Recently, I have been threatenting the talented people around me with brain stealing. My behavior may have something to do with the fact that my brain is in not-too-good shape (I could use a nice transplant), or possibly just because I am in the midst of a sudden burst of inferiority.
So, if you click on the brains above, you will be taken to see a few of the talented girls whose brains I envy.
Check out that link to my portfolio over there on the sidebar. I’ve switched up a few things, and added in a completely new category - one that should put any questions about what on earth that “Very Big Project” is at rest. Yep, as I’m nearing completion I’m keeping it a secret no-more. It’s too pretty to keep to myself. Just look for the hot-pink button, and the mystery will be (mostly) divulged.
Last night we made pizza and settled in to a long night of finale hotness.
I try not to talk about tv too much (or ever) cause most of the time there just doesn’t seem to be much point… but… Lost! Ahhhhhh! So good! They explained just enough to make it a season finale, and yet much too little to satisfy me. I want more! Those writers know what they’re doing. I’m totally tuning in for the rest of eternity.
It’s also fun to come up with ceaseless conspiracy theories on the true plot behind all the mystery.
My current personal theory (which I’m quite happy to be left with, even if it is for an entire summer) involves a diabolical genius in a nehru jacket and an army of minions in moon-suits living in subterranean super-futuristic bunkers deep beneath the artificially created island. The “numbers” are simply their project name, that involves some kind of apocalypse/world domination. The boy is the key to their plan, or maybe just the Antichrist.
How else to explain all the biblical references?
Today should be fun-filled with Brock related errands, crafting, possibly some sewing, and maybe even some trifle making. Advantageous, I know, but I have a lot to get accomplished before I go home for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival! Yay!
I threw together some super-yummy fried rice last night that turned out so well I’m sharing my recipe here. Beyond using very dry (or even leftover) rice, the trick seems to be adding layers of flavour in at ever step possible (just like those fancy TV chefs tell you).
Start out with one cup of dry rice. Saute the dry rice in a bit of oil (just enough to coat it) to bring out a nutty flavour. Add a tablespoon of soy sauce, scraping the rice up from the bottom and stirring it in to make sure it doesn’t burn. The soy should caramelize and absorb into the rice adding yet another layer of flavour. Now add one and one quarter cups of water, stir it in and bring it to a boil. Cover the rice and let it stay on low heat for another 4 or 5 minutes, then take it off the heat altogether and let it sit for at least another 10 minutes, but preferably a half an hour.
It will be cooked after 10 minutes but It should rest for a while because all the moisture in the rice needs to absorb, otherwise it will get gloopy and not really “fry” properly.
Toss one diced red pepper and a half a cup of frozen peas into a big lightly oiled deep saute pan or wok. Saute the vegetables until the peas are unfrozen. Now add a chopped up clove of garlic, the rice and a couple more tablespoons of soy. Fry the whole thing until the rice absorbs the soy, and starts to brown a little. Make sure you keep moving it around to keep it from sticking and burning.
Remove the rice.
Now crack two eggs and a teaspoon of water into your pan. Scramble the eggs till they’re dry and golden. Add the eggs to the rice and stir it all together.
I added some big juicy shrimp, which made this all even better.
Today I am finishing up work on the Very Big Project. I basically have only a couple drawings left to finish and then I’m done (unless my client decides there’s anything else they need done - which is still pretty possible). Here’s a little sneak peak (that is obscure, and tells you absolutely nothing about what the Project is, or what it looks like, ha). 
In between moving things around in Illustrator, I was downloading songs. The entirety of Stevie Wonder’s 1972 “Talking Book” to be specific. I have decided it is one of the best albums ever, of all time. The cat agreed. Her little ears twitched in time to “Superstitious.” It was the the cutest thing ever, of all time.
The first completely me-less issue of the Press has come out. I ‘m pretty sure the new illustrator Joe put me in his comic, but the gif’s too small for me to read the text and be sure. I’ll have to pick up a copy. It makes me very excited, I was editor all last year and not one comic artist put me in their comic. Joe is my favourite person again (sorry new layout guy who used to work for Fantagraphics).
Wow. I feel like I haven’t done this in forever.I almost didn’t do this one, as Penelope herself beat me to the whole birds/worms concept, but I pushed myself to do it anyway. Our interpretations are sufficiently unique.
I got the inspiration for this yesterday afternoon. We were driving around the beautiful wine country we are surrounded by (Liam was dropping off resumes for seasonal work at the wineries). As I was waiting in the car, a little black bird swooped down into the vineyard, then back up past the window with a wriggling, sqworming little worm in his mouth.
My first thought was “Ick!”
Then “Hmmm… Neat…”
And then came “A-ha! Nourishment!”
I worked away at this one, adding, subtracting and re-colouring until I was 99% happy with it (I don’t bother with that last, intangible 1% - otherwise I’d never get anything done).
I think the main reason why I use the computer for the majority of my work is the degree of control I can yield over it. I will occasionally drive myself crazy, but for the most part (if I really work hard), I end up more pleased with the end result because I can alter any little thing that bugs me right away.
I sometimes feel like I need to be drawing, and sketching in “reality” more, and I probably do. But the truth is that one medium is not so different from another.
I’ve been told my grandmother (who was also an artist) thought a good artist is not limited by their medium. A good artist (according to her) could pick up a wax crayon, a sable brush, or a burnt stick and be able to create.
While we all admittedly have our own comfort zones and niches, I think for the most part, I definitely agree.
Due in part to good friends with chocolate fudge cakes stopping by, I am now a little bit energized. Working on little projects is definitely a good distraction. Thankfully I have many uncompleted projects just lying around.
I need to get around to recovering these nice chairs I got from my grandpas house but I’m scared of using my new sewing machine for the first time. I got as far as to thread it, and since then its been sitting on my desk taunting me. I even bought yards and yards of beautiful grey wool for super-cheap… but it just sits there as well.
I’ve decided to ease myself in with something easy, so I’m starting out with some throw pillows. Straight lines, nothing tricky.
I also got a great deal on some white canvas when I picked up the wool, so I painted it up.
I was going for a colourful, retro, organic… sort of Scandinavian look I guess. 
Basically I was inspired by a combination of Beck’s Sea Change Album, a colour wash painting that hangs in my living room, Jill Bliss’ organic forms and pastel colours, and a little bit of Marrimeko’s Finn textiles.
It’s a little splotchy and messy in spots but with the look I’m going for I don’t think it’s noticeable. It just adds to the abstract/organic feel of it, (but I think it’s gonna look pretty good sliced up and sewn into little cushions).
I’ve been avoiding this.
Coming here, saying things.
My creativity is momentarily shot. I find myself needing others to make an effort to communicate with me, any incentive for relationships left foggy and insubstantial. But I know I can’t just shut the world out. So I am forcing myself to do this.
All I have left in my brain are the same few noxious facts and concepts bouncing around. Well, them and the lesion.
A lesion being some kind of physical anomaly that shows up on a CT scan and got me referred me to a neurologist last week who was an insensitive jerk who told me that I probably have an malignant tumour in my frontal lobe. Then he told me that my head will be poked, prodded, drilled into and cracked open to remove said tumour. Then he changed his mind and told me that nothing’s for sure until I get an MRI, but that it could be much bigger than the tiny one centimetre in diameter dense white spot in the front of of my frontal lobe that showed up on the CT scan.
Then he told me (but only when prodded) that it also may very well just be benign or even scar tissue from the few times I hit my head as a child (which is what I’ve thought all along). In which case my head stays intact and it stays in. No surgery of the absolute most invasive kind there can possibly be (of which I’ve had a fear of for pretty much ever, since I found out they very often keep you awake while they do it).
Needless to say, I cried in the stupid waiting room filled with old ladies who are 3 or 4 times my age and the receptionist had to pass me tissue while they arranged to bump up my MRI to an earlier date. The waiting room looked just like that scene in garden state where Zach Braff goes to a neurologist and there’s about a hundred documents and diplomas on the wood panelling (Its weird how much of my life has been haunted by Natalie Portman. When I was 14 and heard about the open casting call for the first Star Wars movie I wished there was a way to get to New York to audition because I knew I looked enough like Carrie Fisher to play her mother. Then it turned out I went to grade school with Hayden Christiansen, and then in high school sweet nerdy boys had crushes on me cause I looked like her).
The internet (which is more and more my most trusted ally) tells me that since the lesion is dense and ‘calcified’, and uniform in shape, that it is most likely not malignant and that the doctor was most definitely an overzealous idiot who is used to dealing with old ladies with dementia, not young ladies with brain damage… or… well… brain cancer.
My mother who is a administrative nurse with many connections talked to her friends and then reinforced my belief that the specialist was stupid, by telling me that I should really be seeing a neurosurgeon, at this point, not a neurologist. Because there’s something physical and visible inside my brain, and that’s a neurosurgeons speciality - finding it, identifying it and deciding if it needs to come out. Not just general afflictions of the brain.
Its very strange to realize that in the right (or actually very, very wrong) circumstances my sickly brain is a hot commodity that young overachieving doctors with something to prove would love to experiment on and crack into. I’ve found out the hard way that doctors are not like Zach Braff.
I have been going through this stuff for so long now finding out this new stuff doesn’t even effect me as much as it should, I think. That probably has something to do with the antidepressants I’m on. They are pleasantly numbing at times. Eventually you even get used to them and forget they’re there. I probably don’t actually need them, but I think they might be making things a little bit easier to handle. For the last year its been nothing but blood tests and doctors visits and vague explanations and assumptions that I should just go on antidepressants already by everyone from ignorant doctors to well meaning professors. Stupid people are everywhere. Quick fixes are too easy to come by. Imagine if 6 months ago my doctor put me on Wellbutrin and kicked me out the door? But I kept telling them I didn’t feel depressed. Didn’t fit the symptoms, the clinical definition. Thankfully my doctor listened. That has taught me that the patient is always right. You know your own body better than anyone else, and if your doctor won’t listen to you find anther doctor. I think that lesson will come in handy later on.
But. There is actually nothing I can do about this. A chunk of my brain is just gone, gone. Never to return, to heal, to function. To be chemically altered back to normal. Whatever happens, whatever ends up being wrong with me that’s what’s true. I am not a whole person. A very small but significant part of me is missing, and I think the only thing that makes me feel a little bit good about all this is that I can no longer be expected to be that whole person who can deal with the world around her. That part of my brain that makes the world easy to deal with is damaged. I may look fine. I may act normal. I’m not. I need help to make it any farther.
Been taking it easy the last few days, taking a mini-vacation before job hunting really begins. The last few years have been very looooong ones. I wish we had the resources to actually take a real vacation, but unfortunately, not so much.
Last night we visited the Albright-Knox, as it’s just a short trip over the border, and had a free Friday night deal going. We’re trying to get into the habit of doing free things again while we’re in-between things. I found it creatively refreshing and recharging to go see some “real” art. Just being in a gallery makes me feel happy and sophisticated. It was mildly disappointing though, as I was expecting more of a museum, and less of a gallery. I think a large part of my disappointment was due to the fact that the majority of the gallery space was showing a monochromatic “colour field” collection. There’s only so long you can stare at a red square. I think I might go back when they change the exhibits. It seems like it’s one of those places where what you see entirely depends on when you go, and a year from now they might have a lot of things I actually might enjoy.
I’m just used to the big Toronto museums and galleries where things don’t change for a very long time, and you can go see the same exhibits and peices you saw on field trips in the second grade. Not always stimulating, but definitely comforting.
I think I would have faired better if I had gone to go see the special Georgia O’Keefe exhibit, but it was not free, and I’m not very attracted to her stuff anyway. It would have been much more interesting, but I didn’t want to wimp out on my ‘doing free things’ attempt at the first try.
I think I’m going to have to take a closer look at Penelope’s cheap date ideas to get some new ideas.
This was not so hard when I was a teenager. Then everything was cheap or free. Then again, I lived in a slightly more cosmopolitan spot. It’s occasionally not so romantic living in the downtown of a (very, very) small city. It’s not big enough to constantly have exiting things happening, and its not small enough to have a close knit community where you can just hang out with your neighbours. I think it will get better when the summer finally hits, and the weather warms up a little. This has been the coldest spring in a long time.
