ABy, Something

A couple of these are retries, though most of them are new. Here is a picture that Grok stubbornly refuses to animate, 'Moderated for Content.' It puzzles me as to why. Rascism?

2021 Diary: I Had the Gall

5/8/2021-5/10/2021: The Gallbladder Days. Was feeling bad Saturday and Susan suggested it might be my appendix. Andy took me to the Emergency Room at 3 PM, and then it was just a nightmare of waiting. Eventually I was put in a room about 9 PM. There were tests and scans and ultrasounds and long dozy uncomfortable stretches of waiting. On Sunday I was put under, and my gallbladder removed. Long periods of urination and dry mouth and ketoacidosis (looks like I’ll be needing insulin). About 6:30 PM Andy came to pick me up and took me to HEB Pharmacy where they didn’t have everything I needed right away. Came back to guest house and called John and Kenny and started to get things straightened up after a good doze. Ordered healthier food from HEB.

 

5/11/2021: Still no bowel movement as of 9:30 AM. Took garbage out. Groceries arrived at 8:15 AM, and I had a long nightmarish trial getting them in, what with the uneven ground at the side of the house where they are installing a new septic tank. Must rest my incisions now.

“Still alive, but little thanks to my pharmacy, which took until late afternoon to fill my prescription for a glucometer and insulin after five or six phone calls to and from my doctors and nurses. Then we had to go back again in the worst of the storm to get needles for the insulin pens, which I guess they thought I didn't need. Then back a third time to get the right sticks for the glucometer. Now I'm medicined up and the blood sugar is headed the right way. The operation seems to have sent my diabetes out of whack. Thanks for all the prayers and good wishes, and especially for John and Susan for looking after me!” – from e-mail to John.

Up about 12 AM and felt awake so did the first cleaning and organization for a while. Now (hopefully) I won’t lay there with thoughts of cleaning run through my head.

 

5/12/2021: Up about 5:30 AM. Septic tank finally installed by 2:30 PM, but landscape still a mess. Besides struggling through the day, I made Malt-o-Meal for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and then chicken and broccoli for supper. Managed (with Kam’s help) to make supper of sausages and cabbage fry. Poor Andy had to clean it up. Kenny called this evening and talked a half hour. I injected my own insulin, and it went easily.

 

5/13/2021: It is a great irony that while something is now actually happening in my life, I feel no urge to record it. I live in a sort of weird ocean of time that passes very slowly, except for spikes that rise when I do things. This morning got an order from HEB and worked to reorganize my fridge. My first blood sugar reading in the morning was 200 before breakfast. Breakfast: Malt-o-Meal, lunch: tuna with crackers, supper: chicken with broccoli and carrots. Ryan came and got Jade [their Doberman]. The house and the yard are starting to look quite different. Kam a great help again. Second blood sugar 367. Cooked supper for Shanafelts; chicken with broccoli, rice, and mushrooms. Insulin at 8 PM. Washed dishes. Is a BM finally near?

 

5/14/2021: And so the world goes on and on. Blood sugar still high; about 260 at each reading. Made an omelet (4 eggs and cauliflower and broccoli) for breakfast. About 2 PM I tried shaving head and beard and dropped the shaver with my head half-way done. Called John and he was just on his way into town to get Joey a haircut. He came by to finish the job (and gave me a new razor) and Kam and Joey got to visit. Made supper (fish, taco noodles, squash); had fish and noodles myself. Insulin at 8 PM. Now 11:30 PM.

 

Notes

Now I am no longer on insulin injections. My glucose has been running about 130, thought it’s higher lately. Looking back, I’m not sure all my dietary choices were that great. I’m getting to the point where I feel I need to buzz my head again; maybe tomorrow. I was little surprised to learn that the gallbladder actually is greenish. 

WY No Z

Wart and Weehawk are from their own movies, The Sword in the Stone and Wizards. Welcome to the Keep and Young Lord Mhoram are from the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; the Wendigo carries off a victim; the Witchmaster from Nathaniel's Witch is strongly hinted to be a form of the Devil himself. Wizard's Tower derives from yet another of my earliest drawings. A woodcutter and his dog meet the Wizardtree.  Wosehome is from Goldfire. Odin riding King Ghidorah? It happened, but it is too tremendous to animate accurately in Wotanclang. The Young Wizard Consults a strange spirit; this picture is actually an artifact of an effort to reproduce a picture of an old wizard talking to a strange spirit. The only Z picture I had was Zeb and Me, and we already had that. I guess I'll go back to the beginning and animate some good stuff I skipped over. I'm making a huge slideshow of all my AI animations, for my delectation and amusement.

A. I. Al

VW

About the last post: I thought I was done with it when Maggie asked me why all those johnnie-come-latelies were at the First Supper and she wasn't? I had to seat her before she allowed me to sleep again.

Falada is the odd horse out here, being out of alphabetical order. Vigil 1 and Vigil 2 are variations from one old drawing. Vlad watches from his fortress wall; I asked for howling wolves and got that peculiar cough. The Vodnyoy is a Slavic water spirit, invoked to keep chidren from playing in the water. Wainemoinen pulls out a monstrous fish. The Wall Guard is another Morg from Ortha (yay!). The old man can only Watch in Wonder as the spirit of his child self appreciates all the stuff he is still buying for him. The old hobbit takes a Wee Snooze; despite all my instructions (repeated several times) the AI insisted on giving him facial hair, which hobbits don't grow. >Sigh< And it had been doing so well.

Life Is Just A Fan-ta-sy

To TU

Sometimes the AI will throw up a pleasing variation; sometimes it's just inexplicable. Like the Trapped Unicorn losing its horn. Treebeard seemed willfully perverse in its interpretation; it's like the hexum was on itand it kept doing weird perspctives. Trumpkin is from the book Prince Caspian. I always found Peter Dinklage's decision to play him as a grumpy a--hole ... interesting. The AI kept wanting to split the Two-Headed Dog into two animals; it still added a tail that wasn't there. Perhaps Nature trying to repair Art's mistakes. Two Ogres are from Ortha. All I have to say is not gangly enough. The first effort at Unicorn interpreted my request for a whinny as some sort of woman's scream. Ur-Viles are creatures from the Thomas Covenant books; the beast is my own.

The Many Moods of General Roth

John sent me this early this morning and I squealed with delight. All these years I've had to visualize things in my brain like a chump. Now we have tools that help actualize our concepts! It inspired me so much I finished my daily script (for a proposed show in which Roth is a character) much earlier than usual. And I post it here to make it easier to find. My files are vast and shifting.

 

Pics and More T

It is fitting that we begin today with Thorsday. The Thoughtful Wizard is developed from one of my earliest drawings. I doubt if I would draw Tidy Smial in a forest setting these days, though I suppose it could kind of be Crickhollow. Father Time Teaches Youth the songs of yesterday; does he look a little too affectionate to you? The Tin Man has some odd-looking lappets on his face, but those were in the original illustration. Mr. Tinker climbs to the moon in some unusual perspective. The Tired King did not start out that way, but he could very well be Arthur after his last battle. Tom Tit Tot and Tom Tit Tot Two (by two different artists) illustrate the beginning and end of that English fairy tale, a variation of Rumplestiltskin.

The Roth of John

My brother John produced a couple of refinements to the image of Roth as part of our never-ending quest to make the perfect embodiment of our favorite character in all of Ortha. Of course I had to run it through Grok to animate it. We've come a long way from the AI deeming our efforts as somehow racially offensive. That they would judge it so makes me think that they are racially insensitive. How could we get it across that the Morgs were an original fantasy race, and that they were in fact heroic, humorous, and lovable? I wouldn't mind being compared to a Morg. The AI still has a tendency, despite all our developments, to rewrite Morgs into merely gorillas in armor. But we shall overcome some day, and, as the computer knows what you mean when you say Orc, so shall it be with Morgs. I may not be there to see it, but it is a dream I have.

T Time

We move quietly from S to T. In this collection we have illustrations from three of my franchises: Steepwater features a Morg Bridgeguard, Teatime has Thornbriar and Bear enjoying a meal (I did not direct the animation to have him swallow a whole ham, but that is so Bear!), and Nathaniel Horsehair from Alben makes The Bargain with a small demon. There are quite a few 'tone poems' in today's films, from Stump to Swamp to Swath to Tall Tree. I only wanted to add the white stag as an accent point to Swath, but the AI kept insisting on making it the star of the film. Even this version is a compromise. I am particularly pleased with how Swanship turned out; so graceful!

Tolkien Tuesday: The Main Event

I went through a phase of just drawing random hobbits; hence Ramble and Stroll. Shelob owes a lote to a Hildebrandt calendar, especially those strange eyes. I have no idea where the nose came from; I only noticed it in the close-up. That is not Theoden and Wormtongue: it's Sauron offering Ar-Pharazon a Tempting Plan. Technically, Theoden should be on a horse, but I couldn't (still can't) draw horses. I guess I could ask AI to do it, but that seems even more of a cheat than usual. I am most pleased with Thorin. By a strange coincidence, I think Tolkien Shrine has about the right amount of books for the core collection of Tolkien books, especially if some of the smaller books were consolidated into one volume. I've noticed that Grok has a strange habit of backing a character up and have it run off in the opposite direction it was facing. You have to corral that.

Tolkien Tuesday: The Charming Prelude

These are developments from Rankin/Bass designs. Since I had them more or less ready to go I thought I'd go ahead and put them up, and have more later. Then my computer got cranky and was moving slow. But, as I say, more to come. That Bilbo was an early, 'ugly' design, used to promote the special; we had (and have) a poster of it from Weekly Reader books (there's a more techical term for that that eludes my morning brain at the moment).

 

Some Bonuses; By Coincidence Mostly S

 

Animations from pictures on my weekly Image Dump over at Power of Babel. Old Mombi, Sandman, Snow White and Rose Red, and Steampunk Seabeast.

More Essesses

I confess I like boring animations, and you can't get much milder than Snail. But it has a quiet beauty to it, as do Spring Tree and Squirrel Tea. The AI has failed the Sphinx's breasts, and in Stalo it seems to have a very strange idea of how arrows work. I've tried correcting them several times, but I can't seem to find the right magical phrasing. I'm not exactly happy with the Spirit of the Air's legs either. Still, is it quite proper to nag and grouse about something that is essentially a miracle? I'm not saying I'm going to stop doing it, but it does seem rather ungrateful.

S-S-S! S Animations

Scholar is an anonymous Morg, probably one of Korm's colleague's. Scourged is from an unfinished short story with a rather Christ-like character. Secret Door 2 is a variation. Shiny Little Kitchen is from the famous Childcraft volume (I had to instruct the AI how a cat stretches and that a teakettle whistles from the spout). Skeezix and Pipsisewah are from the Uncle Wiggily stories. Skullbearer. The Sly One schemes; the Smiling King never blinks or varies his expression (creepy). An old man gives Some Good Advice. And the Sorceror's Apprentice is an old, old tale.

2021 Diary: May the Fourth Be With You

5/1/2021: May the First. Woke up at 7:30 AM and finally able to poop. Have determined to take everything in moderation today. Didn’t eat anything (despite them bringing me breakfast tacos) until almost 11 PM. Threw up and felt a little better about 12:15 PM. Drank mostly water. Slept most of the day which means I’m awake late at night. Very rainy much of the day, and cool enough not to have the AC on. Played some DQ8 up until Ascantha.

 

5/2/2021: Did not go to church; spent most of the day just sleeping and listening to music and having dreams, recuperating.

Susan brought me some Sprite and bananas about noon. I was feeling not sick, but not fully well either.  Come evening I began to do stuff, like make a huge order from HEB, watch animations, eat bananas and Ritz crackers with cheese, and play DQ8. About 10:30 PM I cleaned the house, then prayed, and read 2 chapters of Mark, then the missalette for the day. It’s now 11:14 PM, so I guess I’ll play a little more DQ8 until bed.

 

5/3/2021: Up at 5 AM. Prayers and Bible. Cartoons on METV with an emphasis on Bugs this week. Started my wash at 7:30 AM. Kam and bus at 8 AM. Switched my wash at 9 AM, then got my grocery delivery. The nice woman took it around to the guest house for me; I tipped her $20 for the extra effort. It was a big order. Rosary on and off.

GGACP, then finished the wash about 10 AM. Got Kam a little after 1 PM, and I noticed I hadn’t made boiled eggs! Made cucumber salad. At 4 PM made supper (fish cakes, couscous). Heard that S&A friend [Lance?] is coming tomorrow to cut down a tree in the back yard that was falling. Washed up at 8 PM. DQ8 For many hours.

 

5/4/2021: Up at 5:30 AM. Prayers and Bible. Cartoons. The day progressed as usual, but with even more DQ8. Tree coming down surprisingly fast. Kam at 1 PM. At 2:30 PM started sausage, potatoes carrots and cabbage. Kam hung out with me and helped me. Finished at 4:30 PM. Washed up at 8 PM. Played DQ8 until 11 PM.  

 

5/4-6/2021: Things trotted along as usual, except I was distracted by the work being done. On the 5^th the truck backed up to the gate crushed a hole into the unsuspected septic system under my bathroom window. Now that must be repaired too. Luckily I can still use my terlet. During these days played much DQ8. On the 6^th Susan announced that they were hauling away the old recliner in my house at last, and I took it upon myself to wrangle it out into the yard. Man, I should have let them do it like they said they would; I was devastated afterwards! Anyway, it is gone. Felt a recurrence of upset stomach afterward. They didn’t eat until 9 PM, and then poor Andy was called away for a job, after he and Susan had spent all evening hauling. Didn’t eat my own supper, as I knew my stomach couldn’t face chili. Lay in queasy disease until about 1 AM.

 

5/7/2021: Woke up a little before 7 AM, so missed cartoons. Caught up diary.

 

Notes

The problem was, although I didn’t know it at the time, was my gall bladder. We shall soon see how that played out. I would like to get a new recliner, or at least a good used one, to replace that old one; good to have my legs propped up. Hard to see where I’d put it these days. Maybe move out the old couch? It’s greasy and sprung, and the pull-out bed doesn’t work. But it is good to stretch out on with a ‘wall’ to lean against, as it were.

I kind of miss playing DQ8, but not as much as I did. It was always good to fill in the odd hour, roaming the open countryside and amassing phantom wealth, gaining experience points, improving skills, and exploring every nook and cranny of that imaginary world.

 

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

"Oh, dear, How very late it's getting!" To give them their titles: Raven of Truth, Reaper of the Years, Runnik, Scramasax and Caliban, Seathing, Secret Door, Sermon to the Birds, Shelled Creature, Shepherd, Shining Path. All, except Shepherd, began life as drawings by me.

Oak Tree Tea: Another Edit

Upon consideration, I decided to change "withered old" into "willowy". Though the phrase "withered old" was part of the poem since its conception and the "withered old witch" might be said to be the inception of the whole thing, pulling everything else after it, the illustrations provided from my description allowed me to see new possibilities. Changing one word is much easier than struggling to change the whole thing, and besides, it works. "That's my idea! That is an original thought!"

 

A Bit of a Mixed Bag, But Mostly R's

The last video, Schretel, is based on an old fairy tale in which a goblin haunts a bakery, driving the baker out nightly, until a traveler lends him his pet bear to stay the night. Some people think it has ties to Beowulf, with the bear taking the place of Beowulf, whose name means 'Bear,' allegedly.

A P's Mint (Sorry, I'm Reaching)

From Poltergeist to Puck, we have stuff from Studio Ghibli to James Branch Cabell to The Brothers Grimm to T. H. White to L. Frank Baum to William Shakespeare. Poor Falada freaked me out a little as a child; now I pass the trauma along to YOU!

More Plumping

Mostly A's and B's. Professor Odd is the odd man out here (yuk-yuk). The version with eye-stalks is the more original-drawing accurate, but the lizard version is not without its charms, which is why I include it. For the prompt for Alien Attendant I put gurgles in an alien language, and I got this kind of David-Cross-sounding guy and one of the worst alien languages I've ever heard. Hey-hey, my Glip-Glops!

Plump It Out A Bit

I have a file entitled Whole Darn Show, where I put all my animations and the pictures that inspire them. When I settle down to go to sleep, I turn on my music playlist, start a slideshow, and watch interesting synchronicities unroll. I noticed a certain paucity of animations at the start, so I made these 'to plump it out a bit.' I include that variation of A Little Jaunt because I think it superior, but I can't get it horizontal. The boy in Adventure is walking through a magic portal, not just stepping outside. I also made a variation of Ancient Oak to spice it up a bit; how do you make trees more exciting? I was pleased and surprised to find that Grok supplied Angelic with actual Bible-accurate angel dialogue.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

I was casting my eyes over on the books I have on the shelf on my desk and I saw Death's Jest-Book, by Thomas Lovell Beddoes (see elsewhere on this blog). I came to me that I'd only only seen one old black-and-white crayon picture of him. Then I thought, it's hard to get any idea about him from just that. And then I thought, "Let's bring him back - with science!" And here he is. I wonder how much like him it really is, but this is probably as close as we can get at this late date. Hi, Tom!

Take a P

Padre Porko to Pocketwatch.  Patrick is from an incomplete short story I published here, When He Woke Up. Pecos Bill should rightly be riding a catfish, but whatever. Right now the universe is p'ing, as my nephew would say. I'm glad to have done this much.

Ooo!

Sometimes when I look at my own drawings I think of this line from The Golden Voyage of Sinbad: "These pictures tell the story of a legend yet unrealized." For some reason Grok is being very generous today (10 second animation instead of 6 seconds) and, umm, creative in their changes of points of view. All 'O' subjects today, from On Guard to Ozma. Our Noble Lady is of course You-Know-Who.

Some "Oak Tree Tea" Errata, Corrected

Pages 17 and 21, 17 for the picture (the old page had them obviously in a garden, not a treetop), and 21 for the text. It corrected the misspelling of 'vanished' easily enough, but I practically had to tie myself in knots to get it to remove an extra period. I would like to have kept the bats in 17, but the editing had me so frazzled that I was glad to get what I got and left it there for now.

Oak Tree Tea, Revised and Illustrated

I hadn't used ChatGPT for a few days, and when I decided to make an illustrated edition of Oak Tree Tea, I discovered I did not have to keep inventing the wheel as I built each page. I loosened up a bit about my original vision, and that, in turn, allowed me to make a few variations on the verse itself, variations that subtly improve it, I think. The 'chubby chum' originally was dressed in a robe; the 'withered witch' looked more aged and less charming than she appears here. The background made some mutations that I did not realize at first; I may especially point to Page 17, where the venue changes from a treetop gathering to a garden party. Also that the expressions of the characters were a little monotonous for several pages. By the time I noticed, I had closed the project and 'returning were as tedious as go o'er.' I probably will correct it sometime. Here is the character sheet I accepted for the project before I began, from my original prompts: