The Life of a Foolish Mortal

I've been working hard on being a productive member of society this week. I spent this week working on commission work, small paintings to sell next convention, and taking stock of buttons, and various convention supplies.

I also reorganized the button stock for conventions. In previous years the buttons were stored in a large gallon freezer bag and one had to dig around to find the buttons folks wanted. That was later upgraded to a couple of large gallon plastic bags holding various smaller plastic bags. The bags themselves were labeled and divided into categories, so we had one whole bag that contained all my comic related buttons and another that contained nothing but meta button jokes, etc. This system worked but not very well. This system has been retired and now we are trying something involving boxes with movable dividers and such. We shall see how this system works out.

I also retired some old print stock. I'll probably throw them on the store front when I get a chance since I have quite a few copies of these but no desire for them to be in the print book anymore. There's nothing WRONG with the pictures, the pieces however are old and I feel it's time to take them out.

Alright, now that that is aside onwards to the Art Post.

So anime director Satoshi Kon died of cancer on the 23rd of August.

For those of you who don't recognize the name (I honestly didn't recognize it when I first read this news) he was the anime director for, among other things, Perfect Blue, Paprika, and I suppose Lacy would hurt me if I failed to mention Tokyo Godfathers (one of her favorites which I haven't seen).

I'm not going to say too much, since I don't know much about the man but respected what work of his I'd seen. He was an unsurpassed storyteller and he definitely will be missed.

Shine on You Crazy Diamond.

This weekend the president of the Anime Club died.

This was rather sudden and unexpected, I see him on Friday and he's dead on Sunday. Spooky.

However I haven't been in the club long enough to really have any major grief for him. I feel regret yes, he was a great guy and entertaining to be around. But I just don't feel comfortable hanging around the meetings this week that are mainly the club members remembering and mourning him. I don't know any anecdotes to tell and I have no tears to shed. I just wish I could explain this to people without hurting anyones feelings.

I don't even have the sudden feeling of mortality that many are probably getting. As I've stated before I lost my feeling of being invincible and living forever long ago. I had my wake up call back in high school, when a friend/rival of my entire junior high career died suddenly due to a medication error. He was my age and died, unexpectedly at a sleep over (I can not even fathom what that must have been like). I cried for about a week after that. Funny how those memories just return suddenly.

I hate that instead of feeling grief for the recently passed on I just end up getting a head full of trigged memories from the day I realized death could be just around the corner. It just feels so disrespectful, so impersonal. But thats what I'm feeling and I don't want to manufacture any tears just to fit in with the rest.

Rest in Peace Dude. Thanks for the Advice.

Oh yea, and Julian, Rest in Peace too, thanks for not haunting me or anything.

Madeline L'Engle apparently died yesterday.

I loved some of her books, got bored through others but I respected her ability. My favorite book of hers would probably have to be Many Waters, which was the only one I bothered to buy and reread over and over. I think it was the fact she managed to combine biblical characters and theology and make it fascinating.

Which was greatly appreciated by me, who was 13 and going through Lutheran confirmation where I was pretty much convinced that to be a 'good' christian was to be boring and lose all creative spark.

So Godspeed Madeline L'Engle. Hope you find the great beyond as fascinating as your books were to me.

I WAS going to post tonight whinging on pathetically about how my life sucks until I saw this article on MSN.com.

Attack survivor dies in cruise ship leap". I might have posted about this kid before, he was a student at the high school I graduated from. Some of his friends went to my church, I'm fairly sure that the attack happened near my neighborhood. I didn't know him but the situation hit rather close to home.

Sadly the second I read the headline I had a sinking feeling that I knew who they were talking about. When they mentioned Galveston I was certain. The kid survived long enough to testify before congress about a bill on hate crimes.

I find myself unable to say anything that doesn't either repeat the article or bring up my shame for my school or my urge to beat some ass holes senseless. So I'll just sign off.

God speed David Ritcheson, I'm sure wherever you are is better than here.