Hectic

I'm home with Your Sister who has seemingly had a vertigo attack. She was dizzy Thursday morning, and we saw the doctor that afternoon. She was given steroids, an antibiotics, and medicine to fight nausea and dizziness. The worst seems to be over, but the doctor has made an appointment with an ENT before we do a CAT scan, if needed. The doctor is concerned that this happened before, including during the pregnancy.

We also are fighting another ant invasion. We called the local Terminex office, with whom we have a service contract, and we're currently waiting to hear back. I now question the value of our contract.

I'm that much closer to the comic's completion. The cover is mostly colored, and the pages have been tweaked and lettered. I hope to print a proof this weekend after getting the garden started.

I moved the Doom posts to their own blog at Cooking With Villainy.

Did y'all pass around the shirt artwork for an OK? I can send the layers to the printer when it's approved.

It's Almost Happening

The comic is lettered now after a whirlwind weekend of inking. I planned to be gardening, but rain kept us indoors and required us to move the tiller reservation to next weekend. And buoyed by the basketball tourney and a mild-mannered sidekick, I was able to ink and ink and ink. I scanned in the pages and lettered atop them and have printed out the first full-issue proof.

That's not to say it's done. I intend to fix some panels and tweak the script, and I still need to color the cover. But I'm 80% done, and it's not April yet. I'm surprised. But I shouldn't be, I suppose. I've spent virtually every free minute inking.

I'll soon face the prospect of discovering I've committed an embarrassing crime against creativity and commerce. There's a writer named Warren Ellis whose made some headway from comics to novels and back, and his advice is to produce a work, make it public, learn what you did wrong, and make the next thing better. It's going to be embarrassing he says. But if you learn, the next work will surpass it.

I wanted to make a comic of traditional length, and I've done that. I wanted it to be clear, and I think I have. Next year, I'll make the comic prettier.

+  +  +

The sidekick turned 9 months old and had his check-up Monday morning. They painted his teeth with fluoride because our water system removed fluoride about four years ago. They checked his blood for anemia and took his stats, and that was that. The doctor made suggestions for dandruff shampoo and lotion and said his weight seems to reflect his level of activity. So far, he's OK. He's forgotten how to sleep through the night, and the doctor suggested giving him extra protein to make him sleepy.

+  +  + 

And this makes the 1,002 blog post. Hm.

Picture of the Day
The first picture taken from Mercury's orbit. A high school friend of Your Sister worked on the new satellite that's now orbiting the planet.

Let's Talk Cap

The deputy now has six front teeth moving out of his gums. Suddenly, he's very unhappy.

I into the 20s of my comic pages and hope to be done with them by next weekend.

Moving Picture of the Day
Here's the first official trailer for Captain America, one of at least three Marvel movies coming out this year alongside Thor and X-Men: First Class. This and Thor fill out the individual film series with Hulk and Iron Man that will lead to Avengers, the supergroup film coming out next year.

I'm surprised they spend so much time on his origin here. I'm particular about the way superhero origins are done in films, and mostly I'm against turning a film into one long origin story. They all end with our hero finding a resolve to improve at least the world around him with his new powers. That's a given. The second Hulk movie did it right: Show the origin in the opening credits and get on with an actual story. Captain America should work the same way, and the trailer shows his origin can be communicated in about two minutes.

Now, as a longtime reader, I'm happy to see two things with his origin:
1. It follows the comics, except for one new wrinkle, which is
2. It adds Iron Man's dad.

The fight scenes don't get as much attention, and they, so far, look thin. So do the city street scenes. Marvel is happy to make their hero films on the cheap, and it's mostly worked for them. I worry the veneer will be obvious in this film. Still, a WWII superhero movie -- and a big-screen Captain America film -- may be too good a notion to miss.Even if he seems to be fighting someone other than Nazis.

You may wonder just how a WWII hero can find himself alongside heroes in the modern day. I suspect the film will end with that explanation. I hope they maintain that story from the comics too.

I'll Be Glad to See March Go Away

It's been a harried few days.

Someone I met after I moved up here died Saturday after a very quick hospice set-up at his home. He had been sick off and on for years now, but he was diagnosed with cancer late last year, and his body was weakened from the treatment. Your Sister drove to Asheville numerous times since Friday, and I spent Sunday watching the sidekick so she could visit the family. He was twice surrounded by strangers and shaken from his schedule, and he was miserable. We had horrible nights afterward where he was anxious and inconsolable. We could only fill him full of milk until he passed out. He showed some separation anxiety before all this, but that was mild in comparison. He's exhausted, we're exhausted, and we're on the periphery of another family dealing with another cancer death. It's rattled loose the memories of 2008 and navigating My Mom through two family funerals within a month.

He's settled into two verbal patterns. We all know the traditional baby talk sounds of ba-ba and ga-ga, but his sounds are distinct. He strings together the hard consonants like a mantra or a drum loop.

we bought the beginnings of our garden supplies: potatoes to quarter, seed packets, and ground cover. Your Sister put up black netting on the back deck to keep the sidekick from shoving his head through the bars.

I'm making progress by switching time between inking and lettering. I'm up to page 18 of the 24-pager, including time needed to rewrite entire scenes atop the artwork.

The sketch of page 8.

The artwork with lettering.

I spoke to the father of a student spending time in Japan this semester. Her foreign-study group is bringing everyone back home early seemingly so the dorms can be used by refugees from the areas near the nuclear plants.

I filled out a March Madness bracket on ESPN and correctly picked 9 of the Sweet Sixteen teams. I have UNC winning the whole thing. We also learned a student who requested recommendation letters from Your Sister got into UNC on Friday. She's one of three we know of going there in the fall. I spent many an hour last week drawing the comic while listening to basketball

The time change seems to have dusted off my initiative programming. I'm getting up very early and want to do everything. That may be why I drew and inked the shirt artwork all last night. Check your email. 

Cold Busted

All three non-furry members of Chez Debacle have colds, making us a clanging household of head-gunk noise. How welcoming we can be to three people over the weekend remains to be seen. I am downing orange juice and various cold medicine, including Cepacol lozenges that should be labeled as Pickled Anesthesia.

I lettered five pages of the comic now and hope to have another five finished before the guests arrive. I assume I will get no comic work done while we host them. That's not so bad. I could use a break, and I'm in a good spot to halt; I have mostly fight scenes ahead of me. Those are easier to work than panels with lots of talking heads and backgrounds.

Picture of the Day
Ring up my sick candy, good sir. And hand me a pack of your finest medicinal tobacco.

Picture of the Day

From Bill Rhodes, the photographer of the Blue Ride Rollergirls, comes this shot showing off the official jersey logo based on my submission. More can be seen here.

I'm very tempted o pint up my own shirt with the original logo and put my Jeff Leppard name on the back. And maybe the number 19 to represent the band's number of arms and legs.

Feeling the Crunch

Thursday was an odd night for the boy. He had a late nap that afternoon and hadn't eaten for hours. I thought he'd have his milk and immediately conk out. But no. He was wired and/or cranky. Orajel did nothing. It took much, much longer to put him down than usual, and we had to trade him off to keep our tempers steady. We tried cooling him down and giving more milk and leaving him in his crib to wind down on his own. It took almost three hours before he finally slept, and only today did we learn the reason: He's now teething four upper teeth, not just two.

I learned this while holding him upside down in the daycare parking lot. I took a lunch break and met Your Sister and My Mom there for a tour. It seems solid. It's a clutch of classrooms around a large common from. Each class is broken into development levels, and the classes are small. If he were to go into the daycare now, he'd be one of eight in his class. We put down a deposit today, and he'll start in July. We'll take him for a few hours that first week to get him adjusted to our absence.

Speaking of which, we got a sitter and attended the roller derby season opener Saturday. Between the jerseys, the program, the scoreboard, and the season passes, my team displayed three variations of the logo I created. But still, I got to see my typeface and design (that logo is 80% my work) zoom around the track. It also just happened to be the most competitive bout yet seen in Asheville, and Your Sister got to watch. We sat with some ECU alums and left right after the second bout began.

I stayed home yesterday to mind the boy and moved from office stuff to comic stuff to household chores. I am on page 13 now, inking and scanning as I go. I can work on lettering when I can't put pen to paper, and I feel the crunch to get this comic done. My breath quickens. I try to prevent myself from redrawing panels, but in some cases it must be done. For instance, page five was planned to have a schematic of the typical robot fighter. I even drew it on the page, but just as I was to ink it, it looked flat and thoughtless. I quickly changed the image but kept the idea of the panel.

The sketch.

The limp pencils. 

The salvage job.

I can't do this for every page or even every other page. I had my chance to draw, and now I have to ink. Things need doing.

Your Sister was diagnosed with severe tendinitis in her left wrist and told this is common in nursing mothers. She's relieved to hear it. She took a cortisone shot.

We might be hosting one of her longtime friends and her two daughters this weekend. I wonder who will be exhausted the most at the end of each day: them or our boy.

Overthinking It

I'm trying to come up with a catchier title for the fundraiser, and the closest I've come is turning Pirates of the Caribbean into Pirates Who Are Caring Beings.

So, yeah.

I'll have sketches Monday. Sans title.

Progressing in a Progressive Manner

The deputy is now able to sign "milk" with one hand. It's simple for us: You curl your fingers like you're milking a cow. But he's only recently built up the dexterity to do this with one hand. Before, he was bending his fingers with the other hand. Now, he stretches out his arm and signs away when he's hungry. He still has to master the appropriate audience for this, however. Last night, he was asking Conan O'Brien. I suppose he was confused by the beard.

He seems to be past the worst of the new teething. Neither of us had to give him Orajel yesterday.

We may have found our daycare center. There's one near the Asheville Sam's Club, meaning I can take him there and pick him up during my commute. Depending on the weather tomorrow, Your Sister will take My Mom there during their weekly visit.

+  +  +

I started sketching the golf logo, and I'll have at least two versions of the requested image. I'll see if I can break off some other designs for variety's sake. Hey, does this event have a name? I can maybe make a banner with the name in the logo design.

Picture of the Day
From Bad Astronomy comes this picture of sunspots. It's the beans.

Skyline

Constant Reader writes:

Here is the actual idea, in the words of the committee chair (and feel free to jazz this up...whatever you would want to wear as a T shirt with maybe 2 colors of ink):

"So my idea was to have a pirate (and it doesn’t have to be peedee the pirate) swinging a golf club at a golf ball. The shaft of the club says ‘fights’ and the golf ball says ‘cancer.’"

That's doable. I'll work up some sketches through this weekend and send you them via email.

The inking slowed down a little as I redrew panels, including the schematic I mentioned yesterday. The latest panel was a birds-eye shot of an arena, and just thinking about making the perspective grids that made my eyes cross. I instead redrew a close-up of the caged ring on the arena floor.

The comic's biggest perspective challenge ended this weekend. I had in mind a specific shot of a skyline with the superhero HQ towering above it. I ran a similar image in last year's comic, but it was from below. That allowed me to limit the skyline and tower to one corner of the panel and use negative space for the rest of it. It was a lazy cheat I justified by saying it was an arty camera placement. This time, I needed to establish the city and the tower's prominence. Also, I wanted heroes flying about on their daily patrols. And it happened thusly:

This sketch is about four inches wide. In the bottom left will be an editor's note revealing the theme song of the radio show that bookends the story.

This is the pencil version. I laid down a perspective grid and sketched the structures and figures atop it. Who are these heroes? I don't know. Doesn't matter. I needed flying bodies.

Here's the inks. I randomly delineated building structures, but I think I got across the idea of a metropolis. But, of course, not THE Metropolis.

The convention organizers are promoting the revelation of this year's special guest. They'll spill tomorrow. I can't get too excited as I probably won't get a chance to see whoever it is.

I may have tried another perspective angle after watching the recently released police helicopter footage from 9/11. I saw it yesterday, and it conveys the incredible size of the buildings. As a lifelong country mouse, I can barely fathom structures that large and tall. The footage gets me dizzy, and I wonder if it somehow trips my brain's depth perception in a way little else does. It's possible I'm not afraid of heights after all, but those instances of vertigo are the lone times my brain actually computes depth.

Bossh Office: Social Network

The doctor said our deputy might have the diarrhea for another week, and it was normal. He suggested a diet to settle his stomach and sent him on his way. And the problem cleared up almost immediately. He's fine now. However, he's teething again, and we expect to see his two front top teeth any minute. He responds well to Orajel, and his sleep isn't affected.

We spent Friday night on the couch as we began a new routine of catching up on the 2010 Oscar nominees via DirecTV's PPV service. It was all her idea, and we kicked it off with Social Network. So let's bring in our blog movie experts to chime in.

Chipper Bossh: Social Network was written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing and Sports Night. It was directed by David Fincher. The soundtrack was cowritten by Trent Reznor. I loved it before I watched it.



Surly Bossh: And it starred a whole bunch of nobodies and Justin Timberlake.




Chipper Bossh: Who were all great. I can see why the lead actor was nominated for an Oscar. He carries the film.




Surly Bossh: Yeah yeah. Now let's talk about what the film does wrong. It ends abruptly. Just as the lead character finally has to confront inconvenience and failure, the film walks off  and leaves him there. We get text to fill us in on what happened after, and that stinks.




Chipper Bossh: I gotta agree. The story reaches a truly dramatic conflict -- what would normally be the end of a proper film's second act -- and poof. Credits. But otherwise, the script is sterling. Even the stock bad guys --



Surly Bossh: Who are straight out of every '80s college comedy.







Chipper Bossh: Right. Even they are sympathetic. Likable even. Although one wonders why such allegedly smart business students left themselves vulnerable to losing their online creation by not drafting a contract with the protagonist. Still, the film flies by, buoyed by crackling dialogue and big doings (legal, technological, political, social) made very accessible. The movie earned my interest and kept it. If I wasn't so enthralled, I wouldn't be so bothered by the ending.

Surly Bossh: There are some who bitch about the depiction of women, all groupies and drunks.







Chipper Bossh: Not true. The film's two most important women bookend the film and tell the lead what he needs to hear, not that he'll believe them. They may be the most sensible people in the film because they refuse to be sucked in by the lead's enigmatic brilliance. 



Surly Bossh: Just saying, the film fails the Bechdel Test.







Chipper Bossh: But those allegedly unappealing women are what those guys attract. They are buried in their work and looking for pretty companions to bolster them. If you don't like the women, you have to consider they reflect the tastes of the men we're watching for two hours.

Social Network is about earnest folks, not folks with the best judgment. In fact, had the lead displayed even a touch more humanity, none of this would have happened. Like Fincher's Fight Club, this is a movie about a  smart manchild who can't bring himself to deal with his feelings for a woman and channels a successful, angry campaign based on that inability. Except he winds up richer than Lucas.


Surly Bossh: Whoa.






Chipper Bossh: Tell me about it.

 +  +  +

Your Sister attended a weekend GOP town hall meeting with great hope as she walked in and disappointment as she walked out. One of the two featured speakers no-showed, and the other had no interest in feedback from people, like her, who spoke in words other than talking points. Wisconsin has turned teachers into a polarizing profession, and she hoped she could bring an inside perspective to the state representatives and townies. But no. They were entrenched, and left her deflated. This meeting was set up to conduct official party business and rally new folks to the cause. They may have shooed her away. She made a crockpot bean dish for the potluck dinner, and she was at least happy that most people liked it.

"Of course," I said. "You used only white beans."

 +  +  +

I made headway on the comic, starting page five this morning. I need to pencil a panel again; it's weak and thoughtless. It's schematic of a robot woman, and I dusted off my anatomy book to approximate the muscles and bones which will be adjusted for a robotic undercarriage.

Picture of the Day
Behold, the taxonomy of rap names. 

Spooky Ooky

Though Amazon, which I have realized is the world's bazaar, I have received two books that shaped my young brains.Now, remember that the '70s turned the supernatural into as valid an outlet for curiosity and speculation as any then-current events. As prevalent as today's reality shows, stories about weird encounters abounded. Bigfoot was Osama Bin Laden. The Bermuda Triangle was yesterday's Snooki. New Age mysticism and fringe psychology made anything seem possible, and aliens and vanishings powered conspiracies reaching everyone from Elvis to the world before Jesus. Consider Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Many approached it as a documentary. Those weird Batboy stories in the Weekly World News? Yeah, that was the 1970s, except the evening news did the reporting. And then there as In Search Of ... and Project UFO.

While scifi remained verdant as ever, the mainstream interest in scifi movies and TV shows stemmed from a semi-earnest hope that the filmmakers were onto something. The inclusion of the Force in Star Wars wasn't just a handy plot device; it was an acknowledgment of psychic events allegedly happening all about us. Late-night talk shows frequently featured Uri Geller, a supposed telekinetic and psychic. He was considered legit. His "powers" were a matter of constant debate.

So my little mind had no cynicism about such matters. Ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, aliens -- all as real as Lite Brites. When I found the above books in the Blackstock Elementary School library, I read them repeatedly, desperate to commit to memory documentations and suppositions that I took as gospel. I hadn't seen the books since I left the school. Until very recently. I found the ghost book at the local library, and it inspired me to see if I could buy used copies. New editions had no appeal. I wanted books that once moved through libraries. Luckily, you can buy almost anything from Amazon.

In a nice melange of Your Family and mine, I discovered only upon opening the shipping envelope that the ghost book came from Edwards Air Force Base. That gives it a slight patina of credibility. It's a government copy.

 

I considered that I was trying to mold the deputy into a new version of me, but I dismissed that. No, these books are for me, and he's welcome to them with no obligation of going as bonkers for them as I did.

+  +  + 

I stayed home Thursday to help Your Sister. She had a school appointment in the afternoon at the same time she was supposed to take My Mom and the boy to the weekly family-center visit. She was scrambling to polish her resume, and I could tell Wednesday night that she needed back-up. I took Mom and him to the family center for my first visit. It's a free activity center for kids, and the regulars and employees knew him. He doesn't seem to recognize them yet. Mom brought a heaping pile of photos to show Your Sister, many dating before me.

He is going to the doctor Friday morning to see about this stomach bug he seems to have developed. It's a horror show in his diapers, and he's refusing solid food. He's downing milk as normal, hopefully keeping him hydrated.

+  +  +

I started inking, and it's fraught with peril at every turn. I move slowly for now. In a few pages, I'll have the hang of it again.

Pencils Down

I worked for about a half hour on the cover image before deciding that I couldn't focus so tightly on it. I had to start inking so I could start lettering so I could start coloring. For better or worse, I need to move on. I tightened the pencils -- darkening the contours and filling the shaded areas -- before tracing it on a lightbox. And here's the final pencil version after the earlier sketch work.

I'll ink it after I work through the pages. That way, my inking muscles will be the strongest when I tackle the cover.

We spent the evening with the TV set on a satellite radio station for '80s music. She organized work and tax information while I drew at the kitchen table.

The gun-control debate continues in the newspaper, and it's drifted again into people quoting long-dead presidents who never saw a revolver. I also got something in the mail I'll talk about in a few days. It deserves its own blogololy.

I picked up a new babygate and perused the Babies R Us safety section. We'll probably need to buy teething guards for the crib find a way to secure the TV. Tall widescreen TVs are wobbly.

Before and After

The image on the left is the cover as of Monday morning. The right image is what I've done since then.

I elongated her right arm (our left, her right) so the upper arm length is closer to that of her left arm and making that forearm look less stumpy. I grabbed my toy wrestling belt and posed for the camera to fix that arm. I took some images of my left arm to help me tweak hers, sculpting the foreshortened forearm better and reducing the size of the fist. It should still be a tad bigger than the hand holding the belt.I thought her left upper arm was too long, but I think now that the bicep definition is too big. If I shrink that, her arm should look fine.

I added the faceplate, and I can see now I need to scoot the letters up a bit so they're clearer; the P is lost. I worked on her eyes, and did a bit too much definition on the mouth. I want her to be beaming, but I don't want the mouth to be wider. I'll also need to thicken the waist and hips; I can spread her right side out a bit.  I may also draw the rest of her head when I move this image to another art board. The light on her tights is too far to her right, too. 

So, yes, work still in progress.

That's Your Sister's navel, by the way. I've told her for almost ten years now that I wanted to use it on a  comic cover.

We're debating what to plant in the garden, and I need to get further along in the comic work to give me time to start the garden earlier this year. As of now, almost half the garden will be potatoes, and half of that will be the sweet variety for the sidekick's dinner.

He's unquestionably adorable now. I can see personality and intention and contemplation. He's thinking and trying. He is officially at the stage where he ripples my heart.

As Your Sister put him down for the evening, I installed more cabinet locks. It is not an easy chore to hammer and screw upside down.

Milestone

I have finished penciling the comic, much to my surprise. The deputy behaved himself enough for most of the weekend, and I could lay down a rough of the cover. It's very rough.

I see about 8 things I need to fix here (that left hand, for instance, is huge). The plan is to put the comic's logo on the belt faceplate. I knew this would be layer upon layer of marks and erasures, and I'll copy it it to another artboard for the inking.

You might remember that I had mark called "stat" for the championship belt faceplate throughout the comic. I intended to scan in a master image and place it digitally into those marked panels. I remembered how weird similar instances look in other comics, and I took about an half hour to draw the faceplate throughout the story. I'd like to polish the cover and then start inking the whole thing.

+  +  +

We had a rough evening without the deputy, and we suspect he got too hot. It happened once before a few months back, and I worried it might happen with this patch of warm weather. Yesterday was very warm in the house, what with the oven and washing machines going strong. It took about an hour to calm and cool him down, and he was thankfully out for the whole night. The day before, I walked him in his stroller in the waning daylight, and he never made a peep. He's settling into a default gear of tranquility interrupted by needs at both ends. We can set him down and work on small chores while in the same room. I drew half this comic in the TV room. He is, so far, a good baby.

+  +  +

We noticed our internet was cutting out more and more, and by Saturday, we couldn't connect at all. I wondered that my first try at rewiring the phone box had finally ended in failure, but the connections seemed OK Saturday morning. I called the tech support, and things went well until I marked a certain modem light was no longer on. The techie said he had exhausted his checklist and that he'd put in a work order. This was about noon. Just two hours later, a serviceman called from our driveway. He immediately noted the modem and said it was old and needed to go, and he reconfigured the wifi, and we're back in business. I offered him sodas for the road, and he wouldn't hear of it. Nice guy, quick fix. On a Saturday, no less.

He noticed the comic pages next to my laptop and made the common observation that graphic guys always use Macs. I told him in vague terms that my experience with Macs at the weekly paper scared me off them forever. Also, Macs are no longer so dominant in memory or speed for graphics programs. PCs can compete on those terms, making a full system switch unnecessary. I grew up using Macs in classrooms, but my home computers have always been PCs. It was only within the last few years that you could walk into a Best Buy and get a Mac. In Greenville, I had to go to a specialize warehouse store for office peripherals. There's nothing like that in our town, even when the stores are open.

+  +  +

The Oscars stayed on as we traded shifts with the boy during his overheated meltdown. Your Sister lamented that we had seen none of the best picture nominees and suggested we begin a regular movie night to catch all the films we missed. I have no problem with this. Unlike previous years, I'm interested in all the major films from last year. I still have zero curiosity about Slumdog Millionaire. We'll get along just fine having never sat down together. I know this as I know Things That Are So.

+  +  + 

I got my season passes from the roller derby team. Behold the back.

Yeah. That's the logo I made, not the one used now in advertising. This is something of a cluster for the company. But my logo looks good in black-and-white.

+  +  + 

Your Sister got another GOP survey/solicitation letter in the mail, and we spent an hour answering it. The stilted, limited answers fired her up so much that she's now attending the local GOP open house in hopes of getting them off the talking points. It's a potluck dinner, and she found a recipe for a bean dish. She's resolved. She's going to stir the pot. She's a registered Republican teacher, and she's got things to say.

Gettin' There

I just started page 23 of the planned 24 comic pages. I'm surprised to be here, despite writing the page numbers and dates on the top of each page to document my progress. If I finish page 24 and the cover this weekend, I may give myself a week to touch up the art throughout before inking.

You may remember that the minicomic started as a one-page story. Here's the last panel. I knew I wanted to keep that image for the expanded comic, and it arrived on page 19.

This is the half-scale sketch page.

Here's the penciled page.

I still don't know why my heroine looks like Gwyneth Paltrow. Look at that middle panel on the bottom row.

I changed her scoop neckline because I was making too many chest emblems with sharp angles. Also, that rounded scoop motif is repeated on her pants.  And I am not using "Townton" as the name of the city anymore. Gotta come up with a new one though.

That's What I Thought

I heard back from the derby team. I met with two team members back in August regarding logo revision, and one of them emailed me back today. She says the new b-team roster voted to change the logo after we talked, and she agrees I should have gotten a chance to rework it. My suspicions were borne out: this was a committee effort, and one of the team wanted to put her own stamp on it. I'm relieved the mystery is solved and the good vibes of my team contact remain. She said they are probably not making shirts with the logo, but she did offer to make some to fulfill the contest agreement. I told her to skip it and save that money for team equipment. I can always make shirts at home with the August logo.

And, yes, I'll use the season passes when I receive them.

+  +  + 

We took advantage of yesterday's summer weather to walk the sidekick into the woods. Virtually his entire day is spent pulling up, standing, and squirming across the kitchen floor. He's exhausted when he goes to sleep, and he did manage to sleep all of last night.

+  +  +  

We  had dinner with friends Saturday night, and our sons co-mingled. They consented to let me make a character for their kid to team with ours in the wrestling videogame. 

Picture of the Day

My street gang in 1977. We look good for six-year-olds.

Letters to Everyone

Instead of waiting the full ten days I promised myself after I emailed my derby liaison, I emailed the derby's PR people about the logo confusion. I'm waiting to hear back.

The paper ran my letter yesterday, and it was edited slightly. I feel the last paragraph lost some punch, but here's what I sent:

In his Jan. 31 guest column, Mr. [removed for privacy] argues the Second Amendment should be clear to advocates of gun control and goes on to declare gun control is actually “people control.”

All laws are people control. We don’t rely on the kindness of strangers or the better natures of our neighbors. We legislate to maintain civility, and, most important, we employ good people such as Mister [removed for privacy] to uphold those laws.

To denounce gun-control laws, he cites automotive deaths, stating “no one calls for car control.” But we do call for “people control” regarding their operation. We call for laws regarding speeding, signs, baby seats, impaired driving, maintenance, etc. Those laws aren’t designed solely for the occupants’ safety but also for the safety of others on the road. Gun-control laws are based on the same philosophy. They affect people on both sides of the trigger.

Mister [removed for privacy] noted the Tucson assailant’s mug shot shows him to be “simply yet obviously evil.” That in itself wasn’t what made him a threat; people are arrested for doing bad things, not simply for being bad people. Now that would be “people control.”

Being evil and armed -- willing to firing dozens of bullets without reloading – that combination made him a danger. And, unfortunately, that made him very effective in his violence. Not everyone who has access to a gun has Mister [removed for privacy]’s respect for them, and our laws are designed to protect people like [removed for privacy] and myself from those folks. 

While [removed for privacy] rightfully notes that the fault for the attack falls on Jared Loughner, he argues that banning a high-capacity magazine is a flawed response, calling the bullet count “irrelevant” and noting that even a novice can quickly reload his gun. But that shooter was tackled while reloading, when bullets were no longer an immediate danger. Had that respite come a dozen bullets earlier, so many wouldn’t have been injured, some mortally. 

Perhaps all gun owners should take Mister [removed for privacy]’s firearm instruction and eliminate the reliance on high-capacity magazines to feel protected from harm. That’s a degree of people control I would support.

I finished drawing page 17 of the comic last night. That brings me within eyesight of the end, and then I'll ink it. I also will start drawing the cover and work on that between inking sessions.

Moving Picture of the Day
Here's the new Thor trailer. I was amped until I saw the announcement of 3D, which I can't see. The biggest change I see so far is changing the Natalie Portman role from a nurse to a scientist. This was necessary back when Thor was exiled to Earth inside the body of a frail doctor. When the doctor realized he could become a swaggering thunder god, he would smack his walking cane on the ground and Thor it up.

Just This Side of Identical

Because I suspected the girl assigned to take care of Your Parents' cat wasn't, I went by the house again today to snoop. The litter boxes look like they haven't been cleaned since they left. I scooped them out and put the bag in the outdoor trash can. The top of the cat food bucket was off, suggesting she forgot to close it, which suggests she's at least feeding the cat. It didn't look in any way like the cat had gotten to it.

On the way back to the office, I stopped in Starbucks. There I spied the flyer for the local roller derby season opener and finally got a good look at the altered logo.

Recap: I sent them this logo.

This was the version the derby representative and I agreed to back in August. As of the teams' new year's party flyer, this was the b-team logo. But, last month, when the poster for the season-opening bout was released, the logo turned into this.

I have yet to hear from the roller I talked to, and I'm giving her another week or so to respond to my email. Then I contact the team through other means. Again, my concern is whether my logo is still considered the winner of last year's contest and whether I get the promised prizes. That design is still mostly mine. I would have made those changes had they asked, and, honestly, I would have made it look better. The braids are lost in the background. 

+  +  +

According to the newspaper, my letter runs today.

Picture of the Day
Stethoscope-style headphones.

Slow Progressions

Your Sister took the boy to the doctor yesterday to see about his runny nose. He's had a filthy nose for about two weeks now, and she was worried an infection might spread to his ears. He has been tugging on them for a few days. The doctors found no sign of a virus. He responded well to Orajel last night when he awoke, suggesting he's teething after all. He's also starting to pull upright in his crib, and we'll need to lower the mattress height so he can't climb out. He loves pulling himself to his feet now. It's all he wants to do when you approach him.

When will we remember that we installed cabinet locks so we won't tumble backward when we try to fetch a cutting board? 

+  +  +

Very late in my workday yesterday, I heard from the newspaper about my letter. They said I had to whittle it down to 350 words before they'd run it. I appreciate the chance to edit it myself; I've seen enough of their handiwork to trust them with cropping my submission. I had to make a new ending, and went through about five snarky conclusions before finding one that seemed polite but confident. They don't run their letter criteria often. Had I known about the word limit, this letter might have been printed already. The most recent edition had a secondary response letter, and it was the usual "cold dead hand" rhetoric about gun ownership.

I'm not arguing the right to have a handgun for safety. I'm arguing that the ability to fire 30 bullets without reloading isn't a defensive strategy. When I took martial arts classes, both instructors advised that you do just enough to end the threat and leave the situation. That's the kind of defense a six- or nine-bullet capacity provides. Anything more, and you're escalating the situation and creating an arms race with everyone else packing a gun.

Again, I hope the letter shows that one can advocate gun-control laws while honoring the right to protect one's self and property.

+  +  +

Picture of the Day
We're watching the Jeopardy! episodes pitting the two top all-time winners against IBM's Watson computer. It's astounding to behold this black, vertical screen standing behind the podium. 

He's good at treating each clue as a search listing, although he's not infallible. In a question regarding U.S. airports, he answered Toronto. He's competed strong, but I wonder if he has an increased advantage with a quicker clicker response. The human contestants, as always, run the risk of locking themselves out if they buzz in too early. Watson won't do that. 

Still, a computer is competing on Jeopardy! The mind boggles.