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So, I managed to buy a used copy of The Ring on DVD yesterday or so, and then before I could take it up to Pine and watch it all by my lonesome in a dark room, my sister insisted that we watch it tonight. I reminded her that it was late and she needed to be able to get up to go to work in the morning, but we watched it anyway.

It was still scary. I still have the feeling something is out to get me. Like there’s something right behind me, or just past my edge of vision in the dark, waiting to scare me to death. I keep turning my head to see, and there keeps not being anything there. I probably won’t feel totally alright until I get home to Pine and make a copy of the DVD. Which, I suppose, doesn’t mean a lot if you didn’t watch (or didn’t understand) the movie. But I tell you what; before I go to bed tomorrow night (tonight, really, I guess, it’s so darn late) there will be a good DVD copy of The Ring, made by my hands. I’m thinking of slipping it into one of the four or five DVDs’ cases in the collection at my local library in Pine the next time I go in. Or convincing someone at Zia to slip it into someone’s bag as a ‘freebie’. I don’t know. I need to make a copy, and to get it out of my hands.

Grr… Yeah. So, it was still scary. I happened to watch it with the only other person in this household who also thought it was scary, which I’m sure didn’t help make it any easier on me. But I have been studying how to write good screenplays, and I’ve been practicing watching movies with an eye for direction and cinematography, and I was able through most of the movie to pay attention to the fact that it was a movie, to distract myself by thinking about what sort of cameras and lenses they might be using and why certain shots were set up the way they were instead of other ways… But there are a few scenese that are just hard to do that with.

I think I’m going to copy the movie in some other ways, too. I think I’m going to catch some stillframes from it and integrate them into a painting of some kind. Something that will probably end up pretty creepy. Which reminds me, I was over at Zoe’s house tonight and at one point we were discussing my art, and how he really likes my new stuff, the way it’s been progressing, but doesn’t know where he’d hang it in his own home… Sort of saying it didn’t go with his style, which is fine, but then he suggested that he’d hang it in the bedroom, but it would probably scare his wife. Keep her up at nights. Some of my stuff, that’s true. I have one … there’s this pleading pair of eyes… some people say they just look scared, but I tell you they scared a woman out of the store on Sunday. She would glance up at them and then turn her head quickly away… she practically ran out of the store. I bet his wife would like a painting like ‘her embrace’ … something about passion and love.

Oh well. I’m going to see if my eyes will close. I haven’t tried yet. There’s a light on in the room I’m supposed to be sleeping in, and … well… I may just not turn it out. I’ll let you know.

This is the 600th post on FYTH. I was gonna title it something like ‘I’m tired’ or ‘so tired…’ but I figure that in 600 posts I’ve used that title quite a few times. It’s late, I’ve had a long day, and I have another long, hard day ahead of me. All day tomorrow (that is, today, it’s so late) I’ll be working with my father to hang sheetrock for a new ceiling in two rooms. No, we don’t have any of those fancy devices they make for holding the sheetrock up while it gets screwed in place. Yes, our ceiling is at a fair angle, making holding it in the right place more difficult. Yes, it is just the two of us for most of the day (eventually my younger brother will get home from school and may help, but who know how much help he’ll be, or how far along we’ll be.

Oh, except that since we’re all leaving in the morning Wednesday morning, the whole thing has to be done, and done right, by the end of tomorrow. Which is fine. He and I have done this before, on the other side of this house, in a much bigger, less regular, equally slanted ceiling. Not in one day, but … if I think back 7 or 8 years… I think I can remember … anyway, so that’ll be a long, hard day, then I think everyone’s going to go out and we’re all going to see The Core. You know, if we have the energy to sit still in a dark room for two hours. Oh, and did I mention that on Wednesday, when we all crawl back up the hill, we’ll be taking three vehicles, one of them piloted by me? This is your warning to stay off the roads in the direction of Pine from where I’m at (around 32nd Street and Bell) to the best of your ability on Wednesday. Wish me luck.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to explain why I was still up! I was waiting for my email to finish downloading, because I was expecting one that wasn’t there, and because I was … well … there’s a website I was supposed to do something at Sunday that I thought I did, but didn’t, and had to do tonight instead. And when I switched from high speed to dial-up, I switched from leaving a month’s worth of email on my mail server to leaving 7 days worth. And I stopped checking mail on my laptop, because .. .well, it seemed redundant to check the same mail on two computers with dial-up. So, I brought my laptop with me to phoenix, so I can check my mail, and for another reason, and I told it to download mail, and man but I love junk mail, which made my download take so long I had time to go do the thing at the website AND write this entry. But it’s done now, so I’m going to bed.

So, we were out shopping today, I think my dad was looking for some of those big plastic Sterilite tubs for storing stuff in, and I forgot to bring my toothbrush down, so I was looking for a toothbrush, and we stopped at a local SuperKMart that’s having a big closing sale: Everything 30%-80% off. So we browsed around the whole store anyway, to see if they had any deals we couldn’t pass up. Their regular DVD prices were so high that the 30% discount didn’t bring them even down to the regular prices I pay for used DVDs, so I basically walked right by those. Then 30% off the XBox games wasn’t very good either, and they didn’t have anything I wanted anyway. Except there was a Gamecube still in their display case. 30% off a $149.99 Gamecube is $105, which is a fantastic deal you can’t get anywhere else. I had been thinking (before I lost my job, when they dropped the GC’s price to $150) of getting one anyway, or going halfs with Angela on one, like we did the XBox. So Angela and I discussed it a little and had the woman working there pull it out for us before anyone else noticed it. I know, I know, I don’t have any secure form of income, but I just hung my art in Pine and already there’s a lot of interest. I’ve seen what’s selling at other local galleries and am very confident that mine will sell. And since room and board is all covered by my grandparents right now, any product I sell is just butter. So… Yeah, we got it. There was quite a mit of trouble, confusion, and waiting, involving four or five KMart employees to try to figure out how to ring us up, and the wait irritated my dad a little, since they didn’t have the containers he had been looking for and wanted to get back on track, but for $50 off, it was certainly worth my time.

I’m going to leave it here in Phoenix for now, let Angela enjoy it like she does the XBox… keep my eyes out for good prices on the several Gamecube games I’m interested in at Zia and online, and Angela will do the same and probably rent some at Blockbuster. I’m content with her having it and renting games for right now, I have plenty to do in Pine, and in May I’ll be taking back the XBox when I buy Enter the Matrix… Probably I’ll find a Gamecube game or two between now and when I finish Enter the Matrix, and I’ll trade the XBox for the Gamecube after that. We’ll see. It’s something I wanted, anyway, and an amazing price, even if I don’t take it home right away. Moo!

By the time you read this, I’ll at the least be on my way to Phoenix again. Going down this morning and staying until Wednesday afternoon, when they think they can get me to drive myself back. We’ll see. I’m sure I’ll have to practice with the car they want me to drive, a little. Who knows if they’ll allow for that.

The ride down the hill with my grandparents promises not to be fun. I don’t know if it’s something about the shocks on their vehicle or the sensitivity of the steering or just the way my grandfather drives, but I just about always manage to get nauseous when riding with them, even just the 20 minutes between Pine and Payson. I tell you, before this I probably felt nauseated fewer times than I could count on my fingers in my whole life (that I can remember). It’s pretty disconcerting. In addition, my left knee hates long car rides, and will probably lock up into severe pain before we reach our destination today. Hooray, severe pain!

Anyway, yeah. I’m taking my laptop with me this time, so theoretically I’ll be able to check my normal email account with it. The idea is that I’ve volunteered to help Joey Manley out, looking at some things he’s trying in the Safari browser, so I figure I should at least have a Mac and a copy of Safari with me. I don’t know how much time I’ll have available, seeing as my dad and I are supposed to be hanging sheetrock for the next three days. I hope to get in a movie or two though, while I’m down there. I hope they managed to get my harkins popcorn shirt into a load of laundry in the last couple of weeks.

So… yeah. Did I mention that I’ve got most of my artwork hanging gallery-like for sale in the shop I run up here? Yep. I did some research on pricing of art in the area, and set all my prices pretty accordingly. Which means for you that after May 03rd, after the SaveME Sale is over, all the prices on the website will be marked up 200%-400% to match the prices I’ve marked in the store. So buy now, people! While they’re still cheap! When I get back from Phoenix I should have a new doodle or two to put up, too. I plan on doing at least all the drawings for the next New Comic, if not the next couple, while I’m away. Of course, at this point much of the work is in Photoshop, and I am NOT taking my scanner (though it DOES fit in my backpack)… but I am taking couple of scetchbooks and at least three good drawing pencils.

Oh yeah, and don’t forget that the Modern Evil Virtual Book Club is supposed to meet online tonight about the Foundation Trilogy. Anyone who’s read it is welcome to join us. Actually, I think we’re allowing anyone who’s even just finished the first book, though I warn that it is likely that important details from the 2nd and 3rd books may be revealed during our discussion. I fear there may be two people in a one-line, dial-up-only house who both want to be in on the discussion tonight, but who knows? I haven’t been contacted by anyone new about how to get in. Remember, email me to find out how to join the fun in MSNIM.

I’m going down for breakfast now, and then on the road. See you later!

So, yeah. It seems like all of a sudden I’m getting more involved in comics that I’ve been in a year or more lately. Last year I didn’t even attend the International Comic Convention in San Diego, but this year I’m not only registering as a professional, I’ve volunteered to speak about publishing comics on the internet (we’ll see if they want me involved, I’m sure alot of other people did too, I’ve just been doing it since 1999). And I’ve been doing ‘New Comic’, what I consider my best effort in comics to date. AND I’m considering submitting New Comic to Modern Tales for consideration to fill Patent Pending’s spot, and I think I can run it on the same schedule he was (ie: every two weeks). AND I just emailed Joey Manley (head of Modern Tales) to volunteer my Web programming/PHP experience to try to fix their woes with the Safari browser I use and am so fond of.

What the heck?

I guess, of course, that I probably shouldn’t have let myself slack off last year, I should have been in on MT from the beginning, I should have been doing quick strips the whole time. Comics is something I’ve been doing since I was 4 or 5 years old, before I knew it was comics. Art is something I’ll always do. Of course, real life has got in the way time and again, but I think I’ve got myself in a pretty good place right now, where art, and thus comics, ARE my life. The in between, the getting from there to here, is why you had to wait two months for the third New Comic. As soon as I was up here, I was working on the next installment. I’ve already got some sketches for the fourth one, expect to see it before the April 15th deadline for me to submit a comic to Modern Tales. Plus I’m finally working out the intricate story details for a comic I’ve been wanting to do since summer 2000, but simply haven’t had the time. Depending on how much time New Comic takes up (ie: whether Joey will love it and I’ll be picked up for a regular schedule, or whether it will stay here on Modern Evil & I’ll doo it at my leisure), my new project may or may not see the light of day in the next six months. When it does appear, it will be the beginning of the prologue to the real story. You know, because I was roughing out the story and found that I needed approximately a year’s worth of daily comics to tell just the prologue. When I get THAT one going, I don’t think MT could pass it up. It’s a very rich and detailed story with interesting characters and a significant historical and aetherial background to draw from. Plus, it keeps going well after the battle at Armaggedon, so… You know, it has stayng power. Oh yeah, and it’s experimental, using non-standard connectivity of panels and a virtually infinite canvas to tell the story in… well, I shouldn’t say. Someone else will do it before I can get it published, if I say. But if they ask me to be in that panel, I’ll do my darndest to get it started and online before the Con, and I’ll talk about it there.

I’m going to go down for breakfast now. Have a good day, everybody.