Art Dump, Life Update

 Art tends to come in all-out phases for me. An old friend of mine used to attribute it to my zodiac sign; she'd nod knowingly at my pages and pages of comics or fan art or tattoo designs (of which the dragon above falls, surprisingly) and draw parallels as to how ram-like my run-run-run-ohshitawall-KEEP-RUNNING behavior was, and I couldn't really argue (aside from astology being absolute hokum, I mean.)

This phase was the tattoos and flash art phase, and fittingly enough was the same year The Roommate took me to get my first tattoo, which was also my first tattoo design.

This is why it is imperative to find not just a talented artist, but a *smart* artist, kids; she wisely talked me out of both the cliched scroll AND the Chinese characters. While you'd think someone who had been trained by the military to understand a foreign language for 63 weeks would be less likely to get a screwed up, incorrect or even crass foreign language tattoo, off the top of my head I can name such a one: a guy who flipped two characters' places in a four-character phrase, which are pretty common in Chinese culture, which he would also have learned through the course.

Thanks to his inattentiveness, his "寧 為 玉 碎" or "níng wéi yù suì (colloquially, death before dishonor)" became "寧碎 為 玉 " or rather, dishonor before death.

This week has been choppy and left me feeling a little like one of those dreams where you're juuuuust drifting off and then you TRIP on a curb and TWITCH your silly butt awake. This is what happens when a federal holiday squats in the middle of your week, I imagine, and while it must have happened at least once before in my twentyCOUGHcough years, I don't remember it. 

What I did remember, however, was DEADLINES!!! prompted by the story I posted last time. That particular zine is headed up by a kid I used to babysit (and who was nice enough not to point out that I did manage to outgrow my awkward teens finally, as he seemingly skipped his and records albums now) and two of his compatriots, and while it does ostensibly accept short stories in the form of flash fiction, the last couple of issues have been all poetry. Which, if that's your bag, by all means, but it's not my scene, jelly beans. < the most poetry you will ever see me do.

But while sonnets and slams are out of my ken, they also troll for high-contrast black and white art, and while I'm about 80% sure it's not just my former charge exhibiting some nepotism for his elders, I *did* manage to get a picture published as the back cover on one issue:

So I'm currently running about with my hair on fire, trying to figure out 3-5 black and white pictures for an issue entitled "Kisses for Fishes." And while they stress that there's not a thematic requirement, well, I imagine you'd be pretty confused if you were told about a magazine of poetry that had 'something to do with fish?" and yet, when you went looking for this volume, the cover was, say, Ninja Turtles fan-art / character design:

So I'll let you know if that happens... but wouldn't it be fun if you knew because you got published too? Seriously. Submit some brilliance, people.