My eyes are filled with gods

A beautifully animated retelling of Red Riding Hood. Tense, macabre and suitably bloody.

RED from RED on Vimeo.

via Jezebel

The summer deadlines are upon us at work. Publication deadlines have been moved up, new projects have been added, and of course, everything is due at the same time. Also there’s the heat wave thing that’s making people melty and crazy, which is just all sorts of helpful when you’re working with students who are in the midst of their own mini-meltdown.

So, today will be a post about beautiful things.

Remember that band I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, The Moulettes? I found a copy of their CD from a British-based second-hand seller off Amazon.  Think piratical back-room chamber musicians, dingy wigs askew, getting paid under the table in gin and cigarettes.  The vocals remind me of the Andrews Sisters, or maybe a mellow incarnation of the Ditty Bops, with Jill Tracy’s wicked sense of humor and lovely harmonies (no Rasputina-style vibrato warbles here).  The main instruments are cello, violin and bassoon, and they shift tempo on a dime.

My only real complaint is that a few of the songs occasionally plummet into the so-soft-as-to-be-impossible-to-hear territory — “Devil of Mine” is particularly prone to this — but that’s a minor irritation compared to the otherwise delicious feast. DoM has an interesting video, too, the sort of imagery that reminds me of someone being lured to a faery party that disappears at dawn and leaves them lying in a muddy grove.

I’ve just discovered the John Barleycorn Must Die blog, chronicling the creative process and tomfoolery of the writer and artist as they bring a graphic novel to life.

WHAT IS ’JOHN BARLEYCORN MUST DIE’ ABOUT?

This graphic novel is about the end of the reign of the sky gods and the birth of humanity.

Since time immemorial, the sky gods, aided by earthly Fraternities, have impregnated mortal women, producing demigods who have influenced humanity in their favour. In the 17th century, Elizabeth Cromwell (Oliver Cromwell’s mother) created a Sorority of mortal women to kill these demigods before they generate ‘sky fall’.

A magician, John Barleycorn, is charged by a mysterious woman to expose the last demigod before he can bring about the enslavement of humanity….

The writer (editor/artist/writer Terri Windling’s husband, Howard Gayton) and the artist (Rex Van Ryn) start with an old folk song and spin it out into a modern story. Which doesn’t end well for poor John Barleycorn, as we all know. They’re posting pages of the novel as they go, so I’ll have to go back and read from the beginning.

Also: I am in delighted awe of Brittney Lee’s papercut art. I really have nothing more to say except that I’m incredibly envious of her talent and creativity. And I’m hoping she does post a tutorial at some point, because I would love to give that a try at some point, if only for my own amusement.

In other news, I admit I laughed out loud the first time I saw the new local Crimestoppers/SBPD commercial that insists graffiti is not art.  It shows local children dutifully painting over tags on a building, and is a painfully obvious,  panties-officially-bunched, political pissing match response to the CAD article the Tribune ran a few weeks back (which is apparently no longer available on the SBT site, so huzzah for Google cache!).

The second time I saw it, it only succeeded in pissing me off.

Yes, it is art. You may not agree with its method of delivery, or its message, and those are valid and arguable points. There is a moral gray area there. But it is art. It’s the only interesting thing about being stuck watching a train go by. It’s a splash of color on forgotten buildings, and utility boxes no one ever notices otherwise, and deadly dull bridges with failed scrubby landscaping. It’s an unexpected glimmer of creativity in a landscape that is unmitigated boredom.  And as far as I’m concerned, it resides firmly in the realm of beautiful things.

Next week marks the first full week of actual during-the-summer vacation in ten years. (Almost a full week, I should say — I have to go in one afternoon to teach a class.)  I think I could get used to this “having help during summer deadlines” thing, although the “preparing for a week off ” part thing is murder.

So, a tiring week. And I’ve forgotten any postable ideas that briefly bubbled to the surface.

Instead, here are my two favorite post-Europeans, at least for today. One’s joined the Cult of America and the other’s technically still the Queen’s spy, after all.  Also, is anyone else unsurprised that Craig Ferguson is a Lovecraft fan? Neil Himself does make an amusing point about HPL’s characters.

Elsewhere…

• Erin Palette is spending the week analyzing the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cast as analogues to the classic D&D adventuring party. I’m curious whether she’s going to go cleric or ranger for Fluttershy. We shall see.
• Monica Valentinelli is running a contest for bloggers — write about your passion on your blog and send her the link, and you could win a $25 DriveThru gift certificate or other goodies.
• Note to self:  Self, keep an eye on The Moulettes, Caravan Palace, and Clockwork Dolls

We did CAD’s Karma Hunt on the Mishawaka Riverwalk a couple of weeks ago — it was a lot of fun, and a good excuse to go outside for a few hours and do something different. (Since this SBT article doesn’t attempt to hide the location, I don’t particularly feel the need to keep that mum.) We found 9 of the 12 blocks that first trip, but only made it about 75% of the way around before low blood sugar forced us to abandon the hunt.

So that was two weekends ago. This weekend, we went back to finish the last leg of the Riverwalk we didn’t get to, in the hope that we’d find the remaining three tiles, but we had no luck — either we missed them elsewhere along the path, or they’ve already been pulled down, as someone had tried to do with the “Be an explorer” tile.

I had mentioned CAD’s tags in conversation with some of my coworkers and friends, and it was disheartening that the majority of the people I mentioned it to immediately frowned and felt compelled to point out that it’s vandalism (somehow even the word itself became disgusting as they spat it out). There was no room for the possibility that it might be amusing or creative or have any value at all beyond the price of clean-up.

I’m not surprised, just disappointed. I get the same reaction for just about everything I admit to liking — a sort of utter incomprehension, as if I’m simultaneously speaking a foreign tongue and extolling the virtues of getting high on intravenous liquefied garbage. It’s frustrating, and tiring, and it makes me sad that there’s no room in their souls anymore for coloring outside the lines.

Clearly I should just stop talking outside of my head and just invest in some good old-fashioned invisible friends. Except … I can’t, because then the aforementioned humans tend to assume things that aren’t true, and act on those assumptions, and that’s even more frustrating than being looked at like I’m an alien until they conveniently forget the conversation ever happened.

Someday, I imagine I’ll just snap and suddenly no longer give a damn about playing the game. And then I’ll have to figure out a different way to make a living.

/sigh

And on that note, I leave you with the Best Pony Ever. Because everything is better with Fluttershy, obviously.

Edit: If you’re curious, the SBT article also posted a photo gallery of CAD in action.

CAD on the former Ryan's Steak House in SB

South Bend folks: We have our very own Banksy, y’all. CAD is my new hero. I was going to grab a camera this weekend and go hunting for all the easter-egg stencil art tags I’ve been seeing around town, but s/he saved me the trouble. All it took was a quick search for the signature “CAD flower bomb” I’ve seen in a few places.  I just wish the locations were posted along with the pics, so I could watch for the ones I haven’t spotted yet when I’m out and about.

This – this is a thing that makes me happy.

Let’s be clear about this: I’m still no fan of D&D in any of its incarnations. However, a writer I quite like (Erin Palette of Curse/Or fame) has just published the first installment of her fantasy campaign setting in Claw/Claw/Bite magazine. Erin has posted previews of her Pellatarrum setting on Lurking Rhythmically, but I’m glad to see her RPG work paying off, too.

Go grab a copy of CCB if you can — issue 18 is on sale at RPG Now for $2.99 at the moment.

Also, if you haven’t been to her blog, you really should. Y’know, especially if you’re into “hot goth-girl beseeching action!” Or awesome modern mythic fiction. Or gaming. Or guns. Or Discordianism. Or sarcasm ++. Oh, hell, just go visit her already.

Dammit. I want those boots. So unfair.

From wegame.com:

Yes. Brain is fried, and all the bosses have fled for the afternoon. The cheese stands alone. (Mmm. Cheese.)

Well, okay, now I’m alone. My partner in web-content creation just handed me a bunch of stories to edit and post, and then she fled, too.  Le sigh.

Lovely winter wonderland outside, though. Lovely, and slippery, and frigid.  As if I didn’t already want to go home and build a nest on the couch…

From io9.com:

Conan 3-D (August 19)

The Barbarian is back! Jason Momoa steps into Arnie’s sandals, and instead of Thulsa Doom, we get Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang). There’s plenty of dark magic once again, including Rose McGowan playing a half-human, half-witch character.
Outlook: What is best in life?* Possibly not this movie. But it could be fun.

I have an inordinate fondness for The Momoa (aka: deadpan Ronon Dex from Stargate: Atlantis) and have wanted to see him featured elsewhere for a while, now. I confess a Conan revamp hadn’t occurred to me.

Also: apparently David Tennant is playing the Peter Vincent role in the Fright Night remake. Yes. They’re remaking Fright Night with the 10th Doctor.

Anyway, i09′s list of upcoming 2011 spec-fic movies includes a good number of flicks I wasn’t aware of previously. Smurfs, cowboys, priests, aliens, a new Simon Pegg/Nick Frost comedy, and oh, yes, Sucker Punch. I might’ve mentioned that one before.

–

*This phrase now makes me cringe a little every time I see it. Especially when used in connection to the name Conan. Thank you, Warren Ellis. (EDIT: That link = a list of posts, which in turn refer to NSFW extreme body mod pics. You have been warned.)

Normally I’m not much of a fan of sky gods, but here’s Zeus, gettin’ his game on. Look at his face! This is serious bidness. Hee.

Art by: skitchman

So tired. Happy First Monday and all that.

We had delicious lasagna and garlic bread for dinner last night. Thank you, Lori and Patty (?) — it was very kind and generous of you to share with us!

I’m mostly recovered from The Plague other than that last lingering bit that refuses to let go. My boss, who says hers started the same day mine manifested, is still miserable. Perhaps the Cold-Eeze lozenges actually work? This is the first time I’ve been able to measure against someone else. Unfortunately, Will is exhibiting the signs, now, even though we were pretty sure he was in the clear after holding out for so long without so much as a sniffle. He doesn’t have the luxury of taking time off to recuperate, at the moment.

What did you do over the holidays? I coughed. And sneezed. And slept. And then when I was done with that, there were video games. The Scott Pilgrim game on X-Box Arcade is pretty hilarious. I still suck at platformers, but dang. I’m willing to practice that one as long as Will’s patience lasts. The Raskulls arcade game is also hilarious and amusing to watch, but I haven’t actually tried playing it yet. The humor is pretty meta and very much reminds me of Castle Crashers or Costume Quest. (We’ve not yet tried the new DLC expansion for CQ yet, but it looks like more of the same, except in a snowy/Christmasy landscape.)

Will convinced me to try Fable III a couple of nights ago so we could play co-op. He was running his second character — he’d already completed it with a Good Queen and is now replaying as her opposite — and I’d forgotten how entertaining his commentary is when he’s playing an “evil” character.

Mind you, I’ve watched him play II and now III and although I was interested in the storyline, I never really felt compelled to try either game for myself. Now that I have … well. This is going to be problematic. The last time I can remember staying up to play a video game until 5:30 two nights in a row was when Lowell lent me his copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.  The only reason I managed to make myself go to bed at 2:30 last night was because I set an alarm.  Two alarms, in fact.

Yes. Alarms, plural. It’s been so long since I played an actual video game instead of a DS game that I’d sort of forgotten how badly I lose all connection to that natural alarm normal people have that says: “Hey, you know, I’m really tired now and I’d like to go to bed, please.” Instead, I play and play and play and at some point I decide to get a drink during a load screen, and happen to glance at the clock, and hey, it’s 4 AM. I ought to finish this task and go to bed. Oh, wait, but that’s a shiny thing … Hey, what’s that? I’ll just go take a quick look. Oooh, just a few more Hobbe kills and I’ll get an upgrade on my hammer.  Hm. Okay, just one more quest … Hey, I don’t remember exploring here yet. I bet there’s a silver key or a gnome up there …

Anyway, not so much of a problem if I’m on holiday break, but I had to go to work this morning, you see, so I very reasonably set an alarm to tell me it was 1 AM and I should stop playing and go to bed. And then I set another to tell me it was 2 AM and GO TO BED. I MEAN IT THIS TIME, DAMMIT.

After the second alarm, it still took me another half hour to drag myself to bed. And then I couldn’t get to sleep. Three 4-hour-sleep nights in a row leaves me functional but dragging. Which is a great way to start the first work week of the new year, let me tell you. Also, my hand is killing me again. It’s like I never left work!

This is one of many reasons I’m very, very glad WOW never really managed to click for me.  I probably would have played myself into an early grave.  /sigh

In other news, contractors are re-doing the plumbing for the upstairs bathroom today, and then commencing on gutting the main-floor bathroom for the remodel.  A usable shower on the main floor! No more terrible sunflower border and light switch! No more phantom window! A real ceiling! I think that’s an acceptable way to start the new year.

I’ve been camped out on the couch for the last few days, playing the silly minigames in Puzzle Quest 2 over and over again on the DS even though W. bought me a new game. I have the plague. Or so he keeps telling me. So matching colors is easier than paying attention to a new menu system, etc. Anyway, he was kind enough to bring home more tea and soup and bread and cheese, so I’m not complaining.

I did have to cancel our planned taco/Arkham Horror night with friends though, and I’m kind of bummed about that. This break’s kind of a bust, what with losing the first half to holidays and being sick. On the plus side, we finished Fable III and have been watching epsiodes of Better Off Ted. I’d forgotten how awesome that show was. W. had forgotten that his character Jules was largely based on Veronica. Hee.

Also tonight: finally remembered I could watch Hulu on my crappy laptop instead of flipping channels of crappy TV. It is an improvement. Watched some Castle, tried an anime called Ghost Stories (which was decidedly meh), tried Bleach again with no success, and saw they have Blade of the Immortal. I have a good chunk of those books, so I’ll have to give that a chance at some point. Tonight I settled on one I’d never heard of: Spice and Wolf. It’s a historical fantasy of sorts that seems to mix Japanese sentiment with a European setting similar to Scandanavia and the Balkans, where they managed to hold on to their pre-Christian practices long into the era of the monotheistic Church.  A peddler picks up a new partner — a wolf god of the harvest who has decided her village doesn’t need her anymore, so she wants to go home to the north woods. In return, she, being the wise and powerful wolf she is, will help him in his merchant business. I’m only two episodes in, but I’m loving it so far. I thought I’d find the anthropomorphic wolf-girl irritating, but no, not really. The characters are good, and they have to navigate the differences between Wolf and Man pretty early on. Most of the story so far revolves around the peddler trade rather than swords and magic. Holo’s commentary on Nature vs. the rise of the Church is pretty much right up my alley, and I’m already dreading the inevitable confrontation between Holo the Wise Wolf and the minions of the Church.

Holo: At any rate, how important they have become.

Lawrence: Churches have always been important.

Holo: No … around the time I came from the north, they were not that important, yet.  At least they did not exaggerate that the one true God created the world and that humans are borrowing it. Nature is not something that can be created by someone.

Holo had been tied to that village for very long time, of course. What a difference a few hundred years makes. The world around her little village changed, and so did she — but I don’t think she’s quite realized that yet.

I’m a little wolf inside a girl, you say
And off I’ll go from June to May
Oh whistling round the world

And now I need more tea, some NyQuil and another episode while I wait for the sleepies to drag me under.