My watch otaku-ness continues. But I couldn’t resist this SUPER MARIO BROS / G-Shock collaboration:
K and I have a tacit agreement in our marriage: she can buy plants, I can buy fascinating timepieces: the secret to any successful marriage, I think.
When I woke up this morning, did I think I'd end the morning mesmerized by a collection of music from late 70's/early 80's Italian softcore? Nope. But here I am. Utterly brilliant.
Pervasive stuckness this morning so another Lynda Barry exercise (MAKING COMICS, pp. 61-62) was required. This time, "Scribble Monster Jam," which involved a paneled and quartered piece of paper, four quickly drawn shapes, two minute monsters, and an index card with four complete sentences – "Something you have to do / a line you have memorized from a poem or song / a question you have been wondering about / a specific command by a king or a queen" – which I was then required to add to one of my drawn panels of my choosing.
Dialogue translations from Tylerglyphics: REMEMBER TO PICK UP THE PIES... LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS... SPEAK, MORTAL!... IS THIS MY LAST NAME?
Still stuck – though fun was most certainly had.
22 November, always, even more than a decade after my Executive Director tenure ended and almost a decade since I resigned from the board, is an anniversary – a morbid one, certainly, but more packed with personal meaning than Thanksgiving ever could be.
How much of myself did I give to that gig? (too much and not enough) How much did I gain? (I found my way to writing, fully, through it – so there's that – but I also gained one (maybe two) very deep, very profund regret(s), forks in the road etc) How much did I lose? (everything – but not everything I lost was worth keeping, far from it) ...
I suppose I'm thinking of it in more extistential detail this year than normal: we signed our wills yesterday and I realized that, outside of my wife's family and one very important exception, I have no one to pass anything on to. Being the end of the line in which your last name isn't your own is simultaneously rewarding and confusing.
Current solution: live what I've got while I can and let the rest of it fall where it may. I've pretty much got the "staying alive" part down – soon with cybernetic enhancement! – now I have to figure out what living entails. Been trying to figure that one out for years. So far, no luck – but if I do stumble upon my answer, you'll be the first to know.
Also: that partially completed thing to my left was supposed to be a dog but my 4'33" ran out before I could fur it out.
Wrote the above in a note to myself in (one of the) WIP(s); I write this rather frequently, actually: an agnostic faith that I might find it or might not (?) – difference being now that it bothers me far less, if it's the latter, than it used to.
(This is what I tell myself.)
Playing GOTHAM KNIGHTS on the Series S and I'm entertained enough: once I read that the combat was more ASSASSIN'S CREED than ARKHAM (I can't counter? What?!) it made sense and I was able to get over the initial reluctance to embrace it. CYBERPUNK 2077 is waiting in the wings. Still playing ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD, though that's much more of a backburner endeavor, more often than not played in handheld mode (that OLED screen on the Switch is GORGEOUS), except when I have to face one of those stupid tests of strength in the shrines; as someone sagely told me on Mastodon: "When fed up, go foraging": I have been foraging with increased frequency – perhaps I should apply that axiom beyond ZELDA and into the WIP…
Important note: in spite of my Racoon Mario getup below, I've yet to actually fly but the day is young and the sun is only now rising.
Finally got around to buying the requisite bits to stabilize this butcher’s block, which has been in my family for as long as I can remember - in an unstable mess or in pieces.
Thrilled with how it looks in its new home. As is Grogu.
It is released / and now, EVERY Sunday is newsletter Sunday, in this, the dawn of our post-Twitter era. Decided it was time to return to a shorter, more frequent iteration, an end-of-the-week ritual sent before starting the next week (Sundays begin the week for me).
Started RRR last night and it is insane and wonderful and I love it, even the anachronistic drumset in the party scene but hey / "turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream..."
The figure on the left side of the Attendance Card below started off as a monster then became a shark and then an angry Pac-Man, maybe, until I said fuck it and made it a dog(child) / landshark / Pac-Man hybrid, sort of.
