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Showing posts from September, 2012

trouble (prelude)

Been drawing some trouble these days. More on that later. * * * * * Walking home, heard from a top floor window, with a blanket instead of curtains You bastard. I lost my daughter for you. I lost my daughter for you. You bastard. which makes one look, and stop, and stand there in the darkness, waiting a minute to see if it gets worse. * * * * * Cleaned out my closet last night. Jesus. Some clothes too small, that's fine, I'm not that kind of hopeful, but a lot more just left to collect dust. Not doing that anymore. Amazing how a little anger can promote a lot of honesty.

customs

A custom shirt, made for Ariel . If you'd like a custom shirt, just write me .

a birthday c

It's C's birthday today. She is a very old person now. To remind her (gently!) that she was once quite young, I rescued some old school photographs out of a box. Unfortunately, none of these pictures were labelled. Have I put them in the right order, youngest at top? Is the notion of chronology even appropriate at this point? Is time an elastic concept, and the past only as relevant as memory? Does Cleveland have any chance against Baltimore this weekend? Birthdays are so imbued with reflection.

the remote future (it's fine)

the remote future (it's fine) mixed media on cradled wood panel 30 x 30 inches the string series continues in the  shop Really, it's fine. It's good. It's all good. It's gonna be great.

mad, bad, and luxembourg

Spending a lot of time with Oona Balloona this week, and going a little nuts in the process, as she has not quite found a pair of listening ears that fit properly. Negative choices will only get you so far ( Well, here are your choices: you can put your shoes on or you can have a time out. You pick. ), and it's difficult to stay aggravated with someone who gives such good hugs. * * * * * Free couch on the street this morning. Also, unfortunately, a wet couch. I would like to see a study for the success rate of giving away furniture on the street after a rain. In places like Montreal it doesn't seem to matter, as there's this whole relentless street economy going on. In the neighbourhoods where I lived in Winnipeg -- old buildings, rental rich -- people tended to just take their unwanted furniture and dump it in the alley. * * * * * Mailing a book to Luxembourg today. I wonder what the free-furniture protocol is there? I think I'll tuck in a drawing

squeeze

The next installment of my drawing-poem duel with Ariel .

it's fine

Today I tried, for the last time (hopefully, because I even wrote it down this time -- don't fucking do that again ), to explain the following graphic design problem:  a) Rushed work is bad work. When the client rushes the job, the design suffers. In fact, when the client is just floundering around, desperate and frantic and talking crap, then there's really no design at all -- just something thrown together, and pushed out the door. b) Bad work is not worth doing.  The point of the entire exercise is almost completely defeated -- shitty-looking work, smeared with errors. And that's all that people will see.  c) Actually, bad work is more like pee.  For the graphic designer, it's like having to take the last open seat on the bus, only to discover that it's still damp with pee -- and this isn't just disheartening, but now you have to sit in it, and anyone within sniffing distance will stay the fuck away. Because that's who you are now. The guy soa

sharing, caring -- this is who i am

Out of the blue, been mailing work all over the place these last few days: Ireland, Australia, California, even exotic Winnipeg(!). I always put extras in my parcels -- drawings or other artwork, accordion story cards, etc -- but only sometimes do they have any reason attached, and work out perfectly, like these drawings on masonite board, which did double duty protecting a painting. * * * * * The NHL lock-out/strike has started. Who cares. They'll bleed money for awhile, until they start to feel it, and in the meantime the people who need the distraction will distract themselves with other distractions, and none of it means anything. * * * * * Aside from incidents involving ambulances, firearms or oozing stigmata, is there a worse way to start your morning than spilling a cup of coffee? Luckily I didn't spill it directly onto the laptop (or into the keyboard), but it was still a hellacious mess. C came down and asked, O, was it only coffee? , which is a

it always ends like this

only you , acrylic inks on paper, 8 x 5 inches. * * * * * I just spent the better part of a week alone with my three year-old, my mother, my older brother, and a sporadic but vengeful toothache/headache, culminating in two trips to the dentist in two days. Just how crazy do you think I am right now? • Super crazy, with super-crazy-glue powers. • Temporary crazy, according to any decent lawyer. • Only slightly crazy, but with psychotic frosting. • Deep blue crazy, because it was there all along, like that helicopter that's always followed me, everywhere I go. • Crazy for you. • New-resident-but-only-renting-in-Crazy-Town crazy • All-aboard-the-Dinosaur-I-mean-Crazy-Train crazy. • More-Goofy-Greats-than-Looney-Tunes crazy. • Crazy but in a come-on-down-for-the-crazy-deals-this-weekend kind of crazy. Hey, give me your own answer. Between what I get here and on Facebook, I'll do a draw for the above drawing. I'll even mail it to you. How crazy i

this wellness tastes so clean, and fresh, like a mountain, of Javex

I don't understand why I'm so stupid. Instead of just repeating my mistakes, like most reasonable people, I take them on as a career. * * * * * If graphic design has taught me anything, it's that people do not act in their own interests. Someone will ask me to design a logo for their new company, let's call it ... Bay Harbour Wellness. I already have some ideas , they'll say, presenting me with a series of sketches. And those ideas will be: a picture of a bay, a picture of a harbour, and a picture of someone helping someone, maybe over a wall or up a hill. Maybe the hill could be in the background , they'll say. * * * * * In fact, most people don't even understand what their interests are. They've never really thought about it, except in a What Colour is Your Parachute?- meets-IKEA-catalogue kind of way. They know they want new shoes this fall, and to be thinner, and to be treated better by the people around them, but the very nature

new season, old ideas

Lots of cigar-tin stories in the shop , including #134 . Hanging around. Asking awkward questions. * * * * * Made the mistake, ever since 1 September, of thinking summer was over, and that I could stop dressing like a toddler or a refugee from a flood. Maybe even wear pants. But by yesterday this idea had culminated in so much sweat that I wondered what was wrong with me, if perhaps I was on fire inside, and why my pants felt radioactive. And then after supper it rained so hard that I just sat by an open window, watching wind, and after awhile went to bed.

labour day, fatale

Labour Day long weekend, as if the name meant anything. People hate unions now, because the idea of wealth without prosperity has finally won out. Friday morning generous and cool with long breezes off the lake, but then downtown in the afternoon it's a heat sink, sticky and choking. Summer can end now, thank you. An otherwise normal-looking girl at the library, only she's wearing a winter scarf like a fashion accessory, and using the pay phone(!), saying, ... and he said it looked like I'd had six kids and then he was like, there's one missing, and I didn't even know what he was talking about. On Saturday Oona, C and I go for a bike ride up in Rideau Heights, with Oona as mom's passenger. The area has a fairly scorched look, with a few hopeless trees. Amidst the lack of shade, the dress code is largely the same as our own neighbourhood, perhaps with less drunkenness and more shirtlessness, and accents of armloads of broken-looking electronics. Cabs feature