Last updated 15 weeks ago... does anyone still even read this?
I guess I've just been feeling creative lately because as some of you have heard I've once again taken to writing fiction and have gotten about 30 pages written down in what I hope will be a two part novella. Fun fiction stuff. I also tried drawing again, a hobby I sorta just stopped two (Three?) years ago when I cut off the bulk of the face of my right index finger. Typing, writing and drawing (most certainly) are all still frustrating because of it's lack of coordination and nerves. I've sort of gotten around using it in most life but for drawing it's kind of an important control finger. Anyway I sketched out the first thing in ages and spent part of the afternoon messing with it in photoshop to get in colored and if you'd like to see it I posted it on my artwanted account.
www.artwanted.com/penguin
The inspiration for the drawing was from this photo although I'd like to stress I was not trying to draw Rose McGowan, just get the pose and sorta background right-ish. I'm actually kind of pleased with it right now but I'll have to look at it tomorrow since I spent the last few hours working on it so I'm not sure if I'm seeing it, or what I see when I was making it. It's like writing something then not reading it aloud until later and catching all sorts of repeats and missed things.
Anywho this is the original and my version is through the linking glass:
In other news I've been reading a bit more. Besides many many many (Okay 11) Doctor Who pulp novels I recently finished Stiff by Mary Roach which was morbid but funny and over all good. It also provided some technical details which will probably be incorporated into the short story I'm working on. Anyway Stiff is a novel about Human Cadavers and these uses from historical to current.
I've also re-read H.P. Lovecraft's The Mountains of Madness which is hands down my favorite story of his. This was brought on by the well made radio show the HPLHS released that I got not to long ago because of my love for radio shows and the Mythos.
Right now I'm reading Alone by my namesake Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd and while the first chapter drags quite a bit it picked up quickly from there and now I'm really interested in it. I recommend it. It's about the 6 months he spent alone in an arctic weather station dealing with loneliness, mental breaking, sub zero temperatures and an oven that started leaking carbon monoxide. True story and interesting adventure stuff. Although like I said the first chapter in a chore.
Out side of reading I recently got curtains and all that good stuff purchased and set up in the apartment. I have to admit as much as I loved living with my brother I love living alone. (while I can afford it) It's great to have a whole place to myself. Not that I wouldn't let him come back if he needed but while I do have it to myself it's just relaxing. It's wonderful to come to a place that is yours. Where you can do what you will and not have to clean up after someone else or have them forever hounding you to conform to their schedule. I can play video games, read, watch tv or listen to music without fearing of imposing or ignoring another. Also the food and snacks I get for myself are still there when I want them. It's a beautiful thing.
I also picked myself up one of those retro modeled cd/record/tape/stereos and I put on my old Frank Sinatra vinyl and Winchester Cathedral sounded amazing. It's also fun to turn on, kill the lights and listen to old Shadow Radio Shows or the Lovecraft one's I've accumulated over the years. It's good fun.
On the video game side of things I've played and beat Devil May Cry 4 for the Xbox 360 which was the first one I'd ever played and a lot of fun (although I have a used copy of the first one for my PS2 that I've had for years and just never played.) I also picked up Lost Odyssey which I'm so far much less impressed with. I've played for maybe 3 hours and so far seen a shit ton of FMVs and done some tutorial basic fighting and map exploring but have yet to actually get into and play an open ended RPG which I was hoping it would be. In fact I've noticed and absolute lack of those kinds of games on modern systems.
I picked up a PSP a while back because silent hill origins was out, and final fantasy crisis core was coming out for it. And then of course I bought Silent Hill origins for the PS2 so I needed another game to play on it and I picked up Jeanne D'arc, which looked like a fun RPG, and it is fun, LOADS of fun, but it's a turn based strategy game ala Final Fantasy Tactics. And unless I want to go back and buy the re-releases of the original final fantasy games (which I don't because I have them for the old Playstation) there seems to be very little solid RPG's for it, and even less for the Xbox 360.
So naturally I've been playing Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 on the old PS2 and reminiscing about the good old days when games like Thousand Arms, Final Fantasy, Lunar, Star Ocean and Shadow Hearts were in abundance for gaming systems. Where I could name/customize and play my characters and then watch some cool cut scenes. Not sit through 2 hours of cut scenes moving things occasionally. That's not an RPG that's a freaking movie with a dvd remote game. Still it is 4 discs long and I'm only on the first so I hope when I get back to it, it will open up a little more.
The strikes against it though are that I still have Magna Carta, Shadow Hearts 2 & 3 Star Ocean til the End of Time, Final Fantasy 12, Silent Hill Origins, Jade Empire and Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance all waiting for me to play them too on my older systems.
But the 360 still gets plenty of loving because Rockband is awesome and I'm slowly figuring out the drum set. On easy though. But I have fun.
Oh and Casino Royal is cool to watch on the PSP as well. Crisis Core seemed mediocre but I only played for maybe 30 minutes before I wanted to go write some more and I haven't picked it back up since. I will and I am excited about it even with the bad reviews. Dirge of Ceribrus was panned too and I had a lot of fun playing it.
On the movie side of things I've watched The Mist, which was alright. Wouldn't buy it but glad I saw it. 1408 was much better in my opinion. Dagon which had some cool parts but seemed more like an 80's horror flick then a 2001 one. Although it had the sexiest inbreeding fish woman unblinking deep one monster I'd ever seen. If I was a deep one! Rawr!
I also went and saw Run Fat Boy Run. Which was hilarious. It wasn't exactly an American or British comedy but a hybrid which was great. It had some heart, went some unexpectedly cheap but funny places and made me laugh which is more then many movies these days can do. So check it out.
On the music side of things I recently picked up the soundtrack to Shoggoth on the Roof, it's Fiddler on the Roof set in Arkham and the Cthulhu mythos and it cracks me up, even though I've never seen Fiddler on the Roof. I also stumbled across a newer artist named Arrica Rose who I really like. I have one album and one EP of her's and have pre-ordered her newest one. She's under myspace music and defiantly worth a listen. I also picked up a CD called A Fine Frenzy, One Cell in the Sea. I have no idea which is the band name and which is the album name. All I know is it's soothing and I dig it. I also got Flogging Molly's latest album Float. It's great, everything they've done is great. I love them. And that's about it to report on the entertainment side of things.
Works going well enough. Been working split weekends, this will be the third in a row with Wednesday Sundays off for various freight etc reasons. Although Inventory will be this weekend so after that it should be back to weekends off for me.
The nice thing is when I get home from work I can catch old episodes of X-files (The good ones too, like where Mulder stakes the kid who has fake vampire teeth, or the one with the Mask-esq Mutated monster/person and the reporter who looks kinda like a rooster that I always kind of had an odd thing for.) and then watch It Takes a Thief on Discovery channel. Oh Discovery Channel. How I love thee.
And that's pretty much it. Super stoked about this new story I'm working on. Got my web cam working sorta. Tried sending some messages but never got responses so I don't know if they worked or not. But the MSN chat and Skype did.
Probably going to try and make it to Starbucks at South Gateway tomorrow to say hi and see if friends are working since I've not seen Annie in like infinity years and don't get to see Beesh or any one else often enough either. So that's about it. Gonna finish my tea (earl grey, decaf, lots of sugar, lil cream, tastes like milk after fruit loops) and then find a way to enjoy the rest of my evening.
Hope you all are well and much love and peace from the heart.
I'm off to go bring sexy back.
Richard
www.artwanted.com/penguin
The inspiration for the drawing was from this photo although I'd like to stress I was not trying to draw Rose McGowan, just get the pose and sorta background right-ish. I'm actually kind of pleased with it right now but I'll have to look at it tomorrow since I spent the last few hours working on it so I'm not sure if I'm seeing it, or what I see when I was making it. It's like writing something then not reading it aloud until later and catching all sorts of repeats and missed things.
Anywho this is the original and my version is through the linking glass:
In other news I've been reading a bit more. Besides many many many (Okay 11) Doctor Who pulp novels I recently finished Stiff by Mary Roach which was morbid but funny and over all good. It also provided some technical details which will probably be incorporated into the short story I'm working on. Anyway Stiff is a novel about Human Cadavers and these uses from historical to current.
I've also re-read H.P. Lovecraft's The Mountains of Madness which is hands down my favorite story of his. This was brought on by the well made radio show the HPLHS released that I got not to long ago because of my love for radio shows and the Mythos.
Right now I'm reading Alone by my namesake Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd and while the first chapter drags quite a bit it picked up quickly from there and now I'm really interested in it. I recommend it. It's about the 6 months he spent alone in an arctic weather station dealing with loneliness, mental breaking, sub zero temperatures and an oven that started leaking carbon monoxide. True story and interesting adventure stuff. Although like I said the first chapter in a chore.
Out side of reading I recently got curtains and all that good stuff purchased and set up in the apartment. I have to admit as much as I loved living with my brother I love living alone. (while I can afford it) It's great to have a whole place to myself. Not that I wouldn't let him come back if he needed but while I do have it to myself it's just relaxing. It's wonderful to come to a place that is yours. Where you can do what you will and not have to clean up after someone else or have them forever hounding you to conform to their schedule. I can play video games, read, watch tv or listen to music without fearing of imposing or ignoring another. Also the food and snacks I get for myself are still there when I want them. It's a beautiful thing.
I also picked myself up one of those retro modeled cd/record/tape/stereos and I put on my old Frank Sinatra vinyl and Winchester Cathedral sounded amazing. It's also fun to turn on, kill the lights and listen to old Shadow Radio Shows or the Lovecraft one's I've accumulated over the years. It's good fun.
On the video game side of things I've played and beat Devil May Cry 4 for the Xbox 360 which was the first one I'd ever played and a lot of fun (although I have a used copy of the first one for my PS2 that I've had for years and just never played.) I also picked up Lost Odyssey which I'm so far much less impressed with. I've played for maybe 3 hours and so far seen a shit ton of FMVs and done some tutorial basic fighting and map exploring but have yet to actually get into and play an open ended RPG which I was hoping it would be. In fact I've noticed and absolute lack of those kinds of games on modern systems.
I picked up a PSP a while back because silent hill origins was out, and final fantasy crisis core was coming out for it. And then of course I bought Silent Hill origins for the PS2 so I needed another game to play on it and I picked up Jeanne D'arc, which looked like a fun RPG, and it is fun, LOADS of fun, but it's a turn based strategy game ala Final Fantasy Tactics. And unless I want to go back and buy the re-releases of the original final fantasy games (which I don't because I have them for the old Playstation) there seems to be very little solid RPG's for it, and even less for the Xbox 360.
So naturally I've been playing Shadow Hearts 1 and 2 on the old PS2 and reminiscing about the good old days when games like Thousand Arms, Final Fantasy, Lunar, Star Ocean and Shadow Hearts were in abundance for gaming systems. Where I could name/customize and play my characters and then watch some cool cut scenes. Not sit through 2 hours of cut scenes moving things occasionally. That's not an RPG that's a freaking movie with a dvd remote game. Still it is 4 discs long and I'm only on the first so I hope when I get back to it, it will open up a little more.
The strikes against it though are that I still have Magna Carta, Shadow Hearts 2 & 3 Star Ocean til the End of Time, Final Fantasy 12, Silent Hill Origins, Jade Empire and Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance all waiting for me to play them too on my older systems.
But the 360 still gets plenty of loving because Rockband is awesome and I'm slowly figuring out the drum set. On easy though. But I have fun.
Oh and Casino Royal is cool to watch on the PSP as well. Crisis Core seemed mediocre but I only played for maybe 30 minutes before I wanted to go write some more and I haven't picked it back up since. I will and I am excited about it even with the bad reviews. Dirge of Ceribrus was panned too and I had a lot of fun playing it.
On the movie side of things I've watched The Mist, which was alright. Wouldn't buy it but glad I saw it. 1408 was much better in my opinion. Dagon which had some cool parts but seemed more like an 80's horror flick then a 2001 one. Although it had the sexiest inbreeding fish woman unblinking deep one monster I'd ever seen. If I was a deep one! Rawr!
I also went and saw Run Fat Boy Run. Which was hilarious. It wasn't exactly an American or British comedy but a hybrid which was great. It had some heart, went some unexpectedly cheap but funny places and made me laugh which is more then many movies these days can do. So check it out.
On the music side of things I recently picked up the soundtrack to Shoggoth on the Roof, it's Fiddler on the Roof set in Arkham and the Cthulhu mythos and it cracks me up, even though I've never seen Fiddler on the Roof. I also stumbled across a newer artist named Arrica Rose who I really like. I have one album and one EP of her's and have pre-ordered her newest one. She's under myspace music and defiantly worth a listen. I also picked up a CD called A Fine Frenzy, One Cell in the Sea. I have no idea which is the band name and which is the album name. All I know is it's soothing and I dig it. I also got Flogging Molly's latest album Float. It's great, everything they've done is great. I love them. And that's about it to report on the entertainment side of things.
Works going well enough. Been working split weekends, this will be the third in a row with Wednesday Sundays off for various freight etc reasons. Although Inventory will be this weekend so after that it should be back to weekends off for me.
The nice thing is when I get home from work I can catch old episodes of X-files (The good ones too, like where Mulder stakes the kid who has fake vampire teeth, or the one with the Mask-esq Mutated monster/person and the reporter who looks kinda like a rooster that I always kind of had an odd thing for.) and then watch It Takes a Thief on Discovery channel. Oh Discovery Channel. How I love thee.
And that's pretty much it. Super stoked about this new story I'm working on. Got my web cam working sorta. Tried sending some messages but never got responses so I don't know if they worked or not. But the MSN chat and Skype did.
Probably going to try and make it to Starbucks at South Gateway tomorrow to say hi and see if friends are working since I've not seen Annie in like infinity years and don't get to see Beesh or any one else often enough either. So that's about it. Gonna finish my tea (earl grey, decaf, lots of sugar, lil cream, tastes like milk after fruit loops) and then find a way to enjoy the rest of my evening.
Hope you all are well and much love and peace from the heart.
I'm off to go bring sexy back.
Richard