"What's a sick day?" Art

Here he is, finally. Eliot. Not the best picture of him. It looked better before I scanned and colored it. I need to learn how to actually digitally color, rather than just dumping color in spaces with the bucket tool. Well, I am still learning, and practice makes perfect or some such.

Easily distracted

Dear Friend,
Every day, as I go about my life, I think of interesting topics to blog about. However, every day as soon as I turn on the computer my brain seems to say "Ooh, shiny!" and get lost in the glitter that is the Internet. I then, after having gone through my e-mail, facebook, various blogs and discussion forums will hit the New Post button on blogger and think, "Why am I here again?" Today, as you see, is no different.

I wish I could blog while riding in the car. I become especially creative while in the backseat of my Mother's car as we drive down the highway. Everything worth going to around here seems to be at least a half-hour drive away from us on the highway. My parent's have toyed with the idea of naming our property Cartegena since we love to use the quote "Angel, you are hell and gone from Cartegena!" from Romancing the Stone. And, truly, everything is hell and gone from our home. And so, when our little family decides to go do something I end up in the backseat, wishing I had my laptop or my sketch book. However, if I had either of those I'd end up feeling queasy and carsick. For some reason I started getting nauseated by windy roads at the age of 23, it was odd. I used to be able to read in the car. Maybe that's why I get so creative in the car now, I don't have anything to distract me from my oh so brilliant thoughts.

I wish I had more consistency in my drawing. I'm attempting to do something with Eliot, my little cat cartoon. I kind of want to make him a comic strip or some such, but I can't imagine a comic involving one solitary character. I would draw "My girl" (he calls his owner My girl, apparently because he can't be bothered with learning her name or something) but I truly and utterly fail at drawing people. I can draw animals, cartoony or otherwise, till the cows come home, but my people frighten small children. I am practicing, but it seems with little progress. I suppose I could draw other cats for him to interact with, but from my life experience cat's don't tend to get on well together. In any case, he's the first character I've drawn in years that seemed to come ready with a personality as soon as I drew him.

Weird, isn't it, that I could draw something myself, look at it and feel like I've just met an actual personality. Maybe I'm nuts. The strangest part of it was the fact that I could figure out what his voice sounded like, despite the fact that in my head most comic and book characters don't have voices, I just read them in my own voice. One of these days I'll work up the motivation to go down to the office and scan a few pictures of Eliot so that people know what the heck I'm babbling on about in my blog.

25 Things

Dear friend,
My Brother has already done "25 Things" twice over. I found it interesting, both times, and pretty revealing, too. I thought I'd take a shot at it, and here we go.

1 I'm becoming increasingly interested in Name Meanings. My most recent fictional character went through approximately 5 names before I found one suitable: Eliot which means My God is Yahweh.

2 I was once told that I should go on Jeopardy merely because I knew the origin of the word "chortle."

3 I don't understand when people say they're mad at God. I don't know how they can forget that we live in a fallen world, and have an enemy who does everything he can to make our lives suck, and people have free will. I just don't get it.

4 I don't think I have any taste in music, good or bad. I've liked masterpieces and I've liked garbage. I'm well aware of the difference. I just like what I like.

5 I honestly believe that if I lived in a house without a cat in it some part of me would shrivel up and die. Cats are vital to my life.

6 Though I enjoy poetry, I don't like poems that don't rhyme. It may sound shallow, but I like clever wordplay with rhyme and rhythm.

7 I'm fascinated by points of view. It amazes me how siblings, raised by the same parents in the same home for years can see the exact same instance in completely different lights.

8 My favorite constellation is Orion because I remember the cold Michigan night I first noticed three stars in a row as I stood in our snowy driveway.

9 My sense of humor occasionally disturbs me. This for example shouldn't make me laugh, as it's quite morbid, in fact Mordecai (the black and white cat) shouldn't be my favorite character since he's a cold-blooded killer, but he is. Yet at other times I'm appalled at the horrible things others laugh at.

10 I make "Personal Celebrities" out of people that most others around me have never noticed. Real celebrities bore me, and show up on tabloids far too often.

11 I hate hearing cuss words. (I also refuse to call them swear words) Yet if you could read my thoughts, you would think my favorite word was sh*t.

12 Up until age 24 I hated Pineapple, and only tried it again because of Psych. I still can't eat it in large amounts, but I love the stuff now.

13 I never cheated on a test until I was home schooled. I got away with it once and was caught the second time. I never did it again.

14 I greatly dislike people who try to act like my buddy as soon as they meet me. Especially if they make stupid comments and act like I agree with them or if they are huggy or touchy right away. (Or ever, really)

15 I love birds, even the ugly turkey buzzards we've got around here, but I hate Canadian Geese. Those are just plain creepy.

16 I find accents interesting, American, English, Scottish, Australian, etc. Especially the regional aspects of them. It's fascinating that two people from opposite sides of a city can have different accents.

17 I sometimes get caught up in what happens "off camera" in a story. For example, I wonder about the news coverage of the "traffic" in Mr and Mrs Smith or what if some poor dope was walking outside when Kelly Clarkson decided to start chucking junk out of the apartment window in the "My Life Would Suck Without You" video.

18 I refuse to drive in a car with my mother. She makes me too nervous. I even was dreaming one morning that I refused to get in the drivers seat of a car she was in.

19 I adore the Geico Gecko. He's so cute.

20 I tend to be attracted to guys with what I call distinctive noses. The world at large would probably call them large noses. (Not all cute guys have big noses, though, just a lot of the ones I like looking at)

21 When I was little I wanted to go to Australia, when I was a teenager I wanted to go to Canada, now that I'm grown I want to go to the UK. The only thing these places have in common is that most of the people speak English. :-)

22 I love miniaturized things. I plan on having a dollhouse for my kids.

23 I'm amazed at how alike my Mom and Brother are, and how alike my Dad and I are. Yet, I'm also amazed at how alike my Mom and I are and how alike my Dad and brother are. Our dynamic is awesome.

24 It amazes me when people speak well of me. Not from some false sense of "modesty" or because I think I suck or something, I just figure I fly too low under the world's radar to be thought of.

25 My favorite word is Awesome, because, well, it's awesome!!!

Issues

Dear Friend,
I've been just shy of posting something self-pitying on almost every site, forum, board I am signed onto this past week. I don't know, life just seemed so unreasonably empty. I was dealing with personal issues in my head, and then people in my life decided to tell me the problems they had with me on top of it. The fact that I had been attempting to fix that myself didn't help the fact that it was out of left field to hear about it. I have two ways of dealing with this sort of thing: get really angry or cry. As usual, I cried. I was on the verge of tears for two days.
I'm over it.
I do still have one issue I am dealing with. I have finally restored my "trust" in Victoria (which, by the way, is what I named my computer. Yeah, she has a name now) but the internet isn't being very obliging. Before I had the stressful experience of needing to restore everything on my laptop due to a virus I used to spend hours online. I now don't needlessly stress about viruses, but the internet isn't as entertaining as I used to think it was. Seriously, Facebook, blogs, DeviantArt, message boards, Youtube, and even shopping has been so dull this time around.
Yeah, I guess I'm just asking too much.
I have found a new activity. I've discovered a character I can draw. He's a cat. I can tell from these drawings what his personality is like, but I haven't named him yet. Pretty soon I'll learn how to use the scanner and put up a picture of him on here. Maybe DevArt, but I doubt that one. He has just a little ball of a tail. The funniest thing is I know what his voice sounds like. Yeah, cats don't talk, but he's a cartoon cat. In a move that's quite typical of me, he sounds like a Rob Paulsen voice. I, however, can't think of a character Rob has done in this voice that I'm thinking of. Hmm, the research would involve lots of cartoon watching, poor me. I was being sarcastic, if you couldn't tell. Maybe I'll do a comic strip involving him in my spare time. Then again, maybe one day I'll forget all about him. I wonder if I should call him Max. Hmm, no that's not quite him.