#also. i was searching redbubble for anything related to him.

[fictionallyinparadise]

I feel like it should be known that while doing other tasks and watching Karl edits (before I started self shipping) and it was the classic "I SAID SIT" scene and I sat down in real life.

[skookworks]

Gallery: Delta Green

Most of my RPG illustration work has been for Call of Cthulhu related projects. That’s the result of intention and good luck and accident.

The Intention part happened in the year 2000. I submitted some illustrations to the Delta Green website. Delta Green was a Call of Cthulhu RPG set in modern times – the late 199os. Most CoC games are set in the 1920s/1930s, the time the original stories were written and set. I discovered Delta Green in 1999 when I working at Half Price Books. I was the buyer when a customer sold us his collection of RPG manuals. In the buy was Delta Green and its sequel Delta Green: Countdown. I bought those books for myself. I loved the ideas behind the setting. It updated the Cthulhu Mythos for the late Twentieth Century in ways that surprised and delighted me. It created a means and a reason for investigators to, well, investigate the horrors from beyond.

I’d wanted to illustrate RPGs but didn’t have much of a portfolio of examples to show. I found the Delta Green site early the next year. I don’t think it had a way to send submissions and I don’t think they were asking for any. What it did have was a way to submit fan art and writing. So I worked up three illustrations (see the follow gallery) and submitted them. They got posted. No one from Delta Green contacted me.

Oh well.

Two years later those illustrations got me work at The Black Seal. But that’s another post.

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The original photoshop files of these illustrations are, possibly, residing on an old back up drive. It’s formated for Mac and I currently use a PC so I haven’t tried plugging it in. A lot of the work I did in the first ten years of this century was done on a Mac. The art always started as graphite and ink on paper and then had photoshop magic applied to it. I’ve got the original drawings in big metal flat files but the art that got published looks different.

Earlier this year I realized that I’d sent most of those illustrations to the editors and publishers via email and I’ve never deleted any personal emails. So I’ve tracked down a lot of that older art and will be showing it in future galleries. I found the two black and white illustrations in the above gallery in my emails.

The first three images, however, I couldn’t locate in my gmail archive. AOL has long since deleted all my old emals. At first they didn’t appear to be on the current Delta Green site but, after doing some obsessive google searching and some sort of back door poking around on DG I found them in an archive. Huzzah!

Story Seed #54 The Time Line AntiDefense League

There are a lot of stories that feature some sort of organization whose mission is to defend the “correct” timeline, to make sure that history works itself out the way that it is “supposed to”. Bleah. How about an organization whose mission is to create timelines where history works itself out in the best ways for the most people?

Recommendation

Beeple. This person’s art started showing up in my tumblr feed, shared by other folks I followed. It was weird and creepy so I subscribed to his feed. He posts an image a day, every day.

Also, the Growing Up / Overnight Kickstarter concludes on the 30th. If you’ve been putting off backing it. please jump in.

Local News

Last week, in one of our stand up meetings at USPS, we were reminded that we, the letter carriers were not supposed to talk to the press. That if a member of the press attempted to engage us in conversation we were to refer him/her to management. Also, while we were in uniform, we were not to engage in political discussions with anyone lest they assume that our views represented those of the USPS. We were also to be careful not to express politcal opinions on social media in such a way as to lead people to believe that our views represented those of the USPS.

Sigh.

To be clear, anything I write here about my job at USPS is just my experience and my opinion. I like to assume that those of you who read these newsletters recognize this but, on the off chance you don’t, I AM NOT A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE POST OFFICE. I’m just a guy who works there. In my opinion, the USPS can’t actually have an opinion since it’s an organization. Organizations are not people. The people in charge of organizations may claim that their opinion represents the opinion of the organization but that’s just a fiction.

Anyway.

The most interesting part about the day job right now is that I have a new T6. USPS delivers mail six days a week. Regular carriers work and deliver theri route five days a week. A T6 is the person who delivers the route on the regular carrier’s day off. My last T6 had medical issues that prevented them from delivering my route on a regular basis. My new T6 is healthy and detail oriented. More detail oriented than I am, actually. And that’s good. It means I’m updating labels in mailboxes and doing maintenance on my route that I’d let slide. I keep most of my customer changes in my head. Having another person who has to regularly work my route reminds me that I should communicate customer changes in clear, written methods. It’s only polite.

We’ve also moved our start time from 7 am to 7:30 am. I’m not a fan but I’m adjusting.

I’ve left my alarm at 4 am. I get up. Drink coffee Write. Do computer art or make products in either my Zazzle or my Redbubble stores. I’ve updated my various websites to include a “store” page with links to each. This week I spent most of my store time working on an Oz Squad collection for Zazzle. Oz Squad is Steve Ahlquist’s creature but, as a fan and sometime collaborator, I try to find ways to keep the brand active.

Oz Squad Land of Oz

by Skookworks

In the evenings, once we’ve finished dinner and our spot of television, I work on physical art. Right now I’m doing pirate sketches. More about that when the project can be talked about publically.

Thank you for dropping by. Remember that life has always been insane. Look out for yourself and your friends. That’s where sanity and security dwells.

See you next week!

Tuesday Night Party Club #34 Gallery: Delta Green Most of my RPG illustration work has been for Call of Cthulhu related projects.

[psi-groovin]

a really long ramble about mostly nothing but sort of about what’s been going on in my life: a short novel

What the hell am I doing with myself.

I just sit and wait everyday everyday everyday everyday wait wait wait waiting waiting wait gonna sit and wait til Halloween. All the decorations are up I put them up myself on September 30th and I wore really bad shoes while doing it so it felt like I was walking on bone after multiple hours of stringing lights and small ghosts made out of old marching band t-shirts.

Well here we are. October 10th. I turn 23 in two days. Tonight I gotta go over to my old high school and help coach the color guard cos I said I’d do that about a month and a half ago but I’m finding that they don’t really need my help at all. Also being back there with all those people is just triggering some sort of ptsd in me. I get frustrated and thrust right back into the fray of being in high school with a bunch of girls who don’t give a shit and some who are only there to try and show off. The ones who only talk about band. The Academy, Blue Devils, etc. I don’t know what else to call them except for show-offs. “Look how dedicated I am to this I spent thousands of my parent’s dollars to stand in the back of the field and wave a flag around.” Yeah, good for you. Is that money well-spent? Did you learn anything at all? “Oh this is how we do it at The Academy.” Well guess what, this isn’t The Academy anymore. You’re back in high school with our marching band. This is how we do it here.

See, ptsd. That shit isn’t even related to what I’m dealing with now at the high school. I just keep getting thrust back 4-5 years and experience the same frustrations I did then.

No, now it’s more like I just feel useless. I’m not really good enough (or I guess I don’t have enough training) to be a good coach, but at the same time sometimes I’m the only one helping the girls while the instructors just sit and watch?? But most of the time I just sit there and wait for the head coach to tell me to do something, like repping a certain flag routine while he goes and checks on the weapon line.

I just don’t know. I don’t want to do it anymore but I’m also really fuckn tired of sitting there for two hours while I do nothing. Honestly, it’s probably my fault and I should take some initiative but its something that’s so against my nature that I can’t bring myself to do it. I think the other coaches are afraid of me cos I don’t really talk much. I really just want to quit helping, but I said I’d help and I hate to back out and potentially let them down, even though it seems like they couldn’t care one way or another if I lived or died. So here I am.

It’s currently 5 in the morning. I sent off an application to an airline in Tucson so I’ll be going down there for an interview on the 19th. But it’s in Tucson so I think they’re hiring specifically for Tucson, so I might not be able to do this. Unless I am able to move to Tucson which I don’t really want/have the means to do.

I’m frustrated. I’m in life’s waiting room. I get called in to do one thing and then I have to go back to the waiting room and wait wait wait wait wait o shit look it’s yer birthday woohoo alright let’s go back and wait some more o shit look it’s Halloween.

How do I break this cycle.

How do I break off a piece of that kit-kat bar.

My sister and I went to the store sometime last month around midnight because we were craving cake and were surprised to find that Fry’s was doing a flash sale on Halloween candy. We bought a bag of snickers and kit-kat. The snickers are all gone now.

Whenever we buy Halloween candy we always get one of those big ass mixed bags from Costco but you gotta make sure you get the mixed bags without twizzlers in them cos otherwise everything in the bag will taste/smell like licorice and it ruins the taste of the chocolate so we get a mixed bag of chocolate stuff mostly and I make sure to take out all the snickers and save them for myself cos I’m just a freak for that peanuty nougaty chocolatey goodness.

Kills my teeth though.

I drank some red wine tonight because I have cramps and I read somewhere that red wine helps so I drank some and my teeth got stained a nasty color. It’ll probably just brush off but it was nice to see my teeth turn about the same color as Chop Top’s from Chainsaw 2.

Speaking of Chainsaw, someone commented on the Chop Top/Nubbins drawing I did that’s on Redbubble. Something about how he wished he could assault anyone who would “buy this gay shit.” I deleted the comment of course. I thought about flagging it and reporting it but I didn’t want to trouble RB. Now if the guy comments on my shit again with some more offensive and horrible stuff like that, then I’ll report it.

I’m not upset, per say, by it, but it is a little upsetting to me. The whole situation. Like there are still people out there who are homophobic and insecure enough in their niche genre fandoms that they get offended when I draw a cute picture of two wacky brothers from some famous horror movies?? For real? That’s what’s upsetting to me. The horror fandom tends to be a little elitist, like the metal fandom is famous for. Like… did what I draw bother someone so much they felt the need to comment THAT on it?? What the hell, dude. Just live and let live. For fucks sake.

Am I mad? Not really. Just upset. And like I said, I’m upset because that guy’s way of thinking still exists. I’m not mad that he didn’t like it. I’m mad that he was upset enough to comment some angry shit on it. Like just move on.

Have I beaten this topic to death yet?

My sister got a call from a company in Virginia that if she gets the position, she’s gonna move out there. I want to go with her too. Get a job at Chipotle to help pay the rent. Then continue the airline search.

I don’t know much about Virginia, but I’m pretty much willing to move anywhere as long as it’s not Phoenix or Tucson. Sedona’s gorgeous, Kingman’s gorgeous.. like whenever I have to drive back to Phoenix I want to die. Why does anyone live here it’s a fuckn horrible mass of gray and brown. It’s hot, everyone is angry, traffic is terrible 80% of the time .. why does anyone choose to live in Phoenix. Everywhere else in Arizona is like “ohh, this is why people move and live here.” but PHOENIX… Phoenix can shove a rosebush up its ass.

Grandma’s not doing so good. I meant to ask dad about her today because yesterday he said she went to the ER. We went up to visit her for her birthday and the whole trip was really stressful but it might’ve been extra stressful because I was probably PMSing. We hung up some pictures in her apartment so it looks more like a home, but its still kind of exhausting being around her, especially because she complains a lot. My aunt who takes care of her is always so stressed out with her. I feel for her.

I don’t know. I also didn’t get much sleep because we all shared a room and my sister and dad were snoring really fuckn loud. I kept waking up before my alarm and then thinking I had overslept and then looked at the clock and it had only been like a minute or not even. It was a plus though when we went back to the hotel after dinner with grandma and caught about half of a Jeff Lynne’s ELO concert in Hyde Park on tv. That was pretty groovy.

Also the first night we were there we walked across the street and got a bunch of French fries for a midnight snack and there were two girls in the restaurant who I was facing and they were singing along to some song on their phone and I caught their eyes and they couldn’t stop laughing. So then when I caught their eye again when they were singing/dancing in their seats I started dancing too and they broke up laughing all over again. When they left they waved at me, smiling. I felt good.

If I was in high school I’d feel really insecure about the whole situation. I’d have thought they were judging me or something. I know now that they weren’t. We just had a good moment together and I’m really happy about it. I’m smiling as I type this. I’ve grown a lot since high school.

What the fuck have I been doing for the past month besides all this random rabble I’ve been talking about? Is anyone going to fucking read this? Besides me? This feels really good to type, by the way. This is something I like to call Mind Masturbation, where your brain just shits out all it’s thoughts through your fingers. It feels soooooooooo good and my brain just feels .. clean. Like I’ve gone in there with a toothbrush and massaged all the old shit that’s been building up in there. It feels cool and fresh, like when you get your shoulders massaged. Healthy blood flow.

Anyways, the entire past month has been mostly me mourning the death of Tobe Hooper. I’ve since been catching up on all the works of him I’ve missed and crying my eyes out that we lost such an adorable and really thoughtful (and I mean that in the sense that he thought about things a lot, stuff people don’t normally consider. Like he stepped back a lot and looked at everything and just thought about it. Magnificent. You don’t get that much in people it seems) man. Body Bags was great, and I love John Carpenter as the Coroner and Tobe Hooper’s own cameo toward the end. The Apartment Complex was also fantastic and I just love it and I wanted to see if I could buy it on dvd but it seems its only really available on vhs which is .. neat but also pretty worthless to me. I highly recommend The Apartment Complex, if anyone has read this far. It’s a fuckn delight.

I think I’ve probably jerked off my brain enough to where there’s not much else that’s weighing on my mind anymore. I feel a lot better than I did about 30 minutes ago. I was all wound up and stressed, and now I’m a little less wound up and stressed. I feel slightly better. Writing shit like this really does help get it out of your head.

Well, to anyone who bothered to read this, I hope you found some enjoyment because this was mostly just for me. I hope it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Now you know what I’ve been up to sort of lately and why I haven’t really been on tumblr. Sometimes you just need a really long break. It probably feels longer than it actually has been but that’s another thing: the days feel like they’re crawling by as I wait in life’s waiting room.

We’ll stop there before this thing ends up being a novel.

Thanks for stickin around. Love you all. Glad we could all witness me jerkin off my brain today.