I guess it's a facet of being in your 40s; childhood memories you had long forgotten come back in fragmented chards. I remember growing up not far from the airport, looking up at planes coming and going, and dreaming of growing up one day and traveling to faraway places. This was in no way a realistic dream, for traveling was not something that was common or easy in my circles.

Despite several things not going my way in life, and indeed increasingly challenging in recent times, I realize how blessed and lucky I ultimately am. To be able to have gone to all the places I've gone and met the wonderful people I've met is nothing to be taken lightly.

How many people can claim to have gotten beautiful dick art by a German barista?

#journal #travel

Bootlegged THE SOLAR GRID!

Imre Szeman, author of FUTURES OF THE SUN and one of the scholars on our THE SOLAR GRID panel at Petrocultures 2026 in Dresden, printed out the digital edition so he can read it that way in preparation for his presentation/commentary (which was so smart and immensely insightful). He made sure to have the pages printed on both sides, so his experience of the work would be the closest approximation to the intended format. And my, it's a big-ass motherfucker of a book, innit?

This is how I did much of my comics/graphic-novel reading in my late teens and early twenties, when my preferred comics-material was all too hard to come by in hardcopy formats in Cairo of the late-90s/early-2000s. So I have a strange affinity for that spiral-bound bootlegged home-printer aesthetic.

The panel was awesome! Super insightful (and embarrassingly humbling) presentations, great Q&A, and many exciting conversations thereafter. Several professors mentioned their plans to include THE SOLAR GRID in their teaching syllabi.

The air is refreshingly crisp in Dresden this time of year. Nothing quite like a midnight smoke out on the balcony in nothing but your underwear and a good German pilsner in hand.

#journal #work #tsg

Koshary's kittens have all scurried off to explore the world, save for Tiger, who has decided to make the garden his domain. Curious, because he was the most avoidant of the lot. Now all of a sudden he's become an immensely affectionate little slut.

Amsterdam-based graphic designer Hans Gremmen has created over 400 books. While making these books, a miscellaneous pile kept growing in his studio: notes, sketches, photos, printed matter, screenshots, ephemera, and other breadcrumbs. ‘In Between’ is an attempt to deconstruct and re-organise this pile. The publication is a scrapbook about a hybrid design practice, but also a plea to consider failure as an option.

I would absolutely love to do something similar. I have an unruly amount of scraps, sketches, notes, process stuff, and photographs that I can absolutely see packaged and preserved in a similar way. Perhaps not in one big phonebook of a publication, but maybe an ongoing zine of sorts. A strange and regular rag that collects this stuff would absolutely work, given that such typically discarded material is likely to continue being a byproduct of the kind of work I do. Problem with that format is that it wouldn't sit on the shelf very well. But if each unit was in the hundred-page-range, you can give it a spine and make it work. A print-on-demand model might be a good option for this sort of thing.

Still, just the time it would take to gather this stuff and package it into a coherent and decent-enough design sounds like enough of a daunting sinkhole that I'm not sure I have the time for.

#journal #radar

Despite publication difficulties faced by THE SOLAR GRID, there's a part of me that would love to follow the Rodriquez method and double down and go on to make a series of short graphic novellas set in the world of THE SOLAR GRID anyway. Because you gotta admit, that would be kinda badass.

And if that doesn't shake away the whole “street-artist of the Egyptian revolution” thing that's become so intertwined with my reputation, I'm not exactly sure what else would.

#radar #journal

Dresden presentation in the can. Accounting taken care of. Laundry done. Inbox 0, RSS 0.

I can now spend the next couple of days tending to house things before boarding my flight with little worry.

From Ahmed Naji's latest:

“There is a legend about Abu Nuwas. He went to a master and asked to be taught. The master told him to go and memorize a thousand lines of poetry. He spent a year doing it, then returned. The master said: 'Good. Now forget them. If you can, you will be a poet.'”

#journal #radar

Lords save me from this nonsense.

Many don't know this, but I never went to art school. Much to my misery, I actually ended up in business school (long story). Though not a very good one.

One of things I was most looking forward to upon graduating was pursuing art and design full time and never having to look at anything even remotely close to a ledger ever again.

How naive.

In other news, I keep coming up against hurdles in regard to finding an appropriate publication pathway for the collected edition of THE SOLAR GRID. While almost every editor I send it to does make it a point to acknowledge the book's merits; “a project of immense passion”, “unique”, “graphically sophisticated”, it still gets turned down for one reason or another:

• “Not mainstream enough”, according to one well-positioned agent.
• “Not interested in anything dystopian anymore” said the much-respected editor at a major publishing house.
• “Too big” according to another major publisher.
• “Not quite for us”.

And then there are the few odd correspondences where a publisher would express initial interest and then ghost you. I realize of course that rejection stories aren't cool to divulge unless you have a success story to go with (at which point, rejection stories become extra extra cool), but I don't think of this blog as a space to project any kind of awfully considered persona. I like to say it like it is, likely to my own detriment.

Two more days till I'm off to Dresden and there is just so much to do that I'd rather not have to do.

#journal #tsg

But made a little somethin' somethin' for my special lady, which brought me much joy:

#journal

Random thought: The whole simulation theory thing that seems to be increasingly trendy these days actually isn't at all at odds with any of the traditional religious beliefs of old, the ones that imagined god as an anthropomorphized king on a throne in the clouds. Because simulation theory by definition implies the entire universe being created by someone somewhere. The anthropomorphized king in this case being a computer programmer. The throne: an ergonomic chair. Which, if you think about it, just so happens to be this decade's flavor of king.

#radar #journal

Tomorrow I prepare my Dresden presentation and take care of some admin.

Season 1 and 2 of SILO were good. Season 3 is frustratingly dumb because the main character now has amnesia and we follow her unravel the shocking mystery of what happened to her over the last two seasons, which we, as viewers, already know.

34°C and sauna-level humid and the lack of AC in the studio is proving to be lethal despite all attempts at overt nudity.

Inbox 464, RSS 0.

#journal #work

No art-dealer for larger works, no literary agent, and certainly no film/TV agent. Most of my dealings have been conducted as a “free agent” so to speak, which, quite frankly, I would like to change, because I am now spent af.

#journal