Paradise By The Backyard Lights

The picture is blurry and indistinct, but you get the basic idea:



One of the lights (on the fence wall opposite this one) appears to be a dud, but I need to pick up some more anyway.
(Oh, and if you noticed the cheesy reference to a Meat Loaf song in the title of this post, I should mention that the title of the last post was itself a cheesy reference to an Ozzy Osbourne song.)

Waiting For Darkness

I woke up this morning around 6 AM and found that my contact was irritating my right eye for some reason, so I got up and took them out, then went back to bed.
I woke up again around 8, said, “Nope,” and then went back to sleep until about 9.
After devoting much less time than usual to sitting around doing nothing in particular, I went outside and mowed the lawn. After that I broke out the hose and went around the house washing away some of the accumulated spider webs and various bits of grime.
I then showered, dressed, and headed over to Home Depot. It had been my intention to pick up this little Black and Decker chainsaw that uses the same battery as my other lawn equipment, but Home Depot doesn’t actually sell it.
I’d also planned on getting a shop vac, which I did, and while wandering around I saw these solar-powered LED landscape lights that I’d been thinking about buying, so I picked those up as well.
Once I got home I set up the lights in the backyard. Not really knowing how I was going to lay them out, and therefore not knowing how many I’d need, I picked up a 10 pack. After setting them up I decided that I probably need about 4 more. In addition to the 10 pack, they sell 2 packs (I guess the 1o pack qualifies as Biggie), so I’ll probably go back tomorrow and get some more.
In the meantime, I’m sort of waiting for darkness so that I can see how they look.
Before you applaud my amazingly high levels of ambition today, I should point out, in the interest of full disclosure, that I’d intended to do the mowing and the (low) power wash yesterday when I got home from work, but couldn’t bring myself to bother.
So really, I had two day’s worth of ambition to burn off today.
After I finished with the lights I called Dean to see how he was doing. He said he was sore, and that walking is a challenge, but otherwise he’s doing all right. His pain pills were kicking in, so he understandably cut the call short.
All of my ambition wore off at that point, and though I hadn’t taken any pain pills, I was ready for a nap myself, so I took one.
After about two hours I got up, made myself some dinner, and then sat down to write this.
Anyway, once it gets dark I’ll see if I can get a decent picture of the lights and post it.

Get Well Soon

My brother-in-law Dean got in an accident on his motorcycle today.
He’s okay, but currently he’s feeling about how you’d expect someone who got hit from behind by a car and thrown onto the hood of another car to feel, so I hope you’ll all join me in wishing him a speedy recovery.
Beyond that unfortunate news, not much went on in my life today. I went to work, I worked, I left work, came home, watched some recorded TV, went to the store to pick up some stuff, thought about mowing my lawn, decided against it, and now I’ve written this.

KC As In "And The Sunshine Band?" No, As In Kansas City? Oh.

You may be wondering why I haven’t posted anything in a couple of days, but then again, you probably aren’t because you either didn’t notice, or you just assumed, “Oh, Jon’s just being his usual lazy self.”
Well, first of all, screw you, and second of all, yeah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head.
Well, not entirely on the head.
After all, on Tuesday after work I met up with Scott and Jamie at the theater to see The Incredible Hulk with them, then we got something to eat afterwards, so I didn’t actually get home until after 9, at which point I had episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to watch. Also, I’d learned that there have actually been three new episodes of The Venture Bros., so I had to download that and watch it as well, and once I was done with all of that it was time for bed.
As for yesterday, well, yeah, I pretty much just didn’t feel like posting.
You didn’t really miss anything anyway. Seeing the Hulk movie for the second time allowed me to loosen my focus, as it was now familiar territory, which led my mind to begin to wander a little, especially during one scene.
In the movie, rather than being triggered by strong emotions like anger and fear, Bruce Banner’s transformation into the Hulk was precipitated by a simple increase in his heart rate. After making their escape from the military, Bruce and Betty have some down time, and nature begins to take its course. However, along with certain other parts of him, Bruce’s heart rate begins to rise as things get hot and heavy and he realizes that this moment of passion could lead to a lifetime of regret. Granted, this is often the case with sex, but in this instance the potential consequences were a bit different from the usual suspects.
Of course, I suspect that this is what Betty was hoping for, as she wanted to find out if Bruce’s increase in size is proportionate across the board when he Hulks out.
(I suspect that it is not. After all, why do you think he’s always so angry?)
In any case, as I leaned over and informed Scott, while watching this scene, my wandering mind meandered towards thoughts of what Hulk sex dialogue might be like.
So, if I had written an entry yesterday, you would have seen lots of things like, “Hulk give it to puny Betty!” or “Twist Hulk’s nipples!” or “Hulk coming!” or “Hulk swear, this never happen to Hulk before.”
Aren’t you glad that I didn’t write an entry now?
While it’s not a major component of my job, I will, on occasion, have to do some traveling.
Next Tuesday will mark the first such occasion, as I head off to exciting Kansas City, Kansas.
Yes! Kansas City!
Wait, Kansas City?
Oh.
Well, that’s just a good as, say, Hawaii, I guess...
In any case, today I finally managed to book my flight and hotel room, a process that took longer than it really needed to, for a variety of reasons.
First of all, for the purposes of traveling, I had to apply for a corporate credit card.
Well, I didn’t have to, I guess, but having one makes things a little easier. I’d expected to get the card last week, but as it hadn’t materialized as of yesterday before I left work, I decided to just charge it to one of my personal cards, so I called the travel people, arranged a flight, and was told that I’d be getting an e-mail about it.
I hadn’t gotten an e-mail by the time I left, but when I got home and checked my snail mail I found that I had gotten my credit card.
With no e-mail this morning, I decided to call the travel people again, and was greeted with, “I’m so glad you called back! We don’t have your number.” The nice lady explained that I don’t have a “traveler’s profile” set up, so they couldn’t actually book my flight and hotel.
So I had to fill out a form and fax it in to someone in payroll, who then faxed the form to the travel people, who entered my information into their system. Then I got an e-mail with my itinerary, which I had to reply to in order to confirm that it was in order, and then they actually charged my card and sent me my actual itinerary.
The end result of it all is that I get to get up really early on Tuesday morning and fly to Kansas.
That was pretty much the big excitement for the day.

Someone's At The Back Door

I've used Kelly Brook as a model for pictures in the past, but I've never actually done a picture of her.
Now that's no longer true. Well, that first part, the bit about using her as a model, that's still true, but the second part isn't.
Anyway, the point is, this is a picture of Kelly Brook, done by me.

Why Don't Somebody TELL ME Dese T'ings?!!!

Since I've started the whole five day work week thing I haven't been up on Sunday nights watching Adult Swim, so I'm a bit out of the loop on the current programming schedule.
Earlier today when checking out Scott's fancy new "Blog Roll" gadget, I followed the link over to Polite Dissent and learned that the new season of The Venture Bros. has already started.
In fact, it's already two(!) episodes in.
Since learning that I've downloaded both episodes and enjoyed the hell out of them, and set my DVR to record.
Anyway, I was annoyed about not knowing this, but excited to learn about it, and am now mightily pleased to announce that so far the show continues to deliver.

The Day The Universe Changed

There was a time when you could say, “Jon, you haven’t done a picture of Jessica Simpson in a long time,” and it would have been true.
Now, however, there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of reality, and if you were to make that same claim you would be uttering a falsehood, as, behold:



I nearly finished this last night, having only her leg to draw and some minor touch-up work to do, but it was getting very late, so I decided to hold off until today.
When today rolled around, despite how little there was left to do, I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and finish it, opting to go out into the world and do other things instead.
It had been my intention to take advantage of my irreligious nature and go grocery shopping while other people were in church, but on my way to the grocery store I ended up making a detour.
When my mom was out visiting we’d gone to the Leesburg Premium Outlets Mall – it was the first time I’d gone there since I moved to Leesburg in early 2005 – and I’d bought a couple of pairs of jeans from the Levi’s outlet.
However, a while back one of the belt loops ripped off of one of the pairs, so I’ve been meaning to replace it. For some reason – that I hate myself is the only possibly explanation I could come up with – I decided to stop at the Outlets today to do so. The place was crawling with people, and was just generally nightmarish, and as a capper, the lines were down for the credit card machine at the Levi’s outlet, so the cashier had to make the sale manually. Not being well-versed in this, it took him a while to figure out how to do it.
I stopped and got lunch at the food court before heading off to the grocery store, but, dreading the notion of going home and finishing the picture (I seriously don’t know what was up with my reluctance to finish it), I decided to stop at Ross and Staples first, before finally hitting the grocery store and heading home.
Even when I got home it took me a while before I finally did sit down to finish the picture.
And now it’s done. Whoopee.
When drawing, I’ve finally decided to start doing something that I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time: drawing the hair first.
I hate drawing hair, so I usually leave it for last. This approach has led to me having a folder full of pictures that are all but finished except for the hair, probably never to be completed and seen by eyes other than my own.
(I have a difficult time bringing myself to go back to finish pictures I’ve abandoned.)
As I said, it wasn’t as though this approach was a new idea, it just took me a while to finally implement it.
(I really hate drawing hair.)
Speaking of hair (Bear with me; I’ll make the connection eventually), I don’t think it really counts as a spoiler to mention that in The Incredible Hulk, after Bruce hulks out for the first time, he hits the road to evade capture by the government, and while he’s away his girlfriend, Betty Ross, moves on with her life and finds love with a new man.
This is a perfectly reasonable response on her part, and she can hardly be faulted for it.
However, as soon as Bruce re-enters her life, she drops her new man like a gamma-irradiated potato and practically jumps back into the arms of the man (and monster) who thoughtlessly abandoned her years earlier.
This is, of course, hardly unexpected, and is pretty much a standard trope in the world of comics and movies (and often in the real world), but watching this (necessary?) cliché unfold in the movie did prompt a few thoughts.
(As an aside, there was a comics blogger who, in anticipation of the new movie, got himself the Hulk DVD archive, which contains every Hulk comic published, in PDF form, up to 2006, and he read all of the comics in a series of marathon sessions and blogged about it. He makes frequent references to the nature of Betty’s character, concluding that she is a whore.)
The first thought I had was for a comedy sketch in which we see a happy young couple enjoying an evening stroll in a city park. The man nervously toys with the engagement ring he’s carrying in his pocket, waiting for the perfect moment to drop down on bended knee. The moment arrives, he pops the question, she says yes, and he takes her in his arms. Then, as the woman squeezes her new fiancé tight, over his shoulder she notices a figure standing behind one of the trees, watching them with a look of inconsolable sadness on his face. Why, it’s her ex, the man who disappeared from her life with no explanation five years earlier! Realizing that he’s been spotted, her ex makes a break for it, and she slips out of her fiancé’s arms without a word to chase after her ex, leaving her her new beau standing there bewildered.
The ex explains why he’s been away for so long, tells her that he never stopped loving her, and she instantly forgives him because she never stopped loving him, and as for the new guy, well, he’s SOL.
Cut to several months later and the couple is leaving a restaurant after having a nice dinner, and the woman spots a familiar face watching her from the alley. Why, it’s yet another ex, the man who disappeared from her life with no explanation six years earlier! She chases after him, he explains why he left without word, confesses her love for him, and she confesses her love for him, and as for her once and current beau, well, he’s SOL.
The point of the sketch would be to have still more exes reappearing, with ever-increasing frequency, to the point that immediately after reconciling with one ex, another one appears, and so on…
I thought it was funny.
The other thought that occurred to me was that it would have made for an interesting twist in the movie if Betty had not abandoned her new beau. After all, there were a lot of good reasons for her to stay with him: he’s a brilliant, successful psychiatrist, he’s not a wanted fugitive, and, oh yeah, he doesn’t turn into a hulking, rampaging monster whenever he gets a little stressed out, and he never put her into a coma after lashing out at her during that first transformation.
But no, that couldn’t happen, as Bruce was the love of Betty’s life, and we had to see just how strongly she loved him in scenes in which she fearlessly throws herself in harm’s way to protect the monster she loves. The tragic nature of the love between Betty and Bruce is, after all, an essential part of the Hulk mythos, and therefore must be a part of any adaptation of the material.
(The Betty-Bruce element was very sorely lacking on the TV show.)
Anyway – and this is where the hair connection comes into play – the man who was serving as a poor substitute for Bruce was one Dr. Leonard Samson.
In the comics, Samson does, in fact, undergo a gamma-related transformation that turns him into a hulking, non-rampaging, occasional super hero, with long, green hair, calling himself Doc Samson.
Anyway, the whole point of this little tangent is that watching The Incredible Hulk just brought to mind how often the new guy gets the short end of the stick in movies, comics, and real life when it comes to love, and that’s it’s actually kind of strange that this is not only viewed as acceptable behavior, it’s actually expected, to the point that the new guy will often step out of the way without complaint, as no person of quality would ever stand in the way of “true love.”
I’m not really complaining about that, just observing, and suggesting that every once in a while it might be a good idea to defy expectations and have the new guy be the heroine’s one true love.
Just a thought, from someone who has actually lost out to the new guy.