See, this is where playing warcraft comes the most handy: obsessing about tier sets in the real world:

CHEST - HANDS - LEGS.... HEAD

Gods, this shit is so beautiful...

But this is what makes it powerful, also.. And I need it to be fierce.

The day began with an excellent sandwich. What a surge of life it is, to bite into a simple meal and find yourself going from stale, sleepy, senseless state into a liquid, overwhelming, layered action. And I continue to be in awe of the alchemy of it: just bread, just some proschutto, some rocket, some mozzarella chese, very thin, and some cream spread. Mildly heated up, and crusty. All of that combined in one perfect bite, turns mouth in the lead sensual trap for pleasure.

Things seem to be looking good for the book buy-off.

I'm mildly disturbed by the fate of Anne Boleyn. It's so freaky, fiction that's not really fiction, to see a room where a girl slept in, where she was dressed and tended to by hairdresers, the Bible she read and wrote into, knowing at some point that strange, troubled creature was simply beheaded and tossed into a basket and put into an unmarked communal grave, utterly abandoned by everyone. A prominent historic figure at one moment and a nameless bloated heap of meat and stenched gauze the next...  I'm thinking of adopting her... I'm sure Spotter wouldn't mind a friend.

Some new thingies I'm working on...

Not done yet. I'm letting them simmer - there are always details that are giving me hard time before I wear them out, like hands, eyes, background shading.... But after a  couple of days, they are ready to play nice :p

Some of these should look okay in frames. And i enjoy swinging from one style to a totally another. The General seems to like them, too, as he's taken to walking the dawgie these days :D

vOGUe nIPPON

Sometimes I think that the Japanese Vogue isn't too sure what to do about trying to be like the other western Vogues. The models look dead, make up is ghastly, hair is boring and costumes are, well, as bad as poses, I suppose... Shame on photographers. These are the people that invented the damn things!!

But then they leave me in the dust with my mouth open and thinking: damn.... I'm not worthy :D

I've started working on "grown up" dry pastel thingies. Am using some of the photographs that aren't very well executed (or some that are really well executed, not to be unjust to Porty...).. Did my autoportrait as a warm up. I think it's kind of great: pretty ladies are SO easy to draw :D Ha ha :P

    Not to mention pretty ladies sell best of all. Pity I'm such a fan of asymetrical, unconventional males. In theory. ;)

LoL.. I actually dreamt I was about to be slaughtered by redneck canibals...

How exactly I got myself into that mess I don't know, but a young guy and me were being taken to some small farm on a rim of some small village a little bit up in the hills - otherwise a very idyllic, picturesque scenery. We were just pushed into a pig sty and considering mama redneck was just slaughtering one of the pigs and son redneck #3 was making sausages from freshly washed small intestine, the guy and I could pretty much tell what was going on.

      For two days we were kept and they threw food at us and demanded we eat everything. There were five or six people - three sons to a couple and the father's brother or friend or something. I think they were even bargaining about selling me or us to a further customer. Oddly enough, as absurdly horrific our situation was, I could not bring myself to be particularly desperate. Nor did I feel like I need to rescue the guy, whose condition was rapidly deteriorating. Best I could do was lead by example.

      I used one hand to eat some food so as not to get too weak, but I used the other to shove the rest under the old pig shit and thus hide it. I did a lot of squats, running on the spot and, as much as I could, sleeping. On the third day some other people came, most of them with hunting rifles (but I noticed they are buck shots and thus used mostly for overall close range) and we were taken back towards the woods and the cars. I was considering hitting or stabbing someone and thinking if perhaps I'll be lucky enough for an opportunity to present itself and give me a head start, but I knew, from Rincewind's doctrine, that running is something you start at any given time and don't stop for anything. If things will happen to you, they'll catch up on you of their own inspiration. You just run.

       Hoping the guy will do the same, and hoping he'll get far enough to save himself, I simply charged into the shrubbery, blindly, almost hysterically and apathetically at the same time pushing people off, falling, rolling, running again, hearing gunfire, angry shouts, some drunken laughter, lots of pursuit and constantly wondering if maybe I've already been shot and the adrenaline decided to keep that detail from me. But I found enough strength (cheers to doggy walking..) to run uphil and then across a clearing, throwing myself around a lot, using the terrain's mementum, avoiding bullets. For some reason, somehow, I was getting enough maneuvering advantage to get to a road and chose to follow it, telling myself now is really not the time to be out of shape. I actually hated remembering the first rule of Zombierland: Cardio. In the back of my mind I was also very glad Starbark was not with me at the time of abduction, because she would have slowed me down but I couldn't simply leave her behind. Dog meat is as good as man meat.

      I reached a village, and was very careful about (not) being seen. For all I knew villagers were all on their side. In the center there was some sort of a happening and firemen and officials were celebrating something and I saw that the guy imprisoned with me was here also, dirty and breathless like me, hiding behind the fire fighter's building (the only official building and used for any old purposes.). We paired up to find some clothes and were noticed by a family, which turned out to be okay. They took us in and allowed us to wash and gave us normal food and water. But there wasn't anyone we could call yet. In fact so far in the dream nobody was really speaking. There was a nice girl in the family and the guy, though still in shock, found some comfort by socializing with her. A moment came, however, when they, too, were slaughtering pigs and he just lost it. He made such a ruckus that our pursuers heard about us and came looking. I fled again, this time more carefully, ultimately ending up in an old woman's house in a village further up the hills, but also closer to the city, which lay behind the ridge..

         She was very nice and the house was bright and homely, although small and poor and it was the sort of place I could easily see myself being adopted into. She also had a daughter and we talked a lot, cooking, fixing about the place and selling some garden veggies on Saturday. I even told them what's happened to me, but the old lady didn't believe me - she said they wouldn't have eaten me, they would probably just want to marry me to one of their inbred sons, but she was sure it must have looked like cannibalism to me. The way she said it made me doubt what really happened and I thought perhaps she was right. But I never for one second let down my guard.

        The dream ended with the arrival of the old woman's second daughter, who was almost albinous and blind, but as radiant and pretty as the house. And happy too, for she was thrilled about having a house guest and a friend. I intuitively made noises for her to feel more relaxed around me, hoping it would not seem condescending. I told her what happened to make me come here, but she didn't think it entirely as bad either.

       Then I just woke up. Feeling kind of rejuvenated, really. Outrunning crazed hunter redneck cannibals and finding new friends, all in one run. :p

An old button and tiny candy in my wallet; dog asleep

Five am and the doggie is scooped up and taken down to the lawn, me praying nobody else is awake to see me without my bra, in old shorts, uncombed hair, unbrushed teeth and slippers that don't fit (and have been eaten.) No poo? Okay. I don't have time for this... Back up we go..

Five fifteen and the General is done with his bathroom time, bright and awake, looking sharp in his work clothes and freshly shaven head. My poor mismatched pumpkin - his face is still badly swollen from the tooth infection. I grab him and kiss his tummy violently, until he manages to shake me off, plant a kiss on my forhead and run to work. The dawg has stolen my shoe during and took it to the 'den corner'.

I put some food, fresh water in the bowls and wipe the kennel so it's not a pond of pee. This dog pees for every thirty paces. While she eats, I get my bathroom time to get myself half way to presentable.

Five thirty and we're officially doggy walking. The long main street is morning-cool, empty and asleep. Not even the light is propper yet. It's chilly, refreshingly. The newspaper delivery people, the bakery, the deiry, the restaurants delivery trucks are scarce and I decide not to have her on a leash for a change. Her neck is already like that of a Namibian princess from how she pulls me. Off leash she walks nearly perfectly aligned to my step.

We walk for an hour, almost entirely off leash, but by six:thirty streets are already stirring. It's been refreshing, although it feels like it hasn't happened at all, like I just woke up. We get home, I change my shoes and put her on her cushion; she falls asleep. Lucky sod.

Having stopped making my ice coffees (since the time one got me sick, probably from an OD), I am now filling my thermos bottles with icy lemonade + caramel extract (tastes like vanilla, actually, the final product.) Borrowing the money from work cash register, I buy myself a hot dog and a bagel for later and then hurry to work.

Upon my arrival, the office is dead quiet, stuffy and dim. Alarms first, even before I put my bag down. Then lights, windows and blinds. I sweep the doorstep just a little, water one plant that's fickle and pick up the newspaper samples that have been delivered directly over night. These are the most basic, rutinous, solitary tasks- setting the daily papers on the conference table, turning on the computer and cash register, getting the press seals, checking the messages left just for me..

After that, after I eat and check what's up with the world, before everyone else starts coming, employees and customers, that's my morning. The rest is (at least sometime up until seven or eight pm) everybody else's day.

The good the bad and the over easy..

Weird morning. Slightly revealing, tho. Benjamin Franklin announced it. He is said to have said the saying: Ambition is just dreams with work clothes on :D hehe, I like that. And maybe, just maybe, I could do the fashion for once ;)

          The letter from an ex spouse made me feel approximately as flattered as a rape victim receiving a photo of her rapist jerking off, saying 'thinking of you'. I did read a few lines, hoping against all hope he'll be asking for a bone marrow or a kidney or something :D Alas.. Then again what would it say about *my* mental state, if to someone whom *I* cheated on and was ashamed of being seen in public with and having dumped them ultimately, reasoning it's for the career, I wrote telling them how very well I'm doing? No idea what the fuck he wanted, but I'm glad he's overpaying whatever he's smoking.. 

           At the same time I was talking to Pat (all hail to the time difference - my absurd morning hours are simply early party time down in the Oz) and he distracted me by describing in detail his trip with the lady, making a lush circle from Harlem to Treme, to Key Largo and back again to Waldorf Astoria, NY. We got to talking about money and how being a businessman isn't simply making good old doe - and who doesn't want that - but also being directly in the fast lane.. Art may change the world indeed and I may have tendencies to be an anthropologist or a journalist, but art changes the world in a hundred years whereas progressive, aggressive business project may do it a lot faster. I am a creature of creation, so suddenly, having it all except ability to make money, I've planted a seed that makes me want to open a Starbucks in my country or invent a retro trend that'll steer the culture a little more to where I want the world to be :D

             Then the general made breakfast and the world was perfect again :D
             Off to walk the nutty mutt and then it'll be too hot to do anything but WoW.. Ahhhh, dear Saturdays :D

....Hmmm, should I write a short story about a woman who is in love with July? Waiting all year for it, the distant lover, dressing up, having long walks with slow conversations and sweaty skin with fragrant warm  breeze in the bedroom?.... Hmmm...