Author: Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

Last post before San Diego

After this, I’m shutting the laptop down, packing it away and turning in for the night. At 4AM I shall be roused, and at 5AM be at the airport, at 6AM be on the plane, and shortly after 7AM, be in San Diego. From there it is more vague… Something about … comics?

I will have internet access while I am at the convention, so I will certainly be posting from the con. In fact, I’m thinking of giving up quite a bit of sleep if need be. To keep the world updated as to my exploits. I will have two convenient methods for taking photos at the con, a Sony digital camera I have got from Fry’s Electronics (I fear I will not be fully satisfied by it, and before the 30-day return period is up), and my new phone (that’s right, I have a new phone now – if you want the number, email me – and it takes photos). So, I may put up a few photos for y’all non-con-people to gander at.

I saw The Pirates of the Carribean and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen today, and I must say I quite enjoyed them both. I shall consider full reviews, but I have the feeling I will have plenty to do in the next few days to keep me busy. Oh, and I saw an advance screening of Spy Kids 3D: Game Over last night. It rocks. Expect a full review when it opens, July 25th. Seriously good fun.

…ummm… can’t think of much else to say right now. … that i haven’t already said. i guess that painting of a chicken (freedom of expression) sold for sure, so will not be making any future appearances by me, in person or in discussion. And.. I’m going to try to carry on that other one. And if they don’t let me… they can refer themselves to the name of this blog. sigh.

That is all. Next post, from San Diego. ta ta!

And on, and on…

Tomorrow, Phoenix. Wednesday, San Diego.

I’m trying to get everything together for the trip. We’re leaving here at a little after 6AM tomorrow, so I have to have everything ready to go before I bed down for the night tonight. I have my clothes, my computer and scanner, my old Velo to lend my father, what else? Toothpaste, deodorant, two paintings… I can’t think if I’ve forgotten something.

I’m printing out pages with 6inch by 6inch squares on them and a description of a single panel of the ‘Mouse’ Project below each square. I’m going to have them with me at the con and try to talk artists into volunteering for the ‘Mouse’ Project. If I can get them to sketch something right there, or take the page home and do it on their computer & email it to me, or anything… that will be better than nothing. Even if only a few panels get done this way, it will be worth it. Plus, I will be making contacts with all sorts of new people who may want to help work on the upcoming experimental collaborative comic I’m working on the scripts for.

I’ve got “please” and “freedom of expression” in the back of the vehicle already. Marie hasn’t got back to me since I responded (via email) to her comment this morning, and I don’t have a phone number or other way to get ahold of her, but if she gets her wish I’ll only be taking “please” with me to the con. (Via the helpful helping-ness of Iain. Thanks, Iain!) Note: for those of you who don’t follow FYTH closely, I will be taking “please” because at the Cafepress booth they will be giving away dozens of mini-prints of “please” (along with limited-edition mini-prints of New Comic); I will see about getting the original painting into the Cafepress booth so people can see that their original artwork can be distributed in print form by Cafepress.

I don’t know. I’m going to bed. I’ll see about more updates in the future.

Anticipation

So, I’ve had quite a bit of anticipation leading up to the San Diego Comic-Con this year. To some degree it has been like excitement; it has quickened my pulse in a good way as I look forward to the good things. To a much greater degree it has been like overwhelming stress, increasing the pressure on my heart and making every beat a little more intense. Also, because the future is unknowable, any level of anticipation seems directly related to a degree of expectation, and expectations are the sort of thing that can lead to disappointment, so this anticipation may be setting me up for disappointment by the actuality of the convention.

On one hand, the anticipation of the event extends the event backwards in time to me, allowing my emotional and mental reactions to the convention to exist along a longer timeline than the few days of the con. This extension through time would seem a positive thing, since I believe the bulk of my reactions at the con itself will be positive ones. Unfortunately it seems that as long as the actual events of the convention, such as how I will arrive in San Diego and whether I will have enough cash on hand to do things like eat, are indeterminate the anticipation is simply extending a bad feeling as that of not finding myself with a way there or enough money right back into the past.

I am, at this point, certain that I have a reliable and firm transportation to and from the convention, and that I will have plenty of cash available not only to eat, but to buy a few things beyond food and incidentals. Yet the anticipatory bad feelings that I’ve been having for so long linger in me like echos of a future that will never come to be. Like my anticipation doesn’t want to give up on any of the unknowable futures, even the ones with virtually zero chance of coming to fruition, and is trying to extend my emotional responses to those possible futures back to me.

So, although Anticipation seems to have the ability to move emotions through time, backwards from the future (an extraordinary feat), its arbitrariness in which emotions it extends, and from which possible futures, is a major negative mark against it. I give Anticipation one thumb up and two thumbs down.

A moment from a dream

This is just a moment from the dream…

I was in a large room, perhaps a large office or private library, working on plans for … something … there were windows all along one wall of the room, looking out and down; apparently the room is on the second floor. I am across the room from the windows, but I get to a particularly … important … part of my work and feel that perhaps I should look outside. I see two catholic cardinals walking by the building I am in, across the lawn. They must have passed each other (or were they talking and just began walking away from each other?) just as I had that feeling that I ought to come look. I am in front of the right-most window, a couple of paces back now, but I can see the cardinal’s head and shoulders as he comes even with me, and he pauses. He pauses as though he has just felt my presence somehow from twenty feet away, and as he slowly turns and begins to look up I take a couple of slow steps further back from the window. I am out of view of the window before his head is turned up, and I don’t know if there is enough glare on the window from the sun that he wouldn’t have been able to see me anyway, but I get a weird feeling that he has somehow sensed me as I sensed him. I wait a few more seconds and then brave a step forward to see if he is still looking up, expressionless, but both cardinals are now completely out of sight of my window.