A few pics

Mr Yuk Mouth

Cats, a skull, and me in wizard hat.

Mia in full tortitude

Maebel and me

Why do i keep thinking about my mortality?

Get this image on your van! (See Van Art in the Gift Shop)

Performance Evaluation

"Have a seat. How've you been..."
The older man sits, sweat steadily dripping.
"You know..." He shifts in the wooden chair. It creaks.
"Yes, well that's what we needed to talk about." The younger man looks up from a clip board with yellowed pages and purple mimeographs, and places it on the desk between them. "We need to talk about your stats."
The old man exhales and leans forward in the chair. He looks down at his heavily calloused hands and brings them together with a clap too loud for this small space. "Let's do it."
"I want to say first off that we really respect the time you've been here. Just going through some numbers, your attendance looks good. You have positive evaluations from your prior overseers going back millennia."
"Sounds good to me." muttered the old man.
"The only problem we have is with your PA%.  It's...well, it's at zero."
The older man snorted, and looked away.
"I'm serious here. What can I do to help? What do you need to be able meet the reasonable goals we've set?"
"Goals? Look, I don't want to be rude, but how long have you been here?"
A flush crept the younger man's neck. "I don't think that's relevant. I haven't been here for nigh 5 thousand years, if that's what you're saying..."
The older slowly leaned back. Watching the other sputter was a small satisfaction.
"...but this isn't about me. We really need to bet those numbers within the acceptable range... What can i do to help... pal?" He looked across the desk trying to make eye contact.
Rage grew in the old man. The supercilious overseer's words hung there. Pal was a bad choice. He swallowed the rage and spat out words. "You don't want to hear this, but it's not me. I am out there pushing that rock up that hill for eternity. Your stats aren't able to accurately account for the punishment of that. Look in order to come up with the PA stat for the Pre-BC section of Hades, err Hell, sorry, old habits, you had to create a base line, and when you calculated the punishment quotient of say, Tantalus, you're completely skewing my numbers. If you look at the punishment per annum stat, you can see that i'm one of the most punished in the unit."
The younger man picks the clipboard up and begins to flip through the pages. He finds one and begins to read to himself. His lips so slightly moving along with words.
"Do you see?"
"Hmm?" The younger man looks up from the clip board and places it back on the desk.
"Were you looking at the per annum stats, showing how punished i really am?"
"No. I was looking over your file. Impressive. You conned how many gods? You do have a way with words. So anyway, how about increasing your stats?"
The older man's brow furrowed. His lips pursed. His words were delivered slowly and deliberately. "I push a rock up a hill everyday. That rock, before reaching the top, always rolls down to the bottom, of the hill."
"...but, but we just want to help you get that rock to the top, buddy!"
"It's...not...getting...to...the...top. That's the punishment. Inherent in the nature of what i am doing is exactly what is  preventing me from meeting your metric. Your calculation makes sense for Tantalus. He's chained up in reach of water and food, yet he's starving and dehydrating because they recede when he reaches for them."
"We're not talking about other people. Look Sisyphus, don't worry about what everyone else is doing. You're here to push that rock to the top of the hill. That's not so hard, now is it? We just want you to focus on one rock at a time!"
"There...is...only...one...rock."
"We can change that! Let's think positive. I really think you can turn these numbers around, and start getting some of those rocks to the top of that hill!"
"Ok. You got it, boss. Are we done here? That rock isn't going to push itself."
"Yeah, we're done. And thanks for all you do."

Now, Grackle I'm going to let you finish pecking at that ketchup packet,

but seriously? I mean i defended you when people made that yelp page and complained about you going all Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds on the HEB, and when people said you looked like an oil slick, I said you looked like a black pearl, but now I hear that you eat eggs and bird chicks. What's up with that, Grackle?
A few weeks ago, I found a broken egg on my front porch. A few days ago, a dead nestling on the sidewalk. I have a brick column on my front porch that every season sees a family of European Starlings nest at its apex. The nests are inset into the column, protected from the wind and rain by the bricks and the roof. When I found the egg, I did some cursory research on avian egg eaters, and decided it must have been that shifty Blue Jay i see around here. I vowed to myself to keep an eye out for Jays. Weeks pass. Eggs hatch. Chicks cheep for food. One morning, about 15 ft from the nest lies the body of a little nestling. I gave him a proper burial, and redoubled my efforts to determine the responsible party. I think you can see where this is going, Grackle. Your name came up multiple times. Look, I don't care what you do in parking lots, and fields. Puff up your chest, do your funky little dance, and squawk like an old modem all you want, but don't be coming up on my porch for any eggnapping, or nestling snatching. If you do, I will throw a cat at you. i'm serious. i have two of them.

I can't stop with the kindle covers!

Sunday Craft Project

Well, those seem to be two perfectly ordinary books.

When in fact, they hold my chatty kindle, Edison.

Kindle book cover section of the gift shop is now open.

A Taste of the Sticky Ictal

It started with a feeling that i have trouble describing. At the very basic, it's a feeling of unease, a sort of deep profound sense that something is not right. Almost the feeling that over the real world there is a drape that obscures the true shape or nature of things, and that that drape is fluttering and may be ripped away at any moment exposing some basic truth of reality that will literally drive me mad. This is metaphor of course, during the events it's just a growing, existential unease leading into mild terror. My mind then pictures some place i'm not, usually downstairs in the living room, and the idea that the room exists with no one to observe it causes a bizarre fear. Sometimes from there it passes and I feel better, some times it proceeds.

Today it proceeded, into the lovely world of time loss. So, i had my weird feelings, but while it's happening it's hard to realize what's going on, so i continued on with my morning. Made some coffee. Watched last night's Rachel Maddow. I started watching the show with full consciousness, but about halfway in my brain decided to reboot. I realized i had no idea of what day or time it was. I didn't really know what i was doing. I worked to reclaim the memories. The entire previous day was nearly gone, and the day before that hazy. I went upstairs and knocked on caroles door, to wake her, to orient myself. I don't know what exactly i said. I remember saying, "i made a kindle cover?" "Yeah, on Sunday," she replied. It's coming back to me. Most of it will. On the plus side, I only lost a Monday, which is widely acknowledged to be the worst day of the week.