if you wanna be my cover

September 20, 20088 Comments

I was not a great chemist at school. I hated Bunsen Burners, you see, and those little gas-taps on each desk were just trouble waiting to happen (then again everything was at my old school). I used to like drawing on the desks, and in the textbooks, but that’s it. However, I was happy to lend my one of my lunchtime drawings to the UC Davis Chemistry department for their new graduate handbook (which made me want to completely redesign our own graduate program handbooks). I remember, it was a really cold December day when I drew this, I was proving my tenacity to myself (like I do when it’s hot in the Summer). I hope the chemists like it. Just don’t get me near those Bunsen Burners.

KMnO4, Potassium Permangenate. I knew at the time that t might be the only thing I would ever retain in Chemistry. I was much better at Biology. But only really interested in German and Art.

buttons

September 19, 2008September 19, 20088 Comments

nice with tea

Last week I was lucky enough to receive a package in the mail containing Cadbury’s chocolate buttons, sent from England by the fenland artist Anita Davies (check out her artblog). I had commented on one of her drawings (of a cake covered in chocolate buttons, it looked perfect to have with tea) that I had been moaning to myself that I can’t get Cadbury’s Buttons here in the US, and so she offered to send me some in exchange for a drawn postcard.

Cadbury’s Buttons for a drawing, well how could I refuse, and so I draw the picture below and popped it in the mail. It’s a picture of the Silo, which I’ve drawn on many a lunchtime (but a place which completely fails to sell Cadbury’s Buttons). It went from one flat land (Davis) to another (the Fens). I soon received my choccies (various different size Buttons, plus two ‘Freddo’s which were dunked in tea and eaten almost as soon as I saw them). Cheers Anita! Much appreciated.

So, folks, I draw for buttons.

but not for zips

Tell you what, I do love Cadbury’s Tiffin too…

it’s not the end of the world. i hope

September 9, 2008Leave a comment

So, is the world going to dissolve tomorrow in a flash of higgs-boson particles then, or what? They, those clever people who are excited to find out what will happen next, are going to recreate the Big Bang, or something, by switching on the Large Hadron Collider tomorrow. That’ll blow a few hairdryers. I don’t know what it’s supposed to do, but apparently the human race will be a little more knowledgable about some very tiny things at some point soon. Which might be a good thing. Maybe they won’t be taken in by Sarah Palin’s hockey mom rubbish. I wonder what the creationists think about recreating the start of the universe? Maybe they’ll all start worshipping alpine scientists? I wonder how long it will take us to make a useable weapon out of this? We may already have done for all I know. I hope nobody gets caught inside the beam, they’ll end up like Dr. Manhattan. Imagine that, a Swiss superhero. Kind of makes sense.

I’ve not drawn much this week; I’m moving apartment soon and the mind is elsewhere. I wanted to do a drawing for Illustration Friday, as the theme is ‘clutter’, and I always have a lot of clutter, though now much of it is in bags and boxes. Oh who am I kidding, there’s still a lot of clutter about. If the world doesn’t end, then I’ll draw something, to celebrate.

In other news, I heard that North Korea’s president Kim Jong was Il. Or something.

half-baked alaskan

September 6, 2008September 6, 20083 Comments

So what have we learnt about the Republicans this week? Well they don’t mind throwing all of their hopes and dreams and ambitions and their beloved country behind a woman who a week ago they had never heard of. Oh, sorry, she’s the Veep, not the Presidential candidate- you would never have guessed it though. Palin’s speech, which I thought a little predictable, thoroughly wowed the babies-guns-and-jesus party (or is it guns-jesus-babies? Perhaps it’s the right-wing version of ‘paper-scissors-stone’), leading some to claim they’ve found their Maggie. And oh, she blasted her opponent – sorry, McCain’s opponent – Obama’s lack of governing experience, derising his time as a community organizer in Chicago (boo! hiss! stupid do-gooder!), while lauding her own considerable experience as governor of Alaska since as far back as 2006, mayor of a tiny town of 9,000, and of course her time on the Parent-Teacher Association of her children’s school. The PTA: now that’s real government experience for you, not the stupid gotta-get-elected-into Senate! The PTA. Of course she can run the country! You’ve organized one jumble sale, you’ve organized ’em all.

But for me, all of her ‘hockey mom’ doggerel and her parading of her now instantly famous offspring (who all have strange Addams Family names) was overshadowed by some very dark notions to slip through her saucy librarian demeanour. She made it clear that the civil rights upon which America bases its justice system do not extend to certain people if we are accusing them – just accusing them – of being terr’rists. And what is all this about her and her husband having formerly been part of an alaskan secessionist movement? “Country First” is the GOP’s slogan – which country, the US or Independent Alaska?

I tell you what though, she did love promoting the mall town over the big city. New York, city that doesn’t sleep? You should come to Wasilla, mate, we have sunlight for six months of the year, try sleeping through that!

As for McCain, well he claims he wants to change the politics of Washington, making out as if his party, and the president he has strongly supported in 95% of votes, haven’t been the ones in charge this past 8 years. Oh, democrats run the Senate! But not for most of Bush’s presidency; before 2006, Rove and friends gave King George a free reign. Change?

We’ve also learnt that if you are hoping to attack your opponent on his lack of experiecne, it’s a good idea to choose a VP with less experience. If you are hoping to attack your opponent for being a senator and never having been mayor of a village or governor of anywhere, it’s a good idea to have your main candidate who’s also a senator and also has no such executive experience. If your opponent is campaigning on a promise of change, you too have to promise change, but just pretend you weren’t part of making that situation happen. If you discredited the democratic candidate’s military record in Vietnam last time around, use being a celebrated Vietnam vet as the cornerstone of this year’s candidate. If you accused that same guy last time of being a flip-flop, change your own position to pretend you never agreed with Bush, and be a flip-flop yourself! If you want to show the USA how much you love the USA, choose a VP who has strong affiliations with a secessionist Alaskan party. And don’t forget your friend Joe Liebermann, the Saruman of this tale.

So one thing we’ve learnt this week is that the Republican Party are pretty good at irony.

deadline day

September 2, 20082 Comments

Cor, that was exciting, wasn’t it! I don’t mean Obama’s big speech, or the rain on his parade caused by McCain’s choice of Veep (oh yeah, I hate that word, don’t I) in Sarah “who the..?” Palin, or the rain on the republicans parade caused by hurricane gustav, or the rain on that parade caused by the whole bristol palin non-story. A few days ago I’d have thought bristol palin was an office supply company or something, and as for trig palin, well there’s a name for your “babies, guns’n’jesus” candidate’s son/grandson. Now there seem to be a lot of people in the news dedicating airtime to discussing how they shouldn’t be discussing that story, and before you know it oops, we can’t talk about candidate’s policies, we’re out of time, back later for an interview with the baby’s father…

No, my American friends, my excitement was caused by something which you have undoubtedly no interest in whatsoever: transfer deadline day for the English Premier League. You do things different here, with your drafts and your salary caps, but yesterday in England it was Crazy Season. The deadline to make transfers was midnight September 1st, so clubs and agents were frantically trying to broker deals and outdo each other before midnight, when their expensive striker might juts turn into an expensive pumpkin. I was glued to my computer (midnight there being a comfy four pm here), following the updates on two sites, and was astonished at the mischief suddenly-rolling-in-it Manchester City were causing. I have no doubt that their hilarious bid for Berbatov, gladly accepted by Spurs who were keen to see the Bulgarian fulfill his dream of a move to somewhere in Manchester, helped us get the 30 million we were asking, which United begrudgingly coughed up. Now sulky Berbs has his dream move, and will be with a team that will win things for him, as opposed to one where he actually had to work for his wage packet (oh, except if he was sulking). By the way, sir Alex, four years seems to mean two years these days, so watch out for Real Madrid’s inevitable courting come 2010, and Dimitar’s sudden lifelong dream to play at the Berbateu – I mean, Bernabeu.

There were nails bitten aplenty – would anyone sign Michael Owen? Would Arsenal sign anyone? People texting in claiming to have seen [insert any footballer here] getting out of a taxi outside [insert any football club here]. City were my heroes of the day though, landing the Brazilian Robinho, beating money-bags Chelsea to his signature; he too had talked endlessly about his dream move, but in actually turning the money-grabber’s dream-team down for even more lovely wonga he truly embodies the modern shamelessly greedy money-grabbing bastard footballer of today. Hooray!

I love staying up all night for general elections, watching as each constituency announces their result, watching as the Monster Raving Loony Party honk away at the back; I was reminded of the look on Michael Portillo’s face when he lost Southgate when I though of Chelsea, shortly before midnight, only this time the Monster Raving Loonies actually won the seat, and will apparently soon be trying to win the biggest seat of all, with a flipping hysterical and audacious bid for Cristiano Ronaldo. Oh, please please do it! Just for a laugh. I wish Spurs could get bought by some super-rich Arabs (pretty unlikely though, given Tottenham’s Jewish tradition, Yid Army and all, but you never know – it could be the first step to world peace?).

Bristol who?

pessi-mystic pete

August 23, 20084 Comments

You may have wondered what has happened to Mystic Pete this new football year. Well, my sources tell me he is taking some time off from his uncanny prognosticising to spend more time in the garden, predicting rain and such forth (which may explain the drought we’ve had). He did mumble something about Rafael Benitez being the first managerial sacking, but even that was half-hearted. (Oh, I just noticed “arsenal to win shit” in the message above, it means “arsenal to win shit”, not “arsenal to win shit“. This being a message from Mystic Pete hopefully means arsenal will win shit. But that’s Opti-Mystic Pete, and he’s not in the building).

For those unfamiliar with Mystic Pete, he’s the guy who predicted France would win Euro 2008.

veep

August 23, 20084 Comments

So, Joe Biden to run with Obama. Ok, getting the ‘grey’ vote. Possibly that shady Romney to run with McCain. Predictably, predictably, the words “Obama bin Biden” have started being tossed about the blogosphere by, well, fecking eejits (to use the technical term), most of whom seem to appear on the wordpress dashboard (why is it always republican supporting blogs and arsenal supporting blogs that appear on that dashboard?). Blogs that say stuff like, “ooh, it is a bit spooky, I’m definitely voting McCain now”. And I have to fight the urge to leave comments on those blogs. I really want to say, “GET OVER IT, you ignorant twats”, but really what’s the point? It’s just sad.

Also on this subject, a new word (new to me) has been flying around like a mosquito waiting to be swatted down: ‘veep’. Veep, and its derivative, ‘Veepstakes’. Veep. It sounds like a deodorant. Veep, keeps you dry for up to twelve hours. Or something you clean your bog with. Veep. Ok, new word, I’ll probably never use it, but there it is. Veep.

eight-eight-eight

August 9, 2008Leave a comment

Drew this at lunchtime yesterday. Watched the Opening Ceremony lats night. Wasn’t it spectacular? Amazing choreography and visuals. I was very impressed. And the parade of nations was interesting in that there was no alphabetical order, the countries were introduced by how many strokes it takes to write their character name in Chinese. A nice touch, that. After all the politics and protests (and rightly so) I was very impressed with everything, including that amazing stadium. Bush was there, I loved it when they zoomed in on him looking a bit bored and checking his watch. Most of the time he was looking through his binoculars (which he probably pronounces ‘binoclears’). He gave the Iraqi team a big round of applause, and then sat back and gave his Bush smirk. I had to laugh. They didn’t show him applauding the Iranians. But just a few seats away was Putin, giving his glum anti-smirk. Georgia was on his mind.

Because on the day the Olympics begins in China, and the world is looking elsewhere, Russia invades South Ossetia, the troubled breakaway region of Georgia, and now all hell is breaking loose. This is a serious and difficult situation, and a very worrying development. Georgia wants US help in this crisis. Georgia sent troops to Iraq to help Bush’s cause. They will expect something in return – and will we honestly be able to deliver? And face off against Russia?

“Interesting Times”.

the number of the beast

August 2, 20082 Comments

This is post 666. Well, 66 of the new site, plus the 600 from the old site, et voila. That’s a lot of postage.

This week in evil: our Governor signed an executive order (“Execute Order 66”, a famous Sith once declared) ordering state workers to reduce their pay from whatever it is they are earning, down to federal minimum wage, currently $6.55 (ooh! only eleven cents lower than that magic number), because state legistators haven’t yet come up with a budget for our increasingly broke state. Oh, he apologized while he did it, he was almost in leathery Austrian tears over it, but he still did it. Thousands of temporary workers were forced out of their jobs (Terminated, you might say), thousands of families suddenly had a massively reduced income. Oh, they will probably – maybe – get their salaries back once the budget is finally announced, but in the meantime state workers are the pawns. I overheard some pretty angry comments on the way home on Thursday afternoon.

Another Arnie film springs to mind at this time: Total Recall. But in truth, it’s King George’s adminstraitors that have been mismanaging the US economy for eight years that are ultimately to blame. We can’t get a new President in fast enough.

quelqu’un m’a dit

July 19, 20083 Comments

I am lucky enough to have been given two blog awards by two very nice fellow artbloggers, Karen Blados and Myfiddlestix. Thank you, I am very honoured! It’s a fun way to give a shout-out to other blogs, it’s doing the rounds, and one of the rules is that you have to nominate seven other blogs you admire. I rarely partake in these sorts of things as I can never decide among so many inspirational sketchbogs, so to make it easier I’ll nominate only one per country. I urge you to check out their work, it’s excellent, and I look at them very often, to get inspiration or learn new ways of drawing. So here they are: 1 (USA): Trumpetvine Travels, 2 (Canada): Dessins de Daniel, 3 (Germany): Flaf, 4 (Sweden) Nina Johansson, 5 (UK): Andrea Joseph, 6 (Denmark): Vanadisa, 7 (Serbia) Schunninworks. All immensely inspirational! Check them out. Right….now.