Madness, Shapechanging, Art

The Journal of Mythic Arts Summer /Fall 2006 issue is now up at the Endicott Studio website, and my paper "The Artist as Shaman: Madness, Shapechanging and Art in Terri Winding's The Woodwife" is included. You can scroll down the page to find it (but be sure to look at the other wonderful stuff too), or if you must, skip straight to it here.

This was originally written as an assignment for a workshop/seminar I took at SUNY New Paltz in . . . 2003, maybe, or was it 2002? So it's really Heinz Insu Fenkl's fault that I wrote it in the first place. And, of course, Terri Windling's for writing a book that made me ramble on at such length. (The mistakes and the stupid things are all my own fault of course). The paper was first published in the Mythic Passages web journal.

Two Ronnies Mastermind

Watch this: Two Ronnies Mastermind (the usual warnings about having anything in your mouth apply).

The Shire of Bend, Oregon

Maybe the Tolkien Estate can sure them? The Shire of Bend, Oregon. I shudder. Many times.

School! Books! Etc.

School started up again on Thursday. I had Architecture, Culture and Photography with the lovely Mr Fish. Like Intro Photo, it should be a really good class, but lots of work. On Friday I had Graphic and Typographic Design with a prof who had a Scottish accent and a tendency to trail off at the ends of sentences, but I think he'll be easier to listen to when he's actually talking about design and not reading out the obligatory course descriptions and rules about respecting the historic buildings our school is in. I'll have that class twice a week (Tues and Fri mornings). Then Friday afternoons I have Intermediate Book Arts with Joe Landry, who also taught Letterpress in the summer (and who gave me an A+). It's going to be a really, really great class (even though I managed to cut myself while sawing a recess on the spine of my sewing sample -- Joe and half the class were out of the room fetching sewing frames, luckily) (for those of you who don't know, if it's pointy or sharp, I'll eventually stab or cut myself with it, though it's never serious). And that's what my semester is going to be. Only three classes, but two are 6 credits, which is kind of like double. So I'm still doing 15 credits -- the maximum anyone is allowed to take at once.

And I've just spent some time entering all the books I have out in the living room into LibraryThing. Go look if you want (you can search for me as "feynico"). Basically, you can see most of my geek books, some of my nonfiction and a very small amount of my fiction. The bedroom shelves will be next, but I'm going to need to get a paid membership before I'm done. There's a nice lifetime membership option which only costs two and a half times the yearly membership, so I'll probably do that (unlesss someone wants to get me a gift membership). I really like the idea of being able to keep a record of my books online, for insurance purposes, if nothing else. I'm probably also going to (finally) get some kind of book cataloguing software for offine, too. I had one all picked out a year ago, now I just have to figure out which one it was . . .

One Down . . .

It's been an ambition of mine (one of a short list of things I want to have happen before I drop dead) to have work on the Endicott Studio website or be mentioned there in some way (like if I had a novel published and they put it on the recommended reading list or something). Anyway, there will soon be a paper I wrote in the Endicott Journal of Mythic Arts. And not only that, but I'm listed in the "Contributors to the Journal of Mythic Arts" in the right column of the Endicott blog. I'm only two names down from Neil Gaiman!!

Swashbuckling

You Are A Pirate!


What Type Of Swashbuckler Are You?
brought to you by Maddog Varuka & Dawg Brown

I Rule the Freakin' World

I picked up my grades from the summer today:

Basic Book Arts ---> A+

Intro Photography ---> A

Survey of 20th Century Art ---> A+

Letterpress Printing ---> A+

Plus, I got my paycheque, a notice from Canada Post to pick up a parcel, and a notice from UPS that they'll try again to deliver a package tomorrow. All in all, a good day.

I Have the Best Job in the World

So have I said lately how much I love my job? I really, really love my job.

Twice this week, a nice FedEx person has showed up at my door with packages for me. One was two anime UMDs, for an upcoming special guide I'm planning on Anime on UMD (or Anime for PSP). The second was a Beta build of a wacky Japanese PSP game called WTF (which does not stand for what it stands for; it stands for "Work Time Fun"), with a t-shirt! So now I have cool stuff to review and write about.

Like I said, I love my job.