In Which I Admit I am a Ginormous Puss

Now all he'll recommend for me is Nicholas Sparks. >:(

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Art Dump

Old art. I have precious little of it floating around in the ether (read:3 computer hard drives and a floating, detachable hard drive, all moved approximately 6 times in the last 3 years at least) and while I often hear people lament that you should never ever ever throw away old art, well, I have. For years. Take that, suckers!

The few bits I did somehow retain I will post here, as many websites out there have taught me, the people like pictures. Also, I harbor a morbid pride over the lean pickings of years past. The piece to the right, for example? This is the fruit of a spree, the likes of which I haven't felt in years. (Age and 9-5's put an end to the sprees pretty effectively, as it turns out.)

In September of 2007, I was but a trainee in my past Air Force life; mind, a trainee who had been in training since Dec '04, with no gaps. I had had me some motherloving training, and more was still en route. This was a shift-work schedule, and more often than not I found myself awake at 3am, high off Prismacolor markers (a fairly expensive drug even now) and whatever crap was on the television at such times. That night was inexplicably "Disney Classics"and the stained glass window from the opening of Beauty and the Beast was GORGEOUS to my glassy eyes. I put my head down and didn't come up until the credits rolled, blue marker staining my fingers and the book I'd been using as a lap-desk, and as I looked upon the finished work and let loose a breath I was unaware I'd been holding, I exhaled a little prayer that this wasn't going to look a hot mess come daylight.

(People who freehand can attest that sometimes this happens- you get so head-down in a project that you lose sight of the whole, and only hours later with fresh eyes do you notice that it's slanted, or if you turn it around and look at it through the light, the whole of it cants, the formerly perfect creation melting into a Sloth-like mess of fetal alcohol syndrome proportions.)

I do not remember the next day, but what does come to mind is the same feeling I get whenever I finish something and am not horrified and ashamed of it a few days later. It was accomplishment, and marker-evidence aside, I felt like a million bucks. I had created. Where only white paper had existed before, there was now a saint! Of something. Possibly listening to iPods. The logic didn't fare as well in the telling light of day as the art.

As I write this now, I realize that maybe it wasn't terribly expensive marker fumes that made my head swell with pride, and it's not some psychosomatic ghost I feel even now; I think the act of finishing something, and having a tangible evidence of such in my fevered little hands, especially in the time of the never-ending training-training-training-it'll-be-years-before-you're-actually-useful morass, literally got me high.

The same sense of accomplishment spikes in sporadically nowadays, be it at the gym when I've performed the ant-like task of hefting any approximation of my body weight around, or pulling an especially delectable broiler plate of chicken thighs from the oven, or even writing these little posts. I felt down when I started writing, and yet now? The crap crap crappity poo day I've had is becoming memory, and in time, the sort of memory I look at, assess the value of, and finally, toss in the trash like a doodle of a parakeet dancing the charleston for an unimpressed Wonder Woman audience.  (Not kidding. I toss memories so completely I've lost whole months from my teen years. Remember, this included the success of  the Macarena, the Thong Song, and other such songs of its ilk, so....)

                                                                 I regret nothing.

Whoever you are, thanks for reading, and trusting me when I say it's the achievement, and not the markers, when you see me smile. :)

In Which I Make Good on those "Art" Claims

I told you kids I art sometimes, right? I do. I art all over any available surface. Comics, paintings, doodles, anything having to do with actual paper and I'm there. (Tablets remain beyond my ken, as I made the rookie mistake of buying a photoshop suite that was amazing and promised me I could create whole worlds but was actually a cruel, cruel joke, swaddled smugly in layers of buttons and options that I am not certain were even in Earthen language. Made an equally amazing coaster, though, so not all's a loss.) Sometimes I have an idea as to what it will be, and in comics, what you see is about 90% of what I originally intended, i.e., me doing something ill-advised and silly and the somehow unpredicted outcome, or, the misadventures I have in the ol' dating game (and if you're getting a feel for what a bundle of sunshine and whee I am, imagine what out there is attracted when I raise my head and let loose my mating call into the Nebraskan tundra.)

Then there's the flash art. I use this term loosely, and I think it can elsewise be called "pin ups" by people who have actually trained or have attended any sort of art class, um, ever.*

*Not me.

For whatever reason, when I start drawing a large picture for a story, it goes all... wandering on me. And what I planned on drawing just won't. goddamn. appear.

FOR EXAMPLE! To your right, note the man in the bathroom. His name is Dutch, and he is attached to a story I'm writing. Said story sprang fully formed as though from a box of instant mix one early morning when I was driving in for a 0500 showtime (so what I say early, we're talking God did not intend man to be awake during these hours early. Those weird and shifty hours that look like the Man Himself had only just roughed out some lines and along you come, barreling through His unfinished work, and what follows is the nagging suspicion that you should not be out here and something much bigger than you is regarding you, and not in a friendly way.

Also, I was SUPER tired, because gearing up a holy pally for PVP is arduous work on Darkspear server, where the ratio of Ally to Horde is 6 to 1.

But there was fog out there, and Nebraska, while home to the squared root of every conceivable nasty form of weather there is and a few there aren't, is not often home to fog. Fog reminded me of the coast where I'd done a goodly bit of two year's tech school, and it was jarring to see past come creeping into now. I passed two people that night-day: one some dumbass chick with her brights on, going the other way, and one can only assume she was only practicing to go into the bright light for when she inevitably crashed for being s-m-r-t about how water and light reflections work... and a dude in a pickup, who turned onto my road and accompanied me for a few miles. Somehow, just seeing that other guy in the other lane made me feel a little better about the creepy night-day thing.

But why? I'm an avid reader of Stephen King and his contemporaries, and this setting is more than likely not "stranger saves day with highbeams" as much as "false sense of security regarding simple-looking blonde men in trucks." And yet, it was a comfort. Maybe it was just seeing another person out and about, like the unofficial military axiom* of "if you're going to be wrong, do it in a group; it's harder to punish everyone if everyone's doing it wrong," or maybe it's the same reason you go into your parents' room when your dreams yield snakes and strange men and not the oft-promised visions of sugar plums. (I'm 28 at the end of the month, and I wouldn't know a sugar plum from a squirrel shitting in a hat at this point. Whoever wrote that damn poem owes me at least 10 of them and a pound of whatever marzipan is. I envision it to be like taffy.) Regardless, I found the company of a stranger almost protective in nature, and the rusty spring of my brain toaster prompty popped up a half-warmed story-tart.

*This axiom being a corollary to the main military law of "if one effs up, EFF UP EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS IN THE MILITARY AT THE SAME TIME," and is much less liked, hence the informal invoking of the corollary in the first place.


And that thing up there is the best I can do for the guy. Whatta ripoff, eh? I've been experimenting with watercolor pencils, trying to get that blendy, faded and yes, watery look to them, but that? That looks like I drew a bathroom, and then dropped this in one. What say the nonexistant peanuts in my gallery? Return with haste to the water-based acrylics of my youth? Keep fighting the fight with my poo-pencils? Or take a damn class? The choice is yours.*


*Not really. Night class art school? I know recreational drug use when I hear it, winking face made of punctuation here.

Is blogging still a thing?

Even if you're not a mom?

For I am not a mom, nor a wife, and am starting to hit that age where people aren't as polite about pointing out my lack of such (coincidentally, also the age where you start getting all Gran Torino on all these damn people up on your damn lawn about it.) However, I do hope this won't preclude any chance of the random internet denizen reading this, for I can assure you that, even minus diaper rash and shared bank accounts, sometimes I do interesting things too! I write, I draw, I lift heavy shit inconsequential distances, and I can cook the hell out of some squash, all of which I can only assume will come up as I keep writing here. I play video games, watch entirely too much Netflix... um... I drive... and... okay, look, I quit smoking today because it seemed like it would be a good birthday gift to myself come the end of the month- a month tobacco-free! And yes, it sounded absolutely stellar as I was actively smoking on the veranda yesterday, however now? Not so good. So here I am, typing so hard my fingertips are bruising because it's either type blogs and be semi-productive or gnaw on things in a blind and unfocused rage, and we are running out of pens in this bitch.

So cut me some slack? I put pictures in here for you.

Ahem... BUT THAT'S NOT ALL...

I fly for a living! Excitement.

...well, before everyone starts picturing this, let me go ahead and out myself as a back-ender. Meaning, not the front end. The flight deck. Where the controlling of flying happens. No no, not I. I hang in the back of windowless jets and, essentially, tell people to push buttons. Faster, slower, moar, GODDAMNITTOOMUCH, you get the idea.


No. That is not the idea to have... but I'll take it.

ANYWAY. There's a lot of people I share these cramped, oscillating quarters with, for hours and hours, and when you are that close with people physically, it is very easy to bridge the gap and become close in a friendly way. Well, an "I don't hate you way." Or even a "I will ignore your humping of my chair's headrest while you try to hit those switches" way. Which really, is the best kind of BFF you can get.

But there is such a thing as too much closeness, and at flight level 35, it comes hard.

Come for the expository essays, stay for the "that's what she said!" jokes.

Aside from the random 'accidental' teabaggings, there are a few things that no one can help on the jet, and, hey man, that's acceptable. There's a toilet on board, and if you chose poorly at dinner last night and are encountering the dreaded drawstring butthole, well, just keep the little folding door closed and latched and spray a little courtesy Febreze around afterwards. Likewise for the other end- if you have to puke, well, that sucks, and here's hoping your brought a bag or aren't about to projectile vom all over an instructor or a maintenance dude. I once watched a dude hork down a pound bag of Skittles right before aerial refueling, and, lucky boy, also watched him taste that rainbow twice. Right into his own lap. We named him "Spackler" for the remainder of the TDY. But again, totally socially acceptable on the jet.

The two above might seem to be only loosely correlated, in that they involve exploding orifices and horrible, horrible errors in judgement. But if you're a flyer, you might have noticed a certain phenomenon when you're moving up and down in altitude- that annoying plugging feeling in your eardrums, followed by a need to flex your jaw/swallow/chew gum? That there is pressure, my friends, and if you think it does a number on your earballs, you should try repeated landings and take-offs (in military parliance, "touch and goes.") For a leviathan, peacefully slumbering in your intestines, stomach, and everything responsible for holding food for you like a man holds a purse while you try on shoes, well, he is not such a fan of someone playing with the pressure like a light switch strobe.


You should have paid more attention to fiber.

You fart. I was trying to be all forboding, but that's the moral of that tale. Pressurizing itself, on the way up, no big thing. It's the depressurization that bloats out your various food and poo sacs and when that critical PSI max is reached, it's pretty uncomfortable.

BUT. We aren't talking unmanageable spewage here, we're talking discomfort. Discomfort we all feel. If misery loves its company so much, then explain to me why there's always one rat-bastard who looks deeply into the grimacing, little-trooper faces of all his counterparts, frozen in mid-rectal-sneeze, and thinks to himself, "Self, my right to be comfy for the next three minutes until this builds again is surely greater than anyone else's need for breathing"?!

You also must note the type of people we're talking here. You've got the military aspect, so at any given point, there's three or four curlbros mainlining protein shakes, and one or two girls chowing down on sugar-free candy (you want to talk drawstring butthole, oh Lord, just go ahead and tempt fate with anything combining xylatol and gummy properties. I daresay if the Atkins diet had been bigger in WWII, we wouldn't have needed atoms to decimate cities.) On the other hand, you've got the enablers, who bake up scores of tarts and cookies and all sorts of dried-fruit-based 'energy bars' to share, and the professional eaters- they brought them a duffel bag of vindaloo chicken, and, damnit, if they don't lick the lining clean the terrorists win. Those energy bars will come in handy, still- as utensils. Ultimately, you're running pretty good odds that at least one on every flight is going to hit that winning combo of IBS self-inducer and sociopath.

Such odds were reached today. It was a smell so bad, I could visibly track the wave of malodorous poo-gas as it slapped the faces of the crew, traveling from the far-back end all the way to the front. And then, it was not only visual but textural as well, to the point I felt the need to floss for corn niblets. The supervisor actually started thumbing through his checklist for the smoke and fumes emergency procedures, it was so bad.

It was so bad... um. Penis-havers. You may want to leave; the true story part of this entry was not made for your delicate sensibilities. Go watch monster trucks or something.

Dudettes. (And dudes. You were warned.) It was so bad my monthly started spontaneously.
Only it wasn't just a drib-drab. It was every egg I ever grew simultaneously hitting that emergency exit and creating a red tide that Moses would have looked at and said, "Nope nope nope." I am fairly confident that I stand before you not just presently childless, but forever barren, as my ovaries just straight became an heroes rather than possibly allow new life into a world where smells like that exist.


So, I return to my first question- if a non-mommy blogs, does anyone read her?