I just got some proofs for the book and they look great, except for one thing: somewhere in the process the fact that these are CMYK + spot gloss books got lost, and the printer diligently converted all my sweet spot gloss overlays into opaque CMYK stuff, which pretty much looks terrible. Books at Rainfurrest are definitely not happening, and I’m now thinking of aborting APE since I don’t feel confident I’ll have them for that. Oh well, they should be in hand for Further Confusion, and for other cons next year!
weekend stuff
Things I did this weekend:
– Bussed to Redmond and back on Friday, hung some art in Foolscap’s show and left a half-dozen decks in the print shop. Priced some of the art to move in hopes that I wouldn’t have to haul it all home; my favorite was giving Fortune a minimum bid of $50 and a buy-it-now of $500. Next time I hang her in a show I might move the first zero over to the buy-it-now price – ROLL THE DICE AND HAIL ERIS.
– Went to see this year’s installment of “Nerdz!”, the nerd burlesque revue I was a part of last year. It was kinda nice to be in the audience, as the venue offers no way for folks backstage to see what’s going on. Realized that, judging by which acts I hooted the loudest for, I am apparently now straight, at least where skinny muscly dudes are concerned. How’d that happen?
– Went to Redmond again, which ended up involving a detour through Bellevue because the 520 was closed. Took all my art back, took none of the decks back. I’m cool with that. Also me and my art managed to get a lift so the trip back didn’t take the entire rest of the day.
– Decided to play Nice Elder Of The Fandom and let someone in town for Rainfurrest early crash in my living room, which I am kind of regretting as it turns out having people here who I’m not emotionally intimate makes it impossible to get any work done. And with Rainfurrest coming up there is a lot to do. Plus I think my social tanks are being drained, which is, um, not good when I’m planning to sit behind a table for three and a half days being very social.
the dream of… some crazy shit.
This dream is jumbling up rapidly. It involved, not necessarily in this order:
– a male harpy with a penis on his forehead. He pressed it into a guy’s forehead, slowly, and stayed there for a while; when he drew back there was a bloody hole and his victim was dead. “Don’t worry,” the harpy said. “He’s safe inside me.” (There was an implication that this skull-fucking involved completely copying the personality, in a rather rapey way.) Then he was coming at me. I was holding him back with one had, as the other fumbled with a rusty revolver. I pulled the trigger several times but to no avail. Fiddled with the magazine, then suddenly pulling the trigger took a LOT more effort. Over a half a minute or so I managed to squeeze it, shooting this mind-fucking harpy guy dead. This bit, I think, happened on a train.
spaceport!
There’s a new page of Rita up. It’s got a big money shot of the Vespa spaceport in it. If you click on the thumbnail above you’ll be taken to a hugemungous copy of that spaceport without the dialogue or other panels cluttering it up! Enjoy.
draw draw draw draw
Well this page is taking a while. Lots more to do in both the blue track and the red track, as well. Draw draw draw…
have you had your mind blown today?
Two things.
1. Folks at NASA have calculated that an Alcubierre warp drive may actually be feasible. They think they can run one with the energy contained within the mass of, say, one of the Voyager crafts rather than that of, oooh, Jupiter.
White and his colleagues have begun experimenting with a mini version of the warp drive in their laboratory.
They set up what they call the White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer at the Johnson Space Center, essentially creating a laser interferometer that instigates micro versions of space-time warps.
(Alcubierre’s idea: move the space that contains the ship through the rest of the universe, instead of moving the ship – your basic inertialess drive straight out of Lensman.)
2. This passage from Doctorow and Stross’ “Rapture of the Nerds”.
“Yup,” Doc says. “God loves those who help themselves—that’s basic, isn’t it? A is A, right? Let’s get our axioms in order. God loves those who help themselves, and God wants us to prosper. As long as we’re living a godly life and doing God’s will, of course. So anyway, what is God’s will? Well, God’s got plans for us which include prospering and being good custodians of the world and, uh, well, we haven’t done so good at that. But God’s other plans include resurrecting the dead. And the elect living in paradise on Earth for a very long time, with all the formerly dead sinners as their personal servants. Death is obviously the enemy of humanity and God, so the Prophet says we’re first going to make ourselves immortal, then we’re going to resurrect everyone who has ever lived, and simulate every human who ever might have lived so that we can incarnate them too. And we’re to colonize space—”
When I came to this bit, I just had to stop for a few minutes, staring off into space, as my head unpacked this idea. I’ve seen the idea that we might be in a simulation of the past run by Incredibly Advanced Beings, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen what felt like a good reason to do this. And it’s kind of a horrifying one, given that the character speaking is from the bombed-out remnants of a North America left to the sort of people who the modern Republican party considers its “base”.
weekend
Stuff I doed this weekend:
Worked on the roughs for my contribution to my anthology. What I outlined as 8 pages currently occupies 19 pages of rough layouts, and will probably end up being 21-22pp. Working in a digest size just throws off my calculations! I might try to edit it down a little in the process of going from roughs to finished pages; I’ll see how it reads. It’s only a rough draft of the dialogue right now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there end up being panel rearrangements along with reworking the words.
Went to Jason’s and talked about his plans for the future of Foolscap, a somewhat moribund little Seattle con he’s going to be the chairman of for next year. Then we played “Netrunner” a couple of times. The first time I died after the second time I threw myself at his ice; the second time came down to some very tense headgames when we were both one point away from the win and he had two systems that may have been traps and may have been points. He won – but then again I’d gotten to a point where I was spending several turns just taking money from having the “Great Work” card in play, and had all but maybe 10 of the money tokens available in the game! I declared that this meant I’d basically retired from console cowgirling after my startup went big, and was keeping a hand in for amusement. (I also had fun spinning tales of what taking money from a “day job” card entailed.)
Went to an actual concom meeting for said con.
Went to a Metafilter meetup. Got there late, joined in on the tail end of a game of “Cards Against Humanity” which… wow. I think that game loses you purity test points. Good stuff for playing over a few intoxicants, and one of the very few games where having art on the cards would probably hurt it. I think Erin was threatening to bring a copy to Rainfurrest or something?
Also I need to remember to get Nick to take a reference photo of me for one tough pose in that anthology story when he’s over here this weekend,
ooh, reviews
the dream of the bathroom shooting gallery
This dream started in my studio. It was night, but I had the front window open. A car pulled up in front of the building, and a couple of my neighbors got out. One of them was wearing this fluffy white fox? costume. I stuck my head out the window and said “Wow! Nice fursuit!” as she climbed up the stairs; she nodded, and proceeded around to the side of the building where her entrance is. (My apartment building is a small one, that doesn’t have a foyer or anything – ground floor apartments like mine open directly to the outside, upper ones have short stairs up to their doors.)
Then I went into the bathroom and things got decidedly stranger.
and also
After wallowing mindlessly in a pit of Gantz, I grabbed a smaller sketchbook and started roughing out pages for my contribution to the anthology I’m doing. Which is why I made the post about the Andrew Lang [COLOR] Fairy Books; I was skimming through them looking for inspiration for the title, based on the half-remembered fairy story I’d cross-bred with a setup swiped from Xxxenophile. So far I’m up to the end of page 2 of my 8-page outline, which is turning out to mean I’m up to page 4 of my actual thumbnails. Not surprising, really, given that I’m using a small format.