David Goldman pointed out this short film, Draw the Pirate. It has no connection to Shimmer’s Pirate issue. Really.

You’ve got to admire the fact that the film makers tell a complete story with no spoken words at all.

Indeed. The party went until sometime after three a.m. It’s weird. Culturally, when you throw a party in Iceland, you can expect that the guests will arrive an hour to an hour and a half after the stated start time. They’ll stay until three and then go downtown to finish partying. I can’t do this. Around one a.m. I started fading, in part because the last two work days had been fairly long for me. At one point in the party, as I was passing our bedroom door, I realized that if I snuck in and had a nap that no one would notice. The party was in the kitchen, the living room and outside. Everyone would just think I was in one of the other locations.

This is the first time I’ve ever done this but this is also the first time we’ve thrown a party without other Americans attending. They’ve always cued the other guests by departing at a reasonable, by our standards, time. I’ll have to learn to adapt to this schedule or figure out a way to have parties with an end time. That said, it was still fun. Even if I do feel guilty for needing to nap.

I spent most of today doing a rewrite on Ginger Stuyvesant and the Case of the Haunted Nursery. When I needed a break from that I reviewed portfolios for Shimmer, hoping to find an image that will work for the Autumn 06 issue. Alas. I have not found that magic image yet.

I love Modern Mechanix. Today they’ve got Mechanical Secrets of Marionette Shows Part I. This is an article about Tony Sarg, one of the forefathers of American puppetry. Check it out.