Monster Alphabet Book


From Monster Alphabet, available at Hello with Cheese. Found in Comics & Pop Artist Alley at Dragon*Con 2012.

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GKP
I will get back to gratuitous kitten pictures as soon as I recover from Dragon*Con. It’s been years since I’ve deliberately stayed up into the wee smalls. The kilt blowing was so worth it. The Rocky Horror Picture Show sing-along was disconcerting. I had the privilege of seeing it in Greenwich village with the original shadow cast. As I waited in the interminable Dragon*Con line, I counted back to when that was. Let’s just say it was before most of the rest of the folks on line were born. Eeep.

BTW, Wikipedia reports that, “In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.” Off topic, but cool.

Also, “The annual Dragoncon showing, performed by Atlanta cast Lips Down on Dixie in addition to their standard weekly shows at the Plaza Theatre, also draws audiences of 3,000 or more each year.” (Wiki) Yup. Sounds about right.

Cross-Fertilization


“The mastery of any medium using minimal elements has long been considered a noble aspiration.”

Understanding Comics: The Invisble Art by Scott McCloud [Morrow 1993] p83.
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“Adopt a classical position, resist all fads and gadgets, and ride the horse quietly and softly between the two straight lines of the stirrup leather and the elbow to the horse’s mouth. It’s simple. It’s just not easy.

Training The Three-Day Horse and Rider by James C. Wofford [Doubleday 1995] pp143-144.
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What non-riding sources inspire you?

Fantasy & Science Fiction Cover Art

McKinley‘s horses, including Greatheart in Beauty, may be wish-fulfillment but have enough barn odor to be engaging. I’ve never warmed to characters that are shaped like horses but do not act like horses. Well, except for the robot horse Fess in The Wizard In Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff [Ace 1982].
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Dinner by Powers is good, if odd, but has nothing to do with horses beyond this most excellent cover.

Winning Colors by Moon combines space travel & Eventing. Seriously.
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Haven’t read either one. Included for the pretty pictures.

There Is No Control-Z for Reality

Blogging commentary for July & August.

In his song “Online“, Brad Paisley sings about a lonely guy whose sauve index increases exponentially when he communicates through a keyboard:

’cause even on a slow day I can have a three way
Chat with two women at one time

I’m so much cooler online

At one point, I was more willing to write about current events than to discuss them. This began to worry me. Was I more comfortably confessing my inner soul to strangers on the Internet than sharing with friends? That can’t be good.

However, I think it had more to do with getting work done than with psychic turmoil. Lawrence Block (I believe) divided writers into those who like to hash out their projects beforehand and others who feel this dissipates the energy. A member of the latter camp, I didn’t want to talk about current events when I was still trying to get the phrasing right in my head. Afterwards, wanna know what’s going on in my life? Oh, just read the blog.

This was more likely to be the case when I was posting monthly (Back To Eventing & Back To Riding). Then, I had weeks to prepare and ponder. These days, after 256 daily posts, I rarely have a idea what I am going to say today much less in the future.

I still want to point people at the blog when there is a question to which I do not have a short answer, as in Why don’t you buy another horse? Having spent a week discussing it [Horse Shopping 1-4], I want to hand them the dates and say, Oh, just read the blog.

Bloggers, would you rather blog or talk?
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Gratuitous Kitten Pic

An untenable surplus of blogging assistants.

My desk is an enormous wooden law desk, yet all three kittens try to fit between me and the keyboard. This gets harder as they get bigger.