* Bonus: Affenpinscher.

"Kill you in your sleep..."
Spotted at the corner of 5th and D Streets

Note that Petaluma's population includes a far higher-than-average-per-capita number of redheads on bicycles. Could this be an artistic comment on that phenomenon, or is it just a general comment on crazy redheads?

"Happy Birthday Violet"
Mixed Media: Watercolor on paper, tree, thumbtacks
Found in Wickersham Park, June 14, 2009

Which reminds me. It's also my sister's birthday. So happy birthday to Alexis in Texas.


Bonus pic: Maddie likes the piggy noses.

Recently, at Our Best Friends...



"Hey Hannah," asked Maddie, rounding the corner. "I heard singing." She stopped, puzzled. "Who are your friends?"



"I am among the Moose," sang Hannah, in a low and tuneless dirge.
"I am among the Moose...
"There's no excuse, no truce...
"For Gander or for Goose...
"And you'll never, never, ever get loose...
"Once you're among the Moose."

"What are you doing?" asked Maddie. "It looks kinda weird."

"It's a performance piece," replied Hannah. "This isn't weird, this is art."


"But I don't get it," said Maddie. "And isn't there usually cheese at art openings?"


"Oh, foo," huffed Hannah, crestfallen. "No great artist is ever appreciated in her lifetime."

"That's okay," said Maddie, stepping forward and resting a paw on Hannah's shoulder. "Maybe I was just looking at things from the wrong angle."

The lovely-and-talented Steve Nagy (stevenagy), like many of us in the genre community, found himself profoundly affected by the announcement of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!, by Jane Austen and Seth Graham-Smith*. One thing led to another, which led in turn to Steve announcing a "Zombie Literati" poll, that is, a funny zombie title deathmatch, with the stakes being a copy of said novel (or one of a handful of alternate titles) and "insertion as a character into the novel in progress, Sacrifices, my attempt to write a Hardy Boys-esque supernatural thriller," which is nothing short of awesome.

I'm telling you this because I have a zombie title on the list that craves not brains, but votes. So please, drop on by and vote for Tristram Shandy, Shambling Corpse (technically, the full title should be The Afterlife and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Shambling Corpse, but I ran out of room).**

So vote, vote, vote!***

---

* Art Geek Note: I swear the jawbone in that book's cover has been Photoshopped (clone tool, even) in from Vincent Van Gogh's "Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette". Sans cigarette, of course.

** Not familiar with the Laurence Sterne novel that inspired this title? It's awesome, the original postmodern novel (circa 1759). Sort of a mash-up of Cervantes, Rabelais, and John Locke, Tristram Shandy far foreshadows just about anything we consider clever about current literary fiction. You dig Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels? You'd definitely get a kick out of Sterne.

*** Otherwise, "Brains, Trains, and Automobiles" is sure to sweep this thing.

It's official. I'm a geek.

Three machines, four screens. Rockin' the following wallpapers (clockwise from top) by Jesse van Dijk (obscured, but spread across two screens and worth a look), Jason Chan, and David Palumbo (download here).

I've been reading Steven Erikson's Gardens of the Moon lately, the first novel in his Malazan Book of the Fallen dekology (in progress). Previously, I've only read novellas by Erikson, specifically the tangential tales of necromancers Bauchelain and Korbal Broach: Blood Follows, The Healthy Dead, and The Lees of Laughter's End, staying away from the core series as I have been warned, time and again, that the doorstop-sized volumes are a massive timesink (there is truth in this: I have been neglecting my slush-reading duties since beginning Gardens of the Moon). But, even though when it comes to Fantasy, I am traditionally series-phobic, I finally decided to take the plunge.

When Jason heard that I was (finally) reading Erikson, he said, "it's Fantasy. With death. And no explanations." So far (500 or so pages into the novel's 600), it's living up to that fervent (perhaps even fevered) description. Gardens of the Moon is a great ride with meticulous plotting, intricate detail, and strong characters... and no safety nets. At times, the novel’s RPG roots are evident, particularly with regards to character classes (Healers heal, Mages do magic, Warriors fight, Thieves and Assassins do it from behind) and races, after all, what are the Tiste Andii but this world’s dark elves?

Even so, the originality of the plot, the crispness of the dialogue, and the sheer humanity of the characters all add up to make Gardens of the Moon one of the most memorable and imaginative Fantasy series I’ve yet encountered. I've got the next few Malazan books queued up at BOMC2 (formerly the better-named Zooba.com), so we'll soon see how well the rest of the series lives up to the hype.

This weekend brought the quarterly return of the library sale, and, as usual, I found a bunch of stuff. Lots of hardcover book club editions this time around, which is great for me, since I collect for content (primarily otherwise-uncollected short stories and unusual covers), rather than resale value.

On our first salvo, Thursday night, bumping elbows with cigarette-scented speculators netted the following books: The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, by Nikos Kazantzakis, George R. R. Martin's Dying of the Light, A Heinlein Trio (containing The Puppet Masters, Double Star, and The Door into Summer - and featuring a wonderfully-weird Gary Viskupic cover painting), and David G. Hartwell's The Science Fiction Century.

Saturday, half-price day, we found even better pickings: Anthony Boucher's two-volume A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Alfred Bester's The Computer Connection (a formative favorite that I'm glad to finally have in hardcover), and Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: Lord Foul's Bane, The Ilearth War, and The Power that Preserves. These last three feature, instead of the Del Ray Darrell Sweet stock fantasy covers, sublime jacket art by S. C. Wyeth. I’m not certain whether this Wyeth is related to the N. C. Wyeth clan; perhaps Heather and Julie know.

A third series of Doll Parts photos is now available on Flickr. Click through for more.

If you liked the first batch, here are a few more dolls in distress. Just click on the picture above to check out the whole set. Once again, these dolls (and parts thereof) are from the collection of Jan Frost and Randall Ingalls. All photographs copyright 2008 by Ross E. Lockhart. Feel free to link to this post, but please don't reproduce these photographs without attribution or permission.

While we were visiting Jan and Randy's house a few nights ago, I discovered that Randy had the dolls out (he'd been working on a piece for "The Man Show," currently on display at The Mail Depot). As the story goes, the dolls were discovered in a box, in the desert, in pretty-much the states of decay seen here, many years ago. What follows are a number of pictures I took of the collection, spread out on the table, more-or-less unposed and undisturbed. More or less. Yeah, it's kind of like hanging out in Joel Peter Witkin's rumpus room, but some of you might enjoy them. So put on a record of kindertotenlieder, pour a glass of wine, sit back, and enjoy...



( More images behind the cut. Fair warning, some images may disturb you. )

As spotted on Warren Ellis's LJ feed: Ward Sutton on graphic design elements used by American presidential candidates:


Clikc above for the whole slideshow.