I'd Like to Imagine

I'd like to imagine that the people who read this think that I'm doing really important things when I'm not updating this blog.

Surely I must be.

Things like waking up at 2 in the morning, seeing that my alarm clock says 2:12 and deciding that that must mean I'm late for work.

So I get up and go out to the kitchen and stare at the empty coffee pot for about 2 minutes, then stare at the clock on the coffee machine, then try to get some mugs and bowls out of the cabinets before I realize that I am 4 hours early for work, turn off all the lights, and collapse on the bed.

It was sort of like sleep walking except I knew I was awake...I was just...stupid.

It was like stupid walking.

Very Special Bread

Another story for the keeds.
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EEK EEK EEK EEK EEK EEK EEK!

Your alarm clock blares at you. It's time to get up and go to school! You decide to put on your school clothes over your pajamas because it's extra comfortable and saves time. 

To save time brushing your teeth and combing your hair, you squeeze toothpaste all over the rug in the bathroom and roll around in it while scrubbing all over with your toothbrush.

There! Now you're sparkly clean and ready to start the day.

You go into the kitchen and Mom is making breakfast.

"Hey kid!" your Mom says, "I stayed up all night and made ten pounds of grits! Eat up!"

Your mom puts a giant tub hot buttered-grits in front of you and hands you a small snow shovel to eat it with.

You say, "Aww Mom! Not again!

You slowly shovel the grits into your mouth.

Suddenly, you hear something that sounds like a soft growl. You hope that you aren't hearing things because of the grits again.

A minute later, you hear the growl again. This time it's a little bit louder. It sounds like it's coming from the counter by the sink.

You look over at the sink but all you see is your Mom vacuuming the ceiling for the third day in a row. You go back to the grits.

Grrrr, There's the growl again! But this time it sounds like a word. No, it sounds like two words. It's a rumbly, scratchy voice saying, "feed me. feed me. feed me!"

It's definitely coming from the counter. Your Mom has gone into the back yard to wrestle the crocodiles so you're all alone in the kitchen now. You slowly walk towards the sound of the voice and it gets louder and louder. 

"feeeed me. feeeeed me. feeeeed me!"

You can reach out and touch the counter now but before you get any closer you say, "Who is that?"

"It's me!"

"Me who?"

"The toaster! I'm hungry! Feed me!"

You see the toaster now and when the voice speaks the toaster shakes softly.

"Toasters don't eat." you say.

"Most Toasters don't eat. But in the middle of the night I came to life and now you must FEED ME!"

"What do I feed you?"

"I need breaaaad!' The toaster shakes violently so that it is much closer to you now.

You run over to the pile of bread in the corner of the kitchen and grab two slices. You quickly put them into toaster and take two big steps back.

The toaster growls. Mmmmm. It heats up and turns a light shade of red. It starts to shake again, a lot this time, before it says, "Bleugh!" and shoots the burnt toast out of the top of its head. The toast hits the ceiling and bounces off and smashes through the window over the sink. 

"That bread is no good! I need special bread! Special bread!"

You scream and run out of the kitchen, grab you backpack and head to school.

That night, when you are sitting down at dinner. The toaster is back in its old spot and the window isn't broken anymore. The toaster doesn't say anything to you and your Mom and Dad don't say anything about the window being broken. Maybe none of it happened. 

Later, in the middle of then night, you wake up and think one thing, "BATHROOM!"

You walk to the bathroom down the hall. It's completely dark. You walk quickly because you really have to go. You open the door and turn on the light

AND THERE'S THE TOASTER SITTING RIGHT ON THE TOILET! 

You try to scream but the toaster shoots out two pieces of soggy bread and they get crammed in your mouth so all that comes out is, "muffled scream!"

The toaster says, "Listen to me. I need special bread. And there's only one kind of bread that is special enough for me. Pay very close attention. Beneath this house is a tiny room. And in that room there is a box. And in that box is the greatest bread in the history of bread. It is...the Golden Bread Helmet of Rancho Cucamunga! I need you to go to the basement and find the secret door in the corner. Go inside the door and you'll see a long hallway full of dangers, dragons, and arts and crafts projects. Once you complete all these challenges, you'll find the room and the helmet."

When the toaster finishes speaking you spit out the pieces of bread. "Okay," you say, "I'll do it...but you get out of the bathroom because I still really have to go!"

**5 minutes later**

You're in the basement now. It's completely dark except for the flashlight you brought. You're not sure which corner to check. You look at the first corner but all you see are some rats playing hopscotch with some cockroaches. That isn't it. You check the second corner but all you see is Gary Oldman sleeping in a sleeping bag.

In the third corner you see a tiny door. You'll have to crawl through it to fit. Before you open the door you take a second to prepare yourself for all the dangers that lay on the other side. You open the door and it's completely dark inside. You lean into the darkness and reach out and now you're falling. You're falling and falling and falling! Where was the hallway?! Where are the arts and crafts projects?! 

You're falling in darkness for a very long time, you have no idea which way is up or down. What's at the bottom of this hole? What if it doesn't have a bottom?

Thud!

You land on a pile of dusty potatoes that somehow break your fall. You turn on your flashlight and see a note on the ground that says, "Sorry about not having a hallway. It would've taken too much time and money. Love, the Toaster."

You look up from the note and see the door leading to the room with the box. You run in and see the box. It's a small black cube with no latches or handles or lid of any kind. You stand in front of the box and say, "Hey box! Gimme that Bread Helmet!"

The box shakes and a deep voice says, "You have correctly guessed the magical phrase, here is the Golden Bread Helmet of Rancho Cucamunga, chosen one."

The top of the box slides off and you shield your eyes from the bright light inside. You squint and see the helmet. It's a beautiful Golden gladiator helmet. You pick it up and hold it in your hands and cry tears of joy.

But then you realize, how are you going to get out of here?

Just then a trap door opens underneath your feet and you fall through it. This time you only fall for a short time because the next thing you know you're sitting in your kitchen and it's time for breakfast. Your mother sees you but before she can say anything your run over to the toaster and cram the Golden Helmet into the slots.

The toaster says, "Thank you! This helmet is delicious!" It grows bright red, then blue, then yellow. It rises into the air and spins around and around.

Then, the Helmet slowly rises out of the toaster. The toaster says, "I have transformed the Golden Bread Helmet of Rancho Cucamunga into the Toast Helmet for the Ruler of Bread. And now you, chosen one, are the Ruler of All Breads and Toasts."

The Helmet floats over and lands on your head. It fits perfectly. You are the Ruler of All Bread and Toast. You can create Bread and Toast anytime you want. And bread and toast will always obey your orders.

You will never have to eat grits for breakfast again!!!!! 

The End!

A Googolplex: a very short story for a very big number

(story for children where I work.)

This is a story about a BIG number. Bigger than one hundred, bigger than one thousand, bigger than one million, or a billion, or even 8 trillion 295 billion 333 million 600 thousand 13. 

One number, that is bigger than all of those others numbers put together, is called a googol. A googol is the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes. It's what you get if you multiply 10 times 10 and then multiply that by 10 and then multiply that by 10 and keep doing that until you do it 100 times. You get a 1 with 100 zeroes.

But there's an even bigger number than that and it's called a googolplex. This story is about a googolplex. A googolplex is what you get if you multiplied 10 times 10 but instead of doing that 100 times, you do it a googol times. 

"But Mr.Andy, " you cry, "I don't understand. What is a googolplex?!"

I'll try to give you an idea of how big  googolplex is. Let's say you had a magical sparkly purple backpack.

And then you rounded up all the goats and all the cows and all the wildebeests and all the buffaloes, and all the antelopes, and all the kangaroos in the whole entire world and plucked out all of their hairs one by one and put them in your magical backpack. Now all those animals and hairless and shivering but the number of hairs wouldn't be a googolplex.

And then if you took a book that had all the words you ever said, and all the words you ever read, and all the words you ever wrote or heard, the letters in that books plus all the hairs wouldn't be a googolplex.

-And if you went outside and started ripping out all the grass in your backyard, and all the grass in your neighborhood, and all the grass in the country, and all the grass in North America and South America and Africa and Australia and you went to Antarctica and took all the penguins too and put those blades of grass and penguins in with the words and the hairs, you still wouldn't have a googolplex.

-And so you decide you're going to get in a time machine and go back to when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and giant sharks lived in the ocean, and you meet a magical orangutan named the Great Maleenko. And he gave you a box of chocolates every second of every day of every year until so much time had passed that you were right back in 2013, and you put all those chocolates in your backpack, plus everything else, you still wouldn't have a googolplex.

And then you say, "Okay! Okay! I know what I'll do!" You make a long rope out of pencil shavings, eyelashes, and grains of sand and make it so long that it reaches the Moon and wraps around the Moon ten times and comes back. And then you pull the Moon down to Earth and smash it into little bits and count up the sand and moon bits and pencil shavings, eyelashes, and grains of sand and put all of that in your backpack, you still wouldn't even be anywhere close to a googolplex.

In fact, if you took the whole universe, and filled it completely, until it was bulging, with teeny tiny pieces of paper that said, "I am a sassy hippopotamus" and put all of those pieces of paper in your enormous pretty sparkly backpack, you STILL would not have a googolplex in your backpack.

In the end, a googolplex is just a really really really really really really really really really really really really really big number.  And also you have to clean out your backpack now.

Soy Joy Pancake

I made a picture for today but it's not finished yet. I'll post it when it is.

But it's the kind of happiness from when muddy robots get their giant filthy feet all over your carpet and ruin it. Stupid robots. Playing in the mud and sleeping in the woods.

At first you're so mad that you want to strike a tall person with a bassoon. But then you think about it and calmly clean up all the mud using the proper cleaning products and hard work.

And you take a step back and look at what you've accomplished. A little bit of calm thought can make all your messy robot problems look like a tiny bag of pickled t-shirts.

You're the king of right angles. Geometry works best with steady hands and steady glands.

Happiness is a Warm Pancake: And also the number 5.

I did one image of a pancake stack, and then 3 sets of 3 images related to that first pancake stack.

And then we get to 5 sets of 5 images of those stackcakes.

This first set of 5 is about a stack of pancakes in space as happiness.

It has primary colors with big thick, deep-dish pancakes.

It's like happy doughy children floating on oversized inner tubes down a river of beeswax and pocket lint. Electric Light Orchestra is coming out of sunflower heads.

And the children are eating the inner tubes until their bodies become donut-like and there's a giant hole inbetween their eyes in the middle of their head.

But they can't feel it so they're just pointing and laughing at each other.

That's that kind of happiness up there.

Why Pancakes in Space Make a Great Hero

Ask yourself why a stack of pancakes floating in the farthest reaches of the galaxy makes a great literary protagonist!

Ask yourself!

Come up with anything?

I'll give you a reason or ten.

The stack of pancakes isn't just some character--it's a mirror. It reflects whatever emotions and ideas you put in it and shows them to you. 

And why is that important?

Because in the same way you can't use your eyeballs to see your own eyes, you can't think about the stuff inside your head without bouncing it off the outside world first. It creates an image that matches the fluid amorphous, slippery thoughts in your head and then you see it and you realize, "oh! This thing is like the thing in my head!" And now you can think about it and do all kinds of stuff with it.

For example,   

The stack of pancakes aren't just experiencing icy frozen sadness, they are sadness. These sad sad pancakes are the way you come to understand sadness itself. 

Like if sadness was grape juice, you know, the pale kind of white grape juice. And in your head, the grape juice has just been poured on a plain, bare wooden table. Well, you can't really see it. Or know anything about it. It's all sloshy and slurpy and a puddle of mumbles.

But the stack of pancakes is like a drinking glass for the grape juice. You pour the grape-brain juice out of your ears and into the glass and you can look through the glass and see the grape juice and go, "Oh! That's grape juice!"

But instead you look at sad pancakes crying a single giant tear and you understand what sadness is. 

Then you can drink it and put in the toilet later and flush it away forever!

Or another example,

You can't just know what plaid is. The plaid pancakes show you--give you a medium to understand--the raw element of plaid.

This is deepening your human experience! Pay attention!

You think you can walk around on the street or ride the bus all day looking out the window and try to know what the true meaning of plaid is?

Impossible. The stack of space pancakes has made the abstract into a concrete reality. It's turned energy to mass at the speed of fun!

PLAID PANCAKES! It's like the last strike of the shovel at the bottom of the well before you unearth the violent geyser of soy sauce boiling below the surface.

(for our purposes, a violent boiling soy sauce geyser is a good thing)

And finally, before I drown completely in metaphors...

Only through the stack of space pancakes can you see the thrilling bemusement of complete and total goobery.

Lakes of Light

Lakes of light! Lakes of light! Lakes of light!

Mooses drink from lakes of light and shine my eyes to sleep.

Yesterday I was like...

run like you enjoy running.

It was hard. I imagined a cranky guru telling me, "You're nothing, kid. You run like a boy who wants something out of this. If you want something out of something go ask your momma to make you some mac and cheese with tiny sausages. You gotta run like you love running."

"But I'm just running!"

"No! No! No! Run like you love it."

"But...but...but it's just running." I try smiling but it turns into an ugly grimace.

"You're hopeless."

But that's the new goal anyway.

"The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed. 

Aiming therefore at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself to be carried, even with a slight tendency, towards the attainment of lesser things. Instead, you must entirely quit some things and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would both have these great things, along with power and riches, then you will not gain even the latter, because you aim at the former too: but you will absolutely fail of the former, by which alone happiness and freedom are achieved. "

Strawb3rry Nearing

Steadily, time passes on and imperceptible frames of the moment create the illusion of drifting. Plate of pancakes is drifting forward, apparently. Or, since this void is without direction, the pancakes are drifting towards the strawberry in the distance.

Or the strawberry is approaching while the pancakes remain motionless. Or neither is moving and the strawberry is expanding at a furious rate. We cannot know but we feel something. We feel the impending sense of a meeting, an encounter.

But things are happening much too fast. This moment, this first moment--how can we be prepared, plate of pancakes?

Have you grown cold? When was the last time you were microwaved? Is your butter just a frozen chunk of space detritus? You must prepare. You must be on your best, most gracious, behavior. You must prepare. You must prepare for this moment that has never happened and will never happen again and, for that matter, might as well not happen at all,

but it will happen. Whatever it is, it will happen.    

It is much much closer now!

How have you changed plate of pancakes?! Are you smaller? Has it grown larger? 

Oh glory, look at the swirling colors. Like a tornado of peaches whipping through a lake of day-glo Magic Markers! 

Can we eat it? Can we touch it? Can we wish for Christmas every day? Can we throw ourselves into its orbit and be carried on solar winds? 

This is a strange adventure. 

You are a long way away for a plate of pancakes, plate of pancakes. You are a long way away from anything a plate of pancakes should be doing. Do you miss sitting in the microwave, kept warm, waiting to be eaten? Do you miss the warm maple syrup and clinking sounds of knifes and forks being collected from the drawer? What about the smell of rich, dark coffee? 

You don't miss it now! Because this is the new! This is the shining swirling gleaming dizzying new! Grab on tight to your houndstooth trousers! We approach!

Oh! Oh my! Not like this! Not like this! It's not...It's not a good thing! Turn away, plate of pancakes! All that glitters is NOT gold!

It's got teeth like bon-bons and eyes like pickled brains! It's got typhoid and diabetes in its saliva!

 Head back to the distance! Head away from here!

Find a new plan and some comfort in familiar empty spaces.

3 Views--None Blue

But wait! What is this?!

The plate of pancakes was not alone. Even the void is not without onlookers. Who are these people of pancake? Watching from a perspective unknown--crowded around the shining sphere that encompasses everything we thought we knew and could ever know in finite space?

Do they hold our fate in their doughy hands? Will they provide the moves and shakes while we are left to hopelessly tumble in ever-shifting chaos?

We can make the strong assumption then that these are dark beings. Formed and coagulated from vile, nefarious batter in a skillet stinking of the drops off a greasy witch's brow. 

They are starving, ravenous figures feasting on dreams. Devouring the good as soon as it is obtained to make the hunger burn hotter and the sting of desperation sharper. Poison syrup pumps like sludge through their burnt, blackened hearts and oozes out of their soggy porous skin.

They peer like saucer-eyed wraiths dripping in the slime of indecency and other things that are not very nice at all! 

Surrender, plate of pancakes! There will be no glorious homecoming for you. You will surely lose any home to return to.






or maybe not. Maybe it's not like that at all when the light shines on the shadows.

Maybe we are only watched, only in the presence of, sundry forces with no right or wrong. No good or bad. Just the silly pancake people lost in their own roles played with full conviction and verve. 

Fly on, plate of pancakes!

You do right by you and somebody will do you right. 

One Buttermilk Sail

So, this is the first image then. Simple enough. Stack of flapjacks in space. Ominous glowing strawberry star in the distance. We'll see where it leads.

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Oh intergalactic plate of pancakes! I can relate!

Suddenly there's all this freedom and potential. Exciting! But it also feels like a void. A stack of grittlecakes as fine as you will not languish in a pile of rotten, molden olden trash.

 You've done it! You've finally launched yourself into space. Where comets fly and the golden asteroids flow like crunchy cereal bits on dairy cascades! Gimme a couple dollars and gilded martian underpants!

But, now. For the moment, where is there to go?

 Wait. What?

What kind of talk is that? You appreciate your freedom, plate of pancakes. Embrace it! Fill the void with dreams and your buttery majesty!

And keep your slappy, happy flappyjack sights on the strawberry in the distance!

The only choice for all stacks of pancakes is to choose to motor on.

Energy is the now!

Crappy Image Pyramid

I want to try this thing

1

333

333

333

55555

55555

55555

55555

55555

7777777

7777777

7777777

7777777

7777777

7777777

7777777

It's about repetition. I would do one image, one time. And then three versions of that image, three times. And then five versions, five times. And 7, seven times. 

The image above isn't the image. I'll figure it out.

Hopefully it will form into a kind of story, or something will emerge out of it. Or it will crash and burn wonderfully.

Los Plans

I think I'm going to spend this next year trying to convince myself I don't need money to be happy.

Because if you're happy without money, then you don't need money. Because doing things to get money are like some of the worst things in the world.

Some people have to stand outside and hold signs up for terrible businesses to get stupid people who are driving around with no person to go into their store because they say a guy waving a sign for it.

Some people make a lot of money by attracting attention to themselves and having no private life whatsoever and that makes them crazy and messes their kids up forever.

People do things they hate for years and years, like most of their life, to make money so they can have stuff.

But at the same time, money buys all the coolest things.

You can go to Busch Gardens, you can travel to Africa and watch lions eat lesser animals, you can buy a car that has bigger wheels than a normal car, you can fill your living room with couches and have an all-couch living room and serve guacamole to your friends out of an old wagon. You can buy a house and have a family and have kids that love you and don't starve and...you can MAKE A PERSON! Even college. College costs so much money. And insurance. Being able to know that terrible things could happen to you but people will give you money to fix it. That's pretty awesome. It's like a money-net. I'll just be high-wiring it over a pit of dubious circumstances.

So, the way I see it--getting money makes your life terrible, but not having money makes your life...terrible. Or maybe not terrible. Terrible is the wrong word.

Fun. Fun is the right word. Jobs aren't fun. Money is great at buying fun.

But I was thinking today about how much I love running, because I do it every day. And how, no amount of money could make me any better at running. Or enhance what it already is. It's free. Except for shoes and shorts but I have those things and they're super cheap.

And making these dumb blog posts and paintings and stuff. That's all free. Except for internet but we're only a few years away from that being free everywhere...probably.

So, if I can just work my fun job that I have, and run a lot, and make dumb pictures about toast, then I'll have fun--and I won't need that much money which will minimize the not-fun.

And that's my plan I guess. To work hard at the things that are fun. Even if I'm not all that good at them.

And maybe later I'll move to a place where I can go up in front of people and try to make them laugh. Cuz that's also fun.

Yep. That's the plan. That's my stupid stupid plan.

Calling out the Void

This one dude from a long time ago named Seneca apparently said, "If one does not know to which port one is sailing; no wind is favorable."

And in using Google to find the exact wording of that quote, I found someone who thought that quote was about the destination. That it has to do with the idea that if you don't know your destination, no wind can take you there.

I disagree! What a dummy he must be. To take so little from that quote. It's like taking one giant bite out of an unpeeled grapefruit, rind and all, and hurling it into the ocean. Saying, " and that's how you eat a grapefruit."

No! That quote isn't about destinations. It's about the wind. The wind is the punchline of the knowledge-nugget.

More specifically, it's about the favorable-ness of the wind. You wouldn't put that emphasis there if you were just talking about not being able to get to somewhere.

You'd say, "If one does not know to which port one is sailing; one will never get to port."

The basic idea is the importance of goals, yes. But there's a reason he's talking about the wind. And favorablility.

Wrong-Head McWrong says that without a destination, the wind becomes irrelevant, you are adrift.

FALSE!

The wind is still there! The wind symbolizes events that happen in your life, happenstance. The forces that act on you and change frequently and without warning. That's what the wind is. Events don't stop happening if you don't have a goal. Things totally keep happening to you. Just like the wind will keep blowing.

When Seneca says, "no wind is favorable", what he means is that if you aren't trying to do anything with purpose, everything will annoy you.

You can't differentiate a bad wind from a good wind so you'll be in forever caught in a stinky maelstrom of awful. All you'll be able to do is complain because you're at the mercy of happenstance.

He's making a statement about the natural human condition. It's pretty funny too, because he's sort of implying that being annoyed or unappreciative is something that requires no effort. It's the easiest thing in the world to do. You don't have to know anything to have the opinion that something sucks.

 But without reason and energy and effort, we are bound to be unhappy. Nothing will be good from your perspective unless you are pursuing something and you know where you're trying to go.

But, even without that, we can still complain. It's like in Pokemon when your pokemon runs out of PP for all its moves and it just uses Struggle. That's the one thing you can always do and it kills you a little bit every time you do it.



But the recoil is coming, Pikachu. The recoil is coming for you.

What really upsets me about that reading of that quote is that it leaves out this wonderful image of a sailor in a tiny sailboat out in the middle of the ocean with his arms crossed and his lower lip stuck out in a pout. He's got a tiny little sailor hat that's balanced on his giant forehead.

And the wind blows one way and he goes, "This wind sucks." And the wind blows the opposite way and he goes, "Now this wind sucks." And he has no idea where he's going. He should appreciate the fact that there is even wind at all. But we don't do that. It's a great commentary on cynicism and how it arises.

Escape from Yellow

I really like the blue man. I tried to add some motion. Blue man is all about that motion.

Yellow is all about that crazy grabbing/ dragging himself with his massive forearms. Check out his tongue. Nice.

The Toast Speaketh Further

All I want to do is make these pictures, you guys. Right now, at this moment, this is all I can envision myself doing. And in the future I'll be living in the Men's Room of a Barnes and Noble and they'll call me the Birdman because my sweater is covered in feathers. I'll become incredibly dense and slow-moving and less susceptible to cold weather.

I'll make pictures of this piece of toast in various situations reciting quotes from the Enchiridion and people will call me the Birdman because of my beautiful singing voice. I'll wake up at 5 in the morning every morning and accomplish a lot of things. I'll go on a lot of adventures and explore lots of little corners and alleys that you pass by all the time but never bother to investigate and when you do it's like you're in a brand new part of the world except it's just this little pocket surrounded by familiarity. I'll teach people about emotions and I'll have three toes on each foot so people will call me the Birdman.

I'll ask people for directions to a lot of different places all at once. Like, "How do I get from Wal-Mart to Lowes to 7-11 to my dream mansion?" I'll be incredibly dense so I won't be very popular with public transportation. I won't transport myself a lot of the time. My inertness doesn't mean worthless. I'll walk around with my hands shoved in my armpits all the time so people will call me the Birdman. As long as you live your life based on the choices you want to make, you probably won't be a shmoe.

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Let's talk about how much I hate this picture! Okay, first of all, I ruined it with those stupid words in that stupid font. They're totally unrelated to what's happening. Also, nothing is happening!

What is that blue guy supposed to represent? Someone who allows hindrances to their body be hindrances to their ability to choose? I guess that's what we're supposed to assume. But he's just staring at his with his giant vacuous eyes. I can't see his frustration with life! So, right away, the premise is terrible.

The toast is okay. It's the third time I've drawn him and he's developing his own...style.

But the blue guy just looks all fuzzy and smudgy. What is he supposed to be? Is his green hair balding? It needs sharper contrasts, better...lines and shapes and stuff.  Where's the depth, you amateur?! I kinda like the blue of his skin but why's it all smudgy?! Did I just absent-mindedly smear some darker blue over one side of his face? Is that what I did? Is it? Yeah. It is.

But at least I failed enough to learn from it. And as the Enchiridion says, "If your baby dies, it's probably not that big of a deal."

(seriously, it says that. Like, a couple of times.)

Tartmush

This picture sums up that moment in your life when you're going along being swallowed by one unrelated event after another until finally you stumble upon some novel thing and hold it up like a shining beacon of purpose and direction.

That's what I felt this morning when I crumbled up a Pop-Tart put it in a cereal bowl, put some Trail Mix I bought out of a vending machine in that cereal bowl, added some almond milk and ate it in the dark before heading it to work. Silently thinking to myself, "Look. Look what I've created. Be it good or a fiendish mix of sugar sugar sugar peanuts and dough? The shadows consume my secrets."

That's like a new checkpoint for your life journey. When it's time to reevaluate, you go back to that moment and see what path it lead you down.

Don't do me wrong now, future. This train's bound for glory.