The best culled from recent pages in my sketchbook.
A Personal Dictionary: “Morality” vs. “Ethics”
Very often, when I discuss weighty topics online as one does, I find that a large part of any disagreement stems from unspoken assumptions about nuances of definition in the terms being bandied about. Spoken or written language is a terribly imprecise medium of communication, its sole redeeming quality being that it’s better than any…
Movies Seen Recently: Iron Man 3, X-Men: First Class, Sharktopus
Iron Man 3 (2013) — Why yes, I am catching up on all the superhero movies that passed me by. IM3 pulls back away from the disjointed narrative direction of the second one and gives us a focused story which concentrates, rightly, on Tony Stark rather than Iron Man. Of special note is the PTSD…
Movies Seen Recently: Tangled, The Dark Knight Rises, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Tangled (2010) — The prolog/plot engine for the whole thing is pure handwavium, but what’s best about this movie are the wacky and inspired scenes hung on the plot tree, chief among them being the “I Have a Dream” song and the swordfight between the frying-pan-wielding rogue and the sword-wielding warhorse. (I haven’t figured out…
Can we please retire the “B-word?”
Far and away, the top contender for this year’s “Word Wiped Clean Of Any Denotative Meaning Through Indiscriminate Pejorative Use”* is bully. Before you use the term to bring down the opprobrium of all right-thinking people on the deserving target, let’s cast our minds back to how the word was used when we were children….
SL Comic Con FanX Schedule
Edit: Sorry, I wrong this back on the 7th and then accidentally left it as a draft. Mea culpa. I’m a panelist at the upcoming SL Comic Con FanX, April 17th to 19th at the Salt Palace. Here’s my schedule: 4/17 2:00 pm: Religion in Science Fiction and Fantasy 4/18 2:00 pm: Lovecraft and Poe: What…
The Ancient of Days just got ancienter.
It’s the message that every artist dreads receiving: At the gallery displaying some of your work, a little old man lost his balance and stumbled into the table displaying some of your work, causing two of your pieces to tumble to the floor and break. (Details may be a bit specific.) The two pieces in…
The face behind it all.
So I’m a guest at the upcoming Salt Lake ComicCon Fan Xperience, and was asked for a good quality headshot — in contrast to what I’d given them last time, which was (a) pitifully small, and (b) nearly a decade old. There just aren’t many recent pictures of me, and of the ones that exist,…
Movies Seen Recently: Invasion of the Saucer-Men, Supersonic Man, Krrish
Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957) — The best thing about this movie is the alien costume design, and the best this about the alien costume design is that it looks nifty on the poster. In real life, not so much. This B-movie has got all of the standard elements — necking teens, incredulous policemen, traveling…
Skull on a Stick!
This is something I made as a display piece for my table at LTUE. That’s right, I’m finally getting around to taking and posting pictures a month after the public unveiling. Just be glad that you’re getting something, okay? And while we’re at it, here’s a work in progress. This and the next couple of…