And you've surrounded yourselves with excuses for why the next act won't begin, and it's clear that the kids aren't going to be all right again. -- Matthew Amster-Burton, Allright Again

An Art! Downy Ocean

Here’s a serving tray and coaster set I made as a Christmas present for some friends of the family. The sand was sourced from the beach outside their house.

I still struggle with the clear pours, but I’m improving.

Happy New Year. Or “New Year” at least. I guess “Happy” will take some work.

An Arts! Because it’s time to be happy or sad.

This is a scheduled post, because I got a bottle of champagne and a bottle of draino, so I’ll be ready to toast either way. Anyway, I haven’t been writing much as you can tell, but it’s because I’ve been putting a lot of time into my art. I finally built up the nerve to start working with resin. Results are mixed.

 

Resin Art
This was an attempt to do a dirty pour from a kit. It didn’t work out; the colors mixed instead of staying separate the way acrylics do. Not sure why; it was supposed to come out as purple and green swirls instead of an even sort of purply-green mess. Also, there’s gold flake in there, but they all just clumped at the top.
This an acrylic pour from another kit. There’s a layer of textured paint on the bottom that is supposed to give it depth, but I don’t think they provided enough to have any effect. I like parts of this, but there’s too much black and the cells didn’t open up the way I wanted.
I like how wavy this is, but I was going for something more spacey with these colors. I’m going to try a resin surface treatment on this one.
These are going to be gifts. They’re order-of-play markers for boardgaming. The charms around the outside indicate the direction that play proceeds, and the center charm points to the current player, first player, or dealer. They’re reversible to accommodate games like Uno where the direction of play can change, and designed to be placed on a lighted pedestal. These are photographed in the counterclockwise orientation just because I couldn’t get the lighting right to photograph the other side.
See, here’s one lit up and oriented in the more common clockwise position
I made a soap dish! Functional art. It also glows in the dark. Very slightly, just enough to help you find it during an overnight bathroom break.
Okay actually I made two. I kinda want to make a third one in green, but green doesn’t match any of my bathrooms.

 

Good luck and god speed.

Just a Dandy-Lion

Last week, my daughter performed in a production of The Wizard of Oz. She was a member of the Lollipop Guild. Also the lead apple tree. Also a denizen of the Emerald City. Also a Winkie. I get the impression that as an actress, she is “good, for a little kid”

Anyway, for some reason, she asked me to AI-enhance a photo I took during the performance, and what came out was kinda wild, like some sort of surrealist interpretation of The Lion King, so I thought I’d share it with you.

She’s the one with the nightmare face half out-of-frame.

Never Forgot What They Took From You

And yeah, I am so happy that they’re leaving Calypso in the canon. Yes, we don’t know what could possibly justify them retrofitting Discovery back to its 23rd century configuration, but it was hilarious to watch them scrubbing the “-A” off the hull.

(Just off the top of my head, Craft appears to come from a time when the Federation has degenerated into an imperialistic state. Perhaps Kovitch anticipates that a symbol not of the 32nd century but of “The Long Ago” would be required)

Also, now that we know that Discovery’s state is a cover, it’s possible that Zora’s claim to have been abandoned for a thousand years is also not entirely honest – that she was ordered to claim to have been left there in the 23rd century. Better still, “Calypso” ended on the sad notion that Zora would probably remain alone forever, but now we know that she isn’t lost: they put her there deliberately, and made plans to retrieve her. Might not pay off, but it seems a lot more plausible now to imagine that she’s recovered not long after those events, given that we now know that it was Craft she was waiting for all along.

Anyway, here’s me being angry about the new Taco Bell architecture.

Stock Photo of a '90s Taco Bell
Stock Photo of a ’90s Taco Bell
Taco Bell Construction Site
My Local Taco Bell Mid-Upgrade to Modern Grey Cube.

Oh for the love of…

So I finally start writing again after the strikes, and boom, my web host goes down for like a day and a half last Wednesday, and then again for about six hours this past Tuesday. Plus, I’m currently working a modified schedule, so I only have so much time available.

And what with the holiday, I feel like maybe it would be okay for me to be a bit lackadaisical before addressing the triumphant appearance of everyone’s favorite I Can’t Believe It’s Not Twilight vampire.

See you next week.

Not gonna cross the picket line

I’m not sure if writing a weekly essay about Star Trek counts as crossing a picket line or promoting a work by striking union members, but I think maybe it would be best if I waited until either they sort this out or I am more confident in the answer before posting more of my long-form analysis.

So I’ll just say: Spock/Kirk good, Spock/Christine eh.

Here’s me Playing with AI

I asked Dall-E 2 and Nightcafe to show me a promotional poster for Peter Falk as Columbo on the USS Enterprise.

Neither of them seemed to quite know who Peter Falk is, but were kind of consistent about him being some form of James Garner?

Dall-E Seems to think Star Trek is a 1970s East German production
Nightcafe captures the 1960s television production aesthetic a little better, but I’m thrown by how much better Craiyon was at reproducing Peter Falk.
See, aside from the horror eyes, Craiyon understood who Columbo was.

Special bonus: Here's Columbo as a Pokemon.

I assume this will be coming soon to soothe the hurt manbabies

Since it’s Halloween soon, I’ll do a thematic one.

As you all know by now, the latest incarnation of Scooby-Doo is outing Velma. This has made exactly who you’d expect to be angry very angry. Apparently this is the first time in fifty years that the show about a group of itinerant hippies, one of whom is perpetually stoned, who travel the country in a psychedelic van with their dog, proving that the only true monsters in the world are old white men who are willing to screw over the little people in the pursuit of money has aligned itself with the cultural left.

Whatever. When they tried to make a female-led Ghostbusters, there was rioting in the streets and it had to be immediately “corrected” with a direct sequel to the original films that was kind of mediocre and cruised without putting in much effort on a diet of pure memberberries.

So I got a little help from Nightcafe and came up with this:

I might do a few more of these if I can find the magic words to make NightCafe spit out a picture i really like.