet Away by Nathaniel Fick. It’s only been sitting on my shelf for months. But that’s my plan. If I can read it in a day or less than a week I’m good to go. :3

 
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Posted in 10-9, Babbling, Real Life

 

Toby: Thanksgiving 2004 – Independence Day 2010

05 Jul

Rest In Peace Toby

As of 4PM Central Standard Time, the family dog Toby is finally resting in peace. In February he had come down with a horribly rare illness that had infected his fat cells and with no blood supply going to the fat the possibility of curing it was slim to none. All we could do was control the outbreaks with antibiotics that had radically altered his temperament as well as quality of life. He hadn’t been the dog we knew as ours for a long time.

Over the weekend he had another outbreak and rather put him through another long vet stay and gambling with his health… It was his time to leave us. Mom and I stayed with him in his final moments. Dad couldn’t bring himself to come along as with every other pet and it’s caused some drama in this house already. Toby’s in a better place now, and we still have the cats, but Mom has her mind made up we’ll never have another dog. We’ll see if she still feels the same in three or so months.

Rest in Peace Chunk of Pup. There will never be another weird little belligerent dog like you. You’ll always be my little bratty brother.

 
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Posted in Real Life

 

Beekmanpalooza: Living Your Best Life

05 Jul

Yesterday I had discovered that despite my interest in various fictional genres such as sci-fi, paranormal, romance, fantasy, comics of all shapes and varieties, and manga of just as many topics, that memoirs just might be my favorite genre to read. The drama, loves, and losses of real people are far more fascinating than anything people could make up. And by proxy it’s fun to get a window into the lives of others to adapt to your own writing. From the way they form a sentence, to a certain personality quirk or two.

After my virtual inhaling of Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s I Am Not Myself These Days and suddenly bolting out of bed at 6AM to excitedly tell Mom the ending, as of last post I indeed did as promised and tore into Josh’s second memoir The Bucolic Plague. And finished it by 4 PM as Mom returned from a day of hairdressing to excitedly tell her about it once again.

The Bucolic Plague is the story of how Josh and his partner Brent of The Fabulous Beekman Boys became The Fabulous Beekman Boys. It’s far less tawdry than Josh’s first memoir about his adventures as the party queen Aqua and more a gentle and sweet natured but the wit is no less sparkling and hilarious.

What began as a wrong turn on the New York interstate landed our intrepid heroes in the tiny village of Sharon Springs. A second wrong turn down the road led them to the Beekman mansion. The fabulously for sale Beekman mansion. Josh described that he and Brent fell under a shared fit of insanity to by the mansion that had been on the market for four years and decided to have a go at being gentleman farmers.

For Josh’s 39th year of life taking care of the Beekman had it’s ups and downs, it’s trials and tribulations, and it’s hilarious unfortunate events with baby goats and their excrement. Josh and Brent’s relationship had undergone their own kinds of ups and downs when Josh had learned his life devolved into the roles of he as Oprah and Brent as the Avatar of all things Martha Stewart. Josh was determined to live what Oprah described as living his Best Life and he would have it one way or another.

Year One of the Beekman faced the great economic crash and near breakups. By the middle of it I was getting choked up about the uncertain future of the Beekman as well as Josh and Brent and their great Oprah versus Martha clash. Even now the story still continues and unfolds in front of millions of viewers each week. At the very least Josh tells his audience to never forget to say ‘I love you’, because when you do it’s easy to forget love completely.

I’m rooting for Josh and Brent to stand the test of time. And did I not suggest earlier Brent needs to hurry up and get on bended knee? Seriously. These guys majorly deserve their happily ever after.

Now pardon me while I consider what scent of Beekman 1802 goat milk soap to buy or plan my and Mom’s future trip to Sharon Springs. Mom wants to meet Polka Spot. She’s her biggest fan. XD

 
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Posted in Babbling, Real Life

 

Of Drag Queens and Crack Hos: A Love Story

03 Jul

Recently, I have made no bones about my new found mad love for the docu-series The Fabulous Beekman Boys on Planet Green. I had actually caught the first episode while flipping channels one day and was instantly in love with the concept of two gay Manhattanite execs giving up their city life and becoming goat farmers. Now this show is really the only reason I watch Planet Green at all. Goat farmers! Really! Gay goat farmers! Awesome!

However the Beekman Boys are not just any ordinary two doodz in love. Brent is the former VP of Martha Stewart Healthy Living, and his other half Josh is a bestselling author, advertising executive, and former drag queen. Brent of course being from the world of Martha Stewart is a perfectionist to the nth degree on the border of looking downright insane. Josh is far more laid back and is kind of the mothering type and just wants Brent to chillaaaaaax once in a while. They bicker, they argue, but they’re so stupidly in love with each other it’s endearing. And the occasional footage of goat hijinks and their llama Polka Spot doing something adorable just seals the deal. I’m hooked. I must have more.

I decided to trot to Barnes and Noble yesterday to pick up both of Josh’s memoirs, I Am Not Myself These Days and the recently released The Bucolic Plague. On a side stop during my shopping outing to have lunch I read the prologue to I Am Not Myself These Days and instantly I was hooked and knew I had to read it to my fellow Beekgeek mother.

The bestselling book is about Josh’s days before the Beekman farm, before Brent, and before he got himself mostly together. By day Josh was an advertising art director just going through the motions. By night he was the hard drinking and occasional coke snorting darling of the club scene the drag queen Aquadisiac. Notably Aqua’s claim to fame where the fake clear plastic breasts with live goldfish happily bobbing within.

On one drunken night of partying he meets Jack, he barely remembers him the next day, but slowly but surely Jack and Josh’s lives collide in the tragic comedy of a love story. Whereas Josh is the relatively normal one with working his butt of at the ad agency and then partying his butt off as Aqua, Jack is a hard working male escort paid thousands to humiliate people, beat them up, and smoke a little crack.  And somehow to Josh This Is All Okay.

Obviously since Josh has now been with Brent for ten years things with Jack did inevitably go south. Did I mention the smoking crack? Yeah. That would perhaps strain a relationship.

I Am Not Myself These Days is hilarious, poignant, and pretty kinky. My throat is raw today from reading three quarters of the book to Mom yesterday. She went to bed and I couldn’t resist finding out the conclusion to Jack and Josh’s tragic affair so I stayed up to some ungodly hour finishing the book. I got tired at one point but I had to know how it ended so I pushed though. By the end of it I was choking up that despite the crazy doomed relationship I was hoping Jack would eventually get clean because you couldn’t help kind of liking the guy despite the OH EM GEE HE’S A BAD BAD MAN. And his name was Jack and I couldn’t help picturing The Promise’s Jack instead. As a crack whore. I have problems obviously.

Today I can’t seem to stop and as soon as I’m done with this post I’m going to tear into The Bucolic Plague to learn the origins of how the Beekman Boys became The Beekman Boys. And goats. It’s all about the goats.

In a bizarre twist, I can’t help but see traits of John in Brent and traits of Ahimsa in Josh only toned down to actual human being levels. It’s so fascinating to see it all unfold before me and viewers everywhere. Brent can be kind of mean or cold to Josh sometimes but he apologizes when he really needs to. And treats Josh to candlelit pizza dinners when Brent tells him they’re not attending a fancy dinner gala with the produce from their own farm and Josh is notably irritated. I’m so completely smitten and charmed!

I’m seriously hoping in the near future Brent mans up and pops the question to Josh because every boy deserves to be treated like a princess~ Only if Brent can stop obsessing over every little detail of the farm like the precise parking of the tractors and how their buckets should be raised at an exact angle.

It’s okay. I’ll keep watching for the star of the show. The llama Polka Spot.

 
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Posted in Babbling, Real Life

 

Just Do It!

25 Jun

In all my flailing and nervous ninnying about last night in about 15 minutes after last night’s post I was totally struck with an Ah-Hah! Moment that pretty much fixed everything without a gross suspension of disbelief. Man I can be such a doofus sometimes. XD

In the span of two hours tonight I sat my happy ass down in a quiet space (read: my bedroom) and plowed through editing the first 50 pages of the draft. Of course right now I’m only editing the things I made notes to myself about in the proof copy. Things like certain sentences that really don’t make a lick of sense, details that need a little fleshing out (environments! hi! people! hello!), and other little easy fix tweaks. I haven’t really tackled the bigger issues yet since I haven’t totally gotten there but I’m keeping them in the back of my head.  It’s mostly stuff to do with the ending/final showdown which is understandable since I wrote the damned thing in a day and was liable to miss a few crucial bits. There’s a few things I’m already considering in the beginning because it has to do with the ending but I’m thinking letting it ride and just adding clarifying bits with the discrepancies.

Anyway~ Life is unicorns and rainbows again~ *sparkles shimmers shines~*

In follow up to the Great German Chocolate Cake Debacle, Mom was brave and threw the thing out this morning. However the stench of Death Cake managed to linger in the house and no amount of Lysol was really doing the trick. It kinda faded to tolerable levels but apparently the cake plate it was on kinda sucked up the residual smell. Just ew. When I told Dad dood! Could you not TELL the cake was bad!? His response was ‘……….I thought the cake tasted kinda off. *headscritch*’

What. The. Hell.

It’s a miracle he’s not sick as a dog.

Speaking of animals, Dali’s blood tests came back and she is the picture of health and her seizures are indeed from a very mild case of epilepsy. The cat has a heart murmur, allergies, and now epilepsy. Only my four legged child wins the malady lottery.

 
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Posted in 10-9, Babbling, News

 

Adventures In Editing Anxiety: A Comedy

24 Jun

Nothing sucks worse than going to cut yourself a slice of homemade German chocolate cake to find out it’s turned. The ironic part is my Dad had a piece tonight. Gross. Just goes to show he can’t taste anything. That would be the Karma Fairy keeping me on the straight and narrow. XD

Anyway. Back on point, I’m totally doing The Thing I Always Do when it comes to Improving Upon/Editing something. Could be a drawing, could be a story, but the thing in question that when faced with a tiny inaccurate fact it makes a large chunk roll like a house of cards. I mean this is totally no big deal. The glaring irony is 10-9 is wholesale inaccurate anyway because I remade the world to my liking~ So the part that I wanted something as simple as a flight time to be accurate to the real world laws of air travel is almost kind of hilarious and ridiculous to impose on a world where everything else is so made up.

Who’s to say in the world of 10-9 commercial airliners aren’t more efficient and faster? Shaving travels in roughly half the time. Of course the layovers could always mean death in the pits of mediocrity but the flights could be like… Nothing. Just enough for air sickness to set in and the bumpy landing.

The Thing I’m totally doing is I’m so nervous about changing and adding and cutting details that I’m all anxious I’m going to make it worse. It needs to be done but I’m all nervous the first move I make is going to be the wrong one.

Did I stress how totally stupid this conundrum is? I’ve been making up excuses for the last two days not to touch editing. Like the house is ‘too cold’, or I need to clean up some already clean things, or I should randomly go shopping even if shopping has a 50% chance of making me totally a nutcase. But really? The house is too cold? That is the tippy top of bullshit excuses I crafted on myself.

I think I talked it out enough to figure my plan of action. Because really not a damned person is going to give a shit how long the flight took (In CHAPTER THREE Read: Megs is a Moron~) because most are going to likely be nitpicking at my blatant disregard of real world military protocol. As Adam Savage famously said, “I reject your reality and substitute my own! :D ”

This post is a complete six levels of retardation. But I thought I should offer a glimpse into my silly wtf brain and the lame shit I obsess over.

I’m terrified of making 10-9 worse but The Promise on the other hand can’t get any worse. @_@

Oh~ What’s that? That’s the sound of my daily lament of The Promise being checked off. *crosses off list~*

 
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Posted in 10-9, Babbling, The Promise

 

Details, Details…

22 Jun

Guess who hit a rather sizable editing snafu because somebody (me) didn’t spend the five seconds to obtain an easy to locate little fact. Word to the wise: If someone were to take a redeye flight from the US to the farthest reaches of Eastern Europe there is no amount of magic pixie dust that will make the arrival in late afternoon. Just not happening. The word of the day is oops~ Pretty much it sets a chain of events that affects the first 10k or so of 10-9 because I basically have 24 hours of story events I need to make up. Because I got the time wrong. D:

I can work with this. But damn. D: Way to go me for the blunder. D:

In Nomnom Foodie News I managed to actually be really mindful of my eating today and it all worked out! :D And I’m not snacky! I get the cravings sometimes but I reach for like a piece of string cheese or something. Even did cardio for 30 minutes today. :D

 
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Posted in 10-9, Babbling, Real Life, Weight Watchers

 
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