Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Down With the Sickness

Sure, no one likes being sick.  Especially as sick as I was earlier this week.  But one thing that I tried to keep focusing on as my face rested on the cool bathroom tile floor was AfterSickness(TM).



In my experience, the days after I recover from an illness are among the most productive I ever have.  There's nothing like three days of bed rest to stoke the fires that lie smoldering inside you, doused by the grinding suffocation of monotony and the nightly lullaby of procrastination.

I'm up and around again, with all sorts of ideas bouncing around off of each other in my head, and with renewed vigor I'm determined to get them all down on paper...right after I change my profile pic on Facebook.


Listening To: Oh My Lover - PJ Harvey
Reading: The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan 

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Two poems

Poetry...meh, I'm not much for poetry, but every once in a while something jumps into my head and I go ahead and write it down.  Here are a couple of examples.

BLOOD MOON

The moon
fat and august
red like Mars
fat face of an angry god
lumbering over the dark horizon

Bouyant
lifted maybe by Sisyphus
up towards the wide
stretched out stars
of Orion

Drifting imperceptibly higher
less pronounced
so bright now I feel
the shadow's imprint
leaking running
behind me

I want that monstrous globe
to come down now
to roll across
this vacant landscape
nothing but dreams of ghosts
to mow me down where
I stand legs
sorrow-swollen
like tree trunks stuck there

And now a small white
circle almost perfect
hangs in the sky
to light now for gravity
looks like it would fit
in my mouth



ER PARKING LOT

Ancient blacktop, crumbling
due to age,
oil stains, debris, I'd imagine blood
and tears and salt
and among these
glinting sunlight, sharp reflecting
clouds big in the windy sky
shards of urn, a broken serous neck,
the open mouth of a green glass vase
the flowers, though, are gone


Listening to: Munich - Editors

Friday, March 16, 2012

Dilettante Savant



There was a man who wanted to be creative.

More importantly, to be thought of as creative.

I think, he verbalized to a stark and empty windowless room, that I should want to come up with something new under the sun.

The only accoutrements in the spartan space he occupied were the desk as which he was seated, the chair on which he was seated, and an empty wastebasket, constructed on wire, which sat empty on the floor next to his feet.  The walls, ceiling, and floor were white, as was the tall stack of papers that stood imposingly on his desk.  In imperceptible crack in the ceiling let in the faintest hint of sunlight, the whiteness of the room served to amplify this meager offering from the outside world into enough brightness to fully illuminate everything.

Every thought that sprung seemingly from nowhere into his mind he would eventually track down, like a hunter in the snowy woods, to the den of its origin.  The helpless pups he slayed without mercy, then left on the trail of another scent.  This pattern continued endlessly, with the predictability of the four seasons.

And he died, his headstone a stack of blank white sheets.  Above his desk, a mote hung in a sliver of sun-ray, it's motion imperceptible yet surely it did move, if only one was patient enough to observe.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Who Doesn't Like Pop-Up Books?

The kind of people who would kick puppies and cheat charities and snort veritable mountains of cocaine, that's who.

Here at Quill Studios, we are up to our eyeballs with ideas for pop-up books.  Well, maybe not eyeballs...but certainly our regrettable tramp stamps.  At any rate:  ideas?  We got 'em.  The know how, not so much.  Of course, we do book bindings, but we're not magicians or sorcerers or necromancing foul-mouthed gangsters.

 Stolen from Smidgy

You know who knows how though? Robert Saduba, that's who, smart guy.  Didn't think I had an answer, did you?  If you'd like more sources for creative pop-up book fun times, click here.

My man Rob has got all kinds of crazy pop-up designs, from crabs to castles to the Millennium Falcon.  That's right, you can make your own Star Wars pop-up book.  How cool would it be to get a cease and desist order signed by George Lucas?

Why not make yourself a pop-up book and find out?

Listening to:  Always on the Run - Lenny Kravitz

Thursday, March 8, 2012

I can haz a Tumblr

Quill Studios has a Tumblr! This is, of course, very exciting news, and should lead to amazing new e-opportunites (or as our marketing guy calls them: "eepportunities". The extra 'e' is for 'extreme'. Our marketing guy is kind of lame*.).

So why a Tumblr? That is one hell of a good question!  Tumblr seems like a bit of a cross between a full-on blog and a Twitter account...sort of like a blog for people without much to say.  I guess my reason can be best articulated by reading the following sentence aloud with your shoulders shrugged:  You've got to get yourself out there in as many media as you can, I suppose.

 *Not Michelle Malkin. I would never do something like that to you guys.

This guy explains Tumblr more thoroughly and diplomatically that I could ever hope to:



So what's next? I don't know...Pinterest maybe?

There, I saved you a trip to my Tumblr.



*Full Disclosure: I am our marketing guy


Listening to:  Rowboat - Beck

Monday, March 5, 2012

Twitter lit

Let me be frank regarding my loyalties:  Twitter people are my people. 

I've said it before:  Twitter fuels revolutions, Facebook lets you pretend to be a farmer.  There's just something about Twitter - I guess it's the freedom of the platform, the immediacy of the content - that feels right to me.  I'm not much of a talker; maybe that's part of it.

Yes, I have a facebook account, and it's a great way to keep up with friends, but it is by and large a time-wasting whirlpool of vapidness, a hub of digital navel gazing.  I view Twitter totally differently:  its' necessary brevity and ticker-tape speed doesn't really suit mopey self-reflection.  I can just dip in and out as I feel the urge.  It allows for a real frank exchange of ideas without all the superfluous social niceties that really do little more than drive me to distraction.  Did I mention that I'm a borderline Aspie



I have been told my comments on Facebook tend to be a bit "spicy".


What brought me to the subject of twitter, however, was something less than political:  fiction (Or, I don't know, maybe that's one of the most political things there is).  The idea to write a work of fiction on Twitter first came to me probably about six months ago.  And, the thing is, this would be just me making up things about myself - otherwise known as "normal Twitter" - no; I would tell a story from a character's point of view, having him relate his story through the medium of Twitter.  Turns out I wasn't the first with this idea.

I have started a rough outline and composed a few rough tweets.  I even set up a twitter account for the work, the ID and password for which I promptly forgot.  Before I set up another one, I think I'll get a little deeper into he planning stage.


Listening to:  Help I'm Alive - Metric

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Rather Pedestrian

According to my recent observations, people just have no idea in hell about what the deal is with crosswalks.  Here are a few pointers to help everyone out.

For Drivers:
1) If you see a pedestrian standing on the curb waiting to use the crosswalk, slow down or stop to enable them to use it. Especially if the weather is less than ideal. You're in a climate controlled vehicle, they have snow down their shoes - you can wait for a few seconds.

2) Avoiding eye contact or otherwise feigning distraction doesn't excuse you from stopping for pedestrians. They're still there. If you're really so distracted that you can't see people in the crosswalk, you really ought to pull over and get things straightened out.

For Pedestrians:
1) Don't milk it. Just don't. That's a total dick move, and it makes it all the more tempting for drivers to speed through crosswalks leaving all your fellow pedestrians unable to cross the next time.

2) If you want to cross, look like it. Don't stand on the corner gazing off into space. That's what hookers do.


There.  Not that hard.  Am I missing anything?