Dragonbones and Rusted Armor

Sometimes, I’m Selfish

2021-08-01T19:35:32Z

I’m kinda the cliche in real life.

You know - the guy that sits in the dark corner booth? The one that always has his back to the wall so no one can surprise him from behind because he thinks that’s ever actually going to be a concern?

Anyway. Yeah.

So I wanted to get out of my hotel for a change of pace. Found myself at a Barnes & Noble where I could sit and write / draw. Found this great little corner nook where I felt comfortable taking my mask off and drinking my mint tea. (I still firmly believe we should be wearing masks indoors even if the CDC is only just coming back around to that idea.)

And it worked - at least for like 10 minutes.

Then not one or two, but three different dudes came to cram themselves into the three empty seats (and completely tucked away) behind me, making the space more hooman dense than most of the rest of the cafe.

I’m really tempted to just start farting as much as I can manage.

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Mr. Monk Meets the Playboy

2020-06-08T04:43:30Z

Monk S2E8.

Monk meets a parody of Hugh Hefner. One of the key clues is an earring for one of the models - it's a regular earring, but the model 'doesn't have pierced ears'.

Later in the same episode, I noticed that the model is wearing earrings in her pierced ears. WOMP WOMP.

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Out of Touch in the Best Possible Way

2020-02-15T16:45:00Z

So I was thinking about doing some caricature work to polish those skills. I've never been really good at it, and with the popularity of the ToonMe images I've been doing, I thought it might be time to fix that.

So I Googled "Celebrity" because I wanted a pseudo random selection of famous faces to pick from to get started.

I looked through the results and finally found a link to People magazine about half way down the front page. I assumed everything before that (which I didn't recognize) was a bunch of garbage sites.

So I went to People and looked at their 'celebrity' page. I thought that should cover it.

I didn't recognize a single celebrity until about 3/4 of the way down the page.

My first thought was "Jesus, I'm really out of touch."

My second thought was "I'm just fine with that."

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20191231 An Idea for the New Year

2019-12-31T21:27:36Z

So I’m thinking about trying my hand at illustrating children’s books. I want to create my version of some classic fairy tales in an art nouveau influenced style. My style is already pretty heavily Nouveau influenced, but I want to push it a little further for this project.

I’d also like to accomplish a few other things with this project:
1. Have finished products that I could actually sell more than once.
2. Include under represented groups in my telling.*
3. Possibly even produce prints of individual pages for sale at shows?
4. In my more ambitious moments, I like the idea of telling fairy tales from under represented groups / regions. *

* - As a middle aged CIS white male, I won’t lie that this makes me nervous. I feel it’s EVERYONE’s job to lift others up, but I wonder at how such efforts will be received by the world at large. ie - how many times will I hear “Why didn’t you hire someone from those same groups to write or illustrate your book?!”

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New Side Gig?

2019-08-27T20:09:10Z

So it looks like I may get a new P/T job to supplement my job at TomTom. It’s still a bit of a long shot, but my buddy Brad said there might be an option where he works. We were talking about it last night, and I said that I would love to get some hours there if they would be understanding about my weird “it would have to be on rainy days” thing.

He apparently had some turmoil there this morning including the firing of a beloved coworker. They were already understaffed. They normally have paid interns, but those positions had been frozen until recently which threw them out of the school seasonal hiring schedule.

So we will see. I’m hopeful. I could use the extra hours and the extra money. What’s more, the position, while not anything like any ‘illustration’ gig I would ever think of, does have the word illustrator in the title, so it might be a bit of a resume builder. What’s even more, I know that I will learn a lot - which is enough to be enticing all by itself. I’ve been so stagnant in recent years when it comes to learning anything. I feel like my brain is turning to mush.

Anyway - this all has me looking at my resume and touching it up / adding the TomTom relevant information. That, in turn, had me wandering down my work history in my head. I’ve long thought I need to better document the jobs I’ve done in my past. It’s a pretty broad spectrum and it would be nice to reference them. So I’ll probably do a post for each here and then I can link back to that with individual stories.

Keep your fingers crossed for me and the potential new side gig!

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instagram browser f*** up

2019-08-23T15:22:19Z

So I received the 'action blocked' error for anything I tried to do in Instagram on my laptop. I could, however, use IG on any of my other devices. The problem was two fold:

1. I use my laptop more than any other single device (I regularly use 5) when browsing the web / social media.
2. Searching through all the only posts / comments about the 'action blocked' came up with squat - it was all advice on account level issues - meaning it would be universal for all devices and thus didn't apply to me.

I finally figured out the problem by going back to basics - I just logged out of IG and cleared my cache in Chrome.

The problem now is that I read all those posts / videos about "don't do anything in IG for a while to remove the action ban because they're trying to make sure that everyone is having meaningful interactions".

I follow a lot of popular illustrators. That means that I do a lot of 'liking'. So now I find myself NOT clicking like on posts that have thousands of likes. I know that won't matter for those artists, but I fear that IG's algorithm with stop serving them up to me because they think I don't like those artists anymore.

I can't believe how stressed out that's making me.

ETA: How many minutes later, and the issue is back. #sigh

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Updated Icons

2019-02-06T22:52:49Z

So when I pulled my LJ entries over here, a bunch of my user icons never made it over. I cyber stalked my ex (don't worry - she's wonderful and won't mind, I promise) and added a few of them 'back in'.

I didn't reinstate them all because she didn't make all of them. Just most of the good ones. Plus that leaves me with some empty slots to fill (/BeavisLaugh) with new ones.

I should do that.

At some point.

When I'm feeling more motivated.

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20170724 - Illustration Work Journal

2017-07-24T19:10:48Z

I've decided that I want to start recording efforts I make towards illustration. I will post these entries here on DW and tag them all with IWJ (Illustration Work Journal) so that I can review them in the future. One of my primary concerns is: "How much time am I actually spending on it vs. how much time does it feel like I'm working on it?" I don't want to bemoan my 'not making it' if I'm not actually putting in the work. (This is, of course, exactly what I suspect is the case. Yes, I draw. Arguably even a lot - if you're gauge is 'normal folks'. That changes pretty dramatically if you get into the professional spectrum.

I will probably make these posts private unless one of you fine folks would really like to see them. If so, comment below, and I'll add you to a security group so that I don't clutter my feed up with stuff most folks don't care about.

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Random Moment

2017-06-27T02:40:55Z

So I'm sitting in a Starfucks. Had the day off because of heavy cloud cover (I wouldn't have been able to work at highway speeds). Looking out the big bay windows and I spot a biker standing in front of the grocery store across the parking lot. He's clearly bought his dinner at the grocery store and is eating it while hovering over his scooter.

It's a very solitary thing, and I can feel it in my bones.

He's watching others who come and go (they're all ignoring him completely). It may seem cliche, but there's something about the scene that makes me think of a wolf standing over its kill. He's just going about his business. The rest of the world is irrelevant.

As much as I bitch about being lonely these days, I miss that particular kind of loneliness. Maybe it's just the motorcycle. It's probably just the motorcycle. But I always enjoyed that sensation when riding. This is the the pause to fuel me. I fueled the bike already, but before I head towards The Next Place, I need to eat.

I remember laughing at people on the inside. They're all drones. They won't be getting on a motorcycle in the next few minutes and riding. Poor bastards.

It may seem funny coming from me - doing what I do - but I miss that particular kind of freedom.

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My Summarized Thoughts Re: The 12 Year Old Coming Out in Front of Her Mormon Church

2017-06-23T19:02:22Z

tl;dr: "I'm right and your wrong - Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!"
(Hint: no, that's not it at all.)

You took the time to summarize your thoughts in an effort to put this to bed. Please allow me to show the same kindness.

BINARY VS REALITY
I get frustrated with binary (polarizing) and inflammatory language. Saying that one side 'hates' another or 'wants to force them' positions them as the bad guys before even getting to the details.

And let me be clear - all sides do it. 'My' side included.

(I think) I know why. I get it. I think it's primarily three elements:

1. Everyone wants to be on the side of the angels. We want to believe that what we believe is Right and Good. Even when it's not. It's far easier to frame your opponent as the Bad Guy and go from there. The hard work is really in looking at ones self and (more importantly, imho) the facts in order to pull each situation apart. Once you've pulled them apart, you can start to see patterns. Once you see those patterns, you can decide a course of action for the future.

But that's an awful lot of work. People, in general, don't like to do that kind of work.

To make things worse, when we do _some_ of that work, we get exhausted and we think we've reached that point of "I see the patterns! I can stop doing all that work!" when in reality, that's just the beginning.

2. It makes things simple. "I don't agree with X, so clearly, it MUST be Y." Again - easy over difficult.

We humans are complex creatures, and (I think) also very simple. We _like_ easy. You only have to look at our Amazon.coms (hello delivery to my door), our Starbucks (sure - I'll pay $5 for a cup of coffee I don't have to slaaaaave over a coffee pot for), and out smart phones to see that.

So once we've invested the time, emotion, and effort to have an opinion on something, it's nearly impossible to get us to change that opinion. There have been plenty of peer reviewed studies that prove this. I'm happy to look them up if someone wants them, but right now? I want easy. ;P

Binary is simple. It's easy. But in my experience, it's very seldom, if ever, reality. Reality tends to fall on a spectrum. Shades of grey, if you prefer.

But that's way too difficult to 'prove' in any tangible way. That's hard.

3. There's this perception that 'no one every got anything done by being nice'. It's easy to see why this perception came about, but it's very very VERY untrue.

All of our advances in science. Cooking. Art. Culture in general. Heck - most of the political advancements in the past two decades or more!

Those aren't the things that spring to mind though. We _remember_ the big blow outs because of all the drama associated with them. So when we think 'how did we get here' - we remember the drama. And drama? That's easy to create when we use binary and inflammatory language.

And we LIKE easy...

OKAY - SO...?
I point this out because I'm seeing a lot of this binary/polarizing in this (as with previous) conversations. Everyone is a victim and their opponent is a the devil.

That makes the battle ground easy and clear.

But easy and clear isn't real.

WHERE I STAND
*Despite what I seem to have communicated up to this point, I agree with you that the Church should have every right to set rules regarding how its members conduct themselves. I feel that's the right (obligation?) of every organization.

*I believe we humans are VERY fallible.

I believe that someone other than the girl in question (parents, friends, videographer) knew that she was going to do something to antagonize the Church. It only makes sense. I believe that they are as 'at fault' as she is for breaking these rules of this organization.

I believe that the church members involved in unplugging (visiting minister, etc.) are just as fallible. Especially if he's a visiting guy, of COURSE he's going to feel more touchy about uncomfortable subjects during open mic night. Just like anyone, he wouldn't want people talking about all the bad stuff that he 'let happen on his watch'. Again - very natural and human. No villain here.

*We all have the 'perfect' vision of hind sight.

It's easy for all of us to look at this situation and judge it from the safety of our offices / homes / etc. We weren't there.

But I don't know that it matters. It's important that we discuss major events to go back to that difficult work of deciding how we feel about things, and understanding our own path forward.

*Here's how I imagine things played out:
1. A teenager felt oppressed by a large group because of how she feels. This is not a new thing. Nor was her 'acting out'. And lastly, the response of members of that large group also - not a new thing.

2. That girl decided that she had a way to 'rebel'. It was not an appropriate place to do it. That's part of the rebellion.

3. A normal human being - who has a job to do - responded in the way he felt was appropriate to that rebellion. He did no physical harm, and he stopped the rebellion.

4. People chose sides.

5. Chaos ensues.

I'm being a little bit funny here, but that's pretty close to how I see it.

Everyone goes for that knee-jerk reaction. That "how do I feel right now and without thinking about this too much?" sensation.

I applaud you for being willing to discuss it.

MEA CULPA
Or, 'another version of how I saw the events in question'.

1. A little girl has a not-wise idea to rebel against a group she wants to be part of, but feels persecuted by.

2. She rebels in an inappropriate fashion. (Is there an appropriate way to rebel?)

3. A grown man quiets her. This has probably happened before with others and will certainly happen again with others.

4. A video goes out which I actually become aware of (unlike all the other instances before / after that I'm NOT aware of).

5. In a flash, I see a grown man bullying a small child. For those unaware (Ian already is) I have a history with bullying which may make me a bit more touchy on the subject.

6. I was actually in the process of cooling down on the topic when you posted saying "Actually, the people involved in cutting the mic were right because ALL THE REASONS..." which, to me, and only at first, sounds like "Actually, the bully was right because HOW DARE SHE?!"

Of course 5 and 6 are inaccurate. They're emotion based and non reasonable. They're binary.

NOW THAT I'VE COOLED DOWN
Here's where I fall now that I've calmed down and am thinking a little more clearly.

1. The church does have a history. As a group made up of fallible humans, not all of it is good. Where it has historically stood on gay humans is, I feel, one of those areas. I understand that those who are of the faithful feel that there is an infallible deity behind some/many/all of these positions and therefor those positions are infallible. I can't argue that. I only know that I don't believe in said deity, so I have to deal with the humans who believe in him/her/it/they/we.

2. A little girl rebelled. It was inappropriate. I have a little bit of a rebel still in my chest. Mostly, Life has silenced him, but he's still there. A little. And he likes this girl.

3. A man did his job as he saw best. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt given his chosen profession and assume that it was in order to continue that conversation somewhere more appropriate as he / the church saw fit.

4. The video is released and people start pointing fingers and crying villain. Of course, in our hyper caricaturized world of YouTube etc everything is EXXXTREME. The minister is Satan. The child is a saint. OR The child is wildly inappropriate and the minister could have done nothing else! As I personally see it? The kid was rebelling. The minister did his job.

5. But (and you knew this was coming) there's a bigger picture. The kid is rebelling for a reason. She's part of a persecuted crowd. That persecution has taken many forms, and not allowing her to speak typifies that. It's not a wildly terrible act, but it IS an example of the exact thing she is rebelling against. So the minister, while only doing his job, proves her point.

6. There ARE systems in place that persecute many. These systems are large and complicated. That makes them very hard to see clearly. These systems are parts of even larger systems - many of which are things many people believe in dearly. Government, business, and yes, even religion has many large and complicated sub components which persecute. These sub components have evolved over many years because the folks who are in positions of power constructed them. I don't believe that (in most cases) those people had villainous intent. They wanted to keep things civilized. They wanted to benefit people. But as fallible humans, they didn't think about the people who didn't look, think, talk, walk, or act as they do. As our society continues to evolve, grow, and mature, we are becoming aware of these sub-components and their damaging nature. We are beginning to see the ways in which they hurt others. We are waking up. It is the duty of every oppressed person to rebel against these systems in order to help both themselves and those who, like them, are oppressed. It is the duty of every aware person in a position of power to aid them in that rebellion.

7. In many ways, this single event is unimportant. In the ways that it took courage for a 12 year old girl to stand up in front of a crowd of people she cares about and confess something she felt they would dislike about her, it means everything. It's a small event to those who are the status quo. It's a huge event to those trying to rebel. And then there is us. Outside the situation for the most part. We both have emotional ties in one direction or the other, but I strongly suspect that we don't feel as intensely about it as she does.

8. I guess, in the end, I could bring it back to a binary situation. I'll do this because apparently there 'needs' to be a right or a wrong here. In truth, I do feel like there's a wrong - it's just that it's a fairly minor one. I feel like he WAS wrong to disconnect her mic. He's not evil or malicious. He was just doing what he thought was appropriate. She wanted to rebel. I'm fairly sure of that, thanks to the video. That's inappropriate. Rebellion always is. Because the people in power decide what's appropriate. So in the end? I'm siding with the little girl, if we have to take sides.

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French Press Cafe in Odessa Texas

2017-04-26T15:25:43Z

So this morning I'm in Odessa, TX. I looked through Google's "Where the locals eat" section (side note: holy hell do I LOVE that function). Found a place called French Press Cafe.

It's pretty much exactly what you think it is. LOTS of white paint on everything. Frilly decorations. Think one part tea room, one part French cafe (or at least the American image of what that is), and dainty... everything.

I got the quiche.

I feel pretty much like a cro magnon man who has been handed an iPhone.

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Kicking the Tires

2017-04-06T23:28:24Z

So I did a little clean up and repair to my profile page over here to make sure things are pointing in the right direction. Let me know if there's anything you notice that's missing, or would make things any better. :)

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mrlich @ 2014-01-01T23:05:00

2014-01-02T04:12:55Z

New year. New writing stuff. Tom mentioned starting back up on LJ while over on FB and the discussion mentioned DW. Recalling the fact that I have an account here, I thought I would pop my head back in and take another look around.

Nice, clean site. Less clutter. The fact that it allows for cross posting over to LJ is a big perk. Certainly I would not bother being here if it didn't. If I'm going to leave LJ, it's not going to be for an LJ clone when my LJ peeps would have to jump ship too. You're just not going to get that many people to all jump to the same new ship. Not if it's so similar.

Anyway, I like the site. It would need some work (bringing over my friends list etc) if I wanted to use it as my primary though. I'll have to think about it. And really - if I'm going to be blogging, is there any reason for me to not do it on dragonbones, google plus, or on the ol' LJ? Not really sure.

What do you think?

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mrlich @ 2009-05-06T22:51:00

2009-05-07T02:58:59Z

Well kids (all one of you since I haven't made this journal public yet) I've got some stuff:

1. I'm getting glasses. Yup - finally.
2. I'm doing art. I've really only done a rough mock-up of the image that I'm working on, but I thought that I would upload this early version here to try the image loading options here at the site - so aren't you just the lucky one. :P

...or maybe not. Guess you can't upload images yet. :(

I thought that this site had a focus on creativity and art? I may have misread that somewhere. Whoops.

(Of course it could be that it's just not implimented yet. The site is in beta after all.)

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Testing 1, 2... Testing... Testing 1, 2...

2009-05-04T23:31:22Z

This is where I say something really original and unique like "Hello World!" or something like that - neh?

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