Finally got around to populating the webshop with much work. Discount code BYEBYE24 shaves 24% off all orders until Dec. 6.
It is now confirmed that I'll be off to Italy on December 9th to attend the opening of Oltremari at the Palazzo del Fumetto in Pordenone, which features some of my work alongside that of Deena Mohamed, Tracy Chahwan, Twins Cartoon, and Issam Smiri.
There will also be some kind of joint bookshop event in Venice with Lina Ghaibeh, who has a new book out translated to Italian, IN/OUT.
With Italy's proximity to Egypt, I couldn't not take this opportunity to pay my family a visit. Which means the month of December is now more or less completely obliterated for me, and thus completing work on THE SOLAR GRID before the end of the year will no longer feasible. Which is really frustrating because I'm so damn close.
About halfway through in pencils, with a few pages completely inked, colored, and lettered (the mixed media ones, since the process for those is very different).
This less-than-ideal realization has, I must admit, put me in something of a mood.
#journal #work
$5.19 croissant, plain.
How much does a croissant cost where you live?
#htx #journal
Do I know anyone between Venice and Pordenone?
Sending this out into the ether because it looks like I'll be attending a comix-exhibition opening at the Palazzo del Fumetto in Pordenone (featuring work from THE SOLAR GRID) around mid-December and it would be delightful to connect with anyone I know who might be out there.
#journal #travel
The Great American Nuclear Weapons Upgrade – Undark: “In the plains of western South Dakota, about 25 miles northeast of Mount Rushmore, the Ellsworth Air Force Base is preparing to receive the first fleet of B-21 nuclear bombers, replacing Cold War-era planes. Two other bases, Dyess in Texas and Whiteman in Missouri, will soon follow. By the 2030s, a total of five bases throughout the United States will host nuke-carrying bombers for the first time since the 1990s.”
The Outer Limits of Optimism – Heather Parry: “In 2009, an 81-year-old man named Orville Richardson died, having been a member of Alcor with a view to preserving his head after his death; he had paid a lump sum lifetime membership fee. His brother and sister, who were his co-conservators, evidently did not agree with his plan for cryopreservation... they had him buried. Two months after his death, the relatives demanded a refund of the lifetime membership fee, which seems to have annoyed the company; Alcor subsequently sued to be allowed to exhume Richardson’s body, and though they lost initially they won on appeal. The Iowa Court of Appeals then ordered the Richardson family to dig up their late sibling, cut off his head and give it to Alcor, so they could freeze it.”
Bluesky raises $15M series A – Tech Crunch: “The Series A round is led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Darkmode’s Amir Shevat, and Kubernetes co-creator Joe Beda. The presence of a crypto-focused firm might alarm skeptics, especially since CEO Jay Graber used to be a software engineer for a crypto company, Zcash...”
Now that the newsletter is out of the way, finally catching up on email (inbox: 165) and RSS (653). I loathe that it has gotten so out of hand.
#radar #journal
A new edition of RESTRICTED FREQUENCY is finally upon us, and this is how it starts: “James Baldwin was accused by Richard Wright of being a tool of the CIA. This accusation did not emerge from a vacuum; 'I'm going to destroy you,' Baldwin once told him to his face at a Parisian cafe. He then proceeded to do just that by writing a series of not-so-veiled character assassinations in a variety of magazines.”
Extensive reading and quite a bit of research went into this one and writing it consumed me. Hence the lateness and off-schedule release. I didn't think it would be right to wait until next Saturday to release it, but then again I'm not entirely sure anyone cares. In any case, it's out now. This is where it lives online, and this is where signing up for future newsletters is possible.
#journal #newsletter
“This'll be our fourth move in ten years,” says Carrie Coon's character with disdain to Jude Law's in the film THE NEST, to which I found myself responding out loud: Honey, in the same timespan I moved seven times.
Thought maybe the film might've been from an era where people really didn't move around a whole lot, but double-checked and saw it came out in 2020.
No wonder I'm so damn traumatized (well, one of many reasons anyway).
#journal
Solo week of daddy duty has ended which means I must make it a point to make this week a week of much work as well as much socializing, as I am somewhat deprived of both. Have yet to make much of a plan for the latter, but I've got my work cut out for me on the former.
Branding and logo design tends to come easy to me, a consequence of cutting my teeth on that sort of thing throughout my twenties, but I am presently wrestling with a logo for something only because it's the type of thing that lends itself so easily to cliche, and you don't want a terribly cliche logo, as that defies the chief objective of branding to begin with.
Hoping to wrap that up today and still have time to squeeze in some TSG despite it already being close to 2:00 pm.
Cloudy with bouts of rain today. Hot and humid as fuck though. Inbox 115, RSS 605.
#journal
These days I start my morning at around 7am by reading a passage or two from Yevgeny Zamyatin's WE and Mason Currey's DAILY RITUALS along with my first Americano. Then breakfast: scrambled eggs and homemade pita followed by a small bowl of granola and fresh fruit along with my second Americano.
After a bit of tidying up in the kitchen and a scolding hot shower, I get to work, typically by 9am: Mostly the very last installment of THE SOLAR GRID right now along with whatever work-for-hire I have on my plate: presently a branding gig and an illustration thing. I break for exercise around 1:00pm. Protein shake at 2:00, which I enjoy with some more light reading. Back to work by 2:30 for a final hour or two before I start cooking dinner, which if I'm low on supplies can sometimes be preceded by a quick grocery run. I'm on solo daddy duty for a good stretch which takes up most of my evenings. Not sure if I'll have enough time to squeeze in the next newsletter, but I'll try.
#journal
Woke up today comforted by the knowledge that I will no longer be pestered by rich politicians to give them my money.
I have been on a roll of not-so-great reads lately for some reason, a couple of which I reviewed:
George Bataille's STORY OF THE EYE and Nathanael West's MISS LONELYHEARTS/THE DAY OF THE LOCUST are a couple others, yet to be reviewed. I'm annoyed at this bad book spell I seem to have fallen under, and am wondering how these books ever landed in my TBR pile to begin with. Moving onto WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin and keeping my fingers crossed that this'll be the one to break the spell.
#journal #reads
Finally scheduled the new newsletter. This one took a lot out of me.
It goes out in a few hours. Sign up, as always, is at Ganzeer.com/Newsletter
Inbox 237, RSS 438. Terrible.
#Journal