A Positive Outlook

This always make me feel better.

Crime and Punishment

This is the advertisement that was generated on my FB page today:

You watch four episodes of Sex and the City because you're home and sick and you are now a part of the target audience that has an interest in chubby Asian babies.

I've been reading Kathleen Hanna's blog which is way better than Courtney Love's Twitter page ever was. I followed Courtney Love's ramblings for about one week before I couldn't do it anymore. Hanna's blog is a mash-up of internet findings and actual updates on projects she is working on and only takes a few minutes to read through. The comments she makes are pretty spot-on and I recommend taking the time to read the all the way from the beginning.

More Scores: February Comics

Stopped into one of my favorite comic book stores, here in Pittsburgh, (Copacetic Comics) and picked up a few things this past weekend.

The following two comics were by Mardou. I am writing reviews of comics and zines on my tumblr site.

When I went into the store, I was really looking for a book to help me learn more about the craft of creating comics. This past Thursday was the Fun-A-Day Art Show, where I displayed my comics from the month of January. (Thanks to those of you who came out!) Trying to create 31 short comics was sort of hard and I learned a lot about my lack of skills in that time. I have little to no formal art training, even though I have been doodling for years, and I want to teach myself as much as I can. (My Fun-A-Day comics are available for you to see on my other tumblr site: nervousindustry.tumblr.com.

A Few Things I Have Learned About Art (and Stuff) In the Past Six Months:
- Pencils intentionally come in different hardness ranges. That's why my art pencils from middle school aren't as crisp as my mechanical pencils. I always thought it primarily had to do with the lead thickness (like pens).
- Brush-tip pens are not a myth and are readily available!
- Those cross-hatching skills that were taught in grade-school art class DO come in handy!
- Quill-style calligraphy pens, not just for writing! Very good for comic drawing.
- Comics book artists and other people use this lettering tool to make their words uniform and beautiful Below is an example of an Ames. This literally blew my mind apart (I learned this in the DW+WP book).

Seeking the advice of people who know more than me, I asked the owner of Copacetic what he would recommend for someone with my current interest. After making a few suggestions, he pulled out this:

Drawing Words and Writing Pictures is a college textbook designed out of the classes that Jessica Abel and Matt Madden teach. It is very comprehensive and has a companion website that people working through the book can follow along with. Not only is it full of comics and tips, but it explains what tools are commonly used by comic book artists with specific brand recommendations and supplies lists. This book is exactly what I was looking for and I am working my way through some of the exercises.

Every Day and Evey Night

Tonight is one of those nights where you want to tear everything you've made apart and maybe start anew. Maybe it's because working from home all day and drinking two giant cups of coffee for the first time in months has made you zany. Maybe it's because for the 5th straight day in a row, you don't feel like being bothered to go anywhere without socks (they are in the dryer now). Maybe it's because winter-hibernation mode causes you to lose weight because you're not going out to lunch and dinner all the time you are now between sizes and you hate all of your clothes.

Or maybe it's because the past few weeks of utter laziness and lack of exercise have you finally fed up with everything. Sitting at home all day while you're expected to work only draws your attention to everything you try to escape from when you leave the house.

I had a lot of things to accomplish today work-wise and I even put in a little extra time so I can make tomorrow deal-withable (not looking forward to a million voice mails). At 5.30pm, I was trying to bake a cake before settling in for The Simpsons. In our house, we eat meals in front of the tv, computer, or on the way out the door so I settled into the couch with some kale chips to relax. (By the way, this is just the first usable recipe I found online. I don't think I am a fan of that person, from what I perused, but the directions were straightforward.) As soon as I was done eating, I was ready to gtfu and do something productive with my day.

Having a desk job is only something I am accustomed to within the past 11 months. Last year at this time I was still running my butt off through a maze of tables and cocktails and hot plates. Now, three days can pass before I realize that the farthest I've walked was from the bus stop at the end of the street to home.

In order to make sure that my cabin-fever is productive and not destructive, I plan to do the following things in the near future:

1) Walk to the end of my street and sign up for the gym as soon as payday happens
2) Get school items together
3) Put all of the laundry away and keep it off the floor
4) Clean a little bit of the house up every day for the next week and a half
5) Take these small mountains of stuff to Goodwill as soon as the weather clears enough for me to move my car
6) Set goals for some of the projects I am working on through the end of next week and meet them
7) Limit tv

None of these things are particularly difficult but most of them seem to require coffee.

Western Pennsylvania Culinary Warfare League

This weekend, I was privileged to attend the fourth battle of the Western Pennsylvania Culinary Warfare League at my friends', Sara and Fred's, house. A brief summary of what the WPCWL is all about is Iron Chef at home.

Sara and Fred's secret ingredient, leafy greens, was revealed to them after midnight the day of the battle. They each had the whole day to do their shopping and prepare foods for the battle. Not only was I able to supply them with my NEW food processor (which I am still pumped about), but I was invited to be a judge in the competition.

Sara's Menu:

1st Course
- Pickled Brussels sprout "olives" stuffed with bleu cheese in a martini
- Mint and arugula granita on goat cheese with a blackberry balsamic reduction and candied pecans
- Palak paneer curry-deviled eggs with "sun-dried tomato caviar"

2nd Course
- Swiss chard ravioli with fresh white anchovies and lemon-caper butter

3rd course
- Dark chocolate kale ice cream with kale chips and sea salt (this was made with dry ice)

Fred's Menu:

1st course
- Prosciutto-wrapped Brussels sprouts with three sauces: mint-yogurt, honey mustard, and ginger soy

2nd course
- Filet over a slaw salad, leek mashed potatoes, and a swiss chard salad with a whiskey-carrot dressing

3rd course
- Nori cannolis filled with cherry-raspberry pastry cream

To find out who won and for mouth-watering pictures, you will have to read the update on the WPCWL page.

All I can say is that I left a very full and happy camper and can't wait to make Sara make me those raviolis again.

Resolutions to Keep

The holidays were a blur of activity and by the end of my winter break I felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation. My January month is filling up with Fun-A-Day, a four-day trip to see my friend before she moves back to Mexico, and (hopefully) an adventure into Columbus, Ohio.

I'm trying to stay focused on the important things in 2010, like traveling. Every year my calendar is marked with all of the zine, comic, and punk fests of interest that I never attend. Today I sat down and looked through airfares for Stumptown Comic Festival in Portland, Oregon in April.

In addition to Stumptown, the Boston Zine Fair, Philly Zine Fest, New York Comic Con, Richmond Zine Fest, Small Press Expo and Chajos in Tejas are all on my radar for the coming months. From the internet, it doesn't seem like the BZF didn't happen last year but maybe the organizer's new year's resolution will be to make this happen.

The Joy of Cooking

This might sound silly, but right now I am in the process of reading The Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition. A jolly man in a red fur suit left it underneath the tree this year and I am never letting it go. Surprisingly, I'm super-pumped that I will now be preparing time-tested dishes such as "Mongolian Hot Pot" and "Burnt Sugar Cake." Not only is this book chock-full of recipes that I have never even heard of before, but its reference section is sick. The section on peppers was really interesting (and let me tell you that it was more informative than the websites I found explaining various kinds of peppers on the internet a few months ago). I didn't even know which area I wanted to start in; all last night I flipped though various areas just reading whatever I could.

This morning, after reading comic books in bed for a few hours (beginning at 5am), I settled back in at the kitchen table of my parents' house and started reading the The Joy beginning at the inside sleeve. After some deliberation, I've decided that I am going to read The Joy of Cooking from cover-to-cover so I don't miss a single thing. Reading cookbooks might sound like the hobby of a professional chef or a crazy person, but so be it. 9 times out of 10, cookbooks are more useful than half of the blogs I read and 6x less depressing than the news (reading the local Delaware newspaper today was such a bummer, I couldn't get past the first section.)

Also, The Joy of Cooking has a website run by on of the grandsons of Irma Raumbauer, the woman who wrote the original edition.

Reading this book also has me thinking about the movie Julie & Julia which I saw in theaters and plan to watch again this weekend.