Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

We did end up doing the museum — the batty ROM / Royal Ontario Museum — visit today as planned. As it contains many photos I’ve placed most of that behind a click-through, so you can “read on” for all that. However, I wanted to start things off with this picture of the three of us about half way through the day that I really like. All of us had a good time.

(Continued)

Falsehoods first. Last night when Caitlin and I were watching Survivor (a ritual now that we’ve had for over a decade!), there was a commercial on for the next evening’s news “special feature”, which was on body modification — “Piercings, Tats & Teens” — and they were doing the getting real-old fear mongering where they wring their hands over what the crazy kids are doing these days, and asked the question (and I quote) of whether Toronto is “becoming the Wild West of body modification?” The particularly astute viewer will notice that the branding footage that they used in the commercial is of Blair branding Mikey (below), the former owner of New Tribe in Toronto over ten ten years ago — and even then Mikey was at least thirty years old… Pretty far removed from being a teen in 2010.

But I have never espoused the idea that the news is anything other than a way to sell advertising. They care nothing — or on a good day, little — for the truth, and when you see something on which you are an “expert” and realize how little relation what’s reported as fact has with reality you start getting the scary realization that television news reporting is entertainment and should not be taken seriously.

The last couple days I’ve been working on a new hand-drawn (I count drawing on a tablet as that) animation, in which, after the clouds float off of the full moon, I transform into a werewolf. I’m hugely enjoying the tablet, and how “natural” it feels, and the animation software… and it’s really sucking up my time with the obsession it’s creating!

Nefarious has been watching my progress, and today I showed her the process of building up an animation step by step using an onion skin and she asked me if she could give it a try. Here’s her first creation — I think it turned out nicely and if I hadn’t pried her away with other [real world] games, it would have been much longer that this 13 frame creation I’m sure.

She wants to do more animation this weekend so I told her to do her best to remember her dreams. I have some cut-out animation software as well (similar to what South Park uses) and I thought we could draw some things on paper — make paper puppets basically — andd then create a story with them… I thought of this after she pulled out some drawings that I did for her at the breakfast table something like three years ago that I figured would be fun to pull a Pinocchio on.

Not sure what the plans are this weekend… They just put a new bat cave at the Royal Ontario Museum, which Nefarious loves, so I might go there with the girls since I just renewed my membership anyway. Oh, and I’ll finish off with a Truth — have I mentioned my perfect breakfast? It’s a a few containers of sugar snap peas, blueberries, and some Reeses pieces. Totally delicious. Almost every day this week I have stopped at the grocery on the way home from dropping Nefarious off at school in the morning and picked up this wonderful snack, picking through for the freshest selection.

Although now that I think about it, tomorrow I promised Nefarious a very unhealthy — and rare — treat of a breakfast at McDonalds. For me, the real treat is going out for a morning walk, which legs aside, I quite enjoy. That said, this morning I couldn’t walk, and when I got up, I promptly fell over and landed on the floor. Oops. More for the bruise collection. I managed to get up and then collapsed a second time. Luckily Nefarious was there because I’d promised to play some cards with her before breakfast and I had her get my cane, and I used it to steady myself until I found my strength.