You Never Think

You never think it will happen to you and yours. You never think your friends will get old so fast. Not in an actual physical age kind of way, that is inevitable (but still surprising), but in a refusing to accept or understand anything new kind of way. At least when it comes to gadgets and such.

I remember when I was a child (born in '66) there were still some older people around who didn't use phones. Mostly old men and maybe they just didn't want to be bothered but maybe they never accepted or found any use for them. My young little mind didn't get it at all.

There are still plenty of pieces of technology that people, usually older people, don't want to learn how to use or see no use for. VCRs and then DVD players are the first things to come to mind. We all had a parent, grandparent, or old auntie who had no clue how to use a VCR. When given one as a gift it sat there blinking 12:00 until she unplugged it and then it just sat there. Standard story throughout the 80s and 90's.

Now with technology moving at an ever faster pace the age for saying, "What is that silly thing? Why do I need that?" is getting younger. The social networking web site MySpace has a distinct divide among my friends and acquaintances: most above thirty don't use it most below thirty do. Not a hard and fast rule but a generality. And it's more than "don't use it" for the above thirties it's "don't understand what it is or why anyone would need it". I was talking with some of my above thirty friends last weekend and all a few of them knew about MySpace was that it was dangerous. It's the place criminals go to find their victims. Predators their prey. Yep, scary news stories was the extent of their knowledge.

It's not even a youth culture thing. I'm not really interested in what the youth culture is up to. But I am interested new things and how they can be used to improve life. I like improvement.

No matter how I explained the site was for communicating with friends some one always said, "Why do I need to do that"? They had their old ways of communicating with friends and saw no reason for something new. If it ain't broke don't fix it or getting old and stuck in your ways. It can be a fine line.

E-Mail was adopted fairly quickly by my friends. Not at first. It took a couple of years. I think that had more to do with their jobs providing it rather than embracing a new form of communication. I wonder if most people had to get email on their own, for the first time, would they ever have? The mysteries of life.

The initial thing that made me notice new technology passing by my peers was the iSight camera. It is so cool. You plug it in to your Mac and you can talk to someone (or a few people) face to face. Friends my age said "Why would I need that"? It was pricey at $150 so that explains a lot of reluctance but those few that got it dug it. It really is the next step and the communication tool of the future. Even Dick Tracy changed from the "Two way wrist radio" to the "Two way wrist TV" decades ago. The iSight is now standard on iMacs and Mac Books so I'm guessing more people will dig it as they get new computers.

The web site Twitter was the "Why would I need that?" topic of discussion last weekend. Twitter is a social web site where you just post little snippets about what you are doing at that moment. Friends can keep track of what other friends are up to. That's all it is. Keeping in touch. So when I explain this to someone and they say, "Why would I need that?" I am at a loss. A person's mind has lost it's plasticity when it can't envision a new way of doing things. I could understand all this if it was coming from my traditionally anti-social friends (I can get a little anti-social myself y'know) but it is becoming the norm. I hear "Why would I need that?" way too much. And not in a reduce your footprint kind of way. That I could accept easier.

I'm also interested in being connected with the world. That's what a lot of these new technologies offer. Except as a lot of people grow older they want to be less connected with the world. Life takes its toll. But that's a whole other story.

Comics I Bought This Week: April 26, 2007

Another week another three new comics. All regulars:

Rex Mundi (Vol 2) 5

Usagi Yojimbo 102

The Walking Dead 37

In addition to those my local comic shop was having a sale on some old graphic novels. I picked up:

The Shadow: Hitler's Astrologer (1988)

Sabre (1988 edition)

Moebius 1 (1987)

I also picked up Moebius' Bluberry 2-5 for my friend Ed. Every time he sees my copies he says, "I really should have kept my issues of this". So now he can have his own.

There you go. I agree with Randy and Jacob. All Star Superman - 7 was a well done and fun comic. I hated All Star Superman - 1, hadn't bought an issue since, and generally am not a fan of Grant Morrison's work but thought this was a good issue. The art was well done (Frank Quitely), the plot and script were fairly basic (not a bad thing) and also well done, plus the coloring was good. I didn't understand all of the Bizarro World mumbo jumbo that was going on but I'll accept a certain amount of mumbo jumbo in my sci-fi/fantasy/super hero stories. Jimmy Olsen was also a annoying but when has he not been? Over all it won't change your world but if you want to read a good solid Superman story give it a look.

Week Eighteen of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Infinite Crisis Collected Edition - I tried. I really did but I only got 90 pages into this book. I couldn't take it any more. It's not bad. It's a well crafted comic book but I just couldn't take the content.

Infinite Crisis is a type of story that doesn't interest me. It's a company wide crossover "event" where not only the universe is threatened but the whole "multi-verse". Oooh... Scary...

If you like that type of story go ahead and check out this book but I found it tedious. In this types of stories doom and gloom is everywhere even though, as a reader, I know things will be back to normal soon enough. Characters all act out of character because, "it's the end of everything"! In this book heroes and villains start killing each other at an alarming rate but you know it's not "real". Some wizard will fix everything eventually. I find no drama in this kind of story and they are often filled with mumbo jumbo. This one has it's fair share.

The art also left me cold. Once again, it's not "bad" but it's a style I am tired of. It's that highly illustrative dense artwork that's filled with little scritch scratchy lines. It doesn't make the story any easier to follow. But there are plenty of people who consider such "detail" in the artwork a good thing. I am not one of them. Of course, following recent DC trends, there are four pencilers and fourteen(!) inkers on this book so I guess being buried under endless noodling unifies the art style. It reminds me of the early 90's Marvel then Image style all over again. Just a different type of noodling.

Read it only if you find threats to the DC multi-verse to be in any way interesting.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 1-2, 4-7 - Now here is a movie license that I don't care about. Never in a million years would I have ever bought this book but since it was given to me I gave it a read. It's not bad. As a matter of fact I enjoyed it. The premise is simple and well known: Freddie is killing teenagers in their dreams and those teenagers are trying their best not to be killed.

There is nothing terribly original or earth shaking about these issues but they are executed with some imagination and flair. Don't expect the best comics you've ever read but expect to have some old fashioned (well 80's)horror fun as you read them. The art (Kevin West and Bob Almond) and writing (Chuck Dixon) are solid and no one is phoning it in because it's a movie property. Any individual issue moves pretty fast with all the chasing and killing going on so reading a three issue story arc might be the best way to go. Check it out for some Freddy Krueger fun.

Desolation Jones 7 - I'm only reviewing the first ten pages or so of this issue because that's how far I got. I couldn't read any more. The problem is the art. Every character is drawn in such harsh shadow that I couldn't distinguish one guy's face from another's. Every character has the same face with no discernible expression. It was like reading a comics staring mannequins. I couldn't get into it. I also have issue eight but it's going on the "to get rid of" pile too.

End of an Era of Song

I was listening to a Doris Day CD the other day. It was one I hadn't heard before. I've listened to plenty of her music and she's a favorite of mine. She may be yesterday's style but she had a great voice and knew how to use it. Plus yesterday's style is fine with me. I don't need the latest and the greatest. Just the greatest. But then a strange thing happened. She sang the Simon and Garfunkel tune "Feeling Groovy". It was awful. I have never heard a Doris Day song that make me cringe like that one did. It got me wondering as to why.

If you've ever heard Frank Sinatra's albums from the Sixties where he sings pop songs from that era then you know the kind of butchery of which I speak. They are terrible. And Sinatra is one of the all time greats. How come these terrific singers can sing a Pop song from the 1860's but not one from the 1960's? I think it's for a few different reasons.

These reasons have nothing to do with the singers but have to do with the songs. They have to do with the universality of song. Pop songs have always been the most broadly liked songs of the land. Hence "Pop" which is short for "Popular". But since the advent of Rock 'n Roll, Pop Music has gone from made for adults to made for teenagers. You use to have to go out someplace like a music hall to hear music or have a musician in your family play it for you. These were adult pastimes. Adults made music for other adults who listened to it. Kids liked and listened to songs too but there was an adult universality that permeated Pop Music. Stage Musicals, Ragtime, Jazz, Blues, Big Band, Gospel, Country, and any other kind of Pop Music that I'm forgetting.

Then came Rock 'n Roll and the record album. Records were around before Rock but now the teenagers could listen to their own music without an adult in the mix. They didn't need to go out to a club to hear it and they didn't need an adult to play it on the piano or fiddle. The adult universality of music was slowly eroded until now we have a teenage universality of Pop Music. Nothing in today's top 20 was written for grown ups. From Hip Hop to Techno it's all for the kids. It's tough for adults to sing music made for an ever changing teenage population. That's why Pop Music is a young person's game now. Made by the young for the young.

The second reason why those great old singers have trouble with post Rock songs has to do with a change in the nature of Pop song writing. In the 60's it became less adult universal and more personal. Instead of looking for that great "Fly me to the moon let me play among the stars" poetic lyric that everyone could relate to song writers turned more introspective and personal with their lyrics. I think this started because singers and song writers ceased to be separate people. With the Beatles hitting it big bands were now expected to write their own songs. They started writing personal ones as much as universal ones. Everyone still wants that good universal hook after all. But it came with a more youth centered sentiment. Not an adult one.

The third reason is technological. Bands and song writers had a lot more studio tricks available to them than ever before. Lyrics became a smaller part of the whole production than ever before. In plenty of our favorite songs we don't even know what all of the lyrics are because they are so garbled or lost in the wall of sound. This was unthinkable in Pop music before Rock took over. You can understand every word that Doris Day or Frank Sinatra sing. In a lot of today's Pop songs the listener isn't even meant to hear the words.

That is why when an older singer puts out an album of standards or "evergreens" they are mostly made up of older 60's and before Pop songs. There are no more evergreens. Songs are so highly produced and dependent on the band that originally wrote them that we only get the "cover version". That's when Band 2 does a version of Band 1's song. Good or bad it's always compared to Band 1's song as it was recorded on a highly produced studio album. The concept of a "cover version" didn't even exist in the 1930's because a song belonged to the song writer and different singers gave their interpretations in song. There was no "original" and "cover" versions. Just versions.

Even The Beatles, possibly the most influential and popular band of the last fifty years, produced no evergreens. "Let it Be" might come close but every version is still just considered a cover version. And could you imagine someone covering "Hey Jude"? Yeah, I know lots of people have. iTunes is great for looking up such stuff but that song is so dependent on studio production (that's not a bad thing) that most people just give you their studio production take on it. And if they strip it down it looses what makes it special. It's the total sound of the song with the lyrics taking a secondary if not tertiary role. I think this is what trips up old time singers. For them their voice and the lyric is primary. With modern Pop music voice and lyric are not nearly as important as production and image. It makes for some cringe worthy interpretations of lyrics that were never meant to be heard as words but heard as sounds. Ouch.

Comics I Bought This Week: April 19, 2007

This weeks trip netted me three new comics:

Love and Rockets Vol 2 - 19

Ex Machina - 27

All Star Superman - 7

Those first two are regulars but I picked up that issue of Superman because my buddy Randy recommended it. Grant Morrison written series usually get worse as the issue numbers get higher but Randy says this one is getting better. I'll let you know.

Week Seventeen of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Green Lantern: Rebirth TPB - Besides a few issues recently I haven't read Green Lantern in a fifteen years or so. I missed the whole Hal Jordan turning into Paralax and killing the Green Lantern Corps thing (1993!). This series from 2004 brings back Hal Jordan (the original Silver Age Green Lantern) and makes him the number one GL again.

My GL knowledge is fairly basic but I had no trouble following the story. I won't go into the plot because it's pretty complicated and involves the whole GL mythology.

Overall I liked this book. It is a "serious" super hero book as opposed to a "fun" one and there is lots of life and death drama and writing about the nature of heroism. It's never corny though.

The art was also very good and, at times, great. Overall the penciling was top shelf (Ethan Van Sciver) and the storytelling excellent but it might have been the five different inkers that brought things down a peg. Sometimes the blacks were spotted perfectly and the story just sang but a lot of the time the storytelling got lost in a lot of pointless illustrative noodling. A good art job in general but with the right inker who could really spot blacks well it might have been a great art job. Really good inking is a bit of a lost art.

So if your in the mood for an epic "restoring the glory" super hero story check this book out.

Scalped 1,3-4 - Lots of violence. Lots of sex. Lots of cursing. Lots of criminals. Lots of cops who are just as bad as the criminals. Lots of ugliness. All on an Indian reservation. All fairly well done but off putting unless you're really into "grim and gritty".

I don't know how much more of this book I can read because everybody in it is just so miserable. And the art hurts my eyes. The artist can draw but the black spotting and storytelling seem almost random at times. I don't like his finishing technique because he renders everything on the page with equal importance and that takes away from the depth of the art. The flat bland coloring didn't help either. But if you're into stories about the dark seamy side of existence this might just be for you.

Deathblow 4 - I can't tell if this book is supposed to be a joke or not. Seriously. Is this tongue in cheek or just bad? It could be both because if it's tongue in cheek it's really bad tongue in cheek.

Deathblow the super bad ass agent without his memory, drug dealers, amoral government guys, a cyborg dino-man, kid assassins, and a talking dog? Bad, bad, and bad. Stay away.

Nightwing 128, 130 - I like this series. Marv Wolfman is doing an excellent job with the writing and Jurgens, Rapmund, Ramos (128), Igle, and Champagne (130) are doing an excellent job with the art. This might be my favorite DC book that's out right now. The plots keep moving along and the stories are imaginative and well told. Recommended.

It's Not Easy Telling the Future

One of the many ongoing projects that I have is a set of fortune telling cards. I have a fascination with fortune telling or, more accurately, fortune telling systems. I certainly don't believe anyone can predict the future besides in a "tomorrow it will be partly cloudy with showers towards evening" kind of way but I find systems for trying to to pierce the veil of time interesting.

Through science and observation we can predict the future in a basic and macro prediction way. I predict the sun will rise tomorrow morning. I can even give you the time it will rise by referencing a chart. Not much of a stretch but it's predicting the future none the less. Phases of the moon, the changing of the seasons, and when the birds will migrate are all predicting the future. They're just so simple to us that people usually don't even consider them to be special in any way.

But it's predicting the future in a micro "you will meet a tall handsome stranger" kind of way that I have an interest in. That's because I have a fascination with systems that are based on nothing. Astrology, palm reading, phrenology, Tarot cards, throwing runes, rolling bones, reading the livers of sheep, and countless other ways to predict famine or fortune all have their own distinct way of looking at the universe and peering into the future. And all of them are based on nothing but imagination.

Predicting the sun will come up tomorrow is based on seeing the sun rise morning after morning. A long time ago someone started taking note of when the sun rose and set and noticed it happened in a repeated pattern. Then someone came up with a way to keep track of that pattern. Hence you can predict when the sun will rise tomorrow. Same with the moon, same with eclipses, and same with a lot of the natural world.

In contrast fortune telling systems are not made that way. Someone had to make them up from scratch. They could not be made up from observation. The basic tarot card system has to be in place before any observations could be made. No one made up all the cards, dealt them out to people, and then followed those people around observing what happened to them all the while taking notes. No, someone made the system out of thin air and then applied it to people. Someone rolled the bones and then just made stuff up. And people believed them. And still do.

So I've been working on my own deck of cards and a fortune telling system based on nothing. It's not as easy as it sounds because there really does need to be a system. A flexible system capable of adapting itself to all sorts of aspects of life. I'm also trying to make my system unique and modern. There is no sense in recreating the Tarot. That already exists. No old fashioned king, queen, and knave stuff either. It's kind of a tall order. Fun though.

I've already done all the illustrations (48 of them) and have the names of each card and some meanings for them. I even came up with a layout for how the cards should be dealt. Now I have to work out how the cards work in conjunction with each other. That's a tough part. A lot of B.S. is required. I also need to make a good new prototype deck. I haven't pulled out that project in a while but I think I will. The last thing I did was come up with a name for it. "The Tourmaline" and the instruction book for it is called "The Tourmaline Mystique". Pretty mysterious, no? I've got a future ahead of me as a guru.

Comics I Bought This Week: April 12, 2007

Just two new comics this week:

StormWatch Post Human Division - 6

Optic Nerve - 11

The last issue of Optic Nerve to come out (10) was way back in 2005. It's always a pleasant surprise when I see a new one in the shop.

Format really does make a difference. I bought Frank Miller's 300 in its original run back in 1999 (I wouldn't have guessed it was that long ago time flies). It was printed in the standard comic book form as a five issue mini series. I enjoyed it but didn't think it was all that. I thought it had some story telling problems due to the fact that it wasn't following a standard layout. Instead of reading across the left page and then down before moving to the right page (as any book reads)(well, not Japanese ones) you read all the way across from the left page to the right and then back down and left. Each page was essentially a double page spread with the spine in the middle. The spine visually interrupted every page and ruined the story flow for me. This is why left and right pages are usually completely separate pieces of art in a comic.

The hardcover 300 collection is printed quite differently. It's printed how Frank Miller actually designed it. The book is a double wide. It's twice the with of a normal comic hence what was a double page spread in the comic (every page) is now a single page. Each page reads as it should and the story telling isn't broken up. It makes a world of difference. The story goes from problematic to just plain good. It all makes sense now. If you've only checked out 300 in it's original form do yourself the favor and read it as it was meant to be read. Double wide.

Week Sixteen of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Army @ Love 1 - I generally like Rick Veitch's stuff but sometimes he just gets too goofy for me. This is one of those. Its a story well told about the US army's new initiative to reward combat men and women with sex but it's just too absurd for me. It sure makes war look like fun though. Check it out if you can handle the goofiness.

Superman Confidential 2 - I guess this is Superman Year One and a Half or some such. He's just started out and his parents are still alive. It didn't do it for me. Too much Superman whining about stuff. Oh woe is me I almost failed to stop a volcano and missed my date with Lois. What should I do Ma? I got two more issues of this (3-4) that are going into the "to be given away" pile with out even being read.

The Creeper (2007) 5-6 - These are the last two issues in a mini series and they were pretty good. The art was solid and even imaginative in places, the story telling was generally fine, and the script an plot were fun. A nice couple of super hero issues guest starring Batman that were filled with fights, villains, monsters, and evil plans. Give it a look.

The Authority (2007) 2 - The Authority's dimension traveling shift ship has crashed into a new dimension and can't get out. That dimension has no super heroes or magic and looks a lot like ours. I guess this is going to be "What if the Authority Existed on Our World?". Yawn. That covers the plot. The art has an unfinished quality to it and the storytelling isn't very good. The colors are drab and muddy too. Not much to recommend here so move on.

JLA Classified 36 - The third and final part to a fun dimension spanning Justice League story. I reviewed the first two parts a few weeks back and I haven't changed my mind. I liked this story. It wasn't Earth shattering but it was imaginative. Imagination is always a plus in my book.

Almost Bidder's Remorse

Sometimes I like to bid on things at Ebay that I don't really want to win. Scratch that. Don't really want to pay for is more like it. I'm no welsher. I've paid for every auction I've ever won but sometimes I know I'm not going to win. My bid is way too low and way too early. Plus sniping happens.

For those of you who don't know what sniping is I'll define it for you. I'm big on defining terms. Sniping is the practice of waiting until the very last minute on an online auction before putting in a bid. That way you avoid a bidding war because no one can out bid you if you are the very last bidder. The danger is that the person who bid before you has a high upper bid and your snipe bid might be too low. Then you run out of time. But these snipers know what they are doing and can quickly raise their bid quite a few times in the last minute.

As a consequence if you are bidding on something that is fairly popular and you have the top bid hours before the auction is over you will rarely have the top bid in the end. That's what I count on when bidding on things that I really don't want to pay for. Someone will always snipe me. I watched something I bid on go from $160 to $600 in the last 30 seconds. That was some hard core sniping. I knew it was coming because $160 was way too low for this piece. It was the original art from a 1965 Family Circus Sunday strip. Yeah, I bid on some Family Circus art. Heh, heh, heh...

Sometimes it's just fun to bid. It's almost like owning whatever I'm bidding on if even for a brief few hours. It's a little bit exciting too. Maybe no one will bid it up and I'll be stuck with it. It's a weird form of excitement when hoping someone outbids you on an auction. It's somehow related to buyer's remorse except nothing has been purchased. Maybe it's the fear of buyer's remorse. There sure are a lot of fears in life if that is one of them.

None of the stuff I bid on is very expensive. A couple of hundred dollars at most. I could pay for any of them if I had too. It's just not in the budget. But I bid anyway. Maybe it's a cautious person's way of being reckless? I inevitably get outbid so there is no real danger but there is also disappointment mixed with relief when I get outbid. Relief that I don't have to spend money that I can't quite afford and disappointment that I can't afford it. I wish I could indulge my bidding whims but alas that is not the case. C'est la vie!

I don't indulge in this kind of bidding behavior often. It's not an everyday habit. Maybe I bid expecting to be outbid once every couple of months. Something makes me say, "Yeah, I'd pay $120 for that" even though I don't have the $120 on hand. Even though I know I won't actually get the item for $120. Even though if the bidding actually stopped right there and I would win buyer's remorse would set in. Even with all those thing I still make the bid. Sometimes it just gets me thinking about the nature of winning and losing. At least with an auction winning and losing is a cut and dried thing. Sometimes that type of clarity is a help.

Comics I bought This Week: April 5, 2007

Another week where only one of my regulars was in and a new regular at that:

Buffy Season Eight - 2

Along with that I finally bought the collected version of Frank Miller's 300. I've been meaning to get it for a while but it was never a priority. Slow week and a little cash in my pocket made me do it.

I just finished reading the first hardcover volume of Astonishing X-Men which reprints issues 1-12 of that series. I'm kind of ambivalent about it. It's good and it's bad. The artwork by John Cassaday sure was pretty and the plot and dialogue by Joss Whedon were fine. There were the requisite amount of "cool moments" that make up current super hero stories but there didn't seem to be much meat on the bones.

Whedon kept it simple and stripped the team down to mostly members from the classic Byrne/Claremont days. That appeals to my tastes since those were the days when I read the X-Men regularly but still something wasn't right. There is an awkwardness to the storytelling that I can't put my finger on. Maybe it is the lack of any kind of narrative or scene setting captions. With the plot depending on so many mysteries and surprises I don't think the dialogue carried it all along especially well. The X-Men spend a lot of time hanging around the mansion oblivious to the plots unfolding around them. Since most of the dialogue is spoken by The X-Men yet most of the plot is forwarded by others these is a disconnect to the whole thing. I had a hard time getting into it but when the "cool moments" hit they were powerful. That's when I could get into it. At least for a few pages then the disconnect started again. A bit of a frustrating read.

So overall I'm still ambivalent. The cool stuff is cool. The awkward stuff is awkward. With the "A" level talent involved in this book it's worth checking out and deciding for yourself.

Week Fifteen of my reviews of recent DC Comics.

Teen Titans - Titans Around the World TPB - This book reprints Teen Titans 34-41. I've reviewed some individual issues in this story line before and my review is basically the same. Some solid super hero action but nothing to get too excited about. The Doom Patrol guest stars in the first few issues and I that was my favorite part. I was a little miffed that they went the "Everything You Know Is Wrong (EYKIW)" route with the Chief (the guy who heads the Doom Patrol) and made him a manipulative jerk with good intentions to no one but himself. Though I did like the interaction of the two teams. Check it out if you want a Teen Titans fix.

The Boys 6 - This has got to be the dumbest comic book out there today. Cheese. Pure 100% cheese. But the over the top violence keeps people coming back for more. Well, except DC Comics they cancelled it.

Warlord 8-9 - I'm an old school Warlord fan so I really wanted to like this book. I reviewed and was disappointed with the first issue when I bought it last year. I hoped it would get better as the series progressed but it's worse. The story and characters barely resemble (except for visually) the original series so it's obvious the only reason this is called Warlord is for marketing purposes.
Warlord isn't a modern man out of time trapped in a barbarian world anymore. He's a god (complete with super powers) inhabiting a man's body and running around getting into intrigues among a royal court. Whatever. The book also has some of the worst inking I've seen. Stay away from this mess.

Wrestling With Prints

One of the things I do is make art prints. Not in a traditional lithographic drawing on a piece of stone way but in a modern computer graphic way. I draw some stuff, scan it in, arrange, and color it on the computer. I much prefer to draw on paper rather than a computer but after scanning the image in I can do things with color and composition that would be hard to duplicate with just paper and paint. It's an interesting process. Plus it intrigues me not to have an individual original piece of art, as I do with my paintings, but a piece that is meant to be seen in its reproduced form. The final print is the thing. There is no complete "original". Pieces of original art exist on paper but the whole exists in the world of bits and bytes. And printer ink and paper.

The print is the thing and that is the problem I've been having lately. I print on an Epson R1800 inkjet printer which is very nice in an of itself but ink for inkjet printers is about the most expensive liquid on earth. My printer has eight different ink cartridges and one or the other is always running out. It still beats the days when all of the color was on one cartridge and as you ran out of a single color you had to replace them all. But still it gets expensive keeping that printer filled with ink. The paper I use isn't exactly cheap either.

It's been that expense which has kept me from printing out all of the prints that I've made for the last year or so. But I've kept making prints on the virtual level. Drawing, scanning, composing, and coloring. I just didn't print any up. I think this lead to a fundamental problem. None of them were actually "finished".

In the self motivated world of art for art's sake finishing things is very important. You have to see that you are getting something done. That is vital from a morale point of view because money is not the motivator. It's the making something that's important. Without making actual printouts of my prints something was lacking. This winter I found that I was having a hard time finishing things. Whether a painting, a print, or a photograph I didn't seem to be getting much done.

I had plenty of drawings. Stacks of them. It wasn't like I was doing nothing but once I got into the habit of not printing out my prints that was one less finished thing I had. It also made finishing other things less important. Then I had even less finished things and meandered without direction more often. There is something to be said for aimless wandering but too much of it is disorienting.

So this week I finished up and printed out two new prints. It felt good and made my art morale go higher. Now I've been going back and getting the twenty or so prints I've made ready to print out. That's always a lot more work than I think. Getting something to print up pretty takes technical work that I don't think about as I'm in the creative process. Gritty, moving things around, setting proper margins, entering numbers, and getting the blacks right kind of work. Nothing exciting and quite tedious. But after I get some more ink and paper it will all be worth it. Some things will be finished.