That being said, allow me to present the latest painting that was taking up all my headspace lately:

( Still sitting pretty with a pistol in hand... )
With my recent interest in classic pin-up artists like Elvgren and Dave Stevens, influenced by modern digital artists like Ally Fell and a love of old-school pulp novel covers, this is likely going to be the first in a series of themed paintings.

'Course, having been playing so much Muramasa lately, I can't decide if I'm doing another pulp cover next or cute-n-cuddly kitsune and tanuki.
 

Of course considering I'm getting ready to start a new blog and two new online graphic novels, I'm fairly sure I'm gonna find myself in this position once again.

Don't mind me. Just speaking out loud as I start to understand I'm likely just postponing the inevitable.

 

I intend to drink myself stupid tonight. Anything I did in Miami is getting done double.

But hey! Here's new art!

( Rock and rule, baby. Rock and rule. )

Also, for those of you who are into such things, I have a new photography website: http://www.photomalley.com. Come check 'em out.
 

Any ideas where I should be looking around?

(If distinctions in cuisine matter, I'm interested in French or Italian)

"So Harry, what did you do today?"

"Well, I spent most of my day dealing with cops and private security trying to sort out the legal morass that ensued after SOME FUCKING TWIT BACKED INTO MY CAR IN THE PARKING LOT, THANKS."

Even money says the insurance company attempts to call it contributory negligence.
 

The story of the Battlestar Galactica and the destruction of the colonies is Noah's Ark. God looked down on humanity and Cylons, saw that they were about to repeat the same cycle of violence and destruction that they've been going through over and over again and said "enough". There was enough manipulation to put specific people into place (Zak Adama and Kara, leading to Kara's relationship with Bill and Lee; Bill Adama and the Final Five all on Caprica and/or Galactica) and then instigated the holocaust that wiped out the Colonies.

There are hints that this exact same scenario played out on the Cylon's side last go-round with Anders and Tori seeing the Head characters, which lead to their creation of the their Ark, the ressurection hub. This go-round it was the Humans who got the shitty end of the stick. In both cases you have the metaphorical "all the animals gathered two by two" and then angels (in the form of Head-Six and presumably Head-Baltar) prodding things along the path that God laid out for them to lead them to Mount Ararat after the 40 days and nights.

Unfortunately, as things tend to go when free will is involved, the Humans settled early, picking New Caprica instead of continuing to Earth as they were supposed to. It's at this point that God gives them an even less subtle prodding with a stick in the form of the Cylon occupation (if you'll recall they say the plan has changed), at which point the story is no longer the Flood but the Exodus.

If Roslin is Moses, Adama is Noah.

Obviously it's not a 100% accurate analogue but as we've seen through the series, people's rolls changed as time goes on.

It's after New Caprica that Humanity gets a bit further off track. All signs point to a continuing of the cycle of violence between Cylons and Humans, and God finally decides that enough is enough. Even with teh first sign of random change in the cycle (Hera, a being unprecidented in this eternal struggle) there is every indication that things will continue on in their inevitable course. This is when Kara gets activated and is sacrificed. Kara's initial return leads them to the wrong Earth, which leaves Humanity with absolutely NOTHING. Their backs are literally to the wall. The Ark has run it's course and is about to disintegrate and the only hope they have is, literally, a union with the Cylons.

It's only when the last obstacle towards a Cylon/Human peace is removed (Cavil... notice that neither of the Head characters were particularly upset when Tyrol abruptly ended the transfer) that they're finally rewarded with their true homeland, where *Lee* is the one to establish that it's time for a clean break in the cycle.

This, I am convinced, is part of the metaphor of the pidgeon in his apartment; the dove bringing the twig back to the Ark.

And me, as a bibliophile who has to clear out his shelves every three months because I run out of room to store books when the shelves are already three-deep...

I just can't bring myself to give a damn.

SRSLY.

As much as I love the idea of being able to bring every single book I own with me anywhere at any time the way I can do  with my music collection and my iPod, none of the e-reader options on the net hit that zone that's the sweet spot between convenience and experience. I love the heft and physicality of books, physically turning the pages, sticking whatever spare scrap of paper I have onhand into it as a bookmark, the feel of it as my eyes are defocusing as I fall asleep reading... Even with their covers, the Kindle and the Sony reader both feel more like I'm holding a particularly complicated clipboard.

Now, if you want to get me excited, you know what the killer app for this would be? 

Color.

Think about it for a second.

The biggest issue for comics creators right now is getting comics into the hands of readers. If you know anyone who's even vaguely serious about creating comics, Diamond's new policy changes have set them into a massive hue and cry complete with wailing and gnashing of teeth. I'm somewhat torn on the subject; on the one hand, Diamond's a business, and the point of a business is to make money, not necessarily to be the gateway for a shitload of product that will, in all likelihood, never approach within spitting distance of profitability.

(I should know. How many copies of Miracles Have a Price have YOU seen on your store shelves lately?)

On the other hand, Diamond's also the SOLE entry into the marketplace at this time. If you want direct market access, you have two choices: call stores individually and hand-ship your product to them or go through Diamond. And while I can understand wanting to restrict losses (especially in this economy), the fact that you can spend thousands of dollars on printing, advertising (through Diamond) and market research (also through Diamond), your orders may still never ship in the first place... well there's nothing quite like chopping off the Long Tail, now is there?

One of the Great Saviors of independent comics (besides Image)  has been Teh Intarwubs. Everyone wants to try to replicate the success of Piro, Tycho, Gabe, Kurtz, etc.

Of course, this has issues of it's own; the webcomic movement as it currently stands is STILL geared far more towards gag-a-day newspaper style strips rather than the bound pamphlets that we commonly think of when we think of comics. Now I have full faith that this is just a case of the ongoing evolution as we all struggle with this new medium and learn how to best use it.

What I find fascinating are the pioneers of the new medium. Scott McCloud's experiments in the Infinite Canvas of the web, come to mind. So does one of the great grand-daddies, Argon Zark. Or the occasional splashes of insight and experimentation one can find at places like DeviantArt, such as this comic here (fair warning: most of Balack's work, and DevArt in general is very much NSFW).

Of course, what you usually hear when discussing webcomics are the same issues I have when I talk about the Kindle; it's nice and all but unless you bring your laptop with you, you can't read 'em in the bath. And the ones that experiment with the medium can't be reproduced in any meaningful way in print.

Thus we come to my point.

Imagine, if you will, an e-reader; Apple's minimalist design paired with a full-color, e-ink touchscreen. Wireless internet access. Basic web-browsing capability. Native ablity to read the most common delivery formats; PDF, PRC, HTML, DOC, Flash, CBZ, even basic image files like PNG, JPG and GIF. An RSS aggregator and a centralized delivery hub such as Amazon or iTunes.

Imagine daily, weekly or monthly comics following the podcast model; subscribe to a particular one and recieve a new issue every time the authors update. Get the serialized version or just wait for the "trade" and get it all in one go. The medium and the format can now be as flexible as one would want; you can have McCloud's infinite canvas, Charlie Parker's image-mapped easter-eggs, flash-based experiments in storytelling, even "motion comics" such as the Metal Gear Solid series on UMD as well as traditional page-based comics and graphic novels. Gag-a-day strips, serialized adventure, graphic novels in the classic sense... all of these would work equally well, being bound more to the talent of the creator than the restrictions of the medium.

Barriers to entry into the market would become minimal; while central hubs, a la iTunes would be immensely helpful there would be no reason why a creator couldn't serialize and broadcast his own works himself, just as podcasters don't NEED to go through iTunes or Zune Marketplace. While the floodgates would open to sheer torrents of unreadable crap, the market (as it were) does find it's own level via peer review and word of mouth; throw in a rating system similar to iTunes' App store (where only people who've bought the app can rate it) and the potential for the gold to be discovered amongst the dross increases exponetially.

I want someone to build me this. I want my comics-enabled Kindle/e-reader/what-have-you right the hell now.

 

Once is happenstance. Twice is coinicidence. Three times is enemy action.

SOMEONE's going to the vet this week.
 

Things continue apace here at Caer O'Malley as various "Beginning of the year" projects start to hit the wind-down phase. I've got shoes back from the repair shop, as good as new and ready to be thrown to the wilds of Craigslist,  clothes are sorted for donations, a few old cellphones I never got around to getting rid of are alternately going to women's shelters and phones-for-soldiers groups and books are getting ready to be put up on eBay. Fuck trying to find a price for 'em, let's see what the cold, nearly dead invisible hand of the market has to say.

In fact thanks to some unexpected events, things are actually progressing FASTER than I had expected initially. Looks like I may be doing some stuff earlier than I thought.

(Sorry to sound so cryptic, it's just things I don't feel like going over on my various social networks.)

And, as importantly, if not more so, rehab continues swimingly (for suitably painful values of swimmingly) and I've started weight training again. And um... yeah. My trainer's a cool guy and all but I'm going to be cursing the day his parents were ever born in a few hours from now. It's good having someone who can relate to my goals (and especially the attendent frustrations of the last few months) but holy fucking god that was the most intense workout of a damned long time.

You know, for a guy who's not into S&M, I seem to be paying several not-insignificant amounts of money to hurt me.

Rehab was most interesting for the new addition to the therapy: electrostim. Yup, Mr. Graphicnovelist got hooked up to a car battery and had a few jolts thrown through his leg. Nobody else really seemed to get it when I felt compelled to call out "It's alive! IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!" towards the end as my foot twitched like... well something having a lot of electricity sent through it. Nobody appreciates the classics anymore.

(As a complete aside, I have absolutely no idea how the hell people fetishize this or feel the need to use it for der sexings. Maybe there's some sort of "pleasant tingling" setting that the therapist just never uses, but this felt far more like the shakings of a muscle that's been taxed to the near failing point. A sensation, I might add, that I became intimately familiar with short hours later)