Steve

Nice size dent you left, buddy.

Latest Short Dedication

"This one’s dedicated to all the great raging fires that have brought freedom to the oppressed, and H-E-Double Hockey Sticks to the oppressors."

Very cool video

Trader Joe Dark Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans

Tomorrow: Detox.

So...finally bought a kindle.

Flipping loving it. I've been selling off or donating large amounts of my book collection as well. An event happened a few months ago here in the house we're living that made my wife and I realize just how important it is for us to get rid of the glorious amounts of stuff we've been drowning in for the past few years. Having gone from a large three bedroom house with detached garage and work-shed in New Jersey to this small trailer in Massachusetts has really helped us realize how much we own that we really don't need.

It started with clothes and shoes for myself personally. Then I moved on to my book collection, which was already out of hand when we had the house to begin with. When we first moved here we had this trailer filled, along with two 10x10' storage units down the street at the local u-haul self-storage center. We're now down to a single 10x10 and lots of holes in the shelves in the house here. Also selling my LP collection, most of which I already had digitally.

Also parting with my comic book collection and getting rid of some guitars and probably one of my amplifiers. I've been foolish with my money. Some Americans wouldn't think so, some would say it was my money, I deserve to be happy. I don't think that's why I was buying so much crap though.

I'm not comfortable right now to stick with one strain of thought. Too much going on with my life this week. Very busy with work and trying to letter a comic for a friend of a friend, which sort of is helping me realign my desire to only work for myself when it comes to my creative endeavors. If something is bad, I like being the only reason it's bad, just the same as I enjoy basking in the glory of a job well done. Maybe I've just never found the perfect creative partner, who knows.

Also, in completely unrelated news, Ryan Montbleau Band has a live show for sale on their website from 5/29/2011. It's amazing. I'm sure the other shows are great as well, but this is the only one I purchased. Just wonderful. I wish them great success.

P.S. The kindle is an awesome, life changing device. Glad it's not a color tablet.

lol

I like how my last post was about a mobile blogger app, technically giving me the ability to actually post more and yet that was about a month ago.

Anyway, I had just completely reformatted the books I have available at the Amazon's Kindle store and Barnes and Noble's Nook store. Without saying much about the differences between the two e-readers, I only know the store I actually get any sales on is Amazon. I've yet to accrue enough to actually have them send me a check yet, but it's more about people reading my work than making money. If Amazon allowed me to give them away for free, I'd just do that for a bit to see if things took off.

Android's mobile Blogger app.

Working fine so far, I suppose.
Just took a picture. We'll see how it formats pics and stuff.

an unprovoked rant about fiction.

I don't know why, but I decided to write an unprovoked rant about fiction. Here's the end result.

So much has been done with fiction. So many places and characters have been made up, sometimes as a struggling artist you get to wondering what the hell is there left to do anything with? How many more dragons can put the hurt on a knight trying to save something? What else can go wrong on a faraway planetary settlement? Can four women sitting around a cafe table set in NYC not end up sounding like one of a thousand scenes from Sex in the City? Maybe. Maybe not. You have a voice inside you. A way of telling things no one else can. Give 5 great authors the same damn plot outline to any classic tale of whatever and you know you'll get 5 great different stories back. Got an idea that you're worried is too similar to Grapes of Wrath? I say, Who cares? I say, Do it anyway. I say, If all the good shit's been used up, get the hell down on your knees and scrape up what's leftover and make something, anything, just don't give up and do nothing. If all you see is a literary wasteland, then write wasteland fiction. Hold nothing back.

I told myself once, I want to kill a whale with my bare hands, so I wrote a story about a whale's last day on earth. I was in Costco once and thought to myself, "I wonder, with the way society is getting more and more open about sex, (albeit slowly, thank God) if you'll be able to one day buy a sex robot here." So I wrote a story about a lonely guy who does. In writing this paragraph I asked myself could there be a dangerous alien species that are shaped like toilets? Sure there is, because I'm going to make it happen.

I don't, in the least, claim to be good at doing what I think is fiction writing. But I know I'm fucking amazing at writing MY fiction, because no one else in the world can.

Coven. Salem, MA

Best food ever.

Egypt

I tried reading up on it last night to see what all the craziness is really coming from to try and get a nice fat worldly opinion of the junk that's going on over there and I fell asleep. I'm now afraid I'll fall asleep if I try looking it up again at all, so I'm just steering clear of the whole affair. Good luck good guys whichever ones you are.

Feeling Good

I don't know what it is, but I just feel this need to create lately. I don't want to create crap, but at the same time I know I'm no where near the level of drawing or writing that I need to be in order to pull that off. But all the same, I do understand I can't get to the good stuff, till I get through the bad stuff. So no more being a wuss about it. I just need to do it, and eventually the shit will start turning to gold. I obviously have been given a talent, and I think to ignore it for the simple fact that its not aesthetically pleasing to my own eyes would be to deny my creator the gift he's given me.

Basically since I've had a kid a lot of stuff on how I look at myself has changed.

Will I ever "make it" as a writer or visual artist? I don't know, but you know what, I'm going to be doing both for the rest of my life anyway, so don't worry about it being good, just make sure it comes into existence in the first place. There's plenty of works by people who have "made it" and I don't particularly like them, but lots of other people do. Do the work for the enjoyment of holding a completed thing in your hands. Enjoy life, and what you do within the confines OF that life. You only have so much time to do anything. And at the end of it you're really only judged on how well you treated those around you, so why rush anything. Don't make the fast food equivalent of something pretty to stare at or read. Make something substantial that leaves viewers or readers changed after.

Damn, do I love me some new fonts

Couple days late in writing this, but I'm just now finally recovering. On January first of every year for awhile now Comicraft over at www.comicbookfonts.com has had a crazy sale. This year every font family in their catalog was $20.11 each. Last year (1/1/2010) their sale was $20.10 and next year if they hold the sale I'm sure the amount will be $20.12each.

I have only owned one style from them before and paid about $59 for it, so I was all over this thing. Below is a list of what I've aquired:

I got all International version if available due to my foolish dream of one day being fluent in French and should the need arise for me to lend my graphic skills in that language I won't be without the ability.

New year is off to a great start. Everyone's healthy and I have lots of work at NTE to keep me busy. Fun stuff all around.