Staccato entry with ampersands and quite a few Coraline links.

Last night I dreamed I watched a duckling bite the nose off a chipmunk. First I thought the chipmunk was going to try and bite the duckling, but then the duckling got its beak to the chipmunk and took half its nose off! It was like a little pink false nail coming away, and quite gory.

I was quite relieved though, as at the time I was trying to keep a little batch of baby chicks & ducklings safe as they ran around the garden with all the cats out. Some of them ran straight for our goose (we don't have a goose, but did in the dream. Obviously), and snoodled under it, which was good. I suspected it may be willing to adopt the baby chicks & ducklings as it had recently gone broody, nesting on a ceramic character that was egg-shaped.

Not long after that, I got trapped in the rabbit hutch that the goose was living in & had to call Sj for help. I think the cats may have caught all the chicks, too.
It wasn't one of my more successful dreams. Oh, wait! Sj did get me out of the hutch. That was good.

Here is the evil buttons site, the blog listing the joys of Coraline news in the run up to the film's release, which I have been enjoying. The art around the whole Coraline film is so pretty. However, I am uncertain as to whether the film itself looks dark enough for my Coraline needs.
But it is a film for childrens, thus needs to retain some levity. Then again, Henry Selick is Mr.Nightmare Before Christmas, so talking about children's films not being to dark is a bit of a moot point, there.

Anyway, I still eagerly await seeing it when it opens over here in May, for a film can look all different flavours in trailers, depending on who the trailers are aimed at. If the pre-release stuffs, like the prettiness of the Evil Buttons site and the beautiful Coraline boxes that have been sent out to various bloggers is the best of Coraline, I shall be just as happy, because it really is ever so nice. You can even knit a tiny coraline jumper, like the amazing Althea Crome if you like. OR replace your own eyes with buttons (this one is a particularly beautiful page, an compatible with webcams for uploading pictures to be eye-buttoned. Yum).

Also, the other day I was having a look through the Coraline cast list for the first time and saw that French & Saunders were playing the little old ladies who live with performing West Highland Terriers. It was a piece of casting that made me pleased. Pleased like when I first saw Jennifer Saunders in Muppet Treasure Island. Me & Sj like Muppet Treasure Island a lot. Sj likes it partly because she can mock me over looking a lot like the small boy in it. Of course, the small boy has now grown up to be Kevin Bishop of the Kevin Bishop show, which is brilliant. I think I win that one.

(See how I say he has grown up to be Kevin Bishop as if he is but a wee young lad. He's only a year younger than me)

You know what writing my blog has taught me so far? I haven't written for aaaages. I have been all drawing pictures. Now I have to keep going back cleaning up my clumsy bits, or going back and staring at them going "that reads rubbish. What do I do?". Rusty...word...brain... get your things in the order of the...y'know... stuffs.

That reminds me - my mum's on the home stretch in the latest Septimus book. It's been doing her head in getting it to work right, be in the correct order and make sense all at once. She sounds a lot more sorted now, even though she is still knackered. It's the bit where the book is finished, but needs sorting. I always like it when you've finished a story and just need to jumble. It's all there and down and just wants a bit of hoover, instead of there being walls unbuilt.

Mmm, house metaphores.

Anyway, what am I talking about, sounding all knowledgable? I've not writ a story for ages. I've been drawing cats with little skirts on & speech bubbles saying "bum".


That was going to be the end of today's entry, but I feel I need to tack on an apology for arbitrary ampersand usage. They were being used out of laziness only, and then I thought they looked a bit sloppy (and, let's be honest, lazy), and have gone through replacing them. I think I've caught them all, but I may not have done. It's late now & I'm quite tired. Arrgh! Look! Look! There's one!

I can't even correct it now, because it would totally invalidate my hysterical reaction there. I could delete it all, but look at all the effort I've put into typing these words.

I would feel sad if it all went away. It would be like a piece of stray timeline after someone had been meddling in the past and changed the present & then gone back and they were all on their own in knowing what the original past was like. That's where the ending comes in, when the future is okay again, but what happens to that one person left with knowledge that doesn't actually exist...only, it does exist?

It's a recipe for depression & psychological decline, if ever I saw one. Maybe that's what makes the protagonist of the film the true hero.

Eels, eels, eels, eels

My sister, Lois, is living in Japan at the moment, doing a three month intensive language course (learning Japanese, as it's less well geared up over there for learning French). Yesterday she went to Akihabara, which is known as Akihabara Electric Town & where you go for anything & everything electronic, anime, computer & otaku ("Otaku is a Japanese term used to refer to people with obsessive interests, particularly anime, manga, and video games." -wikipedia).

Basically, it is Lois Heaven. Anyway, she was writing about her first encounter of miles upon miles of porn on one floor of a 7 floor store (one of which was a robot floor, just for robots).

Being familiar with the dubious wonders of Hentai (Hentai is a Japanese word that, in the West, is used when referring to sexually explicit or pornographic comics and animation, particularly Japanese anime, manga and computer games. The word "hentai" has a negative connotation to the Japanese and is commonly used to mean "sexually perverted" -wikipedia.), I posted her a rambly message in reply on the comparison you can draw with Victorian & Japanese culture & musings about porn & la-de-dah.

During the course of said ramble, I mentioned octopus and eel porn (the porn is of the octopus, not for the octopus. Poor octopuses. I bet they're sad there's no pornographic demographic they can be part of. There is a whole blog dedicated to all things cephalopod, though. It's here. Also Squidoo.com has an I Love Cephalopods page).

Then Sj got the Eels Song from The Mighty Boosh stuck in her head, and I found this picture online (I think you'll agree it's quite aesthetically intoxicating). So today I have discovered that once one has thought about octo-porn of evening, it's very hard to stop thinking about it, in one way or another (possibly this is the secret of its success).

Hm? Oh, yes. I was actually looking for octopus porn on Google Images when I found this picture (from the Posthumous Blues blog, 21st oct '96. "The official blog of Mat Tonnies, author, futurist and fortean", which is worth a read. Isn't it good when you find interesting sites through idle image searches?). Just out of curiosity, you understand. I'd recommend you don't follow suit unless you're REALLY interested (or unavoidably curious, now that I've written about it). It's the same sort of risky endeavour as image searching 'goatse' (I'm not going to start explaining that one for the uniniated - you can read about it here, in its wiki article).

Oh! Related to that, here is Pornotron. Not as dodgy as it sounds, it's a googley spin-off page that gives you only the images that you don't get with safesearch turned off (and no others). Go and play on it - a lot of the pictures have no adult content at all, but associated words like 'hot' and 'breast' (a very cheeky photo of, um, fried chicken).

Don't accidentally type in 'pornotron.com' if you're typing it in by hand, it's pornotron.org. The former is actually a porn site with a front page full of pictures you don't want to look at over a nice cup of tea. Again, not one to type 'goatse' into. I'm just warning you, that's all. Warning you by putting the idea in your head. What a lovely theme I am establishing for this post!




I will make it nicer:

There. All better. (from cuteoverload)


Anyway, next!

You probably need to watch this video. If you are already familiar with Hurra Torpedo, you will hopefully understand my eagerness to share. We only just found out about them yesterday. If reading the following series of words either peaks your interest, intrigues, thrills, fascinates or perhaps even faintly horrifies you, then you really should click on the vid link:
Bonnie Tyler • nylon tracksuits • percussive kitchen appliance destruction • gratuitous bum crack action • impressive hair & beard ensemble • swedish musical style.

Hooked yet?
Tut. You're too fickle. Go and have a look anyway.


Finally, here is Tontie. A game I got stuck to a year or so ago & recently rediscovered. So far I've only played it once. Though that once did have ten continue options, so maybe it counts as more than once. It's actually really really good, if you have a need to learn the little extended number pad on keyboards so that you can use it without looking. I had a terrible moment when I first played it on my laptop & didn't notice that I could press num lock to make a block of numbers & letters into a psuedo-extended number pad. I thought I may have lost Tontie forever. Once you have played it, you will understand.

Um, probably.

Have a look at the other games available too, particularly the 'grow' games, if you've not encountered them before. It's all about doing things in the right order. Oh, and if it IS driving you mad, you can cheat & look it up online. Which I have only done once, as an alternative to biting through a pillow and going "Gnarrrrrrr!".

Ending on a picture I drew a while ago, suitably raunchy to match my porno theme...

First T-shirt sale!

Someone has bought one of my t-shirts!
It was a Pirate Cat tee, which is a personal fave.
I have earned nearly two and a half pounds today. OoOOoooh...

2nd Post with bonus WORDS! Also, t-shirts & money musings

Today I shall actually write a blog with words, though it would be unfair not to put a picture in as well, so I shall find a nice one in my drawing folder on the mac & upload that.

First, news of merchandise - mmmmm!


Laurie T-shirts are available for the very first time!

Through RedBubble, which is perfect for my needs, as it asks nothing more complicated or organsation-heavy than an image upload. I am so very rubbish at doing more than that, thus this suits me to the ground for first t-shirt try-outs. The format is limited to one image within a pre-defined space on the front of the tee but, for the simplicity, I'm quite willing to forgo the opportunity of massive all-over prints and doodles on the sleeve.

So far they're doing quite nicely, with several comments and quite a few favouritings. My first tee (arse monkey. Great word for faux-tourettes sufferers) even got onto the featured page when it was uploaded, which was lovely. It's probably on the 2nd or 3rd page by now, but the interest it got me while it was on the first page did me good. Yesyes.

No sales yet, mind. I'd like a sale. It'd make me feel quite special, AND earn me £3!


Working on the new Trof Times for Feb at the moment (Trof are three bars in manchester, that you can learn more about at their website. Watch out! It's a noisy link), which is very welcome indeed, as I'd forgotten they weren't doing one for January & missed the cash very much indeed. BUT the month without did make me realise that I've come to rely on my monthly Trof income (which I'm very fortunate to have) which I shouldn't be relying on so much for, as all things, Trof Timeses are transient & one day will no longer there. Also, that it's too easy to get stuck in a rut & be doing the same stuff all the time, even for very little money. So I'm officially finding an agent now. No, really, honest. This will make my mum very pleased.

There's probably an excellent argument against getting an agent, as a potentially hip young street artist (though I am at the very edge of that definition, I think). Certainly managing my own jobs will get me that extra 10/20/30% (I forget what the current going rate is, and should perhaps check that, to avoid being diddled by the unscrupulous). However, if it bypasses me having to search for and organise jobs, that's money worth paying, I reckon. For, as previously mentioned, I am dead rubbish at that.

Also, agents talk you up a bit, and set decent prices for things. Half, if not three quarters of any artist's success in this world does tend to be down to their ability to self-publicise. Mum (who has spent most of her working life as a freelance illustrator) is constantly telling me that to price your art low is all very well, but by doing it you also lower the value of your work in the eyes of those you're trying to sell to. It's very true, and all a bit of a balancing act. Unfortunately, it's a difficult thing to price one's own stuff up higher, particularly if you need money enough that the possible loss of a sale is a worse prospect than a sale that brings in less cash.

Of course, if you're willing to play the bluff and say bollocks to a lost sale, the raised price will be all the better if and whatever work in question it is DOES sell. Thus you become someone who sells in a higher price bracket. Thus you get attention from those who buy in a higher price bracket. Thus your work does indeed become worth more. Thus you over use 'thus' in a blog post, and start to sound foolish.

Today Laura (11) has two friends over, both of whom come from clean & lovely but smokey households. I wonder if "smoking makes your kids smell funny" would work as an anti-smoking ad campaign.

Finally, some good stuff I've been perusing/using as displacement activities:

Neil Gaiman's Journal & Twitter.
By the law of averages there must be someone who hates him and all that he does, but they've probably confused him with L. Ron Hubbard. Easily done, I believe. Scienctology & Sandman both start with S.
Following the tale (ho! nearly an intentional pun) of his dog-with-a-poorly leg has been most entertaining. And pleasing, because the dog is getting better.

Steampunk Vader Mask

Yum. Find it here.
(via)

The Universal Comedy Flow Chart




Full size here

Also:
The Heavy Metal Band Names Flow Chart
Things You Say During Sex Flow Chart
All from comic vs. audience.

1st blog post, as presented by dino & dino cat. And hexabee.