Comic-go-round

I'm going round and round in circles trying to decide what to do with my comic. I start by thinking I'll make minimal changes. I then think that a bit more explanation is not a bad idea (such as the somewhat important idea that it was the Spanish gold flooding into Europe from America that allowed capitalism to develop). I then get carried away and start chucking in all sorts of things (I've even drawn up plans for the Time Ship Cassandra - not that it'd be a time machine per se). Then I realise it's got stupidly huge and unwieldy, and decide to only make minimal changes. Then the process starts all over again.

I'll get there in the end.

Advice for public galleries

We popped out to the Dowse yesterday. I won't go on about the depressing display of derivative work that was the Wallace finalists. It's not as if there were any surprises there.

I will, however, mention the wall labels for other exhibits. It is not reasonable to mention one or two spelling and grammatical mistakes in a piece of writing. With the best will in the world, these can still slip through. However, when you have one every three or four lines (and the lines are only five or so words long), that's a problem.

It's not just retired English teachers with nothing better to do than write letters of complaint who pick up on these things. Having a lot of mistakes like this destroys your credibility. It tells me you haven't taken much care about your work, and makes me wonder whether you've taken as little care over the factual accuracy. It's simply unprofessional.

Running a spell-checker over it isn't enough. A spell-checker won't tell you that 'hay day' should be 'hey day'. What you need to do is hire a proofreader. The benefit significantly outweighs the cost. Their hourly rate will probably be a quarter or even a fifth of a graphic designer's. It's not that hard people, and it stops you looking like lazy illiterate arseholes.

Dead phone

I don't have a phone, TV, or Internet connection at home. Now I don't have any means of contacting the outside world at all. Yesterday, I managed to kill my cellphone by inadvertantly detaching the top half from the bottom half. Given the state of my finances, I'm not likely to get another one soon. It's quite liberating.

Update: Oh well, it didn't last. I have a new phone, but with the same number.

Idle sketching

Black square painting

Intertemporal avant-garde agents in Auckland report that, at the Dizengoff cafe, you can enjoy a black square wall painting by Andrew McLeod with your coffee and glossy magazines:

Suit

This is an old photo from when I was up in Auckland last year:

Unfortunately, you can't see the black square on my right arm.

Magic art powers

As an intertemporal avant-garde painter, my magic art powers allow me not only to travel in time but also to read minds and become invisible. Although this can be useful now and then, it's not really the point.

Recent telepathic experiments have established that the black square is the main conduit for the avant-garde thought virus through the ur-dimension. Unfortunately, we inhabit one of the minor hell-worlds, far from the centre of things. This is why the thought virus is so attenuated when it reaches here and can only infect a few select individuals inhabiting separate spacetime locations (with the notable exception of the early 15th and 20th centuries).

The dog

On the way out to the Pinnacles, I reached back and lowered the electric window in the back seat so the dog could stick her head out it and take in all the exciting new smells. I did this three or four times during the trip.

On the way back, we wound all the windows up and had the air conditioning going (to stop the kamikaze bees). I turned around at one point and was surprised to see the back window open. I didn't open it. I asked Rose. She hadn't opened it. We concluded it had to be a fluke. Surely the dog had trodden on the button by accident.

To test this hypothesis, we wound the window back up. A little later, I turned around again. Sure enough, the window was down. I find it very difficult to credit, but it looks awfully like it was deliberate. It was done twice, and it was the same window that I'd demonstrated how to open both times.

Camping

I spent most of the last three weeks painting, though I did have a wee break where I did nothing but read books, watch DVDs (lots of Doctor Who), eat, drink, and smoke. Then Rose had the brilliant idea to go camping in the weekend before returning to work. We packed up the car, left Welly at 5 o'clock on Friday arvo, and an hour and a half later were setting up camp at the Putangirua Pinnacles.









Due to technical problems, I didn't take any photos of the Pinnacles themselves, but this should be enough to remember them. They were pretty spectacular.

Rose and I have slightly different ideas of what camping entails. I've usually done it while hitching or tramping, where you have to carry everything you take. Being such a skinny bastard, I try to minimise this as much as possible. But when you roll a car up next to where you'll pitch your tent, it's a little different. We had beer and wine, and lots of fresh food for it to wash down. It was fantastic.

Here we go again

The last of 2007:




And the start of 2008: