So today when we were hanging out by the apartment we noticed a lonely fellow. He appeared to have been discarded, but he was actually quite fresh and clean so we invited him inside.

He could not guess our true intentions…

(Obviously on drugs)

After chatting him up a while, we learned that he was originally from Six Flags, but had lost his job of hanging from a string in the carnival section and was now homeless. I listened to him talk, but all I could think about was his juicy, white innards. He was so big and cuddly– how could I resist making use of his Polyfil? So I signaled to my trusty sidekick Matt, and he attacked.

Oh, the sweet innards..

It was a bloodfest. He tore out all that was useful, and left his poor abused body on the floor to expire.

The poor guy didn’t say a word during it all; It was like he was resigned to his fate. So, after a few proddings to make sure there were no good tidbits left, we disposed of the body and escaped with the spoils. Now what to do with a giant bag of Polyfil?

Life is rough in the ghetto

This has nothing to do with illustration, but just an interesting experience I thought to share.

I’ve always found sleep and dreaming fascinating, and (maybe because of my interest) I often have interesting experiences during sleep. I had one such “interesting” experience this morning (though it was more annoying and frightening at the time) and am wondering if anyone else experiences this!

Occasionally, while I am dreaming, I will suddenly become fully conscious– different than a normal lucid dream in that I feel like I am “awake” rather than just conscious, even though dream stuff is still going on. It will always begin by suddenly being unable to open my eyes in the dream, no matter how hard I try. From there I start to panic in the dream, and it turns to me wanting to wake up very badly but being unable to move any part of my body both in the “dream” and in real life.

After struggling I will occasionally be able to burst my eyes open slightly, and I will even view things in my real room such as posters on the wall and the ceiling fan. An extreme drowsiness will pull me right back into sleep, where the process will start over 4 or 5 times before I finally thrash around the covers and become un-paralyzed and awake for good.

I am aware of “sleep paralysis,” and am guessing that what I experience is some odd form of it, but it feels more like trying hard to wake up with paralyzed eyes, than being fully awake with paralyzed limbs. I have noticed that it almost always happens when I sleep on my back, because I am inevitably staring at the ceiling when I finally can open my eyes.

I have heard various myths about demons and incubi that are more prone to attack whilst one sleeps on their back, and I can imagine how such myths begin if that position of sleep does cause sleep paralysis!

Have any of you guys experienced sleep paralysis or some other strange sleep phenomena? Maybe it’s time to create an illustration about it… though who could do it better than Fuseli’s “Nightmare”?

So this post has absolutely zero educational value, except perhaps to show what a nutcase I am.

In the dream…

I was coughing up a storm, obviously very sick, and this girl kept telling me to stop it because it was so annoying. But I kept coughing, and eventually little specks of blood spewed out with the spit. Then, a giant (like baseball sized) gob of bloody stuff shot out and stuck to the wall. (How it got out of my throat, I’ll never know.) So I scraped the bloody ball off the wall to show a doctor and started running around in a frantic search to locate a hospital.

The thing is, as I was running around, the blood started falling off the squishy gob. I looked down, and underneath the blood was….. a snowman head. Yeah, carrot and all.

Whaaaat???

This has nothin’ to do with nothin’, but I just wanted to let you kittens know that Rhino Veggie Fruit Bears are the most amazing vitaminy things you could ever hope to stuff in your mouth. Matt’s mom sent him some of these, and while I am always reluctant to try stuff created and eaten by crazed health-food addicts, I tried one anyway. Normally, trying to keep my body from forcefully rejecting the cardboard they call health food takes a serious effort, but these are amazing! Instead, each morning is a struggle as I attempt to eat only my allotted two bears rather than the entire bottle. If they sold these in the candy aisle and had absolutely no vitamins or antioxidants, I would still eat them. The heavenly combination of sweet and sour; the spark of delight as the crisp grains of sugary stuff tempt my palette…

…well that’s getting a bit weird. But they ARE delicious.

….and no, I am not being paid to say that

Well, I’m finally back in Savannah, which hopefully means more updating to my poor, neglected blog!

I spent the holidays in Florida and, having grown up in Michigan, stepping outside to 75 degrees and topless Europeans on the beach was a rather startling Christmas atmosphere. I had a great time though, and got to spend some quality time with my four siblings (Including the new one!)

Even on vacation I couldn’t stop thinking about neat stuff to make for my upcoming Etsy shop, so I took the opportunity to have a little craft-time with my siblings. I found some really neat tutorials on making glass magnets on the web, so I printed out a bunch of little bits of my artwork and we all made some sets of magnets out of them. Unfortunately they had to sit out for 24 hours to dry, and I forgot to take final shots! Ah well.

I was also lucky enough to receive an absolutely awesome Christmas/Graduation present…

TADA!!

Suh-weet. My old Inspiron 9300 was about to kick the bucket, not to mention that fact that it weighed a bazillion pounds and could barely run anything over Photoshop 7. My new Macbook Pro is beautiful, sleek and fast, and I’m trying my best to keep it that way. (I give myself a week before it gets cereal crumbs embedded in the keyboard…) I picked the 15″ version with 2 gigs of ram, but ordered 4 gigs online which I’m going to swap out and hopefully not ruin anything.

Anyway, there’s my life in a nutshell. Now that I’m back in Savannah I’m going to try to get back on track with promotion and opening an Etsy shop! Wish me luck!