Artstuff

One of my nephews (technically my wife’s mother’s brother’s daughter’s son but that’s too long to write every time) asked me to draw him a Tiefling. This was the result.
I’d recently joined a Richard Corben fan group on Facebook and folks there had been posting photos of some of Corben’s original art. That gave me a chance to better look at his techniques. I tried to apply some of those to this drawing.

Story Seeds #26

The last human on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door ...

Actually, that’s the story. I’ve added two letters to it as a modernization. It was originally written by Fredric Brown in the 1940s. His original short story reads –
The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door…

He went on to expand this short-short into the story Knock. Brown was a brilliant writer but his work, while often ahead of its time, is also a product of its time. In the 1940s most readers would assume that the last man on earth is a heterosexual, middle class person of European descent. In other words, a straight white guy.

By changing “man” to “human” the possibilities open up as to who is sitting in that room and how they might respond to the person(?) knocking on the door.

I read quite a bit of Brown’s work when I was kid. My favorite was his novel Martians Go Home. The Martians (little green men, of course) come to Earth, not to conquer, but to be as annoying as possible. It’s one of those books I prefer not to read again in case I don’t find it as hilarious as I did when I first read it.

Speaking of Richard Corben, he illustrated a cover for a collection of Fredric Brown short stories so I’ll close with that image – Lifestuff

We – the faithfull letter carriers of the Westwood station – have been warned of an upcoming snowpocalypse since November of last year. Management has passed out tire chains for our vehicles and slip on cleats for our shoes. Seattle rarely gets snow. Because of that we don’t deal with it well. Last year we had a week of it and the mail got backed up something awful.

Often when I deliver in bad weather a customer will quote that “Neither rain nor sleet nor snow…” poem. I will nod and smile. That poem isn’t actually the motto of the post office. It was written at a time before freeways, safety belts and child labor laws. The post office has no official motto. Most of us carriers have the motto – “Deliver the mail, deliver it right and come back home in one piece.” So, during the snow last year, a lot of mail to side streets and hilly neighborhoods didn’t get delivered for a few days. Seattle doesn’t have a lot of snow plows. That means only the main thoroughfares get plowed. USPS mail trucks are not good for adventures. They don’t have a lot of power. They aren’t four-wheel drives. A lot of mail went out, came back, got sorted into the next day’s mail, went out again, came back again, got resorted … But it did get delivered eventually.

Yesterday we actually got a dusting of snow. It started in the morning. I rearranged my route so I delivered the hilly parts early in the day. Snow really only stuck on lawns and shady places, nothing on the roads or sidewalks. I did work 13 hours but that was because of a heavy mail volume (and volunteering to carry part of a route whose carrier called in sick) rather than because of the weather. I’m writing this note in the morning. We did get more snow overnight but the roads appear to be clear.

Weather.com says we’ll have more snow today. I’d ask you to wish me luck but I should be home by the time you read this. I’m not planning to volunteer to carry extra today.

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Thank you for reading! Stay warm! I’ll be back next week.