Posts
I was feeling kind of silly, and I was about to wash my hair anyway, so I did the unthinkable and put hairspray in it (*Shock!* *Horror!*) so that I could attempt a crazy anime hair style. Then, being as vain as I am, I snapped some pictures in the mirror. And now, I'm posting a couple of those pictures to my blog. (Ugh... I'm so vain I should be shot. -_-; ) The photos don't quite do it justice. The hair do was EPIC. ^_^
So, I haven't posted anything here in quite a while and now I post something this silly. Boo... I'll post something far more serious in the next couple of weeks. (I think... Or, I probably won't. ^_^)
Allow me to explain.
I wash windows for a living. One of the accounts I do every month is a hair salon located near Altamonte Springs. I wash the windows on the storefront and I come inside to wash all of their mirrors. The hair stylists and the clientele are all older women, for the most part. Every time I work in there, it seems that someone always has some kind of remark to make about the work I'm doing. These comments fall, almost universally, into one of two categories. Either, (1) you would think that I was there performing brain surgery by the way these women are just in awe of my ability ("No, really ma'am, this isn't as hard as it looks." -me), or (2) you would think they had earned their doctorate in window cleaning by the way they can critique my work and point out the various things I could be doing better ("Yes ma'am, of course Windex and newspapers would do a better job, but I only do this for a living." -me).
On the other hand, one time I overheard a very nice old lady ask her stylist: "Do you think that young man would mind if I pointed out to him that he missed a spot?" Of course, I want my customers to be happy with the quality of my work, so if I miss something I'm happy to have someone point it out to me. I thought it was nice that this woman was considerate about it though. It also occured to me that she may have been aprehensive, because some young guys wouldn't take kindly to being called on the carpet, and may take up a retalitory attitude. That makes me sad.
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Window-Washer
So, I've already posted a review of Mascara, my favorite manga on the web, but I thought I would share a couple of other web comics that I follow from week to week.
No Need for Bushido is set in ancient Japan and weaves an intricate tale of love, war, intrigue, deception, ninja assassins, samurai warriors, blind Taoist priests, pointy hats, and dysfunctional families that historians forgot to put in the history scrolls... Go figure. This is actually a pretty great comic. It has an intricate plot, interesting characters that you actually come to care about, lots of humor, action, drama, and the most hilarious use of onomatopoeia. The art starts out very simple, but has really advanced over the course of the comic. The most recent pages are simply beautiful. There are currently over 400 pages and the comic updates with 1 new page every Monday. (Fair warning: some of this comic is PG-13)
The Adventures of Superhero Girl is a comic I've only started following more recently. It is actually published in a Canadian newspaper, but the artist is republishing the strips online. This comic tells the story of "Superhero Girl" and her mostly ordinary adventures - trying to find a job to support her superhero gig, trying to fit in with normal society, and her search for a fulfilling hobby. The art is pretty consistent throughout, as the artist has written and illustrated other comic strips in the past, and thus has had plenty of time to develop her skills and style. This comic doesn't have any overarching storyline, instead it mainly focuses on some kind of gag on each page. It is always a fun read though.
Frenzy is a card game of real-time strategy. Two players choose from four different factions and then pit their forces against each other in a fast and furious confrontation. The game revolves around drawing cards from your deck and then placing them on one of seven piles which represents the distribution of your forces across the battlefield. You have to watch your opponent's moves and react to them quickly in order to stay ahead.
Each of the four factions in Frenzy is represented by a deck of cards, each of which comes in its own little tuckbox. But as with the Yomi card game, I decided it might be nice to have another box to keep the four decks together in, so I decided to build one. This was a fun little project. Lately I've been really frustrated because I've had a hard time doing anything creative. I sit down to write and I find that I just can't write. I sit down to draw and I find that I just can't draw. But, I can measure and cut! So that's what I've done. Here are some pictures of the process and the final product.
Yomi is a competitive card game for two players that captures the strategy elements of a fighting video game like Street Fighter or Tekken. The game consists of ten decks of cards, each deck representing a different character and requiring varied strategies when playing against different other characters. You can read more about the game here if you're interested.
I just recently purchased the four remaining decks to make my Yomi collection complete. While each deck comes in a nice tuckbox of its own, I decided I would like a nice box to keep all of the decks together in. Feeling a little bit "crafty", I decided to make a box that would be just the right size, and hopefully a little appealing to the eyes as well. I hadn't really done anything craft-wise since I made my Bat Mobile, so I figured I would take some photos of the project and share them here.
