And now it’s Day Ten

Today’s drawings were done to accomplish two specific requests, one from a kind Twilight fan who asked for an Edward and Bella drawing, and that it not be sarcastic because she sincerely loves Twilight and she didn’t want me being all, “Ha ha, Edward looks like a muffin with pointy teeth.” But my first drawing was so terrible that I couldn’t send it to her. I know I’m supposed to practice drawing people for this life list business (which perhaps means I shouldn’t have used action figures as models), but I can’t in good conscience send out something like this:

I went on to just try to copy the hands-and-apple Twilight book covers, but you know what else is hard to draw? Hands holding apples.

At the moment I’m reading the book What Was She Thinking? (Notes on a Scandal) by Zoë Heller (which is fantastic, especially if can forget you saw the movie), and she has a funny throw-away description of a student’s drawing where the hands in it look like “odd, fingerless trowels.” I, too, am working at Odd Fingerless Trowel level, so I backed out and drew this instead:

Secondly, for the lovely person who asked for a drawing of a sheep or a dog, I did this:

Can you see?? It’s a sheep standing next to another sheep in sheep dog’s clothing. It’s funny because it’s true. Also, I couldn’t remember what sheep have on their feet, is it hooves? I just let them be little pegs instead. If you only had two sheep pegs to stand on it would be hard to keep your balance, but with four sheep pegs you’re good.

Whoops

I was looking around inside a 7-11 store today while Jackson was negotiating with the Coke nozzle on the Slurpee machine. (Are banana Slurpees new? I was disgusted at first, but then a wave of sense memory overcame me, and all my childhood summers of eating banana-flavored popsicles flooded my mouth, and icy fake-banana flavor sounds magnificent right now.) Jackson was struggling with getting the lid on his cup, and two older boys were waiting for him to get it together and get out of the way, and my first instinct was to help but then I thought I’d probably just embarrass him. So I wandered over to the refrigerator section with pre-made burritos, bologna, hotdogs, and ham, and I started thinking, “Those hotdogs definitely cause cancer and bologna makes me want to die, but I’d eat the ham. I wonder if I could live off of whatever I found in 7-11 for a month?” Thinking that, of course, tons of people make do with food from small markets, either by choice or because they don’t have a larger grocery store nearby. Our 7-11 has apples and bananas, small bags of flour and sugar, charcoal, a few cleaning supplies, 500 kinds of chewing gum, 20 kinds of lottery tickets, milk, butter, and beer, but no eggs. So if I were to shop at 7-11 and try to continue doing the Paleo thing, I’d be eating mostly packaged ham, apples, and water. I like to think I could make do anywhere, but I’m sure I’d be all, “One little bag of Doritos won’t hurt,” and that would lead to “One little six pack won’t hurt,” and it wouldn’t be long before I’d be practicing yoga in the nacho cheese dip aisle and living on Ben & Jerry’s. Now I’m actually barricaded inside a 7-11, indefinitely. I have a cot in the back room and I’m armed to the teeth. I’ve constructed a catapult out of cannibalized metal shelving and I’m mounting an after-hours attack on the Chevron station across the street. I’ve never liked the way they’re always .5 cents a gallon higher than the 76 station next to the freeway, where you can also get a free car wash. Yes, I’ll join forces with the inmates of Taquería Rincon Alteño and the laundromat, and soon we’ll control this whole exit. No one will use our restrooms except people who buy something first!

Day Nineteen

I was at work today looking around for books to add to the Staff Picks shelf. There are a few books that I’m continually putting up there, like The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate and The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, but when all my favorites are checked out I have to start grabbing stuff that you’d reasonably believe a middle-aged woman whose book club only keeps on their e-mail list out of pity would recommend to you.

I was wandering through fiction hoping for inspiration when I found an old Wodehouse novel called Jeeves and the Tie That Binds. The inside flap said rather effusively that P.G. Wodehouse published this book on his ninetieth birthday, and that this was his best novel yet, and also that it was clever, delightful, uproarious, entertaining, and fun. Skeptically, I flipped the book over to see if there was more hyperbole on the back:

Nope! But he could still touch his toes. Best author photo ever.

Day Fifteen

Draw a squirrel choking a chipmunk.

Why does the chipmunk look like Hitler?

Put sunglasses on the squirrel!

Put a fedora on the squirrel.

Now give him a beard.

Let me do something to the chipmunk! *Adds little mustache*

Yes, Chuck Norris squirrel with platypus feet is killing swollen Hitler chipmunk.

You are welcome to suffer through me learning how to draw cartoon characters, but it’s not going to be pretty.

This is how I know my dog can read

Peewee had been eating the same canned food pretty happily for the last six months and then all of a sudden I couldn’t find it in the store. After digging around a little while I realized that they’d changed the label on the can. Nutrisca food was now Dogswell.

I bought the Dogswell, and yesterday I was trying to figure out why he won’t eat it. We’d always mixed a few tablespoons of the canned food in with another brand of dry food and he’d always vacuumed it right up, but now he was walking away, leaving the whole mess untouched. Did they change the food inside the can along with the label? It looked the same. Was he just sick of it? He rejected all three different flavors. Was he feeling unwell? He was acting normal on all other counts. Was there something else going on?

More to the point: can my dog read?

I feel like they want us to read Dogswell in two ways: “dogs well” (Our dogs, they are well) or “dog swell” (My dog’s doing swell, thanks). The second way is kind of a stretch, as I know no one who uses the word “swell” as a descriptor in the year 2011 unless maybe, MAYBE, they’re over the age of 90. As a child of the 70s I’ve been known to say anachronistic things like “Right on,” and a friend of mine who’s slightly older says “Far out!” once in awhile, which reminds me of John Denver, who was once so earnest, singing about chickens down on the farm, and this friend of mine raises chickens.

But the third way I read Dogswell, and which had to have come up in a meeting or two, is “dog swell” as in Dear God, my dog is swelling, and if we don’t do something soon he’s going to burst.

I know nothing about creating brands beyond the fact that it must be terribly difficult. Even my non-swollen dog who can read knows that. (Not being a member of the Grammar Police, I’m not sure if you’re supposed to use “who” when referring to a dog, but writing “Even my swollen dog that can read” seems callous. My dog, apart from being 7/8 human, reads human gestures and body language at at least a middle school level. He’s no Albert Einstein (nor is he a swollen Albert Einstein) but I’d pit him head to head against any one of those mob wives on TV.)

My point is, if your brand name word play is successful in only two out of three interpretations, and the third one makes dogs who can read walk away from your food because all they can think about is puking or bursting, maybe you should dig a little deeper for a new name. Admittedly, this is coming from a woman who saddled herself with the name Fussy ten years ago, and half of whose search referrals come from people who are clearly misspelling the word pussy. So, yeah, measure twice, cut once.

I just went to their site and laughed out loud because they also have a “Catswell” line. Oh, God, I need to leave the house today.

HULK CONFUSED

Hulk last one to hear that new movie in works about Hulk’s life, Hulk’s struggles, Hulk’s search for love in cold, indifferent universe. The usual. People already know this story, think Hulk to self! Why everybody co-opt Hulk’s story, think they can make brutal poetry on the back of Hulk’s pulp beginnings? They not Shakespeare.
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Halloween

Halloween this year was unexpectedly awesome. Jackson has officially transitioned from cute and/or superhero costumes to spooky ones, and though we thought he’d achieved this milestone last year, we too-late discovered that 2009′s skeleton zombie costume actually frightened him so much that he gave himself nightmares by wearing it. However, 2010′s pulsating, bloody Scream mask was by all accounts a spectacular success, both socially and psychologically. (more…)