Rambling On...

I'm one of those types that is good at starting things, but not finishing them. The creative projects that I do finish, they are often rushed. I fully admit, I start with all this energy and by the time I get near the end, I'm tired and thinking of the next big thing(s). It's been said that for people like me, accomplishing small things can really help mentally. In fact, I had just read advice from a 1990s comic book artist; don't try and do a whole comic book or series of stories, tell a story in 3-5 pages. I won't say my diostories are too long. But they have gotten bogged down due to lack of technology, money, time, whatever. AI, these days, has nothing to do with it, surprisingly. In fact, I found how limiting it can be from a proper 3d diorama set that I built with my own hands.

The VS series I'm working on, it was originally to be a 3-5 pages diocomic. (I use the term diostory too. same thing). I was struggling with getting the figures posed right; those darned GI Joe Classified figures have really stiff joints to the point, I can't get them to bend. Hot water technique, yes, but it doesn't last long). VS is just a fun lil series of pitting GI Joe vs Cobra. Or rather, the bad guy world. Because it's more than just Cobra out there. The original version of this was in 2002 when Hasbro relaunched GI Joe: Joe vs Cobra (aka JvC). I got back into GI Joe at that time and I loved the idea. Now I'm playing with the idea.

I wrote in a post on Facebook that I was moving to the written format for the story. I, for the most part, retired from diocomics. They take too long, too expensive, and I have no space to build stuff (or a decent place to store them). I dabble in shorts and I mean they are short. (compared to 20-some pages; hundreds of photos, etc). The 1st VS story, Storm Shadow vs Helix was a fast write. It took a little bit of thinking on how to make things work. Otherwise, I think I wrote the 1st draft in a day or two. Then entered in WORD, revised it (there wasn't much), and published it. An accomplishment to get the 1st one finished!

I'm working on the 2nd one. I chose to restart it because it wasn't going the way I wanted. Each story is an exercise, it feels like. But almost as interestingly and I never noticed this in the past when I was writing on what I consider my real story (it has nothing to do with toys, started in 1993. Written on different computers, had been on floppy disk, and well, lost on multiple computers too), the stories sometimes write themselves. And with that mindset, the 7 Orochi story project, which is over a year away, I've been struggling with the 7th member should be. This should be for another post but since I'm in the groove... The 7 Orochi stem from an upcoming project called the 4 Horsemen. The full title, I suppose, should read Marauders Task Force: Demon Hunters: Vol 2: 4 Horsemen. Vol 3 is 7 Orochi. Vol 1... uh... errrrr, did I actually call it World Eaters? Or did I call it Devil Dogs. Uhmmmm, anyway, 7 Orochi is the evolution of the 4 Horsemen. I've decided that as I write the story, I might come up with an idea of who #7 should/could be. 

All these ideas to write...

Want to see how Story1 was going to look? Doing the visual version is much different than the written version.

The Lair still exists?!?

 I'm finding myself more and more frustrated with Facebook. Just jumping on here to see if I still had an account. Which apparently I do and it logged me in right away. Now, how do I do this again?

Relaunch the Lair blog?

Has it really been 6 yrs since the last post.

I'll make this quick.

Considering relaunching this old blog so I can use it as a record of what I was doing in life. Probably with a heavy emphasis on the GI Joe stories.

Is there hope for mankind?

http://www.viralnova.com/hilarious-facebook-fails/

So I found this on Facebook today. It is a quick compilation of people posting things that end up being really dumb. It’s not the first time something like his has shown up. I’m sure millions of people have read it and it’s been shared probably by at least half. I’ve been noticing a lot of these types of posts been going up lately. It’s good for a laugh, which is the purpose.

But I can’t help that there’s more to it than just a laugh.

We are laughing at people’s dumbness. We are laughing, rolling our eyes, saying “omg, are they really that stooooopid?”, and etc. This isn’t any different than watching the ‘fail’ videos on youtube or the different tv shows where people do stuff, fail at it and we laugh. There’s an industry for this. Charlie Chaplin comes to mind.

A skateboarder trying a rail trick, fails and racks his nuts on the railing. It’s funny. It’s actually NORMAL (for skateboarding). We wince at how painful the hit is. We laugh. We point. We tell others all about it. Rob Dryek, pro skateboarder, managed to create a tv show from people’s video taped follies. But when it comes to txts and what people post on facebook,  something feels different. It’s more like this…

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Should I even be laughing at how dumb people are? Should I be shaking my head and wondering about the state of education of normal people??? All because some dude doesn’t know the difference between an eagle and a parrot? Or that kids don’t actually know what the Civil War was for? Or that Africa is a continent not a country (wait till they found out where Egypt actually is!). Those are just 3 examples of the 31 ‘fails’ that was compiled.

Part of me says, “why am I laughing at these people?”
Part of me says, “this is bad karma to laugh at the dumb”.

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Because I know, I’ve done dumb things with all intents and purposes being truthful and honest. To be called out on it in this way, it’s almost character assassination. Yet, these people texted/wrote it, right? Should these be reproduced on a social website for everyone to see? You don’t see a whole lot of students’ grades being posted, right? I’m not entirely sure I’d want to be called on every other mistake I’ve made in life.

A simple post like that got me thinking in other weird ways too. The world human population keeps rising. The village gets bigger and bigger. When it keeps getting bigger, does that mean there are more village idiots to the point that you have a village of idjits? (I sometimes wonder if the amount of dumb people is a certain percentage of the world population. Therefore, 30 years ago, there were significantly less people so were there actually less dumb people? OR because of the internet (and tv), the dumb become more pronounced?) And I’ve heard that Alaska is really an island and can only be reached by boat.

Corrosion Of Conformity

For those who have known me for awhile, know I that I started skateboarding in 1986. Or at least, I got my 1^st skateboard that Christmas. Debate the timeline all you want, but the real point here is that some of my musical tastes came from Thrasher magazine. Back in 5^th grade, I checked out the magazines a friend had. 6^th grade, I think I ended up with a subscription for a couple years. Thrasher, unlike Transworld, covered the world (ie; culture) of the skateboarding scene. From clothing to contests to skaters all over, but also, music.

At that age, aren’t we all pretty susceptible to the stuff around us? Music, tv shows, how to act around females (and vice versa), clothing style, etc, it all comes into play. Thrasher covered music; good and bad. From what I could remember, they were usually pretty fair in their reviews. I’m not sure how many albums I bought from random bands just because Thrasher had ads for them or a quick blurb about them. Despite being a skateboard magazine, they didn’t cover just punk. Heavy Metal and some hip-hop/rap showed up. I found bands like Metallica (good), Warrior Soul (gah), Prong (good), Boneless Ones (gah), Drunk Injuns (good), and hundreds of others. The focus of today’s blog is CORROSION OF CONFORMITY.

The album they kept on putting up ads for was for Technocracy. I never did end up with the album, but it looked hella cool (see picture). I believe this was also around the time Metallica’s “…And Justice For All” was coming out.

It wouldn’t be until college that I picked up a Corrosion of Conformity album. “DELIVERANCE”. MTV was airing the video for “Albatross” and it got me interested. I think one of the Mack Dawg snowboard videos used one of their songs too. Since I remembered these guys from middle school, I figured, “hey, I remember them. They are often in the same sentence as Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, etc (and other metal bands around at that time)” Got the album probably from Columbia House or one of those mail order music companies (I’m sure they are long gone) where you can get like 12 albums for 1 cent or something like that. 

The album in itself was ok. They weren’t my favorite heavy metal band all of a sudden. But for that one album, it was cool enough. Yet, I never picked up another album for some reason.

Recently, the Corrosion name has been popping up on Facebook. Mainly because it’s through a band I “liked” tagging them or something. Don’t know if it was Anthrax or Metallica, but there were ads popping up for their new album. Besides downloading it thru Amazon.com, I also looked up info about the band. I suppose I was always curious about them since I would see Pepper Keenan’s name pop up now and then. Probably due to the fact that he showed up in the band DOWN with Pantera’s singer, Phil Anselmo. So if Pepper’s hanging with down AND he tried out for bassist for Metallica, I figured CoC had called it quits. But with a new album, then who was in it and how would it sound?

Well, it’s definitely not the sound I remember. I looked ‘em up on Wiki. It’s southern metal! (But isn’t Down and Zack Wylde’s band southern metal too?) It’s a 3-piece. With the creation of the internet and Amazon.com (and youtube.com), one can sample music. Sure, I didn’t sample their new album which is self-titled. But I did try out Technocracy and OMG, it sounded PUNK! Just babbling on here.

Oh right, talking about where some of my heavy metal tastes came from. Thrasher magazine. Targeting Corrosion of Conformity. Their new album which is self-titled, really don’t know what to say about it. Other than I find it hard to listen to. But I do admit this, they definitely did things their own way and not worry about what anyone else was going to think. Good old Thrasher magazine…

Roll Bounce Part 1

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Roll Bounce Part 2

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I'll admit it. It can take me months to finish a set. A diorama set. For my DioStories (you know, I photograph action figures in either handmade sets or outdoor locations that tell a big ass story). I've been working on an engine room for months and it'll only be for a handful of shots for the scene!

I stopped at Ace Value (or Ace Hardware, whichever you want to call it) and picked up some random plumbing pipe pieces. It turned into what is pictured. What'll be fun here is that I can reuse that tubing in different ways; just a quick repaint and it'll be something entirely different. The engine room set, well, it's pretty close to being finished up. I'm actually waiting for the paint to dry on the base. Cuz then I'll use a watered down black paint to make it look slightly dirty and weathered (like what you see here).

My sets are usually pretty simple. I'm not a welder or sculptor so I don't do some of the really cool diorama sets. Plus, I do stories so I need the sets to be able to be broken down easily and quickly. Then used again. Even the walls are reused. Because I almost never show the whole set, the viewer doesn't get to see the whole thing. It's very manipulative in that way. Which is sometimes a mistake on my part cuz I won't convey the possible sense of 'grandeur' of the set. And honestly, sometimes it's not worth showing the whole thing.

Even with the set shown, you really don't need to see anything else cuz there's nothing there! :D