It’s snowing here in Seattle. Nothing is really sticking where my offices are located but I hear it’s doing so up by my apartment. If it’s still coming down tomorrow I may not be coming in to work. We’ll see.

Nizzibet is napping. Not from turkey overindulgence. We haven’t gone anywhere yet. We’ll be going to BigSister’s at about seven. I think she has to work today. She’s doing the cooking which may mean that there won’t actually be any turkey on this turkey day. It will be delicious so I’m not terribly worried.

This weekend is going to be spent getting the last of the books out of their boxes. This won’t result in getting them all up on shelves. We don’t have enough shelves for all the books. Once all the books are available to look at the process begins for getting rid of some of them. I’ll be applying three standards as I chose –

1. Do I love this book?
2. Is it useful?
3. If this book vanished from the world would I care?

The first standard is easy. That covers a lot of the fiction I’ve got. Not that I love all the books that this standard will cover but it eliminates the majority of the books that I had to push myself to finish.

The second standard is a little trickier. The internet provides us with so much information that many of these books are redundant. But the internet requires that I have my computer on. If I need an image for reference I need to either print it out or have a screen in front of me. For information a book is far more portable and accessible than the most sophisticated laptop. And a book will provide me with the unexpected in a way that the internet can’t. I have to search the internet for the information I’m seeking. As a compulsive reader I’ll read whatever is in front of me. So having books on Russian history makes me more likely to read about it simply because it’t there.

The third standard covers those books that I might not love and that might not be all that useful to me but that I’d be sad if they were to disappear. My two volume study of the grasses of North America. Ethnographic studies of Chinese farmers. Some of the bad (but not boring) novels I’ve got. Books that seem to me to serve a purpose whether by providing odd specilized information or by being an story that someone had to tell (that didn’t bore the hell out of me – sorry, a well-told boring story takes second place to a lively tale told by an idiot).

Let the sorting begin!

You’d think that somewhere online there’d be a photo of the Milpitas Monster. I mean, the movie is a no-budget classic. Hell, there are images of Wangmagwi on the net and that’s almost a lost film. There’s a photo from King Kong in Edo on the net that I’d link to if I weren’t feeling so damned lazy right now. And that’s definitely a lost film.

Part of the fun of doing art for the Kaijuphile site is –

A. I get to draw monsters

B. The illustrations get posted

C. I can experiment and play around and they’ll still get posted.

I don’t know how many of my kaiju illustrations would have been accepted at Epilogue.net because (with one exception that did get rejected) I haven’t submitted them. Since I’m drawing for the fun of it and since neither site pays I give my personal amusement illustrations to Kaijuphile. Epilogue gets illustrations that have been commissioned and have seen (or are expected to see) print. And so far as I can remember all my commissioned illustrations have been accepted at Epilogue. Does this mean that the illustrations’ print world acceptance gives them weight in Epilogue’s judging process? I suspect that this is the case but this is only a suspicion.

And so what? Part of Epilogue’s goal is providing a forum for illustrators build their careers. Hopefully it’s doing that for some people. I’ve certainly seen work there that I’d like to see in print or on my wall.

Anyway … there are four new illustrations up at my Kaijuphile gallery. They’re inspired by the proposed but never produced Godzilla vs. the Devil. Go. Laugh at Satan.

Thanks to Nizzibet’s need to have a Mac online so she can test websites for her clients my home computer has internet access again. Now I can post when I’m barely awake, almost asleep, drunk, bored or trying to kill a couple of hours. Aren’t you all just thrilled?

My latest monster has been posted at Kaijuphile.com.

I’ve begun work on illustrations for The Black Seal #4. This is still not the Viet Nam issue. Work progresses on that but it’s been over a year since #3 came out so the Publisher decided to put together an new issue from the work that was inventoried for the issue after next. He also asked me to provide the cover illustration. Should be fun.

I’ve also begun working on Oz Squad again. Finally.

I’m at work right now. I do the graphic design for Nizzibet’s church bulletin. Usually I do this early Sunday morning. Being a heathen I have no trouble working on the Sabbath.

I listened to one of KEXP‘s public service show on the drive over. This one was concerned with the effects of Geneticall Modified Organisms on the environment. I’m not too worried about the effect of GMO’s on the environment – not in a “we’re killing the planet” kind of way. The planetary ecosystem will survive humanity. The problem with GMOs is that, as they currently exist, they are poison to the human diet. Our livestock won’t eat GMO grain. GMO salmon have greater birth defects than wild salmon. GMO plants have less disease and insect resistance than natural plants.

What’s scary from a cultural side is that Monsanto, the company that’s responsible for about 90% of GMO grains out there is using patent laws to destroy its competition. There’s currently a case going through Canadian courts in which Monsanto is suing Percy Schmeiser, a farmer, for patent infringement because he had unlicensed Monsanto GMO canola growing in his ditch.

So far the Canadian courts have been upholding Monsanto’s insanity. Think about it. Monsanto is claiming rights to Schmeiser’s crops and profits because grain Monsanto created was growing on his property. Not being cultivated. Growing in his ditch. If no one planted it that means that it got there as environmental disapora. Which means that Monsanto can’t control it. Which in my book would mean that their rights over it should be limited. In order to have tough rights protection I would expect that Monsanto would have the ability to be responsible for their product. No responsibilty, no rights.

I’ve been opening and rearranging the contents of the boxes that my Esteemed Brother sent up from Sebastopol. The easiest material to organize is my correspondence. I’ve probably got 98% of all the cards and letters I’ve ever received. That is, paper cards and letters. My electronic correspondence has only sporadically been archived. The postal service carried stuff has been stuffed into various drawers and boxes and filing cabinets. With EB sending up all my left-behinds I should have everything in one place.

I probably wouldn’t be attempting this organization right now if I hadn’t put a system in place before I left California. Sometime back I started separating letters from envelopes, dating them and then filing them under the names of their senders in a little two drawer filing cabinet. One of the first boxes I opened a few days ago contained the majority of those files and the next box I opened contained the rest. So I emptied out a couple of cardboard filing boxes, arranged the files alphabetically and set to work.

I pull the card or letter from its envelope. If undated I try to suss out the probable mailing date from the postmark on the envelope. Then I either put the letter in its appropriate file, or, if I haven’t got one for that writer yet, I create a new file. Once I’m done with the Sebastopol boxes I’ll be going through the boxes of correspondence I’ve got from the last decade here.

My mom and dad left me enough letters that I could probably write short biographies of them. No surprise there. They were both prolific writers. My mom wrote regularly. My dad less frequently but he always responded to any letters I sent him. What I never cease to be surprised and touched by are the number of letters I’ve gotten from other people, especially people that I don’t remember having communicated much with. It probably helped that I was a prolific letterwriter myself. I’d dash off letters on scrap paper during breaks at the various jobs I had.

These days I barely manage to croak out two lines in reply to an email I’ve gotten. Gah. That’s depressing.

Still not connect to the ‘net at home. We have a different ISP for the apartment than we had for the house and I haven’t figured out how to get our router to work with it. Once I get that taken care of posts here will become more frequent. Notice that I’m not saying that posts will actually become frequent.

This morning I unpacked my WACOM tablet and hooked it up to my computer. I’d found and inked a kaiju drawing yesterday morning so today I decided to color it. I made a little progress. Once it’s done I’ll post it to my Kaijuphile gallery.

Attacked another few boxes before I went to work on the illustration. One was filled with books. I found a shelf that had room for them. One was filled with files from my filing cabinet back in Sebastopol – letters from friends. Another was filled with stories and artwork that I did when I was a kid. I set both of those boxes aside for sorting later. I’d like to have gone through all the boxes by the end of this month. There’s probably quite a bit of stuff from 8046 Earl that should have been given or thrown away. There is also a lot of stuff from Sebastopol that needs to be organized so we can live with it here.

After about four years in Ballard the office I pretend to manage moved. There’s still organizing to do here and still clean up to do there. I’m hard pressed to be enthusiastic about either task. Moving my residence was enough of a chore.

Still, the new space has a good ambience for tech support and design. And we’ve got good views of Seattle on three sides. I personally get to overlook Aurora Ave and listen to the neverending roar of commute traffic.