I didn't win THE BUGLE logo contest

that's okay.

I have a good IDEA!!!!!!

Let's cut "entitlement" spending on things like mental health care!  Oh, and fuck off about imposing any sort of functional gun control laws.

I know, I know...  

Let's not get into it. 

It's too soon to talk about that sort of thing.  

Maybe next week we can have a chat.  

Er uh, maybe give it two weeks. 

Here's a water color to calm you down.

A view of Shenandoah Avenue from my window. 

It's raining men... and fire and brimstone.

My last short story podcast before the end of the world, it better be a good one.
No, there is ten minutes of me listening to / commenting on tornado sirens.
Yes I am that provocative.
Enjoy.
 

BUGLE BOYS

I am almost done with my first comic book, though the design and layout process may take a while.  I am learning indesign so I can do my own print layouts and stuff and boy oh boy am I having fun.  If you haven't had the opportunity to watch hours of instructional videos taught by a man who rolls his r's for some reason, then you haven't lived.  

New podcast episode next week.  I will be reading "The Shirtless Man" which is an oldy but goody.  I have been writing new stories involving drones, men falling out of trees, and dad's smoking weed...  none of which are quite ready for prime time, as they say in the biz.

In the mean time, I made a couple of logos for THE BUGLE logo competition.  If you don't listen to THE BUGLE then you are truly missing out on some vomit inducing pun runs.  Here is the finished version of John and Andy's transformation into old timey newsboys.

Hail to the BLEEP BLOOP BLEEP!

A new podcast episode for your listening pleasure...
or your listening torture.

Due to some technical issues and some people getting married and making me drink excessively I will not be able to do the Holiday Sale that I planned for November 24th.  Just don't have the time to finish everything by then.  But, don't fret, FURBIES are back!  So spend your money on that.

I've been painting some abstracts for no good reason.
I wish I was as cool as Gerhard Richter...

Working overtime...

on comics!!!!!

much better than paying attention to politics, can I get an AMEN people?!
No?
Ok, I'll just go back to drawing my comics.

Time Flies Like a Bananananananana

How many "n"s in banana?  Too many.  If I am elected I will repeal at least one of the "n"s in banana.

There is a bit of a political rant in there, but don't get all worked up.  I, for one, have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.

The new story I am reading is Time Flies Like an Arrow subtitled Fruit Flies Like a Banana.  I like subtitles.  Maybe a little pretentious... sometimes.  Mine are meant to be like when someone adds an extra line onto a joke, or when they put a maraschino cherry on your sundae.  It might not be funny or edible but the effort is well intentioned.  They want to make a good thing better.  Then it's ruined.  Human nature.

Again, what am I talking about?  You have to listen to the episode.

WARNING: Political Nerd Joke COMING

Yes, I do believe in the resistance.
Thanks be to the Gods.

Oh, anyway... new CHEAP FUN PODCAST episode coming this week.

Another way not to make money!

Episode 1: Spaghetti and Meatballs is now up.
Here's a drawing for good measure...

Yellow sub-machine

I guess there is no point in arguing that I am not  influenced by pop art.
As an undergraduate I tried my best to deny my electric bright, super cheesy color instincts.
I also wore shirts that were too small for me with the names of bands I didn't listen to.

Here is a drawing of mustard, and another of some shapes that I did over the summer.  They will be included in an art sale happening the weekend after Thanksgiving.

Always being surrounded by desperate men...

I feel anxious, weepy, and weak.

A box in a baby stroller with no crooked wheels.

Gotta try to remember the security code.

To lock up this house that I don't own

against men who are not my enemies

-enemies speak to me through walls

-enemies always threatening 

-enemies far away but here

-an anonymous boot print in the ruin

I lock up my house and stare at my small pile of flammables

things that are no more mine than when they are picked from the dumpster.

I waste this way

When I should be desperate...

desperate to be a man.

*edit #2 made on the starry night of September 9th 2012 having drank a beer to salute the end of summer.  I will have another tomorrow to salute Monday (around the same time) for being almost over.  In that way I am very much like Garfield.

3D MOVIE WATCHERS

Watching 3D movies makes me barf a little.

CHEAP CHEAP!

The Cheap Fun Store is now up and running...  completely safe online store where you can use your credit card or paypal account to buy unique stuff to add to your piles of unique stuff.  More products to come.

Night yachting... a little hobby of mine.

figure 1.

 figure 2. 

No man can block the way of progress...

Except for maybe a very fat man.
Or maybe a man who has been crippled in some way.

The painting show is coming together.  Most of what stands in my way is lack of funds.  Two larger paintings are going to get costly, but I guess I need to do some research on how to get grant money.  Other people seem to know how to do it.

Speaking of funds, my new online store will be up and running soon and I plan on having a big sale (prints, drawings) with some other artists sometime before Christmas.  And yes I take debit or credit.

Here is a drawing from my sketchbook from way back when I was not so lucky as to be trampled by progress (although I do need a haircut):

Seeing you on a foreign continent... dog torturer!

I just finished reading two novels by Peter Handke (A Moment of True Feeling, and The Left-Handed Woman), just in time too for the annual book sale where not only do you get your choice of literally thousands of books for virtually nothing but also free with purchase a nice sampling of dust and mold from the various hovels* these books originated from.  All sorts of good eye scratching and sniffling going on around my house these days.  Also, Katherine scored a page torn from a sixties Playboy magazine tucked away in her copy of Visual Persuasion, The Effect of Pictures on the Subconcious.  She taped that picture up in the dog's crate to help test this effect on dogs.

So far no results.

A short quote from "Visual Persuasion":

The car used to be more masculine than feminine, but in this modern world it is rapidly becoming bisexual.

Anyway...

I found both of these novels a bit difficult, but in a good way.  I like not knowing what the hell an author is doing.  Handke can be a bit repetitive (at least in translation) in description and drag things on a bit but there are truly beautiful moments throughout like little morsels of sugar at the bottom of some perplexingly deep bowl you struggle to get your head into.  These books came out in the 70's so I'm not here selling something new, but worth a read that I just kind of fell into.  To the members of Katherine's now defunct book club I say thank you for having read these books more than a year ago.  

I've moved on to Frank O'Connor, which is to move backwards chronologically.  Putting that lyrical irish voice back in my head that seems to come out in my own writing sometimes, but mostly in a cartoonish leprechaun sort of way.

Anyway I made a short video of the paintings that I am working on right now.  I have a fancy phone now so I can do stuff like that.  I'm trying to post it but the damn thing won't work and the line between me getting annoyed at a computer and throwing it out a window is thin so I will post a picture for now.

These are all paintings in progress.

*I describe the homes the books came from as "hovels" not to insult the former owners, but rather to capture for the reader the stench of wet earth that emits from their pages.

Ahoy! Captain Eli

I saw a root beer today that was called "Captain Eli's Root Beer", which naturally I did not buy.  Straub's Fine Grocers apparently stocks a wide selection of root beers.  I bought Boston Tower Root Beer because it sounded cooler.  I haven't tried it yet so don't ask.

Here is a sketchbook drawing of my dog friend named Eli, maybe you can see why I didn't buy the rootbeer...

If that didn't make enough sense here is another sketch of a super yacht...

I am working on a new exhibition of paintings.  The tentative title being "Splash and Play."  I'll explain later...

Comics!

... and the celebration ensues...

as I work steadily towards evolving into a completely autonomous art making person the debt gets as fat as a bouncing baby boy.  I got a nice new computer out of the deal, so not complaining.  This also means I can post again assumed audience that doesn't exist.  Hooray for me.

Anyway, I am currently working on two little books of writing that include stories and poem-like thingies  (I have always written poem-like thingies, but the process of making them usually ended with me crying and tearing the poem-like thingies into pieces... not this time no sir!)
Here is the cover for one of the books titled Spaghetti & Meatballs:

Nice job Liam.
Thank you self.

The Moon Rises Over Wes' Kingdom

Drew up something for Wes Anderson's new film Moonrise Kingdom.  Whether or not you like Wes Anderson's films you can't deny that aesthetically they are always solid.  I've always enjoyed they way he composes the frame, the vibrant colors and costuming.  Not sure if I will use this illustration for my portfolio but I like it.

Winks and Pelvic Thrusts

Here is part of a story that I have been working on for a couple of months.  It is from the point of view of an unsuccessful writer.  Lika hera hera go:


I’ve been published a couple of times.  I even won a contest in a magazine for a story about a hippy playing the bongoes.  I’ll summarize it for you:  The hippy’s dog keeps barking and barking, yap yap yap, while the guy is there trying to get into a groove on his bongoes.  But the hippy has to keep stopping to correct the dog.  The first time he says to the dog, “come on man," in kind of a whiney voice.  But when he tries to play again, the dog starts barking, so the hippy gets a little mad.  He snaps at the dog “shut up Leonard!” And okay, the dog is quiet, he has learned his lesson.   The hippy starts playing again just for a minute to where he is really getting into it.  His beeds are rattling and his head is shaking.  His hair is flying and he’s looking up at the sky for that moment, for that one thing, that clear tunnel that sucks you in like a vacuum tube and your just some light piece of dust.  He’s looking for it.  When he’s right at the edge (its like the lip of a glass, all rounded over and he see’s it like a blue horizon) the dog starts yapping again.  The hippy throws down his bongoes, snapping them apart, and kicks the dog hard in the side. 


The story was published two years after giving up on graduate school, in a pretty obscure magazine that I don’t think exists anymore.  I got the idea when I overheard my neighbor doing pretty much what I described.  I had just returned from some place that I can’t remember.  Work probably.  I was maybe thirty.  I was feeling pretty dismal, though thinking about it now I can’t say why I was so sad all the time.  The piercing yelp of the dog when that hippy kicked him in the ribs made me laugh out loud.  I was delighted to see someone who was wearing the uniform of tranquilty acting so viscious, so full of wrath.  I can’t remember if I thought of myself as the hippy or the dog.  We switch sides that way.

Walt for Desert

I just ate some cereal.  It was unsatisfying...  here is a drawing of Walt / Bryan Cranston from Breaking Bad for my illustration portfolio.  Bought some new markers to do it.  One of the colors I bought was "sand".  Another color I bought was "shell."  I also bought "taupe," "rose petal", and "light peach".  All equally funny names.

***I was wrong.  They did not announce the winners of the TMR audio contest yet.

Drawing hope...

 

Building up my illustration portfolio with some new drawings (celeb portraits, article based stuff) so maybe I can get a job that doesn't involve not getting tipped.

  

Side note: Fuck you kid who eats egg sandwiches everyday, it comes with cheddar mother fucker and you have high cholesterol anyway.  You should eat a bananna.

Jon Stewart is in the portrait.  For some reason the yellow is more pronounced on here, and by "pronounced" I mean "fucking too bright."

no wonder i can't get any work done... desk

N@B

Just made this flier for the St. Louis event Noir at the Bar featuring all sorts of badness in a good way.

There ya have it folks...

I got distracted.  Just submitted an audio story to a competition, so I spent a lot of time recording the sounds of my dog sighing and shifting uncomfortably and me cussing at him.  Hopefully I can find a way to post it on here.  The story, not the dog sounds and cussing.

Anyway, been working on a new story "There ya have it folks..." here is a video that helped inspire it.  Here are some words from the story:

“Hey light this,” some goatee guy in a hoody said, holding in front of Sabrina a small cyclinder with the face of the evil man printed on the side.  The radius of a red target made its sights on the center of his tan skull.  Sabrina tapped the burning end of her sparkler, like a fairy god mother tapping a dumpy step child with her wand, and lit the twisted whick that came up out of the evil man’s turban.  The goatee guy set the firework down and stepped away cooly.  The crowd backed away with him and watched.  There was a moment of nothing, then the cylinder burst from the top with the gaudy redness of casino lights, spraying in a volcano of almost electrical looking sparks.  It spit four balls that snapped in two, which was followed by a forceful blue smoke that choked out rather quickly.  The crowd was quiet.  Sabrina could hear her sparkler hissing, and she held it further away from her body.  Then the crowd cheered and closed around.  A few people tried to stomp on the spent cylinder, but they wrapped into one another and tumbled, knocking it over on its side.  The cylinder then rolled to Sabrina’s feet.  She stomped it so viciously, and kicked it so hard that it arched upwards spinning through the air, toward a fat guy with a red beard and a Redskins Jersey, who in turn raised his foot like it were ten thousand pounds.  Sabrina whistled as the man did his own dance on the evil man’s burnt head.  She held her sparkler up in the air until the flame disappeared and the metal stick wilted from the heat. 

the WOW! signal

bill is up to his old tricks.

Malfunctioning Man

I have some words for you to read... they are from a story called the second safest city in america.  Teenagers on the rampage and so on, boring stuff.

Is it hard to discern sarcasm from text.  Sometimes I hear it in my head.  I can't tell.  Sarcasm is ephemeral I guess.  For a while people might think you're being funny.  Later on you're just an asshole. What was the point of this blog again?  To archive an asshole.  And so:


I was thinking about airplanes.  More specifically, I was visualizing the bolts up the side of an airplane, like the tacking on a piece of leather furniture.  It’s as thin as skin, the way I think about it.  It had been two years since I had last flown anywhere.  If my family went on vacation, or I was given the chance to do anything that involved air travel, I opted out.  Then I didn’t really think of it as a fear, more of avoidance.  Deferment?  Really, I had lost trust.  I could not accept being held thousands of miles off the ground by a stranger.  


If you start to think about how the mind of a man can simply malfunction, how it can fail and it can do so in such a way that everyone around that man is in danger.  Imagine there is a circle around him, this malfunctioning man, and imagine that circle acts as a sort of destruction radius.  Now that you have this malfunctioning man with his radius of destruction take him and put him on a 747.  Point that 747 toward any large city, then trigger that malfunction (or maybe it was triggered long ago).  You realize that we are all susceptible at any time.  I remember this in detail because it is something I think about even now.  There are people all around us and it doesn’t take much to flip that switch.  At that time though I didn’t understand.  Like I said, I didn’t think of it as fear.  I didn’t trust anyone...

A new addition to stuff I like...

Oh mother...

Landmark Town

Well, three out of four graduate schools have turned me down, and not that I blame them, really I don't.  I'm kind of hard to like...  I already bought a good professor blazer though.  I guess I could start wearing it to the bar.  I've noticed you get looks if you show up to a bar in  a blazer.

  

Here is a drawing of a lizard in a spray bottle:

I don't know what the idea was behind these drawings, they're old.  I know they weren't meant to be preachy or anything.

Here is a segment from a story called "Landmark Town" that I did not submit to any graduate school because I thought it was too goofy.  The story is just this guy describing the town he is from and all the landmarks that make it so great, and the landmarks just keep getting weirder and more violent.  I did submit as my writing samples more serious minded literature that really drilled into the idea that life and all our pursuits are meaningless (which I find to be funny, not depressing).  No wonder they loved me so much.  Maybe I dodged a bullet, not having to be trapped in a classroom with a bunch of hopeful people.  How do you write something optimistic without sounding like you're running for president?  Boy, things sure could be great if we lived like this!

Anyway, here are some words from "Landmark Town":

Up further where Broadway meets Main Street you can see our famous revolving restaurant, Chino’s Italiano.  Yep, it is the only street level revolving restaurant in the U.S.A.  Well, it doesn’t revolve currently due to the accidents.  The gears underneath posed a kind of hazard for children and small pets.  One lady lost her dog.  Look at your face!  You think I’m kidding?  Just snatched hold the leash, the ways those things will, pulled it right out of her hand and grinded him up like that.  Gruesome.  Could have been avoided, I think, with a little common sense,  but you know the city council got all up in arms and now the revolving restaurant is a more traditional immobile restaurant.   The gears are still there behind some chain link fencing.  You can see them from the sidewalk.  I bet they still work.  

Jersey Gore

Episode 57 of the acclaimed sci-fi drama The Grey Zone, starring Bearcat Ponder and Elly Tarsus.  Come back next week for a dick joke.

Sneak a peek!

here are a two pages from my sketchbooks and another useless robot.  No human should ever have to stand over a deep fryer.  I really like this arm robot.  So much emotion can be portrayed through a single mechanical arm.  Can you sense the despondency?  At least robots can't get heart disease.  Mmmm, I wish I had a toasted ravioli right now!

Tomorrow I will be posting the first panel from my comic strip The Grey Zone. It is a parody of the X-Files for all you lone gunmen out there.

More uselessness...

;) I have nothing clever to say.

I am a useless robot...

Anticipating the arrival of my last two rejection emails from grad school I have been busy as a bee trying to keep the gut punching bully of dread and anxiety at bay.  Despite my lack of blog updates I have been doing a lot of work.  The SUPER YACHTS series of paintings are well under way and I will be posting some photos of my progress later this week.  I have also been drawing new comics, none of which are presentable but I do have some small drawings that I have been doing to generate ideas and to simply keep my hands moving so I can't keep tapping the refresh button on my inbox anymore.

This is a drawing of my lovely lady Katherine.

I started doing a series of small drawings of what I'm calling "Useless Robots."  Check back to see more.

I'm thinking about saving the money I might have spent on Grad school to buy a new computer!  Oh, and move out of this black mold infested death trap*.  Priorities.

*exaggeration