Hey, Nobody Gets to Mistreat My Dog Like That Except Me!

"Where is it!?"

Dave tore open the walk-in closet door, sifting through the racks of hanging clothes he never wears anymore -- his plaid sweater-vest, his naru jacket, his day-glo pink Garfield "I Hate Mondays" T-shirt, and his series of animal print long-sleeved button-up polyester shirts. He squatted to root through the storage boxes stacked against the wall, finding just his collection of worn-out sandals, and that is all. He asked himself quickly again why he still kept those... sentimental reasons, he supposed...

"I can't blog without it!"

With a growl, Dave re-entered the bedroom, flopped onto the floor and looked under the bed. An abandoned sock, a magazine with the cover torn off, a roll of wrapping paper, and a menacing dust ball... nothing else. Crossing the room, he rummaged through his sock drawer, finding his missing carved ivory elephant, and two dead spiders among the socks, but not what he was looking for.

Into the master bath, where he went through the medicine cabinet, and his wife's drawer-full of fingernail polish bottles. She'd be upset later now that they were out of alphabetical order, but Dave would leap screaming from that bridge when he crossed it. He went into the shower stall and started shaking each of the bottles of shampoo next to his ear, listening for an out-of-place rattling. Nothing. He crossed to the toilet, lifted the lid off the tank, and glanced inside. Nope.

"Honey, what are you doing?"

Wifey's voice startled him a bit. "Looking for my muse. It's time to blog, and I need my muse!"

"Oh... um..."

Her hesitance caused Dave to freeze in the middle of looking through the dirty towels in the hamper, his mouth open.

"You know something... where is it?"

"Well..." she began, sheepishly.

Dave stood erect, and faced his wife, a glint of desperation and fear in his eyes. "Well, what? Please tell me..."

"Well, it sort of... accidentally... ended up in the recycle bin and set outside for the trash man to take..." She was inching for the door as she spoke.

The stunned silence dragged on, as Dave's eyes, as big as saucers, reflected the emotional blow... He slumped to the ground right where he was, and flopped over onto his back, arms spread out wide, dazed. "No," was all he could manage to whisper.

"I'm sorry, dear. It was an accident. We'll buy you another muse. It will be alright." She wanted to approach him, but kept a safe distance instead....

"But... but what will I do for tonight's post? I have nothing.... nothing..."

"I'm sure you'll think of something, dear... oops, gotta go, seeya!" She bolted out the door, leaving Dave to mumble to himself... something about horror and blackness and the foul stench of uninspired writing...

------------------------------------

Ah, the lazy daves of summer... A good day today, though it sort of feels like the world is on hold, or something. Went into the Rug Shop late today, having to wait to pick Eldest Daughter up from her work at mid-day. Been working on some narration text for a series of videos we want to do for the Rug Care Central website.

Working on a fourth Skateboard Graphic wallpaper tonight, among other things. Now, in addition to the Niel Blender and Lance Mountain WPs, I have the Mark Gonzales WP to a state that could be considered done. Here it is, for your inspection.


Not sure I'm crazy about the brick wall texture in the background. I may end up tinkering with the background on this one. In fact, I may experiment with different background textures for all of them, and make sets of wallpapers. Why not? The current one I'm working on is tricky. It's for this classic Steve Caballero Powell-Peralta graphic from back in the Bones Brigade's heydey...


The good part is that I actually have the board itself to work with, so I snapped some high quality pics for source art. The tricky part is re-orienting the artwork to accommodate the landscape composition instead of the more portrait-friendly graphics. I'm going to extract the border and the name, separate out the dragon, and attempt to morph the tail so that it curls out to the dragon's side instead of below him like on the board. It will involve some re-drawing, but I think I can do it. If I didn't have really high-res source to work from, I don't know that I could pull it off.

I want to get as many of these wallpapers done as I can, while the inspiration and incentive is there. You know me... I'll get 100% into something, and then it will just suddenly die and I'll go 100% into something else. I still want to get some WPs done for Christian Hosoi, Monty Nolder and Tommy Guerrero. Maybe the classic Tony Hawk and Mike McGill as well, if it lasts that long. I'd do the Jeff Kendall Santa Cruz Graffiti graphics if I could find some decent source. Haven't found it yet.

Funny Picture Time:

When in doubt, go with the cat pics. In fact, when *really* in doubt, go with a cat video clip too...

Placed my Amazon order today. Are you proud of me? Here are the fantasy books that will soon be gathering dust on my shelves...

- Black Sun Rising: Book 1 of the Coldfire Trilogy by CS Friedman
- A Shadow in Summer: Book 1 in the Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham
- The Lion of Senet: Book 1 of the Second Sons Trilogy by Jennifer Fallon
- Gardens of the Moon: Book 1 in the Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson

Was going to grab a Brandon Sanderson book or two, but they're so expensive, even for used! I figured maybe I could poll my audience first and see if any of my San Diego friends have any Sanderson they'd be willing to loan me when the time is right (hint hint). The books I listed above are all used, as is my custom. Their prices range from 1 to 5 bucks, with $4 each for shipping! I always end up paying more for shipping than for the books themselves, which is kind of a bummer.

Well, my barrel of blog ideas for tonight was practically empty, as evidenced by my self-revelatory intro to tonight's post. I could try and dredge something up, but I think instead I'll just pull the plug and hope tomorrow is better/different. I do think that I'll give the Movie Quote Contest another go starting September first. I always get more comments when the quote contest is in play, and you know how addicted to comments I am...

In fact, go ahead an leave one now, I won't mind!

Until tomorrow, remember, once again, my life has been saved by the miracle of lasagna.

Director's Cut of tonight's post.