| Turning Darkness into Light |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|09:25 pm] |
A week and a half ago, our computer, P.B., crashed. P.B. is a seven-year-old desktop Mac, one of the white gooseneck models. I usually call him Plastic Baby, but his formal name for company is Pangur Bán, Irish for "White Pangur." It's the title of a medieval poem written by an Irish monk to his cat some 1,200 years ago. (Wikipedia says that pangur means "waulker," but I've also come across the theory that "Pangur" was an Irish pronunciation of "Peter." Either way, it was apparently a common cat name.) When I first read the poem as a college student at Trinity, I was struck by its sweet simplicity. The last verse opens a little slit in time to that monk, hunched over an illuminated Gospel, patiently nursing his tiny light against the darkness. With his white cat by his side.
I'd like to say it's even better in the original Irish, but I've forgotten how to do anything in Irish beyond count to ten, and now I can't pronounce the original verses without getting my tongue caught in my larynx.
P.B. came back from the Powerbook Guy this afternoon, brand-new hard drive, data fully restored. Here's the poem for him.
Pangur Bán
I and Pangur Bán my cat,
Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.
Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light. |
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| The Promise The Day Holds... |
[Nov. 29th, 2009|02:04 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Big R Radio - 70s FM - | ] |
Right now, I'm going to have lunch with Molly on Skype, and then finish inking this page. So it shall be...
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| NaGraNoWriMo 13 |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|08:48 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  cold | ] |
I'M BACK IN VERMONT AND I'M AT PAGE 95! Check out the story so far on flickr. Six pages to go, with two days left in November. QUESTION: should I print this up as a little book? It would be little- 5.5" x 4.25", and I'd want to do a short, bonus Sir Christopher story to round it out. Would anyone wanna buy that? |
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| Giving or Getting a Scott Pilgrim Poster |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|08:03 pm] |
The posters are now on sale at Page 45 in the city of Nottingham, UK, for £4.99 each.
They are also still available on the Oni Press web store (which I believe only ships to the USA).
I believe the Beguiling (in Toronto) has/had some of the posters, and they should still be selling the t-shirts (which they ship overseas!).
I can't send you a poster if you live elsewhere in the world. Sorry! I don't have any posters.
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| Thanksgiving |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|06:40 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The Supremes - When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes | ] |
What a great Thanksgiving.
I had just gone up to Lancaster two weeks back and will again for Christmas, so I stayed in town for Thanksgiving. Craig and Marc were nice enough to invite me over to dinner at their place for the second year in a row and we had a blast. Marc and his mom put together an incredible dinner which we devoured. I had never had sweet potato casserole until last year and rather enjoyed it. But the canned version last year was nothing compared to the grilled fresh version this year. That stuff was amazing.
After dinner we settled in and watched an absolutely insane movie called "The Baby". One of the strangest and craziest movies I have ever seen. If you can find a copy I highly recommend it for the nutso lulz.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069754/
Later we ended up downstairs in the Man Cave for some serious Rock Band-ing. Marc's mom joined us to watch and offer moral support as our fan club. Eventually she and Marc headed back upstairs to finish up making stock from the turkey carcass and Craig and I continued with the rocking. I haven't played drums much but found it may be my new favorite. I still hate the foot pedal with a passion but love the drums themselves. |
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| The Tudors |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|06:30 pm] |
I think the CBC blew half its budget on The Tudors because the whole time that I lived in Toronto, every bus and every subway car was plastered with Jonathan Rhys Meyers' pouting face and ten yards of cleavage. I believe we've all learned a valuable lesson here, and that is William Cecil may have been a crack statesman, but if he wants to me to give a shit about him he better start hitting the gym.
stoorree |
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| Pocket knife for sale! |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|04:44 pm] |
I had way better luck last time I needed to sell something posting on facebook and livejournal than I did posting on Craigslist, and I got the pleasure of selling to someone I knew to boot, so I'm going that route again:
I'm looking to move away from carrying a folding knife in favor of a small fixed blade, so would anybody like to buy my Kershaw Skyline from me?
You may remember seeing my skyline in my Comic Tools post about the NT cutter. As you can see in that entry I keep my skyline sharp, literally shaving sharp. Here's a fantastic YouTube review of it:
My skyline has some cosmetic damage but works as good as new and cuts better than new. If you buy it I'll send it to you with a fresh sharpening that I can damned near guarantee you will be sharper than anything else in your home. It will come in it's original box, with it's removable pocket clip attached. (I took it off because in NYC you have to keep knives completely concealed.) You'll be able to take advantage of Kershaw's very liberal lifetime warranty. You can send the blade in for free resharpening for life if you can't do it yourself, they'll fix or replace any part of the knife for life, and if for any reason, at any point, you're not happy with it, you can exchange your used knife for any Kershaw knife of equivalent price, or apply the cost of the knife to any more expensive blade, or use it's value toward the purchase of more than one less expensive blades. So, if you don't like the skyline but you DO like another Kershaw knife, trade it in.
My asking price is $17, which includes shipping. |
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| Romanian DRAGONS |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|02:07 pm] |
This was waiting for me when I got home last week: the Romaininan edition of HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS.
I used to scratch my head at Jonathan Carroll's mentions of going to Poland for book signings - but now I get it. All those Eastern European countries LOVE this stuff. A fact I and my mortgage company are very thankful for.
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| This is why I never get anything done when I clean. |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|03:50 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
I just finished going through a HUGE box of old drawings/notebooks/comics/etc. It covered about 3 years of my life (11 to 14). Here is a list of things I thought were funny:
- Most of my characters had literal Japanese names. (Ex. A wolf boy named "Okami" which means "wolf.")
- In nearly every story, the villain's name was "Yokoshima." I think it means "evil." I WAS SO CREATIVE.
- Many stories involved the elements in some way.
- I was obsessed with reincarnation? There's at least two stories about ancient warriors dying to save the world and then being reincarnated. One of which was a girl who was reincarnated as a boy which caused all sorts of drama for her lover when he goes into the future to find her reincarnation. Uhhh... Yeah.
- Many of my characters could transform into animals.
- Many of my stories were extremely violent. I would put my characters through hell ALL THE TIME. But they would always be healed or reincarnated so it was okay.
- I liked twins. One good, one evil.
- I liked to trap my characters in burning buildings. (I used this as a "tragic past" story for many of my characters.)
- The largest stack of drawings I found was from a story I was writing that I was sure was going to become the BEST COMIC EVAH when I was about 14 or so. It was about a boy who had lost his memories. All he had was half of a key which he knew if he could find the other half, he would get his memories back. So he goes on a quest and with the help of some elves, finds a unicorn who has the other half of the key. She's a princess who was put under a curse. They can't merge the two halves of the key until her true form is restored. Their quest is hindered by an evil guy and his lackeys (Yes, his name was Yokoshima.). He turns out to be the main character's evil twin brother. I don't remember how it ends. But I'm pretty sure they defeat the evil twin brother, break the curse on the unicorn princess, the main character gets his memories back (turns out he's a prince or something), and they live happily ever after. THE END!
- I was obsessed with Sailor Moon.
HA!
Okay, back to work. :-P |
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| The Future is Bright With Dragons |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|12:21 pm] |
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This will be no great surprise to readers of my books (and the references to THE SHADOW DRAGONS as a "middle" book), but more are forthcoming. I'm finishing the art for Book Five right now, and my publisher has extended an excellent offer, which my manager has accepted, to publish Books 6 and 7 in the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica. Future Octobers are looking GREAT! |
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| Doc Rock: Russian Roulette-o's |
[Nov. 28th, 2009|07:54 pm] |
The mascot is called Silly Cylinder and don’t worry Timmy is O.K. it wasn’t a lethal poison! Aren’t all boys in commercials called Timmy? |
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