I don't know which is sillier...

The fact that my radio-less, speaker-less car came with this little manual, or the fact that I still had it in my glove compartment after eighteen years.

Some of my other finds

You might think that metal detecing is all very glamorous, combining the rugged outdoorsmanship of caribou hunting with the scintillating bling of gangsta highlife. Yes, it often is like that, but unfortunately, there are also truckloads of sweat, bug bites, and crap.

Cracking seeds

I roasted some sunflower seeds. I was cracking them open with my teeth and sharing them with Erin and Jill, but the whole process of biting them and them taking them out of my mouth to give to another person got old pretty quickly. I discovered that pliers work great for cracking them. If you put the seed on-edge in the wide spot, and crack it--
the shell breaks, but the pieces don't go flying everywhere.

This is the second-biggest sunflower head from our garden. I cut it to get the seeds. It was surprisingly heavy, so the girls used team work to hold it up for the photo.

commentary

Last night Kim and I were in bed watching McCain's acceptance speech and its funfetti aftermath on PBS. Jim Lehrer was leading the commentary.

After the speech there was the traditional standing around on stage with runningmate, family, and runningmate's family; waving and kissing and smiling. Things fall from the ceiling. It goes on a long time, as I'm sure you know if you've ever bothered to watch.

Kim and I were laughing at Mr. Lehrer's commentary. There are few things more dangerous to a TV journalist than the perceived need to fill up the minutes with words.

Confetti started falling from the ceiling at the Republican convention, and Jim Lehrer began in a monotone: "Now the confetti is falling..."

pause.

"...And that's colored confetti. There's some blue there."

pause.

"Balloons are beginning to fall. There are a lot of balloons."

Long pause.

"Lots of balloons."

Long pause.

"And there are the big balloons."

By this point, Kim was laughing, and was wondering if maybe this was done to benefit all of the blind people who might have tuned in. I started mocking Jim Lehrer by adding my own monotone commentary: "...more confetti falling now... Many colors of confetti... Those balloons have stars on them... That woman has really big boobs... Sare Palin is waving...waving...blowing kisses... waving..."

The huge screen behind the candidates started showing images of fireworks exploding, so I continued: "The fireworks display is artificial..."

Then, about sixty seconds later, Jim Lehrer said, "For the record, the fireworks aren't real, they are being projected onto that big screen."

Palin's daughter

No, not *that* daughter, another one. I don't know her name.

 

I was watching Sarah Palin give her speech last night on NBC, and I witnessed my very favorite moment of both the Democratic and Republican conventions so far. Palin's youngest daughter, who I guess is about six or so, was there with the rest of her family. She was holding her infant brother, and not paying any attention at all to her mother's speech. She was only paying attention to her brother. There, on national television, during what is presumably the most important speech of her mom's life, she gave her palm a huge lick and used it to slick her brother's hair.

 

It was one of the sweetest things I've seen on TV in a long time.

 

That's about as close to political commentary as I get on this blog.

 

Louisville Zombie Attack, part...what am I up to now? VIII?

There was ghastliness in every direction.
And there were occasional zombie melees. Here, a zombie woman has run down a man; after a valiant struggle, the man got the upper hand, perhaps with the help of his beer.

I would estimate that there were about 200 zombies, and a maybe a thousand people (both alive and undead) that turned out for the event.

Louisville Zombie Attack, part VI

Here's an interesting duo, center back: a zombie Jolly Green Giant, and a zombie Michael Phelps. I regret that I didn't get a better photo. Michael Phelps had lots of gold medals around his neck. (He was also wearing speedos. I do not regret not getting a better picture of that. I saw it, and I really wish I could unsee it.)
The Zombie Express.

Louisville Zombie Attack, part V

These zombies were kind enough to pose for a moment.
A zombie interviewer in the background is interviewing a zombie mother and child in this photo. In the foreground is a zombie bride. There were lots of zombie brides. As a matter of fact, I seem to remember lots of undead brides trick-or-treating last Halloween. I'm sure there is some socio-psychological significance to that.

Louisville Zombie Attack, part IV

In this photo, you can see my friends Paul and Ryan, above Daphne's right and left shoulders, respectively. And here is my dad in the background, taking a picture of a zombie Chick-Fil-A cow guy. Did I mention that many costumes had a, um, randomness to them?

Louisville Zombie Attack, part III

There were zombie children...
...and I suppose this could be their mummy, playing in traffic.

Louisville Zombie Attack, part II

The zombies attacked down both sides of the street. Here is a zombie nun... ...and a zombie Freddie and Daphne.
There was also a zombie Scooby, who was finely grotesque, but I couldn't manage a clear shot.

Louisville Zombie Attack, part I

At Bardstown Road and Eastern Parkway, the crowd gathered as the sun set.

And here the zombies begin to march.
Note the zombie Silent Bob, right background.

Halloween comes early some years.

Hey, I just found out that there is going to be a mass zombie attack on Bardstown Road this evening at around 8:30. I think I'll go witness the carnage and, I hope, escape alive with some photographs.

 

Just in case anyone else wants to go with me...

 

various updates

A couple who live in the Highlands saw my drawing of a co-worker's home (http://markgodofthunder.blogspot.com/2008/07/black-walnut-ink-drawing.html) and have asked me to do a drawing of their house, also in the Highlands. They also want me to work on two other houses as gifts for relatives.

 

Their house is another nice old home, but it's going to be a little tough figuring the layout. The view from which they'd like it drawn is about 60% obscured by foliage, which means I've had to sketch and photograph it from other angles, figure out the proportions, and then mentally rotate the view to get the angle I need. I spent a couple of hours sort of "gridding out" sizes for windows and doors to make it easier. The actual drawing should commence this weekend; I need to photograph my thumbnail sketches and email them to the couple so that they have a general idea of what the composition will be, just in case they have any objections.

 

--

 

I've been out metal detecting during a couple of lunch breaks this week. First I went to Hounz Lane Park; I found a couple of coins and some junk. Then I went to the children's home and detected in a field near and old drive and shuffleboard court. Nothing there but cans, broken glass, and some twisted hunks of aluminum the origins of which I haven't a clue. There is a lot of stuff there to dig, but there are so many buried aluminum cans, pieces of chain link fence, and bottle caps, I get tired of it pretty quickly. There might be good stuff in that spot, but I'd have to wade through a lot of junk.

 

In all of my hunting at the children's home, I've only found one coin. The site has, however, yielded my favorite finds so far: the Joe E. Brown (I think) baseball pin, an old key with a lion on it, the 1998 girls high school track medal, and a few other little bits of junk that obviously were lost by kids 40-60 years ago.

 

I'm eager for the chance to spend a larger block of time (three hours or more) detecting, because then I could go to someplace farther away, someplace I think will hold some good stuff. All the advice I find on the Internet points to private property as the best place to hunt: around older homes, specifically. I also have some schools I'd like to check out on a weekend or holiday when classes will be out. It would be great to get another chance to go out with Brian. The last time we sent was in February, when the ground was frozen and we were still learning how to use our detectors.

 

--

 

There are three vegetables in production in my back yard right now. The tomatoes are doing very well, and have in fact got ahead of me. The vines are pulling over the stakes to which they are tied, and there are lots of ripe cherry tomatoes that are going unpicked because I haven't had time to get them. My kitchen counter is crowded with the Mr. Stripey tomatoes, which are largish yellow tomatoes striped with red. They are actually quite delicious, with a mild sweet flavor, firm flesh, and few seeds. I'll have to look for that variety again next year.

 

There are also carrots, which are green and bushy but I don't think will produce much to eat. I think it's been to hot and dry, and the roots are going to be scrawny and tough. If I still have some seeds, I might try planting some more for the autumn.

 

The sweet potatoes appear to be doing quite well. The vines cover the ground all around the tomatoes, and are so bushy and dense that they discourage Erin and Jill from getting in close to pick the tomatoes. I think that in a few weeks we'll have some good sweet potatoes to dig and eat. Unfortunately, I've never been a big fan of sweet potatoes. I like them baked in a pan with brown sugar and marshmallows, the traditional Thanksgiving dish. But I never get excited about baking them like regular potatoes, or making sweet potato fries. I usually get tired of that after a few bites.

 

Something- a squirrel or a bird- has been eating some of the seeds from the sunflowers. I could probably get a bunch of them to roast and eat, and the girls might enjoy that.

 

experience vs. historical ranking for presidents

Sort of interesting...

 

http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Info/experience.html

 

1956 Sudanese 1 millim

I think this is an attractive little coin. It's actually one of my uncle's. I've very slowly been cataloging his coins for him, and I'm at the tough end of it. It's tough because I've saved all the hard ones for last--hard ones like this. They are ones I can't read and don't have a very accurate guess on attribution, so I just have to root around in my books or online until I figure out what it is. There are also some that I can identify, but I'm afraid to hazard a guess on the grade, or I have a question about, and want to research a little more.

Not a new painting

I haven't any new drawings or paintings to post, so I thought I'd put up an old one that I don't think I've put up before. Maybe I have. This is one of my most worked-over subjects, in the traditional studio sense, ever. I did some sketches of this area on-the-spot at Twin Mountain in the Vedauwoo are near Laramie, Wyoming. Then I turned the sketches into a painting. The painting was a disappointment, but there were some really good parts of it. I knew I could do it better. So after I moved back to Louisville, I used it as the basis for this one. This one turned out much better. The thing I miss most about Wyoming is being able to just drive out to spots like this and walk around.

I ain't talkin' 'bout the linens

Here's a song that Erin has been singing, learned from vacation Bible school a few weeks ago, as she understands the lyrics: "Jesus, Princess Pea is glory! Aya yoo yah!"

Dave Barry quote

 

Dave Barry wrote a column about his colonoscopy (http://www.miamiherald.com/548/story/427603.html), and I found this bit about preparing for it pretty funny:

 

"The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a
great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery
bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you
jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

"MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here,
but: Have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much
the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And
then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink
another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your
bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you
have not even eaten yet."

 

And drinking it, in my opinion, is the worst part of it.

 

festiva snow jumping

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrsWG-g86DQ&watch_response

 

from the mint, part 4 (end)

These two I'm not at all sure about. I think the top one might be some sort of potter wasp, named for building nests for their eggs out of balls of clay. The bottom one might be some kind of sweat bee? It's not a good picture. Maybe both of these pictures are the same wasp. I took about twenty photos and deleted most of them because they came out so poorly.

 

from the mint, part 3

A Virginia ctenucha moth and an ailanthus webworm moth. I frequently see the latter around our porchlamp in he evenings.

 

from the mint, part 2

The top is a grass-carrier wasp. I think the bottom one is a paper wasp, although he was much darker than the ones I usually see, and he looked really really big.

 

Something else from the mint!

I took these photos last evening. The mint that is flowering in our back yard is a real magnet for insects. It's a small patch of mint, but there were hundreds of little bees, wasps, hornets, moths, and flies enjoying it. There was quite a variety of wildlife. I took some photos of the larger insects, but there were lots of very small ones that were too tiny and fast for me to get a clear shot of. I especially wanted some photos of these little metallic gold-colored bees, but I couldn't manage it. My camera always wanted to focus someplace that the bee wasn't, and when I got too close the critters would scatter. Also, I'm a pretty sting-able guy, and I didn't want any of these folks getting upset with me.

 

Here are two pictures of a baldface hornet.

 

Lunch break sketch, continued

I shaded it in.

Forbidden fruit

Riffing on Kevin's theme of forbidden fruit, today somebody brought a chocolate nut pie into the break room. They put a Post-it note warning on it: "VERY SWEET." I am not to touch it. Ah, cruelty.

 

Here's an idea for an Olympic event, and you can't tell me this wouldn't be fun to watch, at least for five or ten minutes: backwards running races!

 

Also, in the soda change box at work yesterday I found another silver dime (1964). That makes two in two weeks, which is as much as I usually find in a year. It makes me wonder if there is someone here with a few more in his pocket.

 

tomatoes

Kevin raised some questions on his blog about stealing some poor little old lady's tomatoes. In my opinion, Kevin, one would have to read clues into the setting. Could the gardener have situated the plant farther away from a public walkway, but chose not to? That could be a clue that she was offering you some. Is there a chance that the plant was a volunteer that just grew there randomly? I have a couple of those in my garden. Might the tomatoes have been laced with a powerful toxin or hallucinogen? Because some people are crazy psychos who might be watching and waiting behind the blinds at their smudged window panes. You never know. You never know until you try one.

Or you could just have some of mine. They are starting to pour in. I picked a small bucketful yesterday.

Grandpa helping out with the brand-new big girl bike.

Lunchbreak sketch

I started this one over at Bellevoir; this time I came prepared with a lawn chair. Man, that's much more comfortable than sitting on the ground. I also had far fewer ants crawling across me and my drawing. I was using some new drawing tools, Marvy and Pigma Micron I just bought a couple of weeks ago. I neglected to get some really fine points, so my shading is very heavy-handed. It doesn't look terrible, though. I've worked on this drawing a few times since this picture was taken, and I won't work on it any more; it looks OK and I'll take another photo of it to post soon.

worked-over lunchbreak sketch

I spent some time shading in that sketch I did on my lunch break.

metal detecting

Detecting totals:

Lincoln cents: 118

Nickels: 7

Dimes: 25

Quarters: 19

 

Total coins: 169

$8.78

 

Saying that I found 169 coins feels more impressive than saying I found $8.78. I'm sure as heck a long way from making minimum wage.

 

I spent some time last night detecting in Anchorage. Anchorage strikes me as a weird place. The first place I went, months ago, was around an old rail station. I found nothing but trash; bits of cans and bottle caps, buried 6-7 inches down. It was the same along the sidewalk in front of the post office there, last night, although I didn't do a thorough search.

 

All the soil I find in that area seems very rich. It's dark and crumbly, perfect for gardening. I don't hit any clay.

 

I get the impression that the whole town had the top foot of soil scraped away a few years ago and replace with potting soil.

 

I've actually had decent success at the Anchorage School. There is a huge grassy lawn in front of the school which I have crisscrossed with the metal detector. I haven't searched it exhaustively, but I've been over quite a bit of it. I've hardly found anything there, despite the fact that it seems like a great place for school picnics and similar affairs.

 

The ball field right next to the school building, however, has been more productive. I've found about a dollar in change around there, and I have a lot more to search.

 

Lots of times when I hunt a spot that seems like a good spot but which produces nothing, I wonder if it has been searched before. In the case of the train station, that seems likely. It's a very obvious and historical site, a place that everyone in the area would know about. In the past three decades it may have been combed over a dozen times. It's the same with the lawn in front of the school. The ball field is more productive because it is used more heavily, and I'm finding change that's been dropped over the past five years or so. There is almost bound to be old coins or other artifacts in all those places, just harder to find.

 

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Exciting news!

Apparently, after being taken off the Web from its limited run, Dr. Horrible is back for free viewing, thanks (I think) to commercial sponsorship from Best Buy.

So, if you missed your chance before, you can see it now! Still (or again) Free!

http://www.drhorrible.com/

Thanks to Kevin for mentioning it.

And a special thanks to Loraine for showing it to me in the first place.

corn

We finished all of our corn. There wasn't as much there as I'd thought and hoped, because a few of the ears weren't in good shape. They hadn't developed well. We did manage to get several meals' worth of corn-on-the-cob, and was was delicious.

 

My giant sunflower has opened up; it might be 13 feet tall.

 

disturbing dream

Last night I dreamed that I was one of hundreds of people being held hostage in a gymnasium by Mel Gibson. We were all seated in rows of chairs, and Gibson was walking behind each row, going from person to person with a revolver, holding the gun to the back of each person's head. He had only one bullet in the gun; it was a Russian roulette game in which he'd pull the trigger, then spin the barrel again and move on to the next person. I can only remember the dream after he had already passed me and was moving farther down the row. He stopped to intimidate and insult one cowering guy, then resumed, and I thought to myself, "When he gets to the people directly behind me, I'm going to leave to use the restroom, because I don't want to get splattered if the gun goes off." However, when I woke up, I just thought, "We would have torn Mel Gibson limb from limb."

 

Coins and notes of Iceland

I just found this--it still amazes me what can be found on the Internet, and the resources just keep expanding:

 

http://www.sedlabanki.is/uploads/files/TheCurrencyofIceland.pdf

 

It's as much fun to try to read the Icelandic as it is to look at the coins.

 

I'm a little bit of a fan of the coins of Iceland; the modern ones have some very pretty animal pictures, similar in design to the coins of Ireland before the switch to Euros. (Ireland, Iceland...the difference is a consonant.) I think that the coins of Iceland deserve more attention from me.

 

Tom Waits's press conference

Sort of amusing, I thought.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrG1r3S6ZA

 

Right now at NPR.org you can listen to 2 1/2 hours of a Tom Waits concert.

 

detecting

I hunted at an elementary school at lunch today, and found my first wheat cent (1956). That's the oldest coin I've found so far, too. A few minutes later I found a dime and a penny right on top of each other, and I thought the dime was silver because it was coming out of the ground so shiny (silver usually discolors less than the clad coins), but it turns out to merely have been a recently lost coin (1990-something). All told, I found 18 cents. That's not much, but I'm very happy to have found a wheat.

 

Italian Sunset pt 4

 

Italian Sunset pt 3

 

Italian Sunset pt 2

 

Italian Sunset

Saturday night we attended an around-the-world cocktail costume party. We were to bring a cocktail that in some way pertained to a country, and dress accordingly. Kim and I chose to bring the ingredients for an Italian sunset (amaretto, orange juice, club soda, and grenadine), and I spent a number of hours on Friday night and Saturday preparing our costume.

 

I believe the invitation indicated that we were to dress as the country of origin, and I was the only one to try to follow those instructions in a somewhat literal way. Everyone else wore regular clothing that one might (stereotypically) associate with that country, except for Barbara, who was smashing as Shirley Temple (not pictured). I chose instead to create props from a heavy cardboard box, glue gun, and paint.

 

Pat and Laura served Thai food, which was excellent, and I really had a great time.

 

Lunch break sketch 7/24/08

This is black walnut ink, fairly small in size. I wanted to "rough it in" enough to work on it some more at a later date, to refine the shading and details. So I don't think I'd count it as a self-contained lunch break sketch since I only intended to start it at lunch and finish it at home later. Since I haven't done that yet, though, it's still a lunch break sketch.

 

Shucking Corn

In the back yard, last week. Jill's face is stained with blackberry juice. Summertime and the livin' is easy.

 

Lunch break sketch 7/22/08

This was done with charcoal, sumi ink, and white pastel. It's about 12x15. I think it came out OK, and I might work back into it some more. I found this a tough medium, as I'm not used to working in it. Trying to muster the finesse to use charcoal and ink together for a presentable 45-minute drawing was a challenge.

 

oops! Here's the photo

 

5 pengõ

Here's that handsome Hungarian 5 pengõ coin. It was released in 1938. There were re-strikes, but so far I've been unable to find information on how to tell a re-strike from an original issue. That's St. Stephan on the obverse. I think this is a very attractive coin.

 

The word "pengõ" is onomatopoeic, dating back hundreds of years and referring to the "ping" sound of a coin minted from precious metal and dropped onto a hard surface.

 

corn

Last night for dinner we had some corn from our garden, and it was pretty good. I think I was most impressed by the crunchy-delicate texture. I also ate some of the first ripe non-cherry-size tomato, and it was good, too.

 

rained out

I left to do some drawing on my lunch break a few minutes ago, overcoming considerable personal inertia to do so. However, after I had pulled out of the parking lot, it started pouring rain. We do sort of need the rain, but rats!

 

Black Walnut Ink Drawing

This is 6x9 inches. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Bronze Vespasian

Here's one from my batch of uncleaned coins that I ordered a few months ago. I've soaked it and scrubbed it, and this is probably as good as it will ever be. I have it pegged as a coin issued under Emperor Vespasian between A.D. 69 and 79, probably a bronze dupondius. I can tell little else about it except that after it was lost, some Roman slave must have hit it with the rototiller a couple of times.

It is very convenient (yes...perhaps a little *too* convenient...) that the only letters legible on it are the VESPAS of the emperor's name.

I can make out no details on the reverse.

As poor as its condition is, it's now the oldest coin that I have.

corn

Here is the corn, nine days after the last picture. This photo itself is five days old. I sampled an ear the day before yesterday and found it to be not entirely ready. I could eat the top parts of the kernels but the bottoms were still tough. I'll wait a couple more days before trying again.

 

We also got our first two ripe cherry tomatoes!

 

disinterred house shoes

Something else that's inscrutable out of context.

 

trolling detecting

I find an awful lot of coins by "trolling," which is the term I use for keeping my detector on while walking from one hunting spot to another. I got a haircut at lunch today, and had ten minutes left to kill, so I stopped at a school on my way back. I turned on my detector as I walked towards the playground, and within fifteen seconds I had a tone. It was a 1996 quarter, just out in the middle of a junebug-swarmed grassy field. I found two more pennies under the swings, as well as a piece of can and a small bronze hunk that might have been a penny that went through whatever machinery shreds the tires to make that nice rubbery playground mulch. I also caught a pretty junebug. There were millions of them.

 

The best Australian crime drama/thriller I’ve ever seen!

I watched "Noise" last night, and it was pretty good. The movie starts with a young woman, Lavinia, walking through a commuter train station in a Melbourne suburb. It's late a night, and she just got off work at McDonalds. She's immersed in her headphones, paying little attention to the world around her as she sits down in a train car. A moment later, she notices a nearby passenger slump to the floor. Lavinia gets up to help her; it's then, to her terror, that she realizes that everyone else on the car has been shot to death.

 

The film then switches to its other focal character, Graham, a police officer. At another train station, he collapses and hits his head on an escalator. A short while later, he is diagnosed with tinnitus; he's had ringing in his ears for more than a year, he tells the doctor, but it's never before made him dizzy or made him black out. His unsympathetic superiors put him on duty interviewing locals in a mobile police office near another crime scene in another part of town.

 

The movie switches back and forth between Lavinia and Graham as they deal with the various people who have been affected by the crimes. Lavinia is fearful that the killer will target her next; Graham is bored sitting in his police caravan all night, and seems to consider his duty somewhat pointless. The story develops emotional depth as various secondary characters drop in and out, giving glimpses of the tragedy's impact on the larger community. Questions develop about the backgrounds and motivations of the different characters.

 

Most of these questions are never answered. Clues and tie-ins are dropped throughout the story, but the exact nature of some character relationships is never explained. We aren't given a start to the story, and the film ends abruptly with a climax but no dénouement.

 

The noise of the title is something of a conceit; it's not central to the plot, but great attention was paid to the audio aspects of the movie. We frequently hear the ringing in Graham's ears. The soundtrack, also, is subtle and a little haunting. The focus on sound would seem pretentious except that it's still secondary to engaging characters and great acting.

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0809931/

 

 

 

sketchbook drawing, last Wednesday

Here's a drawing from July 2. It's a house in the Highlands neighborhood. I intend to work on a pen-and-ink version.

 

silver

I found a 1958 dime in the soda change box at work today.

 

Over the past week I've received various inquiries about purchasing some of my artwork, and a number of other very nice compliments regarding same.

 

Is there some kind of conspiracy? Is someone messing with me?

 

Indirectly related to that, my ink drawings have me revved up for more painting. I want to take what I've learned with ink and apply it to acrylics and oils.

 

I sketched a house in the Highland neighborhood; the owner approached me after seeing my most recent drawing of Bellevoir. It's a tough house to draw because it's comprised almost exclusively of symmetrical rectangles. I plan to work on a pen-and-ink drawing of it, and perhaps a painting of another angle (the view looking between that house and the neighbor's house was very nice, by my taste, but it doesn't exactly fit the "paint a picture of my house" mode. Still, I might tackle it.)

 

Another art project I keep thinking about: my Halloween costume. It's just over three months before I want to have it completed, and all I really have close to completion is the head, which I've hardly worked on since last Halloween. I need to finalize my plans for the support frame and buy some PVC pipe.

 

blackberries

Yesterday morning Erin and Jill ate our first two blackberries. Both of them chewed the berries eagerly, then sort of winced and got funny expressions. I suppose they were pretty tart.  I noticed at least a couple more this morning that were ready to pick, so I guess this evening I'll get my own chance to sample.

 

Lunch break sketch, 7-1-2008

Graphite in my sketchbook. This is an old farm house near my office building. I contacted the nice fellow who owns it, and he gave me permission to come by to draw and paint, provided I call ahead. The place is up for sale to developers, which is why the grass is so high. "I just sort of let it go," he said. I really like how light and shadows look on tall grass, and it's one of my favorite things to draw and paint.

Corn, eight days apart

That stuff really grows.

review of "Noise"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=8745

 

Just FYI

 

Commerce, Ears, Noise

George asked me a fantastic question. Yes, everything featured on this blog is for sale! Drawings, paintings, corn, children, cicadas, verbed nouns and nouned verbs, even the parenthetical remarks and the parentheses themselves.

But especially the drawings and paintings.

If anyone wants details, I'll gladly send an e-mail.

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The tallest of the corn in our back yard is now just an inch or two shorter than me. It has flowery stuff on it, so I guess ear production isn't far behind.

Yesterday I noticed that the first of our glads are blooming.

Last week, one of our four remaining sunflowers was knocked over by some critter (a rabbit, I assumed) and the base of the stalk was torn into and chewed up. The plant was about two feet tall, so it wasn't exactly fragile. I figured the flower was a goner, but the top part of the plant has stayed green and is bent up toward the sky; a slim portion of the stalk is still connected to the roots and must still be supplying the water and nutrients to keep it alive. I buried the part of the plant that was lying flat in the hope that it will grow more roots. I'm very surprised it isn't dead, but at this point, if nothing else bad happens to it, I think it will continue growing and maybe even flower.

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Last night I started watching the Australian thriller "Noise." It's been pretty good, but I'll have to watch the rest with head phones. It's supposed to be an interesting auditory experience, and I sort of got that, but I had to keep the sound down a little because everyone else was asleep. Also, I need it loud in order to decipher the mumbles and accents. Normally I watch movies, especially the non-American ones, with the subtitles on, even when they are speaking English. Otherwise I just can't hear half of what is said. This movie, though, has no subtitles in English or any other language! Nuts. This might be the first DVD I've ever had that was devoid of any subtitle option.