The Art of Procrastination

Ah, it's been a while since I've written an entry into this blog, specifically because very few interesting things have happened in the last month that I really have any lingering thoughts over. Thinking back to my history as a child though, I used to, and somewhat still have a tendency to procrastinate at great lengths... although it's not really what I'd call procrastination as much as priority side stepping. Ack, it's the same bloody thing, just word play as always... enough word play, a shotgun, and a gang of idiots can get you pretty much anything you want in life. Of course, the problem of all problems is how to use what you've got.

In any case, my mother visited me this week, she goes here and back to my hometown every few months or so. I normally dread the arrival, because I have to make the apartment spotless, and very rarely do I do such a good job that I don't receive any complaints... needless to say, cleaning is not my specialty... and cleaning a war zone isn't particularly to akin to success either. Generally I will be at the receiving end of a modest amount of verbal abuse, but things usually go up from there... kinda' like a hot air balloon that has a distinctive "Pssssssssst" as it flutters away into the sunset, killing it's passengers.

I've been wondering for a while since if I should blog with a more positive tone than my strangely unusual pessimistic one, but it seems in my experience that people like reading blogs filled with "My Life Sucks!" and all sorts of good hard glimpses of the pitfalls on our mortal plains... lately... I have been thinking about ways to harass Ostriches... I mean, when you think Ostrich, doesn't it somehow make you think "Golf Club!" I mean, the sucker puts it's bird sized brain into the grass, and you wiggle your bottom and smack the bastard with a giant metal stick with the grace of a Siberian wonder swan, doesn't it say something poetic about the universe? There isn't anything in this world that doesn't speak volumes about the universe; some just get more attention than others.

It's also a tendency for me to talk about very neutral, grandiose things and restrain from targeting out specific topics of regular human concern... I wonder why... but I'm going to break that cycle today by talking about pillows. I wonder if you can smuggle a pillow filled with bricks through an airport? I mean, they always seem to catch and confiscate the small stuff like nail files and nose hair clippers, but just maybe they will ignore something so bluntly obvious and obscurely lethal as a sack of bricks.

Well, that’s my rant for today, been putting it off for a while, but it’s okay, since I got to use the word “Siberian”, and that makes things all right and well in the universe.

Spiffy Deal!

These days, I don't go out as much as I would like too because of all the work I do at home... which actually is probably more of an excuse than an actually valid reason, but eh, I know that eventually I'm going to run out of the supply of immortally canned food to withstand the Apocalypse and have to go out to shop, seeing as how now my fridge is virtually empty. Maybe it's because of my slight OCD tendencies, but I have problems with buying stuff that isn't at it's absolute lowest price, so for me, shopping is more of a special event similar to a hunt, as in a lion tearing off the leg of the weakest zebra than a weekly chore. I gather up all my little coupon books, head out, and only usually come back with a small bag of items to tie me over. Speaking of which, I really should get a new head of lettuce, my fridge is as empty as a tumbleweed infested wasteland and seriously needs come green and fresh meat.

Regarding my slightly obsessive compulsive nature, I have a few habits that I have realized over time have become exponentially more noticeable, like my extreme preference for rounding off numbers. In my artwork when doing CG, I almost always round off the color numbers I use between the hue, saturation and darkness, it's a rather strange habit, but it does have its uses when I want to mentally catalogue my preferred color pallet, which I tend to do very frequently. I also have the almost so healthy it’s hazardous habit of washing my hands frequently, particularly when I'm using a computer for often little minimal additional effect. Should you ever come to meet me in person, rest assures that you'll probably be shaking one of the cleaner hands out of the world's entire population. Fortunately, I use a good brand of soap, so my hands aren’t dried up and white as a ghost, but still, I wonder how the habit developed in the first place. Strangely though when I think about it, I’ve never had these habits as a child, it’s just something I kind of developed from daily routines, but I suppose that’s how all habits develop… I wouldn’t say that I’ve gone to full blow OCD yet since these habits haven’t yet crossed over to the destructive side of life yet, but I better not follow them too diligently or I might cross that line in the future.

Oh, let’s see… the other day I was pretty lucky. Went to London Drugs to buy some Pepsi and 7-Up on sale with a Star Wars theme, naturally because of the recent release of Star Wars Episode III which I have yet to see as of yet due to work, and I was pleasantly surprise to find out that I wasn’t charged for one of the bottles when I got home. Thank goodness cashiers are only human in this day and age. Not that I saved more than a dollar, but sometimes, it’s the little things in life like this that make an otherwise sucky day good.

On a completely unrelated note, I frequently wonder why on message forums it seems as if nobody ever reads the bloody FAQs. On most of the more important things in life it would be understandable, but on some video game forums, people just completely ignore all the signs that point to answers and head straight to the forums to flood with questions. Now then, there are no stupid questions, but there are lazy ignoramuses and impatient know it alls and between the two of them exists every problem in human society. It actually doesn’t bother me that much as I’m advertising, but I frequently wonder why some people would rather leave themselves out as flame bait and whine when nobody answers their question rather than do the research on their own, especially when it is in fact a Frequently Asked Question, as opposed to the obscure bizarre question from Hell. Well, I guess everyone is different, but that’s like saying well I think pretzels aren’t donuts, it’s a obvious truth that everyone knows but few think about.

While I’m on my hate rant, why is it that people have such natural problems following instructions? Well, I’d have to say that I often fall into that category as well, but it just yanks my chain when people start saying that they need or want some information, but apparently don’t need or want it enough to go through two links to find it and rather become big flaming targets on open boards. Now then, sometimes though, the most ignorant people end up being the nicest, and the most knowledgeable end up being ungrateful pricks after you try to help them out, but eh, for every good thing in life, there is an equally crappy thing to make it stand out, so I can’t complain too much when I get a bad hand in life, since I know for a fact that there are a lot of people who got it much worst than I probably ever will know. For all purposes, I’m one of the people who likes to answer questions, so long as the people asking are polite, but having seen some of the more jaded people in internet society, I frequently wonder if there will be a time when even my patience runs thin… Hmmm… I should get a job in customer service and see, hahahahaha.

I Hate Telemarketers!

Hahaha, seems to be another sub-normal day in my life, and I've come to realize many fascinating facets of existence, like my utter hatred for telemarketers. Now, I know that they have a job to do, but in all honestly, I hate phones to begin with, they always manage to disrupt my concentration when I'm working on a new piece with their infernal ringing, and then when I answer them thinking that my friends or family are calling me, it turns out to be some annoying telemarketer pushing any given item on Earth on me and not taking no for an answer... Then there are the political and religious groups that lecture you for three minutes about how the universe will implode if you don’t think the same way they do before you even get a clue what the heck they stand for… I can appreciate the struggle these people have in order to garner attention, but honestly, I just wish the same telemarketers or awareness groups wouldn’t call more than twice in a week… I mean, can’t they just cross my name out the first time I say “NO” instead of persistently spam the hell out of me hoping that I’ll change my answer?

Honestly, I'd like to be ruder to people I don't care about, will never see and will never know, but if it's one thing that I seem to be incapable of, it's being rude. So rather than slamming the phone down in pure piss-officity, I listen to whatever they have to say and waste my time and try to sympathize with their marketing plight to win me over. Let me make this clear, if I wanted to buy something, I’d do the research and come to you, not the other way around. Of course, all of my frustration is gathering into a single black ball of densely purified hatred that will randomly explode at any given telemarketer who calls me from this day on, but till then, I'll probably still be incapable of being a rude jerk on the phone.

Hmmm... I wonder why I'm naturally afraid of the phone... it could be because of the fear of dialing the wrong number, or the disembodied voices, seeing as how I tend to rely on reading people's body language frequently... more likely than not though, it's because of all of the scary phone calls I received from my hostile relatives growing up. When your relatives scream at you in a foreign language like they're coming to their house to kill you and there's no one at home to translate, it gets a little scary.

It's not that I'm absolutely afraid of the phone, it's just that I feel at a disadvantage when I speak on it, like playing tennis on a sinking ship, and I am unable to use my full social abilities when limited only to voice. As you can guess, I don't have a cell phone, the disturbance in the peace that comes from the ringing seems to make me slightly paranoid when I take it every where I go, hahaaha. Hmmm… anyhow, thankfully I have a pretty good e-mail service that filters out pretty much 100% of the spam that has turned my old hotmail account into a digital wasteland -- gmail rocks!

Is It Edible?

Hmmm... these days, it seems that I have run out of conventional food and since it was the middle of the early morning when I came down with my semi-regular case of the munchies, I decided to hunt around my apartment like an omnivorous scavenger for something that could pass off as food in some country or another. I learned two very important lessons.

1. Rotten food doesn't smell good.

2. Rotten food doesn't taste good.

Despite that inarguable train of logic, I decided to see what I could eat anyways, and what I discovered in my apartment were loads and loads of food that I had forgotten to eat... Now, since my fridge is virtually empty, you tend to look outside the ice box for food that is semi-immortal, but just because it comes in a package or in a can doesn't mean that it'll withstand the apocalypse and still taste good, as rotten tuna will atest to. Additionally, I had some nifty Japanese spiky ball thingies that's name has escaped me at the time, a slightly moldy egg biscuit, some concentrated caltrate chewable, dried fruit that you could break windows by thowing, and instant coffee... lots of instant coffee.

I like cooking, but what I don't like is shopping, the stress of buying stuff uber cheap gets to me every time and my tendency to let food rot prevents me from typically buying anything with less than a month's shelf life. With a diet like that, I can't possibly be standing in good health, but here I am feeling my usual perky self and my iron lined stomach... maybe living the life of a single artist has made me immune to petty things like eating rotten food? Then again, maybe I'm just lowering my standards to sub human proportions.

Hmmm... I want to eat some dead animal today, something with small beady eyes that I wouldn't feel bad about, not that I couldn't eat half of a still breathing cow and feel bad about it the day after... actually, dead cow happens to be one of my favorite foods, but I'm more in a dead fish kind of mood today, then again, the seagulls flying past my window make me crave for dead bird... Speaking of which, I used to have a pet seagull but he disappeared, I wonder what happened to him?

The War on Gravity!

Waking up this morning, I finally came to realize who mankind's true enemy over these countless eras has been, gravity! There's a war on poverty, a war on terrorism, a war on drugs and a war on drinking and driving, but alas, no war on gravity! I think people need one more virtually omnipresent force to antagonize to balance out all of the peace and sanity that the world is experiencing today, and what better enemy to have than gravity? I’m surprised with all of the health talks about the horrors of the sun causing cancer and the lack of air quality, nobody has decided to single handedly exploit the health deficiencies associated with gravity. Now, other than the fact that gravity is what's preventing our little planet from flinging off into deep outer space to a slow painful death, don't you think life would be so much easier without gravity? I mean, oceans would fly upwards and the planet would implode, but then again, we could all eat cereal upside down, and wouldn't that be neat? Anyway, you come up with ideas like that every foggy morning or so, and realize when you pour your Wheaties that maybe it isn't such an ingenius plan after all.

People always have the tendency to want to antagonize the product and actions of other people, long gone are the days when the "Fight against wild animals that will EAT YOU" has ever been of any particular concern. I guess this kinda' argument has layers and layers of metaphysical application and facets to be exploited, but eh, even the greatest of philosophical debates can be solve by a enough well sharpened sticks and people willing to use them. That's what I love about quality RPGs, you spend a fine amount of time pondering the meaning of existence and contemplating the delicate fabric of human nature, but we all know that ultimately at the end, the vast majority of difficult questions pertaining to the meaning of life can be solved by finding the right godlike being in the game's universe and beating the crap out of it by any means possible. Since art imitates, life, in theory, any problem can be solved with enough excessive violence, albeit side effects may vary from minor to apocalyptic.

Fun With Giant Mutant Eggs!!

Its days like this when you wake up and there seems to be something different in the air, and I’m not talking about the smoldering flame love child of bad cooking from last night’s dinner attempt. Maybe it was the sugar rush from yesterday’s Star Wars oriented Slurpee binge, as apparently endorsed by Yoda and Darth Vader (They don’t taste any different than the usual though and probably have enough additional food coloring to be the embodiment of cancer), or perhaps it was the cleaning fiasco that I executed yesterday in my cozy little apartment with all of the comforts of a dwelling during the bubonic plague, no thanks to my cleaning habits, but I woke up feeling rather blitzed, and without the alcoholic hangover to boast.

Waking up after a surprisingly effective three hours of sleep at five in the morning, I couldn’t help but feel a bit different from the montage of dreams that have been haunting me as of lately. Now, a lot of people forget their dreams when they wake up somewhere between changing their undies and eating their Fruit Loops, not necessarily at the same time, but not me. I consistently have one of two reoccurring dreams and very clear interpretations. The first dream is a reenactment of my horrible memories in 9th grade math class, which symbolizes my life sliding downhill, and the second is me sliding downhill which tells me that I should have did better in 9th grade math class. When I wake up, I always ask myself that since it was a dream, I should have made at least one or two attempts at stabbing my evil teacher with a well sharpened pencil, but eh, somehow whenever you are in the whimsical delusions of the dream world, you tend to forget obvious trains of logic like that.

It’s good to set goals for yourself everyday like those self help books tell you too. It’s also good to set yourself up for a gigantic guilt trip of unachievable goals so out of your reach that it’ll take the backhand of God to slap you back to reality. That being the case, I decided to make two simple goals for myself today, get my fly magnet of a laundry pile washed and start the coloring process on one of my typical mother of unholy artwork pieces that’ll burn me out faster than a bowl full of mice soaked in burning lighter fluid in the spring time.

I actually enjoy doing laundry, but since this morning my mind was slightly off its regular discourse, it took me half an hour to find my favorite yogurt cup to fill with Sunlight detergent and I accidentally took my Master Card down to the Laundromat instead of my laundry card. No biggie, things like this happen all the time, not usually to me, but they happen. Should have had my regular cup of Taster’s Choice instant coffee, but then again, I drink it so weak and with so much cream and sugar that I might as well drink chocolate milk. Anyhow, the laundry was going well till I got to the drying part and realized that nobody who had previously used the dryers was courteous enough to remove their lint from the filter. I’m not exactly a clean freak, but I think that like how video stores have a sticker on their tapes that say, “Please be kind and rewind”, commercial dryers should say “Remove your goddamn lint or else we’ll hunt you down and shoot you”, since apparently, very few contextual words rhyme with “lint”. While I’m complaining about that though, I might as well debate the reason why any self respecting human would not flush the toilet in a public washroom after leaving the “Captain’s Log” in a tidy aesthetically pleasing swirl, then again, kissing penguins doesn’t seem very normal to me either if you really think about it.

As I write this, I’m waiting for the laundry to dry… but it never really does dry in Vancouver where the air is so moist that my drawings practically sponge up water from the air and curl into a tiny little ball of pain and suffering if I leave them out too long, although I’m exaggerating… slightly. It’s been quite a while since I’ve draw on paper, I mainly use a Wacom Tablet to do my work these days, but somehow, I’m just not quite as precise with a drawing tablet as I am with the old ceiling sticker and the dead tree pulp.

I have a tendency to worry about the meaning of the universe more often than worry about how to put food on the table, a trait that has not worked well in my favor both as a freelance artist and a socially self expanding individual, as talking about the meaningless essence of existence isn’t exactly the best card to play on dates or job interviews for that matter. As such, I decided that today I’d do something different, and so following my rather trippy morning, I decided to finally follow my brother’s echoing advice and start a blog, as you are hopefully reading now or else it means that I screwed it up… again, hahahah ^_-. I suppose I could have robbed a bank using my well trained army of mutant squirrels, but that’d make just too much sense!

Life is just full of problems isn’t it? Actually, the whole concept of life is to ride on the molehills and mountains of conflict until you eventually hit a bump so large that you are ejected from your mortal vessel and spattered onto the pavement of the afterlife, that or you drive into a pot hot large enough to be classified by the Encyclopedia Britannica as a cliff in a surprisingly graceful explosion. Fortunately, I haven’t hit any life traumatizing threats as of late, unlike last year, but then again, I’ve hit enough small speed bumps to stunt my speed to almost zero, so now I’ve got to start picking up the pace, gather momentum and start making a difference. Well, the day is still young and I hope to get some good wholesome work done and hope that it will be one step in the direction of change, for better or worst. Oh… as for the giant mutant egg bit mentioned in the title of this article… umm… I’ll explain that later… hopefully… definitely…