out of the blue

And the second art offering piece. Aya's request of an arrogant and fat cat. I hope I managed to pull off the subject well, because I'm not so used to painting living things. It's difficult. But I used a bunch of references to give me some direction, so it should be okay. I like cats. Maybe now I'll be able to draw them better in the future.

(See a larger version by following the link.)

DRAWING REQUESTS PROGRESS

• Andrea Crow – doodle of "The Cat and the Fiddle"
• Jenny Sullins – a pretty sunflower, or a swallow midflight, with the right colors
• Cami Wendlandt – a lighthouse shining over the ocean at night
• Sarah Redd – a flying purple llama
• Ann Foreyt – draw anything, but at the park (view)
• Soren Laulainen – something Fugue-related, or Rock Lake
• Paul Moore – a forest-dwelling ascetic being given an ice cream cone
• Aya – a picture of a very fat cat looking arrogant (view)
• Lila – something cute
• Laila – a Rusty

Here is the first completed doodle for the art offering. I drew this at a park near my house. The flower is on the shore of a pond, and I wasn't able to sit and draw it because of no good way to sit, so I would go take glances at it every once in a while and then go back to the log to draw. I wasn't happy with the lights and darks when I was done, so I painted over the drawing. You can still most of the original pencil work. I hope you enjoy it, Ann!

(This is a thumbnail showing only a part of the image. The whole drawing can be seen by following the link.)

I still have a lot of drawings/paintings left to do.

DRAWING REQUESTS PROGRESS

• Andrea Crow – doodle of "The Cat and the Fiddle"
• Jenny Sullins – a pretty sunflower, or a swallow midflight, with the right colors
• Cami Wendlandt – a lighthouse shining over the ocean at night
• Sarah Redd – a flying purple llama
• Ann Foreyt – draw anything, but at the park (view)
• Soren Laulainen – something Fugue-related, or Rock Lake
• Paul Moore – a forest-dwelling ascetic being given an ice cream cone
• Aya – a picture of a very fat cat looking arrogant
• Lila – something cute
• Laila – a Rusty

I'm sorry, Gregory A. Douglas, but this is very nearly the worst piece of writing I've ever stumbled upon. Your book isn't quite up to the standards of The Eye of Argon, but it's certainly in the vicinity. If your premise isn't bad enough ("It was an ordinary Cape Cod town — until the huge mutants began to leave their nest…"), then perhaps the acknowledgements make up for it: "Thanks are due to novelist Eli Cantor for suggesting that an island could be as terrorized by an invasion of mutant insects as by killer sharks off its beaches."

Fortunately, "Any resemblance to place, incident, or characters living or dead, is unintended and purely coincidental." Otherwise, I might have to desert this reality in chagrin at its amazingly bad plot.

The prose is amazing. Here's my favorite excerpt: "The vermin were squealing with agony as they sprang into the night air. Their writhing bodies were as bizarre as their gyrations and screaking; they were covered not with fur, but with what seemed to be shells, scintillating in the moonlight. The pinpricks of fire on their rodent bodies flashed crazily over the dump with a metallic sheen until there was a quick change to the crimson of blood. The rats were cloaked in sequins of death; a nightmare scene out of an animal hell."

"Routine poisons normally controlled the noxious creatures everyone knew and tacitly accepted as living in the dump. Warfarins held the inevitable rat population in check, and the cockroach broods were standardly contained by pyrethrum and sodium fluoride. Since the prevailing southwest winds carried the stench conveniently out to sea, it was easy for the dump–out of sight and smell of Yarkie's homes–to remain out of mind.

"Thus, no one marked, suspected, or theorized about the slithering mass of preternatural life seething through the stinking intercises. No one considered or remarked that conditions were ideal for breeding in geometric multiplication. For cockroaches, particularly, the ever-enlarging dump was a great progenitive womb–warm, fetid, moist, with food so cornucopianly plentiful that everything crawling, creeping, and scurrying through the foulness could gorge to satiation."

Ahhhhh. "Sequins of death"; "cornucopianly plentiful"; "breeding in geometric multiplication." The perfect example of a bad writer armed with the twin folly of a dictionary and thesaurus. The best 25 cents my mother ever spent.

My advice to you, Mr. Douglas? Practice using the small words first. Then maybe we'll let you at some of the less ornery three-syllablers.

• Soren and Nathan are in Everett (and without internet)
• Aaron will shortly be in Spokane again
• With Becky
• Sarah is on a research project in Puerto Rico
• Cami is in Hawaii (well, she'll be there shortly; not sure when exactly she arrives)
• Rusty lives 30 miles away
• Paul is in Fairfax, Virginia

Life is hiding from me my closest friends, one by one. Eventually, they'll all be gone, and it'll begin to work on my acquaintances, until I'm left dealing only with strangers.

I'm glad Jenny and Elana and Paul are still in town.

Sorry if I missed anyone.

Jon Carroll printed part of an e-mail from one of his readers in his column today, and I thought it was a good way to put things. As you may know, many of the more "dangerous" (useful) chemicals are becoming difficult for people interested in science to acquire, because the government is afraid that they might be used in terrorist activities or meth labs or something.

"It may be illegal to run a high school chemistry lab, but it's your God-given and Constitutionally Guaranteed right to buy handguns and ammunition, which are designed to kill people. In fact, in many states you can purchase packages of gunpowder, in case you want to pack your own shotgun shells, without even the minor protections that you have to deal with on guns.

"Instead of science class, we'll just issue each student a Glock and send them outside to play. It's gotta be safer, 'cause they'll be ready to defend themselves if the terrorists turn up."

Some of the strongest arguments against this trend claim that this will stifle science. They ask us to remember just how many famous scientists were drawn to science in the beginning because of the interesting bangs and smells you can create with a simple chemistry set. Read Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, and you'll see what I mean.

Paff and I are currently engaged in a very stylish contest of endurance and skill. After a conversation about living arrangements, we came to the conclusion that his currently suffer massively when compared to those of various folks like Willard, Aaron and I. His response:

"In that case, I challenge you to a duel – whoever has the better living arrangements in 10 years wins" (of course, it was shortly thereafter changed to five years).

So, we haggled over details, and worked it out into a reasonable challenge. Let me present to you…

THE CONTRACT

I am happy. That is all.

Not a thing that happens when being artistic. So, I was working on a doodle for The Cat and the Fiddle, and I ended up with something completely different. It was way too colorful, too contrasting for that, so I just took it in another direction. So, Andrea, you'll have to wait a bit longer for your doodle. But in the meantime, you can take a look at what I will refer to as "Dawn", which title is so unoriginal that I won't even bother actually naming it that. So, as of yet, it's untitled. Perhaps Untitled Diverted Painting #45, or something. Most of my paintings are like that. I will often start out with no idea at all where I'm going, and after a bit of doodling something will begin to form. Then I'll follow that 'til the end.

Dawn, or Untitled Diverted Painting #45

I am happy. No, not happy. Elated.

Lots of things are going right today.

Charles Stross, the writer of Accelerando, rants about the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, the famous place where the United States decided to ignore all modern rules of engagement and torture prisoners in order to force them to divulge information. The most haunting words:

"kindly reflect: if you support the war on terror, then you're also supporting a policy that has brought concentration camps back to the western world." (link)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have little faith in our current administration. When reports of torture came out, there should have been a HUGE reaction. We needed to show the world that we weren't like that. We don't torture people. Instead, the Pentagon decided to edit out parts of the Geneva convention from our policies like the part that forbade "humiliating and degrading treatment" of detainees, justified by the fact that "it would restrict the United States' ability to question detainees." We can't show the world that we aren't inhuman, because that's precisely what we are. The government decided that it is worth trampling our morality in the mud to gain ground in a misguided war.

Remind me again why Bush is thought of as a Christian leader?

[ Info from Pointing the finger and Torture: It's the New Black ]