Category: Uncategorized

I’ve been trying to “document” my actual sleep schedule in iCal lately, and … it doesn’t look good. Going to sleep after 5 or 6AM all week, and alternately waking up at 9 or 10AM with days where I sleep until 2 or 4PM. Long sleep, short sleep, long sleep, short sleep, if I stick to the pattern I won’t get to sleep for another three hours and I’ll be up before 10.

And I haven’t been accomplishing much, either. I’ve been working a lot on this experimental comic, but I just hit a couple of roadblocks. For one, I’m at a part I wrote that requires me to do a fair amount of algebra to figure out how to code it, and I keep coming up with the wrong results. My brain just isn’t in tune with algebra right now, I think. Another is that I looked at it so far on a Wintel PC and found … that a lot of the things I programmed don’t work correctly because WinIE doesn’t accurately interact with JavaScript. That is, sometimes it says there was an onMouseOut event when there wasn’t, sometimes it reports an onClick as an onMouseOver and onMouseOut both, and sometimes it behaves correctly. So some of the things I set up so that the user has to mouse over and off of certain images in certain patterns to follow the script of the story just suddenly jump ahead as though they had done so, whether they have or not. So, that’s a challenge.

And there have been abrasives problems… new ones not being as effective as expected… and I forgot to pick up some more of the ones I know work when I was in town the other day… so I’m going to pick some more up tomorrow when I go see Hidalgo, but … what about before that? What work can I get done? I guess some hand-sanding, some work with the less-effective abrasives. Whatever. I’ve decided to change from a “small table” to a coffee table. Which drives up the price and the sale-ability, in theory, without much changing the work involved.

I don’t know. If I could somehow get paid for not feeling very good, I’d be set for life. If not feeling like facing the day, if being depressed enough to forget to get out of bed, if prefering the night because I don’t have to deal with anyone… if these things could be turned into income, I’d be set. A couple of hours ago, I though about going downstairs and working on my sanding.

I’m thinking of going down now.

Heck, whether I’m staying awake up here or down there, I’ve got to build another fire. At least if I go down there and work I know I’ll be working on something that will almost definitely pay out. If I stay up here and work … on my comics, which no one even pays a quarter for, on my novels which no one wants to buy, on transcribing my high-school stories and poems which no one cares about at all, that’s work on things that … may never produce income. I could even get my everything out and try to work on painting, but … I sold all of 3 paintings last year. With this furniture, there is a matter of getting word out that it’s available, but there is a known market for it up here… they say.

The economy has been in such poor shape since Bush took over that every business I know of in the area has been hit hard, established market or not. Who knows what this year will be like. My dad keeps saying that no matter what happens to the economy, the rich will always be rich, so they’re the ones we’re building for, but … I don’t know. I suppose I just have to have faith.

And I do.

I have more faith that the furniture will sell than any of the other things I want to do. The writing, the painting, the comic-ing, any of it. And at least there’s SOME creativity in the furniture building. I don’t want to buy and re-sell things on eBay. I don’t want to work retail. I don’t want to manufacture endless duplicates of something. Original pieces, that appeals to me.

Maybe it’s because once I finish a piece, it’s over, it’s done with, I never have to work on it again. It’s like tech support. One of the few things I really liked about taking tech support calls was that most of the time, you get a call, you solve the issue, the call is done and you never think about it again. There’s nothing to bring home at the end of the day, usually not even stress, because you don’t have any pending projects weighing on you. That was nice, until Realink decided to … stop.. I’m not talking about them.

Anyway, yeah. The way my mind works, I lose the drive to work on most individual creative projects after only a week or two (which is way up from what it was even 24 months ago) and being able to start something new is a great relief. Six months was just about too, too long for the Mouse Project before I stopped caring about it anymore. I can feel myself getting tired of this experimental comic I’m working on, and I ran out of steam on Anyone But You in … like, two hours. I’ll see if I can’t get back into that at some point. Or not. It doesn’t really have a story. Maybe I’ll go the easy route. Draw one panel, copy it 60 times, and just change the text and facial expressions.

Anyway, it’s almost 3AM, I’m going dowanstairs, I’m working until 5 or 6AM, or until I’m too tired to work, whichever seems the most reasonable. I do have to get to sleep at some point, so I can wake up, go to town, do some shopping, pick up Heath from school, and watch Hidalgo. But for now, sanding.

Sleep? Strange thing.

I don’t seem to know where it’s supposed to go, to start and stop, in my life.

Oh well.

So, woodworking lately has put me more and more in mind of … well, woodworking. And having to carve out some … irregular and dangerous bits from the lamps I was working on has finally given my hands a bit of practical experience with carving, so that my mind startes thinking of it again. And so I brought some carving tools up to my room and started work again on a little chunk of wood I’d had some feelings about carving in the past, and I’ve been whittling away at it the last few days.

And tonight, as I was taking a break between coding an experimental comic (you’ve probably already read it by now, but I’m about … 20 hours of work into it so far, and expect another 10 or so before it’s all to my satisfaction… and then I begin testing it on PCs) and transcribing and posting my “Vintage” short stories, and was carving away.

Now, the chunk of wood I’m working on is pretty small, just a couple of inches by a couple of inches by about an inch, so there’s not a lot of room to hold it so that I’m not carving towards some part of me. Which usually isn’t a problem; I’m pretty careful most of the time. But tonight I managed to hit my thumb.

At first I couldn’t even see that there was something wrong. The tool must be pretty sharp. My thumb goes directly into my mouth, but … nothing. Just pain. No blood, no obvious wound. Except that after a bit of sucking, I’ve pulled up the flap of flesh that was cut by the blade, and I can bit it off, which I try to do. I get most of it. I can see now that while the wound is small, it may be deep. I am still not bleeding externally.

I press my thumb firmly (and out of the way) back against the wood and continue carving. After a couple of moments, when I take my thumb away, I see that I have started bleeding, and there is a drop of blood on the wood. I rub it up and down a feature I have carved into the wood with my thumb, spreading it out.

It spreads too thin, it’s just barely pink now. But my thumb is bleeding pretty fast now. I press my thumb against that spot again and carve some more to pass the time. Now there is a little line of blood and a big impression of blood from where my thumb was pressed. Again, I spread the blood out, rubbing it into the wood, hoping it will stain the wood. The blood is dark at first, and deep in hue, even as I spread it across the feature. The color that remains as the blood is spread evenly, but very very thinly, is a surprizingly red red. I keep bleeding on that side of the wood until I am satisfied with my application of blood, perhaps staining, to that feature.

I have begun squeezing my thumb as I have had so many blood technicians do to get drops of blood to swell from my fingertips, using the larger drops to get the color of the blood into the tiny cracks and crevases in the wood, then using the moistened surface of my bleeding thumb to create an even value of color across the feature. Once I am satisfied, I move to a feature on the opposite side of the wood, and I begin to color it to match.

By now, my blood is beginning to slow; I’m really having to squeeze to get more out, and I’m not sure it will be enough to cover the entire feature. With some perseverence, I am able to get a satisfying hue and value of red to both features, on opposite sides of the wood, before my blood stops up.

I am not 100% satisfied with the carving of the rest of the wood, but these two features were already done. I am thinking now about sanding and carefully working with the remainder of the wood to get it into the kind of shape and quality level that I would like, then see about how it takes a finish. See whether the blood actually stained the wood or not. See how the color is affected by the finish.

I am thinking, perhaps too much, about the whole thing. I am … very … my creative mind goes fast and furious to work when the subject of blood play and blood art comes to it. I have been able, mostly, to avoid exposure to blood all my life, in any significant, exposed quantity. Blood in bags and jars and machines, as when I donate blood or plasma, is … it seems antiseptic and without artistic merit to me there; too cold and scientific and unnatural. Blood spilled out across the floor, pooling and puddling… Blood dripping and draining and sometimes squirting from openings in people, from the mistakes they have made and left behind while they tend to themselves first and this “mess”, this … living, powerful, emotion-inducing substance which inspires me in so many ways.

I have avoided the sight of blood most of my life, not because it offends me, but because it excites me.

It’s like avoiding having anything in my home which could be used to seriously, perhaps fatally, harm someone; myself or others. I know myself too well. I know that sometimes my mind turns to thoughts of death, of my own, or of other people’s at my hands. I know that I am entranced by blood, that if I had a knife that could cut, draw blood, it would be hard for me to stop. I have never wanted to be one of those people who carves into his own flesh for pleasure, but I suspect that if carving my flesh was what it took to get the blood, I would be covered in scars. And I suspect that if I had not made too many ways to keep myself from it, from keeping dangerous items away to making sure there are people who would always suspect me of murder should someone go missing or some clue turn up, I would have hurt a great number of people by now.

But here, let’s move off that a bit:

I’m thinking now about what I can do with blood. Can I stain woods, and what woods, and to what degree? Can I add blood to finishes to change their hue, as was prominently featured in the motion picture The Red Violin? Can I create paints from acrylic medium and blood? And dried blood? Can I put together “installation” art pieces with flowing, real, blood in them? Am I allowed to just play in blood? It’s so neat. I just want to bathe in it.

(I own the DVD of Forsaken, a mediocre vampire movie; it won me over in the first scene, which features a naked young woman, covered entirely in blood. I saw it in the theatre, and as soon as the woman covered realistically in blood (she was trying to shower it off) came on the screen I thought to myself something like “Wow! This movie is great! Nudity AND a literal blood bath, and in the first thirty seconds! Wow! I love it!”)

Anyway, that’s probably enough of that. I better go to bed. Heath will be getting up for school in a few minutes, and he thinks it’s silly of me to still be awake when he gets up.

But as you know by now, I’m going to keep it a secret for the rest of the month. There shall be no appearance of posts on FYTH until the last moments of March, when they shall all, quite suddenly, appear at once. That is, as you are reading this then (if at all), I continued making posts, I just didn’t publish them to the public webspace.

Mwahahaha!

I am vastly silly! And my wordcounts are surprising, in more ways than two!

And now, to post about blood.

I’m thinking of leaving my wordcount at 400 this month.

Whaddya think?

Seriously, I’m on my way to bed after spending the last seven or eight hours (I’ve lost track; Iain, when did I say I was starting?) simply drawing an ambitious experimental comic tonight. I created 138 .gif files tonight. I have no idea how many “panels” they make up. I probably won’t after I get through putting it together, either.

Wow. Eight hours? Longer, if I count writing the paper script. This is taking a while. And the next step, the actually getting it put together into DHTML and JS and working and tested and wonderful and all that business, all the coding that it’s going to take to string these 138 images together into a coherent whole… I expect it to take at least as long as the drawing took, if not … two or three times longer.

Whoo.

Oh, here’s a quick pic of the lamps I just finished. I’ll get more online when I’m not about to pass out.

Anyway, yeah. I’m physically tired, not just because of the long day, but from the drawing. I don’t know how many of you draw, but have you ever done it eight hours straight? Starting at the “end” of the day, for that matter? Not the best idea. But I didn’t want to stop before I had the entire thing drawn. Success!

And now, sleep, and tomorrow … sanding, I think. And then more sanding. And then later that day, coding. Whee!

Anyone want to buy a lamp?