January 27th, 2010
Back near the beginning of the month, I asked Ten-Chan to illustrate her pick of the four Elves versions, leaving most of the specifics open to her best artistic judgment. Yesterday morning (I suppose I should say “Monday morning”, by now), I opened my laptop to find her finished art waiting for me, and I think I can safely say that it’s been well worth the wait. Click through the thumbnail to see for yourself.
At the moment, I plan to commission a different artist for each version of Elves, but I’m not sure. Either way I’m sure I’ll have Ten-chan return in the future. What do you think?
January 22nd, 2010
So… this is my first Notes from the Void, the name for the posts I discussed last week. I’ve decided against making it a strictly-weekly feature; to keep them from overwhelming the site by sheer numbers, I’ll only post them on weeks where I don’t add other content (reviews, fiction, illustrations, etc).
It’s very fashionable right now to donate money to Haiti, but please be careful where you donate; anywhere money flows, there will be unethical people trying to take a cut, and even legitimate organizations can be astoundingly poorly managed. Charity Navigator seems to be a good place to check things out first; they don’t have the resources to check every charity, but they rate most of the big players. Personally, my Haiti-bound donation went to Doctors Without Borders.
On a lighter note, I’ve been spending a lot of time wandering RedBubble lately. My friend Caitlin introduced me to it back in August, when I bought a print of her “Tokyo” project, and I keep coming back, usually just to explore. They have a great talent pool, and their print quality is fantastic if you feel the urge to buy something. One of my favorite recent finds is JenniferB. Really, I think the best way for me to introduce her is to shut up and let two of her poems speak for themselves:
- I Want To Fuck You With Words
- To be continued…
Some of her writing is a bit morbidly uncomfortable, but I think it’s still worth reading.
In site-related news, I’ve commissioned Ten-Chan to illustrate one of the Elves stories I finished back at the end of 2008. She says she should be finished soon, and I’ll post it appropriately as soon as I can.
October 15th, 2009
Doctors looking at the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey have discovered that millions of children are not getting enough sunshine. This is terrible! Sunshine is important to health, happiness, naptime, and all living things (except maybe chemotrophs, who don’t know what they’re missing). The article says that even fifteen or twenty minutes of sunshine a day is enough for health, so even in places like Seattle there should be plenty to go around.
We cannot even blame the economy, because sunshine is free!
This is a very large problem, in need of great consideration. I think it is too big for one small catboy to fix.
Still, that does not mean I cannot try, especially not if I can get some help from all of you. As an exercise in public health, I would like everyone to join me in a little bit of solar appreciation. The next time a day of sunshine comes to your area, please make for yourself a nice lunch. Of course this should be a lunch of healthy, nutritious food, but I think it is best to avoid “diet” food, because I would like this also to be an exercise in public happiness, and “diet” food is usually not very tasty.
Then, take this lunch outside, find a nice place to sit, and eat it. Bring your friends! Bring children if you have them, or just set a good example. Make sure that anyone you bring has made a lunch, too, or bring enough to share.
That is all, really. Take a small step in the right direction.
Always,
~Catboy
( The art is by Jandruff! )
May 9th, 2008
I dropped my watch the other day, breaking the glass, so I looked up a jeweler this morning and wandered in.
This time, Rio found me.
“Are you following me?” he asked, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all. I turned at the sound of his voice and found him leaning comfortably across the counter. “You know, I could have given you my number and saved you the trouble.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“No, no you don’t, actually.” he said, his eyes glittering as he straightened and looked me up and down. With a faint smile, he brushed a speck of dust from his shirt, running his slender fingertips against the tiny antiqued-gold nametag pinned there. “I’m Rio. How may I help you?” His voice dropped, just slightly, as he tilted his head, looking at me as if he meant something more than jewelry. “What do you need?”
When I think back and wonder when I began to fall for Rio, I come back to this moment, to the way he looked at me, the way I saw myself reflected back in his eyes. It was the almost-lilt in his voice that caught me, the beautiful, casual weight of that question. “What do you need?” A small, happy noise forced itself out, deep in my chest. I handed him my watch without a word.
For a moment he considered it, holding it to his ear to hear it tick. “It’s just a broken crystal,” he said. “Call it… twenty-five, probably.”
I nodded, licking my lips. The seams of his pants were sewn with soft pink thread, highlighting his long legs and the gentle sway of his hips, and my mouth went dry as I watched him walk to the workbench in the back of the store. “Twenty-five. Right. Okay.”
“I think… ow!” he cut his finger on a stray fragment of crystal. “Uff. Yeah, I don’t have this size…” he gave his fingertip a slow, thoughtful suck as he set the watch on his table. “I think I need to grind one to fit… can you come back in an hour or so?”
“Sure. Yeah, I can do that.” His tongue was very pink, bright against his lightly tanned skin. I tried not to think too much about it as I turned to leave. Behind another counter, a very small, beautiful woman, dark and elegant in her inky-blue dress, gave me a wicked, knowing smile.
February 13th, 2008
Recently I commissioned some character artwork from Kitty of Kitty’s Tavern, and we turned it into a banner for the website. She’s a pleasure to work with. It’s a little bit of an easter egg (I have a script that offers “alternate” banners about once every five or six pageviews, so pay attention).
That isn’t Tybalt, for those of you who enjoy Tybalt artwork, but you can expect to figure out who it is in a future story. Given my slow output that will probably take a while, but I’d love to hear your speculation if you have any.
