. . . tell you how many times I've been in exactly this situation with Mark Shea.
My eyes are bad–so much so that when I go into the optometrist's office and hand him my glasses at the beginning of the examination, he takes one look at the lenses and says, "Myyyyyy! You *are* nearsighted, *aren't* you!"
And did I mention that my family gets cataracts really early?
Down yonder, a reader writes:
Jimmy–I'm only a casual fan of B5, and haven't shelled out for the script books, so I won't ask you to go into detail about how the Sinclair version differs, but one speculation that's been bugging me for years:
Would the original series have ended with the end of "World Without End" (the Sinclair/Valen reveal)?
The first part of the Battlestar Galactica finale (Daybreak, Part I) has now aired, and next Friday will have the two-hour conclusion of the story.
(from my blog Old World Swine)
Well,
life is full of surprises, ain't it? Remember a while ago, when I was
asking readers to send in their impressions of the local and personal
effects of the recession and the stock market crash? I made my own
observation at the time that I was seeing very little evidence of it,
as yet, aside from lower gas prices. Then I did make note that some
local stores would be closing (a Starbucks, Circuit City, Linens &
Things).
Now the evidence I asked about has come up and kicked me in the aft end… as of Friday I was given the official two week notice that my job is being cut. My last check will arrive in a month.
It
was a surprise, but not a deep shock. I had been aware for some time
that the amount of work they had for me to do was steadily declining.
When I started in my position, I was kept busier than a grasshopper
kicking the seeds out of a watermelon, but in recent months I had not
only begun to somewhat, shall we say, stretch the projects I
had, but had actually started to create my own projects (which has
never been in my job description). I began to create a library of stock
illustrations that (based on my experience) I thought might be useful
in the future. As this library expanded and went largely unused,
though, it began to feel very futile. I was sitting at my desk, drawing
a check and drawing (literally) whatever I thought made sense… food,
mostly. Our company had used a lot of food art in their packaging.
I had the odd hot-potato-we-must-have-this-by-Tuesday
job to break the monotony, but it began to feel like my own company was
sort of holding me on a retainer for those increasingly rare instances
when I was actually needed. I began to get frustrated and a bit
depressed, which is a horrible position for a Christian.
The
Christian should always be eager to go wherever God leads and do
whatever is needed without complaint and with sincere gratitude.
Constant thankfulness should be the default position for any
follower of Jesus. Life is just too variously and mind-bogglingly
wonderful – too "lopsidedly benevolent", as I have put it before – to
allow oneself to mope because this or that aspect of it isn't meeting
one's expectations.
So, when I began to get frustrated and
depressed at my job, I knew something was deeply wrong. I was also
feeling a more insistent desire to move ahead with my fine art, and the
day job (with its two-hour daily commute) seemed to suck the life and
energy (and creativity) out of me. But I have a family to support, and
as long as I could keep the job, I figured that was where God wanted me
to be.
So, it looks like I'll have a lot more time to devote to
the fine art and to Catholic (and other) illustration. I'll be putting
up some illustration and cartoons from time to time, as well as my
painting. There are new avenues open to me, now, in terms of getting my
art out there in front of people. As it turns out, instead of painting
this past weekend, I spent the time getting my Etsy store up and
running. Etsy is a cool, fairly new outlet for handmade goods and art,
and I've been meaning to get my online store – er, gallery – started for some time. I may even have time to begin that series of the Mysteries of the Rosary I have been wanting to do.
So, check it out. Tell your friends!
(Thats www.oldworldswine.etsy.com)
The Esty site will most likely be where I direct people from my Daily Painting blog
from now on, though I have had some early success with E-bay and may
continue to use it. I don't know. You would think I might have more
time to blog here at OWS, now, but that's not likely. I'm going to have
to hit the ground running if I want to maintain any kind of steady
income in all this, and so I'll be treating the fine art as a full-time
job (and possibly more). I'm grateful, though, that I'll be able to
make it to daily Mass.
Your prayers would be most
appreciated. At the moment I'm kind of excited at the possibilities,
and am looking at it as an adventure… Wheee! another big dip on the
roller coaster of life… but it is easy to talk that way when the
checks are still coming. We have been through some lean times before,
and the romance of such a position fades quickly. The sense of
adventure turns into a rather permanent knot in the stomach.
As Chesterton has said (and I have often quoted before);
Our society is so abnormal that the normal man never dreams of
having the normal occupation of looking after his own property. When he
chooses a trade, he chooses one of the ten thousand trades that involve
looking after other people's property.
I have to say that, as a Distributist, I do look forward to looking after my own property.
The final ten episodes of Battlestar Galactica start airing this Friday, and the producers plan to answer a bunch of questions, some of which have been around since the beginning of the show and some of which were only recently introduced: What happened to Earth? What are the Virtual "Head" beings (e.g., Head Six, Head Baltar) that only some people see? Can Human and Cylon live together? Who lives and who dies? And, of course, who is the final Cylon?
I'm going to tell you.
Or at least I'm going to tell you who I think it is.
I've made a significant number of BSG predictions before and gotten more than my share right, so I'm going to put my cards on the table here and tell you who I think the clues point to.
If I can shift from a cards metaphor to a dice metaphor, sometimes you have to roll the hard six, so here goes.
Continued below the fold for those who don't want to read this speculation.
Hey, Tim Jones, here.
Today marks the *official* launch of my long anticipated (by me, anyway… I always was a procrastinator) Daily Painting blog.
Now, "daily painting" doesn't mean necessarily a painting a day…
it just means I plan to paint daily, and I'll offer that work on
the new blog (via e-bay). In practice I look for this to shake out at about
3 paintings a week, though that may increase as things progress.
These are mainly small – even miniature – pieces, but made with all the care I would give to any of my larger artworks.
I will also soon be offering some very special pricing on some of the art from my old fine art website, as I move into this new strategy.
Up
until very recently, making a living in original fine art was mainly a matter
of finding gallery representation (in viable commercial galleries) and
building a reputation (and generating income) that way. Finding
publicity through art competitions and art publications could help to
make you more attractive to these galleries. But the whole process of
vetting and courting galleries – in addition to actually trying to get
any work done (on top of having, like, a day job) – has been like hiking through molasses. One needs almost
to work full time just on marketing, scheduling competitions,
hob-nobbing and the like. It doesn't help that I'm such an intense
introvert.
With the advent of the internet, though, there are now
more and more artists taking their work directly to the public. It's a
transition I've been turning over in my mind for some time, but
hesitated to jump into.
I have now made the jump. That means that
the prices I had on a lot of my artwork will be reduced because I no
longer need to consider the requirements of a third party (the
galleries) or worry so much about impressing collectors that might drop
by. So, in addition to the small daily painting pieces, watch for some
larger work as well.
The long and short is that I would rather
paint – and make my living from painting – than not. If that means
pricing my work so that it will be more accessible to a wider audience,
then that is a change I am happy to make. It could even be seen as very
Chestertonian… a Distributist approach to fine art.
I'll be
offering occasional opinions and commentary on my work interspersed
with with the new paintings, but the next several posts at the new blog will just be
new paintings offered for your viewing pleasure, with a link to the
e-bay auction page for each piece.
Do check in often. I hope you like what you see.
Oh! Also please feel free to drop a line in the combox.
EDIT: Comments below revised.
SDG here with another Christmas song from Straight No Chaser, this time a straight rendition of Silent Night.
And also, I can’t resist posting a non-Christmas acapella song pointed out to me by JA.o reader Matheus on another subject beloved of JA.o fans. I have a few comments on this one below — but don’t read the comments below until you’ve watched the second video!
Straight No Chaser – Silent Night
Star Wars – John Williams Tribute
Comments on the John Williams tribute below.
(you did watch it, right?)
HT to Bill for pointing this out: This song was written and recorded by an acapella group called Moosebutter. A different YouTube video is available showing , but not this recording of it (you can tell it’s the same voices, but not the same recording). The video above shows a “paid YouTuber” name Corey Vidal lip-synching a different recording of the song. Thos video was apparently made with Moosebutter’s cooperation, but lots of people (including me at first) haven’t glommed that Corey isn’t actually singing. Anyway, I’m keeping the Corey version here because the recording is cleaner, with less mugging, and I like the way it sounds better, but it does dampen my enthusiasm to know that that’s not the real guy singing.
One of my favorite bits is the E.T. theme, where they’re doing Luke complaining to Uncle Owen about not getting to go to Toshi Station for power converters — they get Luke’s whiny tone exactly right.
I also love the goofy dissonance between the soaring, majestic Jurassic Park theme and the sinister dialogue they put over it.
SDG here with a follow-up to my June post on family films of 2008.
As the year draws to a close, it looks like my sense of 2008 as a good year for family films was on the money. In fact, the premise of my June post became a full-fledged article which appeared first in the December issue of Catholic World Report and is now available in an abridged version at Decent Films:
Family Films Move Forward in 2008
Unfortunately, many of the films that, in June, I was looking forward to hopefully didn't pan out. I knew some of them wouldn't pan out, but I was hoping for more than we got.
The one spectacular exception, of course, was Wall-E, the crown jewel of the year's family films, as I hoped it would be.
And today, a worthwhile film opens that wasn't even on my radar in June: The Tale of Despereaux.
At least one other film, Bolt turned out to be better than I expected. OTOH, City of Ember turned out to be a visually stylish disappointment, kind of cool but not very good. Journey to the Center of the Earth was a little more fun, but also not exactly good.
Fly Me to the Moon was barely a flyweight contribution (and the buzz I heard on Armstrong's involvement was wrong — it was Buzz Aldrin who voiced himself, which makes a lot more sense on multiple levels). And The Half-Blood Prince didn't even arrive — it was postponed until next year.
Still, between Wall-E, Horton Hears a Who, Kung Fu Panda, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Prince Caspian and The Tale of Despereaux, plus a raft of tol'able also-rans… not to mention, for families with older kids, The Express and Son of Rambow… definitely a good year, all in all.