Saturday, October 18, 2008
Nefarious wrote her first “book” today, based on Frog and Toad. It goes like this:
Translation:
1. “frog and tod / bi ari”
(Frog and Toad / By Ari)
2. “frog and tod gow to the prc”
(Frog and Toad go to the park.)
3. “tod goz to the prc and plaz”
(Toad goes to the park and plays.)
4. “frog wz wochin tod”
(Frog was watching Toad.)
We took the pages she made and I reprinted them at 1/4 size and bound them into a little book, which she then read to her dolls (cutest scene ever). The calendar by the way is a daily x-off until Halloween.
I did a little work on my Uilenspiegel painting as well. This is the base colour. It’ll be touched up of course, but the big change is that it’ll all be lined in the final stage which is what really brings it out. I have high hopes for this particular painting and think it’s going quite well so far.
We’re all prepped for tomorrow’s zombie walk (watch out)… click the flier below to visit the official site. Caitlin (who will be the primary makeup artist) I think is going as a walking autopsied corpse, Nefarious is a princess party zombie with an extra eyeball, and I’m going with gouged out eyes and a wide stitched up wound. I’ll post photos tomorrow evening.
My supper today didn’t turn out. It just felt… I don’t know… flavorless? I’m not sure why. Desert was a success though — there were good strawberries at the grocery store today so I got a big container full of them, halved them, and served them with fresh lemon juice and brown sugar. Simple and delicious.
We played ZigZag some more. Now that Nefarious has the hang of the game she likes it a lot more and can play it quite well. I got beat once because I wasn’t paying attention — you get focussed on your attack vector and you don’t notice your opponent sneaking up behind you. At one point she shouted, “ohh — look at the sunset!” and grabbed the camera and ran out on the balcony and started taking pictures.
She snapped a picture of me. “I’m sure it’s just the flash”, but jeez… I’m amazed kids at her school seem to be such fans of me, I totally look like a crazy person… Kind of a Manson thing going on? Well, I’m going to paint for a while before Caitlin gets home from work. I’m looking forward to the weekend — it’s the big Toronto zombie walk on Sunday and we’re all getting undeadified for that.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
This disturbing clip from a McCain/Palin rally — which really illustrates how incredibly dangerous negative campaigning is — is from Al Jazeera. How strange is it that viewers in Iran and Saudi Arabia and across the Arab world watch America on their televisions and see it as a backward nation full of religious extremists with racially isolationist views?
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Continuing in my blog of “funny things Caitlin said to me today”, right now she’s reading knuckletattoos.com (it was linked from gorilla mask today — I think she’s one of their few female readers) and comes across the picture on the right…
Caitlin: “What does that mean?”
Me: “I think it means ‘Love’ and ‘Fate’.”
Caitlin: “Are you sure it doesn’t mean he loves fat chicks?”
Thursday, October 16, 2008
First, let me mention that I had some problems with my kit car blog that resulted in a software upgrade trashing the original functioning site… The reason I mention it is that DreamHost tech support fixed it for me relatively quickly and were responsive via email — given how cheap their pricing is, I continue to be very happy with the service I’ve gotten, both in terms of dealing with them, and having servers that are far from overloaded. I’ve served tens of thousands of pageviews a day (and sometimes more) off these blogs and rarely had a problem — and when I have needed more server availability because of site popularity, they’ve upgraded me without additional charges.
Anyway… Nefarious and I went down to the art store yesterday and picked up some wood panels for new projects, as I mentioned. I’m working on an interpretation (a la The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind) of Uilenspiegel (aka The Beggars) by Lucas van Leyden… Here’s the sketch on wood. As you can see, it’s much smaller than I usually work, but I want to make pieces that are easier to ship (and to hang).
Nefarious and I also got a new strategy boardgame — “ZigZag” — which involves building “roads” that you move your pegs along in an attempt to get four in a row. It’s simple, but surprisingly difficult and quite enjoyable… That said, of all the games we play, she prefers chess and is best at it. I’m not a particularly good chess player (Abalone and ZigZag suit me better), so she can keep up with me without me having to pull my punches.
And WTF was McCain thinking with his weird moves at the end of last night’s debate? I guess he is unaware that people can freeze-frame him…
