Well, mission failure but with it, new possibilities

I scouted out Santa Cruz, only to find that the town is sealed off from campers. I could have camped way out, but it seemed like too much of a struggle, so, I'm continuing to reside in the Berkeley hills until May, or until something else comes up.

I'm considering creating a new business, loosely based on what I'm doing now, but that would help local businesses as well. I will keep folks posted.

New toons soon, presently I'm in the process of inking a new set of drawings.

Something else interesting about Brisbane: most houses sport an inverted pentagram star. I wasn't there long enough to hear the story as to how they came to be the town symbol.

Thx to Jim and Emily for their hospitality, and thank you Brisbane for being so nice a town!

Cops treated me well in Brisbane

So, Brisbane is a small town, on a 78degree hill to the south of SF. I am visiting a friend here, and went into town to sell some toons. It's a long walk down a very steep hill. The town itself is pretty, each house is unique and the people inside the houses are all quite friendly.

About ten minutes into doing my job in this small town, a police car rolled up. "Can I talk with you a moment?" Asked the young officer. I was of course happy to talk. "Do you need a license to do this?" he asked. I told him I didn't think so, since I have no set price on my wares and (as many readers of this blog know since I changed tactics a few weeks ago) I don't ask for any money in my pitch. He smiled. Another officer arrived as we waited for my ID to check out. I told them how I've been doing this a year or so and doing well, and I'd only been stopped two other times the whole time.

My ID checked out, and they said they like my toons and told me others might call, but it was a small town after all. I just smiled and told them that they were just doing their job, which they were (and doing it well I might add). How's this compared to the "neighborhood of the damned" I was in a few weeks ago?

The best laid plans...

Well, things did not go well in the North, so, I'm now considering my next move. I could stay on in SF, but I'm sort of interested in the South part of the state also, some place like either Santa Barbara or SLO. At this point, I'm tossing around ideas of exporting this business to other artists, but with a local business twist. My greater dreams are, to be generous, fantastical. I would like to organize a new business around getting a voting holiday, so that everyone has at least a few days off from Halloween to voting day. I would also like to create an international peace force that ends war on earth, but, like I said, I'm someone that is prone to fantasizing a bit too much.

I'm considering throwing more about other parts of my life into this, such as my social experiences, but I'm not sure if I will. So far it has been studiously about my business experiences and cartoons (save that last one about the desert).

I welcome any comments on that subject or any others.

on desert experiences when off work.

The other day, I had a very interesting time in the Mojave desert. I was attending a dance party in the far out desert, and decided to walk to a crag of rocks far off in the distance. When I got there, I found a pile of old rocks in the crag. Now, many of you may not know this, but in the ancient times, men used to carve rocks with faces and stories, and deposit them at certain locations. It turns out, this crag was one of them. I picked up one rock, and found delicately etched into it a mayan face, complete with an earring. Another, I found a seal. I found one rock, covered with dust, and withdrew it from the pile. I wiped the dust away to find the image of a frightening creature (which I will someday transmute into a figure in my cartoons) looking like he was crawling out of the dirt. I imagined a whole story of the creature attacking a sleeping bear (which was cleverly etched above the image). I decided that I had to replace the stone exactly as I had found it, but, when i looked, I couldn't find any dirt in the pile! How had the monster on the stone gotten covered with dirt when there was no dirt amongst the rocks? Then it hit me: the creator of the rock had gone down off the crag, gotten some dirt, and poured it on the rock long ago. So, I did the same thing. I went down to a snake hole and found some fine dust, brought it back to the crag and, while thanking the original sculptor, I poured the dust onto the 1.5 inch rock in the middle of nowhere in the desert and thanked the Great Spirit (or God or whatever) for creating the earth, the rock, the dust and myself to honor this ancient art piece.

Afterwards, I was walking back to the dance party, when I espied some movement on the ground. It was an ant colony. Then, low and behold, I saw a beetle, about the size of two adult thumbnails, digging with the same motions a dog would into the pile around the anthill, obviously either eating something, or getting moisture. I saw that many of the ants were carrying tiny little twigs into the hole. I began to impute personalities to the little creatures, when, suddenly, a tiny desert spider leapt out of the ground and snatched an ant about a third larger then it was! the hairy spider, which was about the size of a grain of rice, if not smaller, immobilized the ant in a tenth of a second, and then casually walked off with it's humongous prize.

Amazing.

I highly recommend staring at the movements on the ground: they can be a lot more exciting then you might first imagine.

new toons

This Blog may be slower soon for a few weeks

I'm getting ready to travel north, to a job near Mt. Shasta. I'll probably be incommunicado for several weeks, if not months. I will try to load pictures from where I am, but I'm not sure they will have a scanner. I will probably be able to load a bunch of pictures every few weeks, so, if I can't do it regularly, I will at least do it bi or tri-weekly. I'll still be on for a few more days at least, and I hope you all enjoy these little comments and the cartoons. Have a nice day.

When did you stop being creative?

The other day, I was out and about, doing my work. 2 hours, only five bucks. But, the last few houses each gave me five bucks each totalling me to twenty. A few days earlier, I was walking some other streets, and I ran into a friend of mine, Owen, who suggested I don't ask folks for any money at all. This idea intrigued me. I started doing it immediately, and found that I made the same amount of money I had made earlier. So, as a few of you know, my new rap is only about my art, and I don't mention money anymore. Anyway, I was walking by one house, and the woman of the place was gardening. I started doing my rap, and she said no thx. Then she added, "I was an artist for many years." I immediately responded: "i'm sorry." She was taken aback. "why are you sorry?" I smiled, "because, i was hoping you would say you WERE an artist NOW." She smiled, "I AM an artist," she corrected her language. Or did she?