The Laughing Brain

Future

2009-10-02T09:49:00.001-07:00

Don't know what direction to take sometimes. Gotta keep going, though. I'd rather be vertical than horizontal.

And that's a fact.

Best Potato Chip

2009-07-21T09:06:00.001-07:00

Grippos.

Radcliffe

2009-07-06T09:59:00.001-07:00

Daniel Radcliffe, the guy who plays Harry Potter, is an atheist.

I'll bet that makes the crazy people at www.exposingsatanism.org very happy!

Just Do It...Doosh

2009-07-06T09:12:00.001-07:00

Eh, I keep having these crazy notions of doing non-fiction comics exploring issues that appeal to me. But in the end I can barely eke out enough time and energy to do my main projects.

So I'll just post here whatever the hell I want. Howzat?

First of all: how long till we start to see Michael Jackson at the mall? And will it be the young or old one? How much longer till the official stamp?

Artist

2009-06-28T02:44:00.001-07:00

Heap of Headness

2009-06-22T12:07:00.001-07:00

So again I'm considering turning this dead old blog into a new machine...a machine of comics!

What I have in mind is a series of short comics exploring topics that I like. Keeping it on a conversational/journal level, sort of going at it blindly and with a casual mind. I'd like to "comicblog" about complexity, science, religion, Satan, life, and fatherhood.

That's right, I said Satan. I think the Church of Satan is terribly fascinating. At once an atheist organization and a religion, celebrating camp and ritual, and expressing some pretty extreme Libertarian ideas.

At the very least it's good fodder for a comicblog.

Reviving The Old Hag

2009-04-29T03:25:00.000-07:00

Thought I might kick this blog back into action to some degree. I'm constantly trying to learn and understand so why not share my pitiful attempts with the rest of the blogospherical world?

Sabotage and the Beauty of Creating

2008-11-07T09:55:00.001-08:00

Something kind of dawned on me today. The last couple of nights I’ve spent time working, drawing things of the usual sort and having a damn good time doing it. The feeling was/is healthy.

And I was thinking about comics and how I cannot figure out why I can’t get any of them done. Then today I thought about artists I really love. Bode in particular, but also Frazetta and others. None of them are associated with strictly delineated projects. They aren’t Bode’s Project A, they’re just Bode’s art. The world they build is not a detailed secondary fantasy world (so-to-speak) but an organic thing that comes into being spontaneously out of what the artists actually do.

Well, I have been doing that too. When someone contacts me about my work they never seem to speak of specific projects or worlds…they always ask about my art, how I do it, what I’m working on, generally stating that they like what I do, etc. They respond to the art I do, not necessarily to the specific content.

So is it possible that I’m sabotaging myself by obsessing over compartmentalizing everything I do into this or that “world”? Am I making it harder or impossible on myself by refusing to allow my chocolate to touch my peanut butter?

I thought about all the little stories and ideas I have laying around – some with images attached, some with scripts, some with mere doodles and noodles – and I realized that so many of them are simply not exclusive. By simply wading into these ideas and just doing them would I be allowing the – pardon me for saying it – “West World” to take shape naturally, rather than trying to engineer it from blueprint to real print?

The Situation Room

2008-08-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

Slowly working my way through all these ideas and all these possible paths to take. The experiment of having several websites has been a mixed bag. Since none of them are very demanding I don’t feel stressed or anything, but I do feel like I’m not managing my time very well. And I am sad to say that certain ideas are just not blowing my skirt up these days.

Land of Hof is a total pet project. I knew that from the beginning. I have one issue posted, and a second issue partly finished. I don’t know when I’ll actually sit down and knock it out. But as I said, this is a pet project. No deadlines, no promises. My thought on this is that it will grow over time and I’ll be very proud of it along the way. No pressure.

Blood Red is a pin up site with no stated frequency of new posts. I have a lot of content on there so I’m not worried about it. As I do new artwork suitable to it, I’ll post it.

Random Order Creations is my main site. I’ve been online with this site since sometime around 2001, I think. But the Random Order imprint has been mine since I was publishing Anomalic in 1994. I treat it more like a hub site than anything.

Catgirl Mojo features Arzra of Aroora – a comic I’ve been stoked about for the past year. Updates are weekly or bi-weekly depending on what’s going on and how motivated I am. I don’t want to let it go more than 2 weeks without an update if I can help it. It’ll be a slowly developing comic and I’m totally fine with that.

Zoa Space Fantasy has been my biggest disappointment lately. I just can’t find the fire to work on it. I have several more pages scripted but I go weeks without even thinking about the comic. That tells me something important: it’s not high on my priority list. I hope to at least bring the story to a satisfying pause and then put it on the backburner for a while.

Even with all of that I have this gaping hole that needs to be filled with comics. I need a solid, regular, flagship comic I can get behind 100%. So that’s what I’m working on now. I have the concept down, based on some ideas I’ve been mulling for a year or so. But I’m playing it close to my chest. I don’t want to say much or show much until I have a more confident feeling. I hope to be able to move forward with this idea publicly by November, but if the fire isn’t there I won’t bring it out.

Fun fun and more fun! As long as I’m alive and drawing then all I can say is fuck it, bring me more.

Comics and Websites and Artwork Galore!

2008-04-13T04:27:00.000-07:00

Spread too thin….

Well, not too thin really, just kind of thin.

Right now I’m working on 3 active projects: Zoa, Land of Hof, and Catgirl Mojo. Given the fact that I am not a dynamo of productivity, it seems like it’s taking forever to get things done. Of course, it’s all in my head. I’m not on the radar screen of most people so it isn’t like I’m letting them down.

Zoa has been stalled for a few weeks. The main reason is that my attention is elsewhere. Looking back on it, I think my pattern is to hammer out 7 or 8 pages at a stretch then take a few weeks off from it. I can live with that for now.

Catgirl Mojo is weird. I honestly am not sure what to do with it. I love the title, got the domain registered, and it’s like a blank slate to me. I have lots of cool anthropomorphic drawings I could post if I just wanted to make it my catgirl gallery. That’s cool. But I kind of wanted to do something more ambitious. We’ll see.

Mainly I’m focused on Land of Hof right now. This is my pet project, my baby. It’s a kind of mythology/epic I’ve been monkeying with for years. Looks like it’s coming to fruition soon. But more on that later. One thing to look forward to is that it will be the smallest fantasy epic of all time. (sort of…)

ex-Christian says no to atheistic world

2008-03-22T08:37:00.000-07:00

http://mexc.blogspot.com/2008/03/no-to-atheistic-world.html

I like this guy quite a bit. He and I think alike in many ways.

The Wizards of Ur

2008-03-05T09:06:00.000-08:00

I've joined forces with mad artists Chuck Whelon and A.P. Furtado on a new sketch blog called The Wizards of Ur. If you like the kind of stuff I do, then you'll love the kind of stuff they do. So check it out.

Most of my blogging will probably take place over there so don't be a damn stranger, you jerks. We have terrible powers and are not afraid to use them.

Zoa and Color

2008-01-26T14:32:00.000-08:00

Been doing this little ditty called Zoa Space Fantasy on a local news/message board. The pages are in the mini-comic format, all hand work and scanned/arranged digitally. A lot of fun so far and promises to be mucho fun to come.

But the colors are washed out. I’m not sure what’s happening. The original pages are hand colored with Prismacolor markers on bristol and they really pop. But digitally – at least on most monitors I’ve seen – they don’t pop so much. I guess I just need to do some Photoshop tweaking before saving for the web. I had hoped to keep it as raw as possible. I even leave the little bits of messiness around the border that results from putting a jet black template behind a scanned page with different values. I like the roughness of it.

As far as the story goes, we'll just have to see where it goes. We've got demon drives and space witches and tekwizards and all that jazz coming up. Basically a space rockin' romp.

Later

Thoughts on Famous Deaths

2008-01-23T09:16:00.001-08:00

People die every day. If you live long enough it is inevitable that people you know will die. It is inevitable that people you’ve heard of will die. So why are we so shocked when famous people die?

I heard that Heath Ledger was found dead at age 27. I was genuinely saddened. I loved the campy little movie A Knight’s Tale and I thought Ledger was incredible in Brokeback Mountain (as a good friend puts it “He carved his performance out of old leather”). I heard a bit of water cooler talk about it at work and I began to wonder why we worry so much about people we don’t actually know.

It is a little bit odd, but I think if you enjoy art (meaning film, music, all of it) then you will develop a connection with the artists. They speak to you personally. That’s the power of art – it reaches inside us and finds out what makes us tick. It shows us secrets about the world, about ourselves. If any of you are rolling your eyes at that, think about your favorite song or a song that seems to speak truth to you. If you’ve ever found yourself singing along or letting some old, sad song wash over you then it shouldn’t seem like such a nutty idea. When we lose an artist we feel it more profoundly than we might feel the loss of a stranger from 1000 miles away who never reached inside and touched us.

Of course there is a danger in this. The cult of personality surrounding many famous people is somewhat troubling. The world shook when Princess Diana died, and I’m sure there was a good reason for that. But there was an unfortunate feedback…a negative feedback in the form of media saturation. So for a while we were all going “Please, please, please shut up about Lady Di.”

Our monkneysphere’s aren’t that big, but there must be some kind of place in them for people who make magic but who we will never meet in real life. Otherwise why would we care when an actor or a musician or a comic book artist dies?

To quote the rock band Monster Magnet, “I was thinkin’ how the world should have cried on the day Jack Kirby died”. I didn’t cry the day Jack died, but when I look at the wealth of art he left behind and the immortal impact he had on comics art I do feel a sadness that I don’t always feel when I hear about a stranger dying in a car crash in Wisconsin.

It’s a curious thing.

The Starry Eyed Wisdom of Nada Plainbritches

2008-01-20T00:03:00.001-08:00

Catchy title to a somewhat vapid post. Empty it is...all full of nothing. Three in the AM and I'm going to bed now. I've updated Blood Red Comics with more images both new and very, very old.

As I sit here about to fall asleep at the keyboard I have this somewhat pleasant feeling that I'm destined to be an explorer inside my own head. This is pleasant because I have a lot of cool things in my head. However, it bodes ill for any plans of world domination. I will never be a King among men, only a regular Joe. My visions will largely remain locked inside this bone cranium cell, constantly clawing at my insides with their bloody knuckles and soft, soft fingertips. They move and writhe and swirl and dance inside me and I love the pain they bring.

Blogs are fucking weird.

Oops

2008-01-15T03:39:00.000-08:00

Ya know, in that last post I said something like "I am NECESSARILY talking about...yadda" but what I actually meant was "I am NOT necessarily talking about...yadda".

Kinda changes the meaning a little bit. So no, I was not referring to the ubiquitous all present generic universal nameless formless god that so many people believe in.

More later.

Agnostic, I

2008-01-13T06:58:00.001-08:00

Belief in God has been on my mind a little bit lately. I haven’t really talked about it for a while, been doing other things. But it seems that all roads lead to Rome and all thoughts lead to meaning. Good, Evil, God…these seem to be closely linked with my thoughts on meaning.

A couple of years ago I started thinking seriously about what I believe. When we found out we were going to have a baby it suddenly became very important for me to come to an understanding – a deeper understanding – of literally EVERYTHING. And so I’ve been trying. And I’m still trying.

I’ve never really believed in God. Looking back at myself as a child I was always kind of afraid of churches and preachers and the Bible. They talked about punishment for stuff I didn’t even understand…yet I seemed to be implicated in. It was frightening…so frightening that I eventually got up before a congregation and got saved.

I never went back to that church and I never attended any church again as a person interested in believing.

So God and church kind of remained a murky, uncertain idea in the back of my head for many, many years. I went through a short Jesus phase when I was 18, actually having several very moving spiritual experiences thinking about Jesus. I recall telling my girlfriend a couple of my Jesus thoughts and she looked at me like I was on drugs. She was very much a church girl and she didn’t approve of my Jesus thoughts. After she convinced me to burn all my “evil looking” heavy metal tapes (which I did, in a barrel, with mixed emotions) I started to lose that Jesus feeling again.

Since I married a beautiful young lady who shared an alarming number of my own views I didn’t really have to deal with the God subject again for many years. I mean, church is one thing. I always disliked them and I was vocally opposed to churches as a young adult in my roaring twenties. But I didn’t talk about God very much. I do recall writing some rather nasty, negative poetry about religion when I was in college, and I think I drew a rather distasteful image of Jesus on a cross. But even in that darkest of expression I wasn’t insulting Jesus…in my writings and doodlings Jesus was PISSED OFF at Christians for being closed-minded fools. And he was venting all the foul-mouthed, middle-finger-flipping pressure he had been saving for two thousand years. Ya know, all that young adult angst and grit and passion stuff.

But, aside from the occasional proselytizing from pious college Christians, I rarely discussed it with anyone.

Enter my son.

When you know you are about to become a father something clicks inside you. Suddenly all your weaknesses, all your personal foibles, all the stuff you keep hidden in the peripheral zone of your life comes rushing to the surface…an ugly, misshapen, shambling mound of a monster that threatens to undermine your child’s chances at having a good start in life.

And so I started taking my thoughts more seriously. I started analyzing my own beliefs and expanding my own knowledge. I wanted to learn, to grow, and most importantly to understand.

Belief in God was one of the topics to be dealt with. Does my belief define me? Can I label myself Atheist, Agnostic, or Believer? Should I? It seems prudent to define how I believe, and these are the tags we use to do so. I don’t think they have much function beyond being convenient descriptors, but then again perhaps they function as guides. I don’t know.

I’ll spare you the rambling (well, mostly) and cut to the chase.

First, a short definition. God, as I use that word here, means a “personal” deity. A literally existing all powerful superbeing. A Yaweh, Odin, Indra, Freya, or Jupiter kind of being. I’m necessarily speaking of the more ubiquitous “God” that has no shape, no form, no name, and is not associated with a particular religion. That view of God is so ambiguous it is virtually indistinguishable from an Agnostic’s Naturalism where the whole panorama of Mother Nature herself (if you’ll permit me a bit of panache) is so loved as to be something like a worshipped idea. In short, God = Yaweh/Allah.

Atheism itself is a strange animal. I’m a naturalist – meaning I lean toward natural, probable explanations rather than supernatural ones. So Atheism is attractive to me. I don’t see any evidence for God, therefore he must not exist…?

No, that’s where I part ways with the hardcore atheists. I mean, I’ve read the “New Atheism” books by Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris (and others) and found much in them to admire and much that I had not thought of before. But their willingness to shut the door completely on any concept of God is a little bit unsettling to me. It isn’t that I think we may discover God someday, or that I’m afraid of what God might think. It’s just that I take my philosophy to heart. I don’t know everything and I’m not willing to make an unequivocal, absolute statement like “There is no God”.

Here is where things get tricky. See, I don’t actually believe in God at all. When I say “believe in” I assume it is an active statement. I assume it means to invest belief in something. I don’t. I never really have. Doesn’t this make me a de facto atheist? Well, the term atheist means “without God”. I can buy that as a definition. I live without God every day. But the common understanding of the term seems to be a little different. It seems to mean “one who believes there is no God”. And I think that’s different.

If you believe in God, you are actively investing belief. You are doing something. It insinuates some kind of effort on your part to put something of yourself into the idea of God. So to believe there is no God means the same thing. You are putting energy into the idea that God does not exist. Well…I don’t do that either. I can’t possibly make a claim like that. I’d have to be fully aware of the entire universe in order to say – without a doubt – that God does or does not exist.

So I’m an Agnostic. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me. Hardcore Atheists believe Agnosticism is fence-straddling, or a step on the road to Atheism. I disagree. I’ve always been Agnostic, and I still am. I don’t know if God exists or does not exist.

Now, that being said, I will submit that I live my life as if there was no God. Maybe you could argue that this really does make me a de facto Atheist. I don’t know. I guess you’d have a good argument there.

But from my perspective, from the place inside myself where I make conscious decisions about what I do and do not believe, I invest energy in wonder and in amazement…not in absolute declarations. I do not invest in the idea that there is or that there is not a God. In my everyday practical and even everyday spiritual life the question is not very important (see my definition of God above).

I am an Agnostic, and I am a Naturalist. I have an intimate understanding of what this means to me and I’m finding it easier and more interesting to express that understanding. I’m also finding it easier and more fulfilling to hear the thoughts and beliefs of others. I think that listening to ideas with which you might not agree can enrich your own understanding. It might even make you aware of thoughts within yourself that you didn’t know were there.

The Brain Leaketh

2008-01-10T19:07:00.000-08:00

I blog to myself at work. I type these rambling emails going on and on about a comic idea, a way to do a comic, or some piece of philosophical gibberish. If I posted everything I write to myself on this blog I'm afraid no one would ever read it again.

What am I saying...it's a blog. No one reads it now! Well, maybe a couple of people.

I'm sleepy and feeling weird. I'd better shut the hell up now.

BTW, comics are actually coming to bloodredcomics.com. Just give me a few more...ya know...months.

New Year Is Coming...Shoot To Kill

2007-12-30T05:54:00.000-08:00

Feeling pretty good. Friday was a very creative day...a burst of energy. Lots of sketching, drawing, noodling.

I'm Libertarian. I took The World's Smallest Political Quiz about 5 times in the past 2 years. Always end up on the left hand side of the Libertarian sector.

This only bothers me because I've known a couple of Libertarians who I really don't agree with. I guess it's such a diverse political philosophy you can't nail people down to a narrow definition within it. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind.

Peace, and have a wonderful New Year!

Green Top Babe

2007-12-26T07:28:00.001-08:00

She is gonna totally kick your sorry, lazy, stinking ass back to the stone age. And she'll look good doing it.

Me, Myself, and All Those Wankers In My Head

2007-12-08T13:58:00.000-08:00

So here I am at the end of 2007 and I'm at a total creative impasse. Ah, it's to be expected. I'm 38 years old. I know what kind of bullshit goes on in this head and I didn't expect it to be any different this year. The Noodle Naysayers are having their way with me.

See, the NN are my personal demons. They love to torture me by constantly harping on the shortcomings of everything I do. That's too gimmicky, that's not cool enough, that's too hard, that's too simple, that's too controversial, that's too banal...Fuckers. Then, when I do get going on something cool, they change their strategy. They find my reservoir of passion and poke holes in it with their cursed brainpicks. My passion flows away like a river of golden mist and I'm left with a kind of numb void where there used to be a fire. So I drift away from the idea - whatever it was - and meander out in the pretty butterfly fields of noncommittal sloth. Once I realize what the Noodle Naysayers have done to me it's too late. I'm a goner and months have went by.

But I don't give up that easily, really. I keep at it. I come back around with a glancing blow to the chin of this collective monster and I do a little Ali shuffle and make myself feel better. It's all for a good cause, ain't it?

Once more into the fight, my friends. I feel an idea clawing its way out of my deepest subconscious ravine...

Zoa Space Fantasy

2007-09-25T20:26:00.000-07:00

The new comic is officially unleashed upon an unsuspecting rural population! Zoa Space Fantasy started airing at supersomerset.com this week to mass hysteria and threats of violence.

Heh.

Seriously, though, this is a spiffy little space comic with cool droids and stellar dragons galore. Having a really good time with it so please check it out. After a few weeks I'll start posting it on my Webcomicsnation site as well as
Random Order Creations.

Why Do Catgirls Wear Pants?

2007-09-03T07:13:00.001-07:00

I don't get it. I mean, if you're already covered with a layer of fur, why wear clothes at all? That's the conundrum I've yammered about before. Clothes are meant to cover naked human flesh and make it warm and/or appealing. If you're going to draw catgirls (or other animal-looking cartoon folk), why give them clothes?

Alas, making them proudly nude limits your audience. It seems people still have a hang-up about the natural form...the body in its own original beauty. Is it some kind of prude gene acting like a virus in the larger DNA pool?

I do have a cool catgirl comic idea I'm developing. I struggled with it for months...chainmail bikinis? Leather straps? Full, regular, practical garments? Teaser breast plates that show just enough that a nipple doesn't poke out?

Screw that. These are catgirls in a world that is supposed to reflect the natural state of life...brutal, honest, direct, passionate, loving, terrified, and robust. They're naked. Maybe some rings here and there, maybe some decorative accessories...these are proud catgirls. And badass too. And naked.

Anything else seems dishonest, in this context.

Site Overhaul

2007-08-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Yeah, http://www.randomordercreations.com has a new face. Pretty frickin' simple too. Bone simple. Much of the old content is gone now, but not forever. I plan on expanding the artwork galleries over time. For now you'll note that everything up there is pretty much PG-13-ish. No nekkid boobies right now. Not to worry, nekkid boobies will be back soon.

In the meantime I'm trying to get some goddam work done. More comics!

The Block and the Anti-Block and Pan-Gea

2007-07-14T05:34:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why it is, but I’m such a caveman these days. I rarely update any of my web stuff, rarely contact people (email, phone, or otherwise), and I don’t seem to be very concerned about it all.

That’s probably one of the reasons I’ve never quite “made it” as an artist. Of course this implies there is a gold standard to “making it”, which there isn’t.

So the past few days I’ve been fully immersed in late nights with Pan-Gea. I’m feverishly (well…maybe that’s a strong word) working on a short story called Echoes, written by my associate in crime Cyd Clark-Praxis. Naturally I’ve ran right up on the deadline – or past it – and I’m in the crunch zone. But the thing is…I like it here.

From the get-go Pan-Gea was an idea born of fire. I can spin descriptions of lost races in the ancient world battling the forces of evil but when it cuts right down to the bone we’re talking about warrior chicks fighting ugly monsters. I find that I enjoy the work best when I attack the page and don’t think too much about it. The kinetics are heated up and I burn through the pages more rapidly. I hope those who read Pan-Gea appreciate this element to the art. I don’t mean to create “rushed” art. I mean to let the art live.

Of course my biggest flaw is in not doing enough. I can (and have) created multiple page stories in a matter of a couple of days. Yet my output is pathetic. Seven Arrows is a 48 page story and it took me something like a year-and-a-half to complete it. Sure, we had a baby in that timeframe, but come on. There’s no excuse for pitiful output like that. I’m young(ish), I have time to work, and I have the ability to make good comics. Obviously there is some kind of block there and I’m not seeing it clearly enough to move it out of the way.

Ah, but that’s the journey ain’t it? We muck our way through life hacking at the creepers with dull machetes and occasionally we’ll see a brightly lit glade or a city of gold. Sometimes we just find quagmires. But its all so goddam electrifyingly fun I can’t find a reason to complain.

Now…about that silly block-thingie…