birthday wish list!!!

It'll be my birthday again soon, and you know what that means: totally unrealistic wish lists!!! Hee hee.

Some of my dreams are already coming true--I've already got some swag from friends like manga and a shoulder bag for work. And I got to visit Manila and party with some very old friends!

But it's not a wish list if you didn't have some completely unlikely items in there, like a Lamborghini or one of those ginormous Phaidon books hand-bound by Italian monks. A wish list is basically throwing your desires out into the universe...just in case it's feeling generous.

So I've mixed up the unlikely with the plausible for fun, and maybe you guys can make up some of your own wish lists to join in!

• Hopeless Savages Greatest Hits volume 1 - a not-yet-printed Omnibus Edition including my favourite comic ever, Hopeless Savages Ground Zero, which has been insanely difficult to find.
• A Lomo Lubitel or LC-A+
• Blue animation pencils or pencil leads
• An extant copy of Helen deWitt's The Last Samurai. I have owned three different copies of this book at different times, and lost them in different ways. :(
• A Softimus Prime!!! Please stop laughing now, you know it's awesome.
• An iPad (you knew this was coming), possibly with a stylus and a copy of Sketchbook Pro.
• Comic book and manga layout sheets.
• Any of the following: Welcome To Temptation, Bet Me, Tell Me Lies or Fast Women by Jennifer Crusie
• Anything from here. If I had to choose, I'd pick a few of the Caran D'Ache Neocolors or the Inktense pencils, or maybe some acrylic medium or canvases. But really I would take anything. Even if I already had it.
• A geeky coffee mug like the Penguin Classics/Moderns

Or, you know, an e-card from Artpassions.net would be ok, because I love that place and people hardly send e-cards anymore.

So I fell down the stairs at work today.

I was short on sleep, and in a hurry, and a little annoyed because of the combination of the two plus some crowding on the stairs, and then my heel slipped.

My heel slipped on the top step, and then my whole body sort of folded up.

And I was so out of it, I just watched helplessly as I slid, on my knees, with a bumpy but steady turn of speed to the bottom of the stairs.

It kind of hurt, but it didn't seem so bad. I was just irritated with myself and in the mood for some mindless self-indulgence, so I went to the mall and bought myself some pens and a blue mechanical pencil.
Of course, when I got back, my foot started hurting enough to notice, and it got pretty swollen, which didn't improve my mood. I finally had it checked out by the company doc (benefits! yay!) who put a cold compress on it and had me prop it up on a pillow while I had a short nap.
Then she taped it up, gave me some meds, and told me to keep a cold compress on it and get it X-rayed if it was still swollen after 24 hours.

I hurt myself rarely enough that it looks kind of cool. If I were younger I could pretend I were Robin and had hurt myself kicking a skel in the teeth, or facing off with Lady Shiva or something. As it is I just draw sketchy comics and sit at my computer with my foot up and an icepack tied round my ankle...blogging about it.

The End!

because you can't reblog facebook things on blogger.

So while I was pretending not to stalk a bunch of my friends on The Social Media That Dares Not Speak Its Name For Fear Of More Bloody F4rmVi113 Sp4m, I happened on this:

On Work by Kent Nurburn (non-FB link--FB link is here)

Which reminded me I hadn't posted any Alchemy for a while.

For those of you just joining us...Kabuki - The Alchemy is the seventh book in a series, but with a very different tone from its predecessors. It stands alone as an exploration of turning points in one's life, of vocation and what vocation means to different people at different times in their lives.

Click the pictures to enlarge and read the complete text.

Stranger on Plane (DM): Don't choose a career based solely on job security. You can work for what you think is the most secure corporation in the world. But even that giant company can buy you off or stab you in the back.

Don't sacrifice your dreams for the illusion of security. There is no security. This will free you up to do what you really need to do. Use this as an opportunity to realise your dreams.

Kabuki: What if you are not sure what those are?

DM: Start by recalling what you liked to do as a child...Around the age of 9 to 11.

At that age your personality is sophisticated enough to know what you are internally motivated to do, but it is right before the age where you begin to submerge your natural identity...Think back to what you enjoyed before they squeezed your dreams into a box of practicality.

Before you were labelled or groomed for your family's or society's explanations of you.

Kabuki (thinking): I peel all that away to peek underneath at what is inside. What I was. Before the mask. Before the scars.

DM: Write down what you enjoyed doing at that early time in your life. Chances are you have the innate ability to do that, because you are designed to do it. Hardwired for it.

You make the list and then the list becomes real. But not just the reality changes. You change as well. You grow as you create. Because you are essentially creating yourself.
You can take a part of you that died or was damaged...and bring life to it.
Take your problems, your baggage. And turn your garbage into gold.

Kabuki: Alchemy.