So, this weekend is unofficially (?) me and Colin's 3rd anniversary, hence the drawing of the boy. I say unofficially because we've never really decided on which date to deem an anniversary date or which milestone event made our relationship a relationship.

He suggests making my birth date (next week) our anniversary date for easy remembering. Boys.
Besides, what would happen if he forgot my birthday one year? That's shooting yourself in the foot twice.

In any case though, we met on Halloween weekend, so I guess Halloween weekend is our anniversary now. To be honest, I kinda need an easy date to remember these sort of things as well. It's also pretty unofficial because neither of us reeeally care about celebrating these things. It's been a very good three years though. 

We're going away to DC this weekend though! And being a 'special event' weekend (haha) just gave us reason to actually book a place downtown. We're staying at a place 2 blocks away from the White House. 

But yes, I'm pretty excited about the Rally To Restore Sanity in DC this weekend, especially with the release of the sneak peak at the day's schedule.

We're planning on making the drive down to DC from NJ early Saturday morning (4am?), and abandoning the car at one of the first Metro stations we'll hit (either Greenbelt, College Park, or maybe Cheverly or Deanwood, depending on which route we take while driving down). If we leave by 4am, hopefully we'll make it in to downtown by 9am. It's just really unpredictable, with the traffic and all. If even half of half of the estimated 100k people are driving (I imagine a lot of people taking buses, and a lot of people carpooling), it's going to be a lot of cars on the road that morning. Then again, a lot of people are traveling down Friday night. Ah well.  

Also, Halloween. I love Halloween! Or maybe I just love candy. Too bad most of Halloween day will be spent on the road, traveling back to NJ by car, and then to NY by train for me.

But, in honor of Halloween, here's a quick drawing of a creepy ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life support) dummy that we have around here at work, which we use for training students. Sketch was done as I was proctoring an exam yesterday with this plastic-latex guy on my table. I used a ballpoint pen and a red exam-marking pen.

...which means apples. I like apples, I do. Fuji (probably what I eat most often), Granny Smiths, Mcintosh, Rome, Gala, Golden Delicious, etc. Nearly all of which went into the apple pie baked last weekend, for an October-fest (not really Oktoberfest, since it was more a get-together for autumn/pies/apples/pumpkins than it was for beer and wurst-- though... there was lederhosen).

Truth be told, I've never like apple pies. Guess I'm a fruit purist and think they taste best raw. Mmm, raw apples. Raw sliced apples with sprinkled cinnamon. Mmm. Baked fruit always just seems too mushy. However, I DID like the homemade pie from last weekend, so maybe it's like how I am with cats-- I don't really like cats, but I like MY cats.

Also, I've been looking through food blogs today and these Apple Walnut Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes look aweeesome and is possibly something I have to try sometime.

We carved a pumpkin, which was awarded "most sustainable," since we took someone else's pumpkin and recycled/carved it after they lost interest in it (after they had already done the dirty work of gutting it and all!).

Aside from apples, I guess persimmons (blergh!) are also in season. The persimmon tree in my backyard is bearing a lot of fruit, baskets of the stuff. Growing up, we've always had persimmons around the house-- grocery-store bought, not home-grown-- but I've never liked the stuff. 

Fun to draw though!

Maybe I'll convince Colin to make me those Apple Walnut Cinnamon Roll Cupcakes this weekend. Oh weekend, you seem so far away.

Ukulele concert tomorrow night (Jake Shimabukuro), yaaaaaaay. 

I've been pretty busy with school lately and have neglected doodling.
Had my Multimedia midterm yesterday, which consisted of being presented with a bunch of (fairly straightforward and not too complicated) Flash animations and being asked to recreate them from scratch. See example below.

As many gripes as I do about Flash and its non-intuitive interface (I think there may have been a guy yesterday, an older gentleman, who couldn't make it past recreating even one of the animations), I still would like to master this thing, and get beyond just simple shape/motion tweens and keyframe by keyframe animations.
I'm not too much of a curmudgeon when it comes to technology, I don't think (but boy, going through library school though, you see so many tech luddites who are so scared of Facebook and of blogging that you can't help but wonder how many of the younger folks are just going disregard them as knowledgeable information professionals to turn to...) HOWEEEVER I still do think that Flash is kinda bleh. Nobody likes Flash sites. Flash advertisements are annoying. As are intro animations (always skip those). Is it even worth trying to actually master, since in about 10+ years from now we'll all probably move on to something better?

Two (rhetorical-- I'm sure there are real & logical explanations) gripes for now: why isn't object drawing mode the automatic default? WHO would want to draw in anything other than object drawing mode 95% of the time anyways? WHY do I have to convert objects to symbols before I can motion tween them? This is why I shape tween things when I could/should motion tween them, ya know.

In any case, right now I feel like I'm just practicing my scales. Can't play any whole songs, nevermind composing something great from scratch.
But they say there's a huge learning curve for Flash. But then again, my design skills are pretty subpar, so we'll see if I ever really hit the ground running with this.

Humble little comic about a humble little experience.
Click either on "fullscreen" on top, or magnify on bottom (suggested), to actually be able to read.  

This comic may or may not be based on a true story.

On a more random note, earlier this week was my friend Sean's birthday.
& according to him, Kat and I gave him "probably the best present he's ever got" (coughcoughwacomcoughcough). The present comes with a condition that he actually has to use it though, and so that we can perhaps sometime collaborate on some animation project or other (since I know nothing about animation/film, and he's taking class. I'm, er, learning Flash though? I can motion tween?).

Which segues into the video below-- apparently Jim Woodring's surrealist Frank comics have inspired the production of Frank animations (with permission), and the project is collectively known as Visions of Frank: Short Films by Japan's Most Audacious Animators. A lot of them are on YouTube, and are pretty great (I especially dig the one below; you must watch). Since Frank is a wordless comic, the videos are too.

Regarding wordless comics, which there really aren't enough of in the world, I'm really digging the concept and am looking to dabble in it more. The juxtaposition of text WITH images is great and necessary for most comics, but Woodring's sequential art is strong enough to stand on its own- he knows how to speak in the universal language of just images. As a child of immigrants without strong English-language skills, it'd be great to one day make a work that can they can read if it transcends the boundaries set by language.

Woodring recently was the winner of the The Stranger's "Genius Award", and I dig his acceptance speech and what he has to say about wordless literature:

"THERE IS a controversy I have to address. I know some people feel that giving the Stranger Genius award for literature to the creator of comic books, and wordless comic books at that, is a travesty.

The redoubtable Charlie Kraft spoke for many when he posted the following on Facebook:

'I just read that Jim Woodring received a Stranger "Genius Award" for literature. Have any of the cartoon characters he draws ever uttered anything? Was it literature? Had I been a judge for this I would have given The Stranger "Genius" award for literature to a writer, maybe David Stoez or Doug Nufer, not to a guy who draws mutes. If I was Jim W. I would accept this prize then turn around and and give $1,000 each to five deserving local writers and poets. Five persons who toil away with words, not pictures. Those who think cartoonists who don't even use word balloons are entitled to cash awards for "literature" can un-friend me right now and go get in line for another tattoo. You've been so dumbed down by hipster culture you think Archie and Veronica is Crime and Punishment.'

Well, part of me agrees with this; after all, it's the default position. But the part of me that is more, oh, progressive thinks that the Stranger may be ahead of the curve here. They've gone and said that a wordless comic book can be rightfully considered literature, and it falls to you and me to prove otherwise. The question, obviously, is Does literature require words to exist?

Well, now that I think about it, no, I don't think it does. I would go so far as to say Milt Gross' 1930 wordless novel He Done Her Wrong is as much literature as the hackneyed melodramatic plot it tells in pictures. It never occurred to me to care whether He Done Her Wrong was literature before, but, now that you mention it, why not? Perhaps it's only literature in a theoretical or technical sense, like non-musical music or a printed painting. In which case, who cares?

But I don't think the Stranger is playing an elite prank here. I think they see that we are living in a transitional period where traditional categories are melting, blending together. Boundaries everywhere are being dissolved. A high school kid can choose to be either standard gender, or make up a new one. An utter dullard can be the life of the party online. Strictures that no longer need to exist are evaporating. Liberation and paralysis are merging.

Personally I don't think that it's a coincidence that the computer has emerged and become ubiquitous just at the moment when humanity has everything so mapped out and pinned down that the sense of a future has effectively vanished. I think the computer is training wheels for that unborn generation who will live outside the world and ultimately outside the computer, in a state of secular empathetic samadhi. The blurring of the line between the drawn image, the written word, the video and the game is disturbing, but nothing can stop it, and I salute the Stranger for their far-reaching and prophetic vision.

The question of whether I personally deserve this is open to debate. But I think I do, and I can sure use the money. Thank you."

Got my camera back, so here are some snapshots from last weekend's camping trip.

THIS weekend involved lots and lots more domesticity, much less pine. Part of it was actually spent vacuuming up pine from the car.
And moving huge (like, 5 feet by 6 feet) pieces of cardboard from my office back to my house. I'm not certain yet as to what I'm going to actually DO with all that cardboard, but it seemed like too much of a waste to just let them go to the dumpster.

Now I have to think of what to do/create with them, especially after all the hard work of actually saving them, which consisted of carrying them all out to the van via multiple trips and trying to tie them to the roof (I admit: all Colin... I just sat back and watched). I was mostly on duty to shoo away circling cars who thought that we were going to be leaving our spot soon (No cars, we won't be going for at least another hour!). 

Ah domesticity, and the freedom from the threat of bears. How grand.
But there were cats.

and you thought this was going to be a cat-less post.