Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

I've got a lot to be thankful for. I'm working, and there's a lot of people who aren't. I'm also very thankful for my family. Meagan, Rachel and Nicole keep me on my toes and really keep a pretty scatterbrained guy like me focused. I love them dearly and would be a wreck without them. I'm also very thankful for all my friends and my loyal readers out there. Thanks, gang.

Hope everyone has a great holiday.

The future is coming!

And it's looking really cool.

Part 1


Part 2


Behold as science fiction enters the world to kick the ass of our thoughts of what the future will be.

Bang bang

One of my Karate students returned after a few months on deployment.


"So, what did you guy do out on the ship?"

"We declared war Poland."

"That was you guys?"

"Wait, we declared war on Poland?'

"Don't worry. It didn't stick."

"What could Poland do anyways? Do they even have a navy?"

"Yes. But its all inflatable."

Its talking to me again....

My little ads, which site on the side of the tripe I write here and have done so for months yet not generated one red cent, have just delivered an insidious message to me: "the holidays are coming". They did in quite the subversive manner too. It put an ad for somesuch that a person who knows how to cook would use to bake Christmas cookies. So, as my mouth watered at the notion of nummy cookies the truth was deposited in my subconscious: "holidays, coming".

I find myself not in the holiday mindset. Right now I'm in the "we just had a hell of a storm push through here and there lots of work to do" mindset. But also Halloween barely seemed to have hit on my mental radar this year, which is weird because I had a really nice time. Although I do feel bad about scaring one of the girls with Disney's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". I have to keep reminding myself that it's November. The Salvation Army bell ringers have been spotted. I must prepare.

Thank you Google ads for bringing this to my attention.

Move over Ceiling Cat and Basement Cat!




COURAGE WOLF IS HERE!

Where did I put my ark?

Day three of miserable weather as what's left of Hurricane Ida is supposed to finally be gone by day's end. This is the worst storm to have hit two since 2003 and that one had the decency to to hit us be be gone the same day. I was very fortunate during that one (Hurricane Isabel) in that the apartment I lived in sustained no damage and we had our power back by the end of the day. It was interesting. The day started out windy but no rain, and ended the same way. We got to experience the whole thing. This one has been drug out over three days.

So far so good, but I'll be checking over everything this weekend. There have been lots of flooded streets. Chris sat in his third floor apartment in downtown Norfolk watched as people who obviously didn't know what they were in for tried to deal with a city that floods whenever someone waters their lawn.

The neighbors all had their generators ready. Darren had to set up a pump to keep his house from flooding. We lost power for about an hour or so yesterday, and that's getting off really light. The longest I've been without power is three days after Hurricane Bonnie which also isn't nearly as bad as some people have been through, but not something I'd care to go through again.

So today I hide in the house and watch as the last of this storm passes. Tomorrow I get to clean up the yard and be very thankful that we removed that dead oak a few months back.

Worth 1000 thoughts



As we can see the above picture is obviously taken during a reenactment of this years comic series FINAL CRISIS by Grant Morrison as the Mandrakk the eeeeeevil vampire space god attempts to put the nom noms on Superman and Superman being Superman resists Mandrakk's power and triumphs. In a twist of Elizabethan dramatic conventions in which all parts, both male and female, are played by men all the parts of this FC reenactment are played by women.

Wait, perhaps this picture is a statement upon the state of comics in either disparaging the grim and gritty comic view of the 1990s in which comics were SERIOUS BUSINESS and as such had to be DARK AND EPIC; or even a view of the current state of comics in which guys like Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio are atempting to send the Silver Age, which they loved from childhood, through a 90s filter, because they're fanboys, and give us a lot of books I have no interest in reading.

Could it possibly be a portrait of the totality of the comic book sub-genre? We have representation of fantastic science fiction with a being from a doomed planet rocket to Earth where they have amazing powers and help people. We have an element of myth with the vampire (please note the lack of sparkling) representing the older tales elements of the supernatural. Finally we have the human elements with the eating of a pretzel and what human being doesn't love pretzels?

No, I'm not going to be going into 1000 different ways to look at this picture. It is one of my favorites that I've taken on my phone. The vampire is my wife, Meagan, who took great delight in scaring the neighbors with her fangs, and the little Supergirl is my daughter, Nicole, who wasn't scared of her mommy one little bit. Nicole's twin sister Rachel was dressed up like Spider-girl this year and unfortunately she was moving much too quickly with her little Spider-powers for be properly captured on film, but did run up to every little boy she came across dressed as Spider-man poked them in the chest and proclaimed "SPIDER-MAN!" before fleeing leaving the little boy usually quite confused.

Yep, it was a good Halloween in the Nozz compound.

Behold the family, worth 1000 thoughts with or without fun costumes.

Big hurtle

Its easy to do the work when you're a happy camper and everything's going your way. When the bills are paid and everyone under the roof is happy and sipping hot cocoa smiling and laughing it easy to take a long pull from that mug do some work on that script/page/commission. When you're bubbling with energy and everything is in working ordered and everyone is loving your work then there's always a song in your heart you can't wait to punch those keys/layout that page/ink those pencils.

But then you get swamped with work, and not the work you really want to do, the work you need to do if you want to eat and keep the lights on. Then you have to find the time to do the work you want to do. But that's fine. You may get a little less sleep, but that's why we have coffee.

Then you get and honest critique and it becomes apparent that the work that you love and are quite serious about isn't up to par. You're not sure exactly where things got off track, but they did. Fortunately someone cared enough to point this out and not spare your feelings. If you're lucky, they gave you a few tips on getting going in the right direction. So, now you either have to put the work on hold to get your act together or continue to do the work while on a learning curve that can get real steep real fast. So the work you love is now requiring more effort and perhaps testing your love for it. However you are a writer/artist/actor/creator and your shall persevere for your craft.

Then you slip up in your personal life. You said something when you shouldn't have, or you didn't when you should. You weren't there when you really needed to be. You dropped the ball. Then doing the work becomes hard because you're feeling stressed/scared/guilty/depressed/angry and despite what you've hear and read and seen about "tortured artistes" you quickly discover that sucks like a shop vac and you're left feeling like hitting something/drinking something/crying instead of doing the work. You can still do the work, but only after the Xanax kicks in.

That's not to mention the many other distractions that you can easily ignore like sports or going to the movies or playing your X-Box. Or being worried about the world at large and if you're going to maintain gainful employment or if we're all going to die horribly in the 2012 Mayan Apocalypse which will inevitably be triggered by Wendy Williams.

Sure.

Doing the work is a piece of cake.