Unicorn Tea Party

Every word has to be carefully chosen.

You remember my last entry when I mentioned the spaceship comic? It has a logo now! It will be a few months before it starts up properly, sorry, but in the mean time I’ll post bits as they become postable.  Yesterday I wrote the first chapter, and I have to tell you… it’s awesome.

And there were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that he blases in to them like to bubbles.

Happy Bloomsday folks. Keep it in your pants when you’re hanging out at the beach OK? In about fifteen minutes I’m cutting out of the office to go home and watch Jeff play Ghostbusters. Is this a fitting Bloomsday celebration? Yes.

The art show at Vox Sacramento went great, apparently I sold five things! You can see pictures of the event starting here on Jill’s flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillallyn/3625650766/

I just got to look at the galleys from the children’s book I illustrated over this past winter, and I’m very happy with how it came out! It will be for sale here in a few months, I’ll be sure to let you all know when it goes up on amazon.

All this good art news is pretty rad, but the best thing is that I’m starting up a new webcomic soon and I’m not promising anything, but it just may have a space ship in it. Are you excited? I am!

Meanwhile, instead of throwing out all the concepts and procedures of the past, let us search them for values that can be put to use today.

Yesterday I collected up the past six years, put them in an envelope and mailed them off to Sacramento California so that they can be here:

I’m not going to lie, it feels good! I know they are going to be happy hanging at the Vox show, getting looked at by hordes of wandering Sacramento pedestrians. Then on to further adventures, any of which will be better than sitting out eternity in a pile here deep within the unmentionable recesses of Unicorn Tea Party headquarters.

Speaking of the past and unmentionable recesses, a couple months ago my high school boyfriend gave me a blog award! It’s true:

I think it is very shiny and awesome, and it’s also awesome to win a blog award! It seems so quaint,  like out of the past when blogs ruled the earth… It’s nice to hear from the past, and it’s even nicer to hear the past appreciates the future. There’s some wormholes getting kicked up around this event but I’m just going to ignore them and move on, it’s all good, right?  There were rules associated with this award but I think the statute of limitations is expired on that so in exchange I’m just going to set up a permanent blogroll of awesome.

Pretty soon though, not right now, right now I have to finish up this afternoon’s work so that I can get home to sushi and rifftrax Casablanca with my future husband!

PS: Sorry I’ve been away from blogging for so long – obstensibly this place is supposed to be for book reports, but believe it or not I just haven’t finished A World Between yet – I think I was too heartbroken over Anathem to be able to get into anything at all – it seems to be subsiding though. Right now I am completely absorbed in Drawn To Life, 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes by Walt Stanchfield.  It’s causing revolutions and the next step is going to be a doozy folks, thanks for hanging on with me, whoever is left! Peace out for now.

Fake Palindromes

PHONOGRAM 2: THE SINGLES CLUB #4 (of 7)
written by KIERON GILLEN
art by JAMIE McKELVIE, DAVID LAFUENTE and CHARITY LARRISON
cover by JAMIE McKELVIE

They’re the Single Club’s DJ ogres: Seth Bingo and the Silent Girl. But do sensitive hearts beat within shallow breasts? Hell, no. Join us for a story of sarcasm, extreme sarcasm and solipsistic snobbishness. Remember: they’re laughing at you. You may as well laugh at them. PLUS two back-up stories showcasing the dazzling art of DAVID LAFUENTE (Patsy Walker: Hellcat) and CHARITY LARRISON (Busted Wonder).

March 18 • 32 pages • FC • $3.50

The way things are going, this is probably about as close as my artwork is ever going to make it to a comic book store.  I’m pretty psyched, because I mean look, if you are only going to get to be one somewhere, this seems like the best somewhere to be.  It’s where I’d pick anyway, so I’m glad it worked out!

This is my favorite review of issue one.

time had a different meaning out here, you could expand or contract it at will

Norman Spinrad again. It is lucky I had this handy to soothe the pain of missing Anathem.  Plus it looks rad sitting on top of Jeff’s laptop. That’s what she said. Won’t someone please think of the children?

There are machines that can do this way better

You know how sometimes it feels like your face is smashed up against the ceiling? Like there is a pocket of helium in your skull and you keep bouncing off the top? All you can see is all the other faces smashed up against the same ceiling and all you can feel is all the piles of the past faces filling up the space under you, till there is nothing left except to feel the pocket of helium in your skull push against the barrier?

The rest of this blog entry is going to contain spoilers for Neal Stephenson’s Anathem.

Usually I don’t buy books in hardcover, I prefer the paperback experience for the most part, but I was too excited to wait around past the hardcover cycle for this. I haven’t read everything Stephenson’s written up to this point, I still have The Diamond Age to get through, and the rest of The Baroque Cycle after the first book to read, but I’ve read enough to wonder what there is left to write about after you have written about the past and the present and the future.

I didn’t read any reviews or blurbs or interviews, I just ordered the book from amazon and opened up to the first page. I read the first sentence of the forward that said if you like surprises skip this, so I skipped the forward, and I was surprised, and I liked it.

For two seconds I almost groaned at realizing this was going to be a whole book full of made up science fiction words, and then I immediately stopped caring and loved it, because the ceiling opened up and my head stopped hurting and there was a whole long world where you had a bolt and a cord and a sphere and a giant clock and you could spend your whole life reenacting an ancient battle with some weeds in a back garden, drawing pictures of it on some leaves and shoving them in a nook in a stone wall that you knew was going to last forever until someone else a thousand lifetimes later could find it and say hey that’s cool, I can use this.

I was immediately envious of this life and world, while not perfect it seemed to flow correctly, taking into account the pockets of helium inside our skulls, opening up the ceilings wide enough for each little skull balloon to float up as far as it could.

If you like to think about things like the flow of information through time, isosceles triangles, cats that are both alive and dead, orbital mechanics, phonomancy, and what it means to be a finite biological organism exsisting in an infinte universe, this is a fun book to read.

i just lied to get to your apartment

I drove across Pennsylvania this week to meet my brother’s first son, Elijah Joseph Onuska. He has the cutest most smooshable monkey face. On the way there, I listened to Heretic Pride, on the way back, I listened to Sarah Vowell read Assassination Vacation. I might have died and been born over one thousand times or more.

Today I finished Live From New York, An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, As Told By It’s Stars, Writers, and Guests. My favorite person on Saturday night live will always be Brian Hooper, who would re-do all the funny parts with his friends every Monday during art class, but these guys were cool too. Lorne has lunch with Paul McCartney a lot, by the way.

I started Anathem and I’m ok with that being like it is, I think it’s going to be fun.

the chewy

This past weekend was lovely and quiet. I made chocolate peanut butter chip cookies and did laundry and read more of the saturday night live book.  The steelers played hard and won it & so did we.

You better kick ass tomorrow night or else

Here is a 5 page preview of Phonogram 2 – The Singles Club by Kieron Gillen and Jamie Mckelvie. Penny is a cutie face isn’t she? I’m really looking forward to this run of Phonogram. The first time through I already knew the story, this time I get to be surprised every month, which is way funner.

Anyhow, If you keep clicking through, you eventually see my name, and page one of the B-side Kieron wrote for me to draw. I’m super amazed to see my work hanging out in such splendiforous company.

Now is the time to mention to your local comic shop that Phonogram 2 is starting up in December, and you would like it very much please if they would order a copy for you.  They’ll probably be grumpy about it and turn up their nose, but that’s half the fun of the comic shop experience, isn’t it?

moving forward in a positive direction

Success! Screens are on their way to Reading.