Threshold

Cinnamon Mist

2012-01-29T19:25:00.001-05:00

After coming back inside from smoking a cigarette, I opted to get all of my vitamins and supplements for the week ready, and while I was putting them into their assorted pill caddies, I realized that I hadn’t taken any of them today.
So I did that, then headed back upstairs and sat down to do some drawing.
While I was sitting there drawing, I burped. That’s hardly unusual, especially considering that I had eaten dinner about a half an hour earlier.
What was unusual, however, was the smoke that the belch produced.
”Wait a minute…it’s been at least a good twenty minutes since I smoked a cigarette…the hell?”
Then the cinnamon flavor kicked in, and I realized that it wasn’t smoke, but rather a cinnamon mist.
Apparently when I took my supplements one of the cinnamon capsules got stuck in my throat, where the coating slowly dissolved, leading to my “smoky” belch.
Just thought I share that bit of weirdness.

Inevitability

2012-01-27T20:38:00.000-05:00

(The Scene: An imaginary conversation with a hypothetical person. The Time: One week ago. The Place: Let's say...Malaysia?)

Hypothetical Person: Hey Jon, do you suppose you could ever get tired of looking at a beautiful woman with huge boobs?
Jon: No. No, I do not.

Boring!

(The Scene: An imaginary conversation with a hypothetical person. The Time: Shortly after finishing the above picture of Denise Milani. The Place: The Belgian Congo.)

Hypothetical Person: How about now?
Jon: Shut up.

I mean, okay, it's a good picture, the woman is beautiful, and, indeed, the boobs are huge, but I spent a lot more time looking at the source image than really should have been necessary, given that it's a pretty straightforward image with nothing terribly complex, and that led me, ultimately, to get...well, a little bored.
It was kind of distressing. It reminded me of the first time I went to a strip club after I quit drinking and finding that while yes, it was nice to see attractive women taking their clothes off, without the booze it wasn't nearly so much fun as I'd remembered.
Beyond the boredom, though, was the inevitability of it all.
As I posted on Facebook earlier today, they say that a definition of insanity is "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Well, what do you call it when you do different things and get the same result over and over again?
It seems to me that the word for that is inevitability.
See, part of the reason the picture above took a sufficient amount of time to finish to result in me becoming bored was that my entire approach to drawing it was different from the way I normally draw. Entirely new techniques that were supposed to lead to entirely new results.
And yet, while it is, by my own admission, a good picture, it's not new. It looks just like any other picture I've done using my standard approach and technique.
It's inevitable.
And inevitability is kind of boring, even when it has huge boobs.

****

Speaking of inevitability, despite my earlier post railing at the Universe for its unwillingness to allow me to hold onto my VA refund for more than a few hours, I did plan to, inevitably, buy the Samsung Series 7 Slate.
So it's hardly a big deal that I bought it today, given that there's plenty more money coming in over the next month or two, and I have no plans - despite whatever notions Stacy may have about a Russian mail-order bride - to purchase anything else that's terribly expensive.
It's just that it would have been nice to hold onto that money for a little while, and to fend off the forces of inevitability for more than a few hours...

****

Earlier today I texted Scott a link to info about the slate and a message telling him that I bought it, and explaining what a good deal (it really was a hell of a deal) I got on it.

Scott: Stacy wants to know what your mail-order bride thinks of it.
Me: Who cares what she thinks? I mean, she's just a whore.
Me: I mean...what mail-order bride?

****

Boss: (To Co-Worker) We need to drag Jon out on the links with us. (By which she means playing golf, for those of you fortunate enough to not have to hear about fucking golf every fucking day.)
Me: I would kill us all before I'd let that happen.

****

Boss: (Talking about our SVP) He wants you to talk more. He told me, "He seems really intelligent." I told him, "He's probably the smartest person on this floor." So he said, "Well, why doesn't he ever say much?" I said, "Do you think Einstein had long conversations with most people?"

Screw You, Universe

2012-01-27T08:19:00.001-05:00

Universe: So Jon, I see that you already got your VA tax refund.
Me: Yeah, that was surprisingly fast. I mean, I just got the notice that my form had been accepted on Tuesday.
Universe: Sweet! So...what are you going to buy?
Me: Nothing yet. I mean, I might take a day off from work next week and make a Costco run to stock up on stuff, but nothing too major.
Universe: What about that Samsung Slate you've been wanting?
Me: I can hold off on that for a while. I want to wait until March, when I've gotten my Federal refund and my bonus, and I know how much of a raise I'm getting.
Universe: Seems sensible.
Me: Yeah. I really want to put as much money away as I can - after paying off a few small debts - and use it to get some work done on my house and yard this summer.
Universe: Good plan.
Me: Thanks.
Universe: You know you're not going to do that, though, right? You can lie to yourself, but you can't lie to me.
Me: Screw you.
Universe: Hey now, I'm just being truthful. It's not my fault that the truth hurts.
Me: No, that's just a happy coincidence for you.
Universe: Well, it couldn't hurt to just browse over to the Microsoft Store site and see if they have any kind of deal on it. That has been the place with the best price for it, after all.
Me: No, I don't want to go there.
Universe: Come on...
Me: No.
Universe: You can do it. What's the harm? Start typing...
Me: No. Dammit, fingers! Stop typing!
Universe: ...dot com. There you go. Now, hover over Computers, and then on the Slates flyout...
Me: WHAT THE FUCK? $300 off with the 128 GB SSD and docking station????
Universe: Yeah, that's a hell of a deal.
Me: DAMMIT!
Universe: Oh, hey, look! You also get a $200 Microsoft Store credit for future purchases!
Me: SON OF A BITCH.
Universe:

Problem?

There’s One Certainty Out Of The Way…

2012-01-22T19:06:00.001-05:00

According to dumb and/or credulous people, the Mayans “predicted” that the world will end in 2012.
People believe that – to varying degrees – because, as mentioned, they’re dumb and/or credulous and because they heard someone say something about it sometime or something.
The fact of the matter is that saying that the world will end in 2012 because the stone calendar the Mayans used only extended that far is akin to, in 1996, saying that the world will end in 1997 because the last day on your current calendar is December 31, 1996.
(There is slightly more to it than that, in that the Mayans were actually determining that the end of that calendar marked the end of a particular age or epoch, which, naturally, has to occur before a new one can start.)
The thing that annoys me the most about the whole thing, though, is the notion that ancient peoples were somehow more “plugged in,” and had access to some sort of hidden knowledge that we modern people, with all our fancy book learnin’ and telescopes and quantum whatsits are unable to access.
It’s a sort of extreme nostalgia, I think, taking the basic notion of “the good old days,” when people were smarter and had more common – or even uncommon – sense than the current crop of people.
I mean, if things were better in your (poorly-remembered, romanticized/mythologized) past, and things were better still in the pasts of the generations that came before you (at least to hear them tell it), then, by extension, the farther back you go, the better things must have been.
The idea certainly aligns with our standard mythologies, which, when you go back far enough, generally lead to some sort of paradise or Golden Age.
(Or, if you watch The “History” Channel, which helps to propagate the notion of 2012 being the end, our mythologies all lead back to aliens.)

Aliens!

Personally, I think that xkcd has the best take on 2012.
In any case, all of this has just been my roundabout way of mentioning that I did my taxes today.
What does doing my taxes have to do with predictions about the end of the world? Nothing, really, but I was thinking about the old adage about death and taxes being the only certainties in life, and it occurred to me that there are actually two other certainties in life: people will continually predict the end of the world, and won’t learn anything when their predictions prove to be wrong.
Of course, the “end” was on my mind anyway, thanks to watching some science show about the universe and how things are, based on scientific observation and theory rather than the number of carvings on an old rock or predictions about wars and rumors of wars, or the shapes left by tea leaves, or runes tossed into entrails, and who knows what all else people rely on in their steadfast refusal to be rational and their desire to avoid being some kind of smarty-pants nerd, actually likely to end.
(The way things will actually end – most likely trillions of years from now – is actually far cooler, and in its way, more bleak and terrifying, than any Rapture or series of disasters anyone has ever conceived of.)
Anyway, as mentioned, I did my taxes today. Normally I actually go to H&R Block to have them done, but I decided that I could just as easily plug numbers into a computer program for a lot less money, and so I did them online, from the comfort of home.
This year I don’t have any major purchases planned – though somewhere along the line I may pick up a Samsung Series 7 Slate just because – so I’ll probably actually manage to establish some savings…until I start spending money on fixing up my house.
There’s yet another certainty, which also serves as something of an axiom: a Jon and his money are soon parted.

Amazing Photo Of Awesomeness That Will Make Life Worth Living

2012-01-18T06:14:00.001-05:00

Best. Picture. Ever.

Friday Night Randomness

2012-01-13T22:53:00.001-05:00

Last night, being Thursday, was movie night for Scott and me.
Shortly after he left, I tended to the things I needed to tend to, then got into bed.
After a few minutes my phone rang.
I have a cordless phone for my landline that’s Bluetooth-enabled, which allows it to connect to my cell phone, so I can make and receive cell phone calls via my regular landline phone. I could see that the call was originating from my cell, and with those calls, all that gets passed along to the Caller ID display is the number. I looked to see if it was from Michigan, as my first assumption upon getting a call that late, if it isn’t a wrong number, is that it’s my sister calling to tell me that my mom is in the hospital. (Not that I’m trying to jinx things, but…well, I’ve gotten quite a few calls like that.)
When I saw that it was a Virginia area code, I thought, “Okay, either it’s a wrong number or Scott had some kind of trouble on his way home.”
It was not, unfortunately, a wrong number.
It was Stacy calling to inform me that she believes that Scott and I are cursed, as he got hit by a snow plow on the way home. (He was, at last report, a bit stiff and sore, but not injured. The same, of course, can’t be said for his car…)

****

I spent a fair amount of time at work this week consolidating four separate SharePoint lists into one SharePoint list.
It was exactly as exciting as it sounds.
In any case, the point of it all was to refine the intake process for our team, and while I was at it I thought I’d also refine our impact assessment list, our project tracking list, and our zzzzzzzzz
*Snort* Huh?
Oh.
Anyway, at the risk* of causing everyone – myself included – to doze off again, I also created a risk register to accompany the intake form and etc..
Actually, more than anything else, the risk register is what motivated me to consolidate the four lists into one, as the addition of the risk register would have added yet another separate list for us to fill out, because there was no way to incorporate it into what was already in place. So even though I added a new list, thanks to the consolidation, there was still a net decrease in the total number of lists. So, go me!
(My boss said, “You’re amazing. Next time I’ll let you pick out your own Christmas present.” Given that she gave me a gift certificate, I said, “I pretty much did this time anyway.”)
In any case, in testing out the new list, I created a sample project called “The Call of Cthullu.” The description of the project read, "In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming,” and added, “Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fhtagn!”
In the associated risk register, I listed the primary risk as “Being devoured by Cthullu,” and for the risk response, I put, “There is no response – we’ll all be eaten.”
When I was showing the new list and risk register to my boss and my co-worker – who’s also my cube neighbor – my boss laughed as she read through the sample project and said, “You’re an idiot.” She then turned to my co-worker and said, “Does he just sit here giggling all day?”

****

(Standing around looking like my normal self, which apparently to others looks like..honestly, I don’t know what it looks like, but “normal” for me appears to be dour and/or suicidal or something.)
Co-Worker: Jon? Are you all right?
Me: Hm? Yeah, I’m fine.
Co-Worker: Is everything okay?
Me: Yes, why?
Co-Worker: You aren’t smiling.
Me: Well, things aren’t that okay.

****

Yesterday I woke up on my own five minutes before my alarm could go off. I turned the alarm off to keep it from sounding (or rather, playing music) while I was out of the room.
I forgot to turn it back on, so this morning I overslept. However, when you normally get up at 4 AM, “oversleeping” means still being up well before the sun, and getting to work two hours before everyone else.
But this is Northern Virginia, so it still means having to deal with a lot of traffic.

****

Co-Worker 1: It’s such a 90s way of thinking.
Co-Worker 2: You say that like the 90s were a long time ago.
Me: Uhh…it’s 2012.

****

Fred “Slacktivist” Clark comments on a piece by the public editor of The New York Times which contains this:

I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about.

As I said in the Comments section:

This...this is an example of exactly the sort of illogical statement you would make in a bad sci-fi story to cause a robot's head to explode.

****

Boss: Thanks, Jon. You saved my ass on this.
Me: I know.
Boss: “I know.” Jackass.
Me: You’re welcome.

****

And finally, my sister Kristy turned 50 today. So, first of all, happy birthday, of course (and also to her husband Ken, whose birthday is also today), but second of all…well, before that quote about whether or not reporters should investigate “facts” could do it, that realization made my head asplode.
*Get it? Risk? ‘Cause I was talking about a risk register and…shut up.

Never Thought I'd Say It

2012-01-10T18:12:00.000-05:00

For as much as I adore her voice and her music, I never thought I'd say, "Huh, you know, Sarah McLachlan has a pretty nice ass."
I don't mean that as any sort of slight against Sarah, whom, as mentioned, I adore, but I never thought I'd say it simply because I never thought I'd see it.
That changed thanks to a coffee table book full of artistic pictures of the backsides of assorted women, many of them famous, called Culo (Spanish for "Booty") by Mazzucco (some content is NSFWish), which included the image of Sarah that served as the reference for the (NSFW) painting I did that can be seen by clicking "Read More."

Yep, I'd say it's pretty nice.

Why I'll Never Be Alan Moore

2012-01-02T10:06:00.001-05:00

Is it because I lack his incredible talent, the work ethic that allows him to be incredibly prolific, and his ferocious intellect? Is it because I don't practice magic, or worship a sock-puppet snake god of my own invention? Is it because I'm not from Northampton?
Well...yes, but mostly it's because I'll never be capable of growing a truly fabulous Moore-like beard:

So long, annual "beard." You were itchy while you lasted...

Twins!

Like I Said, "New Year, Same Jon"

2012-01-02T09:43:00.000-05:00

Jon drew a picture of Scarlett Johansson? What are the odds?

A picture of Scarlett Johansson? The world's gone mad!

Okay, what actually is notable about this picture is how quickly I managed to churn it out, thanks to some new techniques I've been playing around.
Basically, rather than drawing/painting multiple layers of line art and color, I've taken to drawing and painting on fewer layers in black and white, then colorizing them.
I'm not 100% sold on the results, but it does take less time.
So there you go.

New Year, Same Jon

2012-01-01T20:09:00.001-05:00

As is always the case when I take off the last part of the year from work – there’s really no reason to be there, as there’s nothing going on, and the place is a ghost town – I had a checklist of tasks I wanted to accomplish during my largely-uninterrupted time at home.
(As an aside, when I’m at work, my life seemingly revolves around checklists to an ever-increasing extent, and when I’m away from work, I don’t seem to be able to escape them.)
This is probably as close as I get to making resolutions.
So how did I do?
Ehh, better than I did last year, I think.

Things I accomplished:

Thoroughly cleaning the house
Drawing my annual holiday images for Threshold
Maintaining a regular workout routine
Sleeping
At least starting on fulfilling the art request I got from Jamie
Bagging and boarding the comics I’ve accumulated since the last time I bagged and boarded

Things I partially accomplished:

Rearranging/organizing the house

Things I didn’t even start on:

Editing and revising my 2009 and 2011 NaNoWriMo novels
Organizing my comics
Becoming independently wealthy
Gaining super powers
Getting back into a regular blogging groove, with meaningful and insightful posts
Quitting smoking, or at least fully moving to the electronic cigarettes
Making some additional updates/changes to heroicportraits.com
Getting a long overdue oil change

So, yeah, not really great, but probably better than previous years.
Ultimately, I may have been a bit too ambitious. I mean, organizing my comics? That’s probably completely outside the realm of possibility.
Some of the things on my list I didn’t accomplish simply because I lacked resources. For example, I couldn’t find a radioactive spider anywhere (though I did find several dead, presumably non-radioactive ones in the course of cleaning the house), and the rearranging/organizing of the house was kind of dependent on having an easy way to dispose of some of the…stuff that’s just cluttering up the place, like all of the things in my Closet of Forgotten Technology, which will need to be hauled to some sort of electronics recycling facility.
Conversely, while there’s stuff I need to get rid of, there’s also stuff I need to acquire in order to rearrange things. For example, I really need a new desk for my office (though, of course, that also means getting rid of my old desk), and I need some new shelving and storage, but until tax/bonus time rolls around, my budget is rather constrained.
Then there are – as is the story of my life – the mistakes I’ve made in the past that come back to haunt me. As a for instance, I probably should have set up my office in the larger guest bedroom, but now, with the way things arranged, it would be difficult to completely shuffle things around.
Beyond that, there’s the fact that I have longer-term plans for how I want the house arranged, which actually involve some amount of construction and renovation, and my short-term plans for rearranging things would actually interfere with those plans, so I found myself at a bit of an impasse.
Also, I’m lazy.

2012: The End?

2012-01-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

I'll bet the Mayans didn't predict this:

They say the end is near. I wish.

Happy New Year from Threshold!

Nothing Special

2011-12-27T14:46:00.001-05:00

This picture is nothing special, really. I mean, it's okay, but...so what?
However, the reason I've posted it is that it's the first time in the 17 years since she first popped into my mind, that I've been able to complete a halfway decent image of my character Sam, AKA Subject 76, who is the alien-human hybrid daughter of my character Fontaine:

Not perfect, but the best I've done so far.

Sam was a major part of my 2009 National Novel Writing Month novel, and was, naturally, a big part of this year's sequel.
Though she's only eleven years old, Sam matured at an accelerated rate (thanks to her alien heritage), and is a fully-mature adult, roughly equivalent to a human woman in her early twenties.
Sam has vast superhuman abilities, including superhuman strength and resistance to injury, some degree of telepathic abilities, telekinesis, and energy manipulation.
Her "hair" isn't really hair, but a collection of hair-like filaments of the internally-generated alien energy that serves as her power source. When she's weakened, her hair loses body and volume, and if she's sufficiently weak, it disappears entirely.
Her name, given to her by her mother when she was born, as she came out with a full head of long, glowing "hair," and she demonstrated sufficient strength to shatter the bones in Fontaine's finger with a gentle squeeze, is actually Samson, which everyone agrees is a terrible name for her, but which she insisted upon keeping.
Since escaping from the government facility where she was born as part of a breeding program, Sam has been a wanted fugitive, living her life on the run, and occasionally trying - and usually failing - to develop something akin to a mother-daughter relationship with Fontaine.
Anyway, if you've read any of my Fontaine stories and wondered what Sam looks like in my head, wonder no more.

All I Want For Christmas...

2011-12-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

...is a better reference image to work from for this picture of Kelly Brook:


What, you thought I was going to say the actual Kelly Brook? I learned long ago to set my Christmas expectations low.

I mean, seriously, who uploads a 360p video to YouTube? No one on the staff of Love magazine had an iPhone?
In any case, Merry Christmas from Threshold!

Save Us, Solomon!

2011-12-23T23:10:00.001-05:00

I recently watched the Solomon Kane movie, based on the character created by Robert E. Howard.
The movie itself was just okay – certainly better than the recent movie based on Howard’s more famous character, Conan – and it’s been a while since I read any Solomon Kane stories, so with my spotty memory it was difficult to say how well it adhered to the source material.
(I’m going to throw out a guess, however, and say “Not very well.”)
The particular merits of the movie, however, are not really the topic of this post. Rather, I wanted to use a particular scene as a jumping-off point for something else.
That being said, I do need to provide some background on the movie, and the movie version of the character.
Solomon was a man who had led a wicked, violent life, but after a supernatural encounter, he puts his murderous ways behind him and vows to live a life of peace. However, circumstances are such that he soon finds himself faced with a challenge that forces him to set that vow aside, when the family of Puritans who had taken him in after he was robbed and violently assaulted by a band of thieves, are themselves placed in mortal jeopardy.
As the bloodthirsty minions of a demonic warrior menace the family, the assorted members of the family call out to Solomon to renounce his peaceful ways and save them.
…
Here’s the thing. The family knows, based on the few things that Solomon has told them about his past, that he was once a formidable warrior, but they’ve never actually seen him in action. He is, it turns out, once he decides to go back to the old ways, more than a match for the half-a-dozen or so armed men holding the family captive, but the family had no way of knowing that.
And yet they fully expected this unarmed pacifist to singlehandedly clean the collective clocks of the armed men.
I’ll admit that, frightened and desperate, the family would naturally latch onto even the thinnest, most frayed strand of hope, but it still seems to me that it was an awful lot to expect of him.
I mean, honestly, as you’re standing there with a sword to your throat, and every other member of your family is in the same predicament, what, exactly, is it that you’re expecting your unarmed savior to do?
(And it turns out that – spoiler alert – even though he did end up dispatching all of the goons, Solomon wasn’t really up to the task of actually saving the family.)
In any case, as I was watching the scene, I was reminded of my recent reading of some collections of old (Late ‘30s – early ‘40s) Superman dailies from the syndicated comic strip.
The stories they contained were at a point in the development of the character at which the phrase “mild-mannered,” in reference to his Clark Kent persona, meant just that. He wasn’t presented as being particularly cowardly, or nerdy as he would be in later years. He was just a regular guy.
And yet, from the perspective of Lois Lane, Clark was the most craven milquetoast the world had ever seen.
It struck me as unfair on her part.
I mean, what, exactly, was the standard she was judging him against? What were her expectations of him?
Basically, her thinking seemed to be, “That Clark Kent is such a wimp! Why, he didn’t even try to singlehandedly dispatch those seven dangerous felons aiming machine guns at his head!”
Apparently, from her perspective, anyone who wasn’t ready to engage in some act of suicidal recklessness was cringing coward.
Then again, this is Lois Lane we’re talking about, a woman who engages in a dozen acts of suicidal recklessness before breakfast, so I guess it makes sense that she would equate being even remotely sensible with being a pussy…

(Secondhand) Conversations

2011-12-21T22:20:00.000-05:00

My VP: What would happen to this place if you got run over by a truck or something?
Boss: One of my guys could take over for me.
My VP: What if they got run over by the same truck?
Boss: Then you'd be screwed.

"Fred Clark Is A Treasure."

2011-12-21T08:07:00.000-05:00

Test everything; hold fast to what is good.

Fred Clark posts at a blog called "Slacktivist", so he is often referred to by that name. But this left-wing Christian is far from a slacker. His blog is a powerful voice against the usual conservative Christian presence in America, and the best distillation of his strength is his series of posts analyzing the Left Behind novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Fred savages these books for their "bad writing and bad theology" but it's not the usual Internet snark; Fred has a larger mission here than just pointing and laughing. He just finished dissecting book two, Tribulation Force, so it's a great time to jump on if you already haven't. (He has promised that after a holiday break, he's going to do the Tribulation Force movie, and then on to book three.)

- MetaFilter

Random Doodling

2011-12-17T19:45:00.003-05:00

I don't generally paint things like landscapes.
As this picture, which I call "Home," shows, there's probably a reason for that.

I don't get it. Where's the naked lady?

The image is, of course, inspired by memories of the UP, but it isn't of any place in particular. It's mostly the result of me randomly doodling.

Lost Skills

2011-12-16T21:18:00.001-05:00

There are certain...well, I hesitate to call them skills. I mean, there's no real amount of "skill" involved but...
Anyway, there are certain common, mundane tasks that I seem to have lost the ability to perform easily or completely successfully.
Some are mental, such as performing long division in my head, which I've completely lost the ability to do - I know there's something something remainders and one number goes into something something - but most are physical.
And when I say "common" and "mundane," I really mean it. These aren't tasks that require an unusual amount of hand-eye coordination, or supreme reflexes. I'm talking basic, everyday tasks.
Now, granted, there have always been basic, everyday tasks that I've had some degree of difficulty performing, given that I seemed to have been designed for maximum awkwardness - reaching over and picking something up, particularly something with liquid inside of it, without knocking it over, for example - but these are things that I used to be able to do reasonably well, or at least without any noticeable difficulty.
I first noticed this trend a few years ago with straws. I was at some restaurant and grabbed a straw for my drink, and, thoughtlessly and reflexively, as I had done so many times prior to that, I pulled at the paper wrapping to remove the straw.
...
I couldn't do it.
I remembered how to do it, but I just couldn't make my fingers accomplish it. I ended up shredding the wrapper in my desperation to release the straw from its imprisonment.
At the time, I laughed it off.
Then it happened again.
And again.
And yet again.
In fact, it happened every single time I tried to get a straw out of a paper wrapper (and it was even worse with plastic wrappers).
Eventually I had to learn an entirely new way to quickly and efficiently remove a straw from its wrapper, but even with that I only have about a 40% success rate on my first attempt.
The next thing I noticed was the trouble I seem to have with tucking in my shirt.
Invariably, in the back, it will just get all bunched up, and only the smallest portion of it actually makes its way into my waistband.
There are so many of these little, losses of seemingly unimportant skills that I notice every day- too many to list here - that, in total, I'm beginning to wonder if it's something I ought to be concerned about.
(For the record, the aforementioned inability to pick things up - and also the inability to hold onto things once I have picked them up - is getting worse, which, honestly, I wouldn't have thought was possible.)
Even more disturbing, I'm beginning to notice that I'm having trouble talking. Again, it's very minor, and it's also oddly specific.
The most noticeable is the difficulty I have saying "It's Jon."
Generally, it plays out like this:

(Join conference call)
Host: Hi, this is [Host]. Who just joined?
Me: Hi [Host], it's Jon.

At least, that's what I intend to say. What I actually say is:

Me: Hi [Host], issshshhhjon.

To counteract this, you would think that I might try saying something else.
Well, as God said in Time Bandits, "I'm not entirely dim," so the thought has occurred to me, but I am a creature of habit, so it's difficult to change the script.
However, I have tried:

Me: Hi [Host], thissshshjon.

Even when I try to simplify it by just saying my name, I find a way to bungle that.
Still, I haven't let it disturb me too much, because, as with the random, inexplicable pains, and moments of sudden weakness, I dismiss it with the thought, "Oh, right. Nerve damage."
After all, before getting my diabetes under control, I did, clearly, suffer a great deal of neuropathy.
Which is, of course, disturbing in and of itself, but at least I know what it is.
How I feel it about that is a different matter entirely, but it is what it is.
Or, as I'd be pretty likely to say if I were on a conference call, itishwhassissh.

Conversations

2011-12-16T12:47:00.001-05:00

While working with my boss on developing a Project plan for a project that is likely to become my full-time job for most of 2012, I kept thinking of more and more variables and requirements that needed to be addressed:

Me: (Thinks of yet another thing that needs to be done) Fuck.
Me: You know what? Fuck it. I quit.
Boss: What?
Me: I quit. I'm just going to take my chances out there in the world without a job. Good luck with this.
Boss: Sit your ass back down.

While on the phone with my mom:

Mom: Do you have a tree up?
Me: ...this is your son, Jon.
Mom: Oh, right.

The Marilyn Cliche

2011-12-10T21:06:00.001-05:00

Lindsay Lohan recently posed for Playboy. Twice, actually, if I recall correctly, because someone - Playboy, Lohan, her representation, or some combination of all three - was unhappy with the first round. Because he's a tired old man who lacks imagination, and because every starlet who aspires to sexiness is similarly lacking in imagination, Hef decided to make the seven millionth trip back to the well that is Marilyn Monroe.
Let me just state upfront that even if the Marilyn-inspired pictorials weren't already a total cliche - especially for Lohan, who did a similar Marilyn recreation for another magazine a few years back - I would be bored and annoyed by the idea, because, and I know this puts me in a minority, I think that MM is overrated. Really, really overrated.
There's no good reason whatsoever for her to be held up as some icon of sexiness or any of that nonsense.
None.
I can't be convinced otherwise.
In any case, the Lohan issue has yet to hit the stands, but the pictorial has already found its way onto the Web.
Despite the trite Marilyn tribute aspect, the pictures actually looks surprisingly good. Good enough, in fact, that I was inspired to draw one of them.
At least it wasn't shot in grainy black and white, with her covered in sawdust and whale's blood. All things considered, I'd rather have the Playboy photographers go with a tired old cliche than attempt anything avant garde...
(And at least there's unobstructed nudity, and she flirts with going full frontal.)
I did make a change, however; to counteract the played-out Marilyn aspect, I presented her as a redhead. Imagine that: Lindsay Lohan with red hair.
Check out the nude and NSFW image after the jump.

No platinum blonde locks, thanks.

Testing

2011-12-09T00:09:00.001-05:00

Trying out the Blogger app on my phone.

Sad Little Man

2011-12-06T21:10:00.001-05:00

This morning I was listening to Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails while I was on the elliptical.
When I finished - over 1,600 calories in about 50 minutes - I got off and grabbed a towel to wipe off the sweat, and I'd left my Bluetooth headphones on and kept the music playing.
The song featured in the video below was playing, and it occurred to me that it was pretty much the perfect soundtrack music for a sad little man going about his sad little morning routine:

Which is, perhaps, not the most charitable view to have of myself, but what can I say? The endorphins were wearing off...

Because It's Pretty Much A Requirement

2011-12-04T20:55:00.001-05:00

I think it may be a law that you have to do a picture of Bettie Page at some point if you're going to work in Pin-Up art...


A picture of Bettie Page, as required by law.

Someone Was Filming Me...?

2011-11-30T21:16:00.001-05:00

Okay, this video is pretty gross, and not at all safe for work but...holy crap.
My stomach still hurts from laughing. It's just all too familiar...

Edit: Now with the actual video.

Black Friday Randomness

2011-11-25T17:28:00.001-05:00

On Tuesday before I left work I employed the "hovering" tactic on my boss before I left, which entails just kind of hanging out until she tells me what I want to hear. In this case it was, "You might as well just take tomorrow off."
So far, with both this boss and my former boss, I believe the "hovering" approach has had a 100% success rate in either getting me what I want, whether it's permission to leave early or to not come in to work on the day before a holiday.
So, having Wednesday off, and knowing that, while it would still be bad - the zombie hordes already began descending on any and all retail outlets last weekend - going out into the world would be less bothersome on Wednesday than it would be on Saturday, I went out to do my grocery and comic shopping.
At the comic shop one of the customers asked about Black Friday deals, and the guy working there told him that the shop would be e-mailing special Friday offers to customers that evening.
When it came time for me to pay for my stack, he said, "We have your e-mail on file, right?" I said, "Probably, but it doesn't matter - I don't go anywhere on Black Friday."
In the alternative, I considered saying, "E...mail?" and looking completely bewildered.

****

While I don't - and didn't - go anywhere on Black Friday, I did look at some of the online deals. For the most part I wasn't impressed.
I did, however, very briefly toy with the notion of buying the Acer Iconia from the Microsoft Store, which was selling it at a steep - $400 off - discount.
I have to admit that I was tempted, not because I really need it, or even want it all that much, but simply because, well, as a concept, at least, it's pretty cool.
Mostly it reminds me of the late, lamented Courier concept that Microsoft so cruelly and unwisely killed before it even got out of the gate. Seriously, Microsoft, I would have thrown money at you if you'd actually made the thing:

Anyway, I soon decided against buying it, despite the coolness, because, as mentioned, I don't have any particular need for it, it's far too bulky, its battery life is pathetic, and it doesn't have an active digitizer, which means that I wouldn't be able to use it like a portable Cintiq, which is the main thing I want in a tablet.
My current Tablet PC can, in theory, behave in that fashion, but in practice, setting aside the fact that the N-Trig digitizer seldom works at all, it never offered pressure-sensitivity (even it claims to do so).
At some point in the new year, I will most likely pick up a Samsung Series 7 Slate, which has a Wacom digitizer (same company that makes the Cintiq), and Samsung has stated that they intend to make it upgradeable to Windows 8. In fact, it's been used as the reference machine for the Developer Preview of the next version of Windows.

****

I probably really ought to be working on my novel if I want to achieve my goal of actually finishing the thing - as opposed to simply achieving the 50,000 word challenge, which I've already done - before NaNoWriMo draws to a close, but...ehh.
I also ought to be finishing up the Heroic Portraits order that my boss placed (it's essentially done; I'm making some decisions about whether or not I want to make some additions before sending her the proof), or working on the standing, "no rush, just in time for one of the holidays" order I have from someone else.
And today I just got a challenging request from my friend Jamie which I should probably start on, but...again, ehh.