“Kubo and the Two Strings” is the most gorgeous and masterful animated feature that I never want to see again. You should go see it. It is exactly what I needed to see to remind me why I do what I do while I'm still mourning the second loss of a parent.

Normally when I see an animated feature, some part of my brain is sitting there picking apart technique. I trained for this for years; I see the 1/24th of a second images that combine into the “illusion of life”. But I stopped trying to dissect this one, because its story was too good. It touched upon a bunch of the standard feature cartoon tropes and turned them around in beautiful, bittersweet ways.

I could talk about the plot, I could talk about the artistry. But fuck that. Just go see it. And bring tissues.

From the department of needing another project like I need another hole in my head: Build a magic wand.

There’s this story making the rounds about a magic shop that makes hand-made wands, and refuses to sell them to people who just want toys. Personally I’m down with it – if you work from the mindset of these being Real Tools for Real Magic, then it’d be like selling an AK-47 to someone looking for a water gun.

There has, of course, been a lot of snark in the various places it’s been posted. One common theme is a crack about real wizards making their own wands, damnit.

And that’s got me thinking. I have a wand already; it’s transparent plastic with glitter floating in it. I got it at a toy store for like ten bucks, and it has fit into my casual Chaos paradigm quite well. But… I could make my own.

I found myself on Adafruit, looking at parts. A Feather microcontroller (tiny Arduino, with wi-fi on the board). Some DotStar LEDs. An accelerometer. I could make it send messages to my lights. I could get a wi-fi-to-ir bridge and wave it to turn my projector and reciever on, and set it to an input. It could glow different colors to indicate compass directions for Actual Majgickghqxal Work.

This is a deep, deep rabbit hole I could fall down.

Got up. Read the morning internet. Pondered the overflowing laundry bin: am I gonna do it in two consecutive loads at the apartment building’s laundry room, or haul it down to the laundromat to do it in two simultaneous loads?

I decided to ponder this in the living room, sitting quietly on the beanbag chair. As I settled on the laundromat (I want to get out of the house, I’m probably just gonna play Clicker Heros or No Man’s Sky all day if I don’t), I noticed that the rubber dragon mask I’d gotten for cheap thanks to the pound falling into the toilet on Brexit night was sitting next to the chair.

So of course it only seemed logical to put it on while I dealt with getting the laundry arranged on the handcart to take it out to the laundromat. Just a perfectly ordinary dragon lady doing her laundry, nothing to see here, move on.

I’m taking it off before I go outside though. The thing’s heavy black rubber and it’s seventy degrees out. I’d die.

This is an email I get with increasing regularity:

“I found your work on [INSERT WEBSITE HERE] and love it. You should come sell your stuff on [WEBSITE]!”

I used to just ignore them. But lately, I’ve started replying with words to the effect of “Why should I bother? What will you do to get people looking at and buying my stuff in particular? I need another account on another website to promote about as much as I need a hole in my head.”

I don’t get many replies to that.

You want my art on your site? Lovely, I’m glad you like it. How are you going to promote me? How are you going to make money for me? Why should I bother spending my time rendering and uploading print-res files? I got comics to draw, and those come pretty close to paying my bills these days. I have zero interest in being another anonymous artist on yet another site full of ‘em, or in promoting your site by promoting my gallery on it.

You wanna put my art in your pop-up gallery show? Wonderful! Am I gonna have to wrangle printing it? And front framing it? How much more than “give you some AI files to print, show up at the opening and look pretty, get paid” am I gonna have to do? I got comics to draw.

I really, really like enjoy replying to these things with, essentially, “I ain’t gettin’ off my ass unless you show me the money.” You can work on spec. Not me.

(and that said, if promoting my stuff on spec sounds like a thing you’re interested in, email me – I could use an agent!)

There is a lure in Pokemon Go: the secret world, which only some people can see.

“This is where I caught a Vileplume”, I think as I walk down a particular footpath in the park. I have a memory of a thing that never happened, of a woman walking past a ten-foot tall fungus monster she had no awareness of. It was an epic fight; I had to throw ten Pokeballs at it before it succumbed.

Further in the park, there are people loitering around a place I know has three Pokestops. They probably put up some lures. Do I boot up the game? I do. Once again I am reminded for what seems like forever that it is by Niantic and the Pokemon Company. I catch a pink blob and move on.

I can’t decide if my walk was enhanced by looking at my screen, waiting for the game to boot, and catching a pink blob, or if it was worsened. I looked at my screen instead of the beautiful trees.

I stare at the sigil of the Niantic logo. I catch cute cartoon monsters. Micro-stories from the game attach themselves to the real world: this is where I caught a Vileplume, this is the first gym I won. The world’s stories attach themselves to the game: I caught this one on my trip to Europe, you can’t catch them in the States.

Slowly, Tlön seeps into our world.

Every so often, I think “oh hey, my mother is dead” and I'm sad again.

But on the whole, I'm a little less sad each time.

Eventually I won't feel much of anything when I think it, most of the time. It'll just be a fact of my life. And that feels kind of sad, too.