Month: March 2021

The Big 5-0 And Other Things

Happy Kitty

No, I’m not turning 50… not yet. Christ, how old do you people think I am anyway?! Hahahaa… I’m just messing with you. Actually, it gets closer and closer all the time and I can feel the walls of a half century of life closing in all too fast…

Actually, what I meant is that I’ve now reached 50 followers! Woot! Damn, I nearly fell over when I saw that! And I want to thank all my followers tho have an interest in the inane ramblings of an old fart who’s a bit mental. Seriously, thank you all so much, dear readers.

I’ve been a bit down in the dumps lately… Facebook is a serious waste of my time. No one wants to hear good news from me or see my art. They only want to hear of my misery and they only half care about that. So this really lifted my spirits. Thank you all so much!

Hippie Dippy…

I did have a bit of a mood elevator the other day…

This thumbnail showed up in my YouTube suggestions a few days ago. I was so intrigued that I decided to check out the song and take a listen. The song is “Hey Little Baby” by DOPE LEMON. As soon as it began, I felt so relaxed and at ease. This seems to be my new go to song for when I’m feeling stressed and need to take a chill pill for a minute. The image itself has such a chill vibe… I kind of wish i was there in that little cabin, looking out at that view, feeling this free… What’s even better is the tiny amount of animation added to the image in the video. Between that and the song itself, it really brings a sense of peace. I highly recommend checking it out. And I thank YouTube for suggesting this for me.

I’d like to tell a lot of things to suck it…

And I need the serenity right now. I have a birthday coming up 2 weeks from today…

I remember this episode of I Love Lucy where Ethel’s birthday is coming up and she was asked which one it was. Her response was, “Oh, it’s mine…” I like that. I think I’m going to start responding like that when I’m asked. Yes, I realize age is just a number, but it’s not exactly thrilling that the number keeps getting higher and higher. It’s as if I feel that there’s a certain way someone of my advanced age should behave, but my brain screams no. On a good day, mentally, I feel 16! Why shouldn’t I act as young as I feel, right? Therein lies the problem… Mentally I feel 16; physically I feel 116 on any given day. So which age do I act like?!

I also get down around my birthday and have for well over a decade. My late friend was much like me. She hated anyone making a fuss and we were only allowed to wish each other a happy birthday. No one else… Our birthdays were literally a day apart (hers the day before mine) and our job would celebrate them together. We both hated it so fucking much… but what I wouldn’t give to be able to celebrate with her again. That’s the only thing I really want every single year and I never get it.

As my birthday nears, I get thrown into all sorts of emotional turmoil. The last few years haven’t been as bad since I’ve been on meds, but now that I’m weaning off, I’m seeing that the old apocalyptic mood swings are returning. One moment I’m fine and the next I’m either bawling my eyes out over nothing or literally trashing my house and busting shit up because I don’t know how to handle what I’m feeling. And it’s not normally my birthday or her being gone that upsets me at the time when I flip the fuck out. It’s always something stupid that sets me off…

A few days ago, someone had mentioned my friend… They had met her and were telling me of a memory they had of her. It took all I had not to spaz, get angry, cry, tell them to shut the fuck up… It wouldn’t have been proper on my part. And the memory being shared was a pleasant one and was told innocently. What could I do…?

Isn’t it a beautiful reminder?

Speaking of my birthday… I’ve decided to treat myself to something I really want this year.

A few years back, I had gotten my very first tattoo. It’s a watercolor lily with the kanji for “artist” (taken from my Japanese dictionary so I can trust it’s correct) on the back of my left shoulder. I was scared half out of my mind, thinking it was going to be painful, but it wasn’t. Watercolor tattoos use a different type of gun that’s a lot less painful. I love my tattoo, but I rarely see the thing considering where it is. Half the time I forget I even have one. I can’t tell you how many times people will see my back and say, “Oh, that’s beautiful!” I give them a puzzled response until they tell me they’re speaking of my tattoo. Seriously, I forget it’s even there.

This time, I’m going to get the tattoo I have pictured here in the same spot. Heaven help me… I’m not sure how bad that will be as most people don’t beat up the inside of their arms as much as other body parts. Then again, it’s not like the back of my shoulder gets beat up, either. And I have a pretty high tolerance for pain. I mean hell, if I can go through having an ovary rupture, I’m pretty sure I can get a tattoo anywhere on me and it won’t hurt near as much as that did. That was my mindset when I got my first one. I was still scared half out of my mind, but I did it and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. It really didn’t bother me at all/ I hope this one is the same.

Stop… Yoga Time!

I’ve been feeling a lot of stress weighing down on me lately…

Perhaps it’s because I’m weaning off meds, perhaps because I have a horribly high numbered age coming up. Perhaps it’s the billion other things going on n my life right now that are causing me more stress than I need or can handle right now.

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t taken time to meditate. And the closest I come to doing something productive like yoga is in my Animal Crossing game. In all fairness, it’s because even yoga is too much of a strain on my knees. That’s sad and pathetic, I know. Exercise helps arthritis, so they say. But when you have a degenerative type, like osteoarthritis, there’s no amount of exercise that will help you. Besides, how does it help arthritis when it hurts too fucking much to exercise…? Riddle me that, Batman…

I just need to find a way to destress and fast. It’s beginning to take a major toll on my health again. Not to mention that it’s messing with my creativity once again.

But at least I did get some happy news today and I have all 50-some of you to thank for it! I really appreciate the fact that you enjoy the weird ass shit I post and I hope to continue entertaining all of you with even more weird shit in the future. Happiness is best when it’s shared, right…?

The Forces That Be, Hard At Work…

I like Audie’s views on coffee…

So, it seems Corel Painter wasn’t the only thing trying to stop my creative flow (see entry “It’s Trying To Stop You”). My Wacom tablet decided to jump on the same bandwagon… What the hell is it with The Forces That Be…?! They seem to be trying to stop me from doing what I’ve finally been compelled to do after several years!

Title (c) The Brothers Johnson, Art (c) yours truly

I’ve been having issues with my Wacom tablet for a few years. Periodically it would just go off while I was working and I’d have to unplug it and plug it back in. The issue was just getting worse until my solution stopped working (and it wouldn’t come back on until the following morning). I figured it was the cable, so I ordered a new one. It seemed to help until it stopped working again and refused to come back on. Again… So I put in a call to Wacom tech support. None of the solutions worked, which meant my tablet had finally bit the big one. Had it not been so old (it was made in September, 2014), I would have been able to take the cheaper route and get it repaired. But it wasn’t an option… I had to drop a little over $400 to get a new tablet. I wasn’t thrilled, but, as you can see, I was able to finish my drawing! I worked like a mad woman to get it finished…

My temporary outlet for my creativity…

In the meantime, I made these weird little scenes in Animal Crossing to get out my creativity… It seems silly, but I had to be creative until I was able to draw again. So The Forces That Be didn’t stop me! Much as they didn’t want me to be creative, “Life always finds a way.” It may not have been a great solution, but it helped.

Marker testing…

I also had another outlet…

I’ve been seeing these markers on Facebook for a while and have wanted to buy them… It’s a bit difficult to tell in the picture, but these are the type that write in silver and have a colored outline.

I actually had one of these when I was a kid back in the 80s… Forget I said that… Not only do I not want to date myself and give you a clue how old I am, I’m also making myself feel old and I don’t like it…

Anyway, I always loved those markers, so I decided to get some and try them out. I couldn’t think if what to write, so I just wrote some song lyrics to see if they worked like the ones I remembered. No shit, they’re just like they were back in the day! I was so excited! Morticia said I was weird for that, but she doesn’t seem to understand how strong a pen fetish I have…

My new black orchid betta, Narcissus

I’ve also had some other help during this stress I’ve been experiencing…

Sadly, my betta, Betelgeuse (named after the star, not the movie) passed away. I had really wanted to get a black orchid betta, but every pet store near me was out of them. I had to cross over into a neighboring state (thank goodness I live not far from the state line) to get the very last black orchid betta they had. Isn’t he beautiful? I named him Narcissus after the book/movie/miniseries Black Narcissus. I highly recommend the mini series. It was amazing!

Anyway, he’s been providing me with some comfort… Watching fish swim has been proven to lower blood pressure and stress levels. And man, did I need that last week. If it could go wrong, it fucking did…

I’m hoping for a much better week this time. At least I’ll be able to draw…

I Want To Be A Danish…

“Na na na na na na na na…”

To quote the fictitious character Ty Webb, “The Zen philosopher, Basho, once wrote, ‘A flute with no holes is not a flute. And a doughnut with no hole is a danish.’ He was a funny guy.” Then he proceeded to putt all but one ball into the same hole in odd fashions while making sounds like The Six Million Dollar Man.

It actually wasn’t the only good advice Ty gave his caddy, Danny. He also told him, “Stop thinking; let things happen and be the ball.” Imagine such profound advice on life coming from such a stupidly funny movie.

This is why you want to be a danish…

This is why it’s much better to be a danish… As you can see, a doughnut with a hole has no center to find, right? Hahahaa…

I’ve been feeling more than a bit off balance lately for quite a number of reasons. And no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t seem to get my shit together. This lasted the entire month of February… There was just too much hitting me all at once and much of it wasn’t good. To make matters worse, the means of escape, my zen activities, were denied for a variety of reasons. Corel Painter expecting me to pay a shit ton of money for an upgrade since their last version didn’t work with the Mac update, the fact that every Monday, the day I have my guitar lessons, it either snowed like a bitch or we had ice enough to make travel unsafe. I was coming unglued at that point, I think…

Just a little sneak peak…

You know I sucked it the fuck up and paid those money hungry fuckers at Corel the $148 to upgrade my program, right…? Yeah I did… My desire to draw was so strong, I couldn’t not upgrade. I was afraid that, if I did, I would lose my desire to draw again (and the price would go up to the normal $229 for an upgrade). And I absolutely had to redo one of my drawings because I caught a goof I made that was so obvious I had no idea how I didn’t see it before. I normally don’t like to show works in progress, but here’s a little sneak peak (minus a lot of detail).

That’s what I was throwing myself into for a while as well as my writing. Then, suddenly, I just kind of lost my way again. I’m not having as horrible a block with my art as I am my writing this time, which is unusual. Usually, it’s the other way around. Still, I haven’t done either in a few days because I just fell into a mild funk for whatever reason.

My favorite “Rick and Morty” scene

However, there has been a minor improvement in things…

It seems Morticia is finally getting her shit together. That’s a good thing… If she didn’t, I was going to have to quote Morty here and give her the speech on getting her shit together, hahahaa…

I think she’s finally coming into her own again. She inherited her mother’s trailer after her passing and was all beside herself about it. “The park won’t accept my application”, “I don’t know that I can afford it” (even though it was cheaper than her previous rent and better than moving in with Gomez), “I’m afraid to sleep here alone”… The neurosis went on and on.

So she got accepted, moved into the trailer and she still seemed to be having some issues to a degree. Then she got a kitten… To be honest, getting that kitten seems to have done her a world of good. Pets will do that… There’s always someone there to greet you when you get home, listen to you when you need to vent, not judge you and love you unconditionally. She seems happier which is a huge load off me.

Yup, that’s me…

And I had something to look forward to, which was a major help.

Finally, there was no snow or ice on a Monday! That meant I was able to make it to my guitar lesson! Yes, after a month of playing here at home and trying to teach myself as best I could and practicing pathetically hard, I was finally able to have my lesson! It felt great to be able to go do something I loved again!

And it turned out to be a great lesson! Well… sometimes they’re a bit more like jam sessions because I catch on quick to some things, so I get a lot of tunes to practice with the occasional new chord thrown in if need be or a new technique I need for said song. My instructor is just the coolest guy! This week I had something amazing to show him. I found chords for a song I’d been wanting to learn, looked up how to play them and even learned a bit of strumming on my own!

Look this shit up, people! I can’t stress that enough!

But the best part of my lesson was a collaboration of sorts… One song I wanted to play (that I introduced him to) was “Scratching Machine” by Janko Nilovic, part of the Montparnasse 2000 Library. It was a collection of circa 1970s French contemporary jazz. It was mostly used for incidental music in various shows. Anyway, this particular piece has an amazing bass riff and guitar riff. Alas, no sheet music. So while I was snowbound, I picked out the main note I heard, showed my instructor and damned if he didn’t figure out the right notes for the chord! He was playing a bunch until I finally exclaimed, “That’s the one!” It’s exciting when you find someone with perfect pitch like yourself! In any case, he wrote it down so I would remember what the fuck I was playing, taught me to strum it… I was beside myself! I’ve been wanting to play this since I first heard it several years ago. Now I can!

The non-Keanu Reeves version of Constantine…

I also picked a name for my red beauty. Finally…

I had an interesting conversation with my mother about what to name my guitar. It’s a D’Angelico, so I thought an Italian name was befitting. I liked Giuseppe, but she suggested Giovani. I actually grew up (sort of) with a Giovani. His parents owned the town pizzeria and they had a million kids. That didn’t sit well… She then suggested Raphael, but people would think the angel or artist. No… they’d think the fucking Ninja Turtle. I was coming up dry.

Suddenly, it came to me… Constantine! When I told her, she countered with, “That’s not Italian!” I retorted, “The hell it isn’t! He was one of the early emperors of the Roman empire!” She seemed a bit put off by this. Gee, I’m sorry you don’t know your Roman history, mom… I don’t know why she seemed funny about that. So, to lighten the mood, I suggested, “I could always call him Caligula! Or Caesar! How about Brutus?” She said no. So Constantine it is!

Celebrate!

I think I’m going to take a few days to make a few changes…

This is why I shouldn’t watch Animal Crossing videos on YouTube. They give me all sorts of new ideas on how I want my island to look and… well, then I have to change it. Again… Do you know how many times I’ve done this so far?! It’s insane!

Then again, I’m an artist. We seem to have that urge to create and destroy, sometimes at the exact same time. Fun, isn’t it? But, today, I think I’ll celebrate Girls’ Day in the game. It’s a Japanese holiday… Maybe ripping my island apart can wait a day…