Last night’s build of the dog went much faster because Ken Scholes was in town and visited me in the studio. He is one of my favorite people and getting a chance to just yak away unto the wee hours was great. Plus he had brandy. He’s got his view of yesterday up on his site.

Me? I’m printing up stage money and putting blood on the dog.

No tricks, but we’ve got a treat for you: a new story from Vylar Kaftan. Download and read for free! Go on, it’s just a piece of candy. . . nothing scary at all. Grab some for your friends, too.

Something Wicked This Way Plumbs

Happy Halloween from Shimmer!

I’m too fatigued to generate content today, though I still have lovely photos of the dead dog process. Meanwhile, listen to this podcast of The Moon by Jodi Eichelberger and Mark LaPierre.

My skull arrived day before yesterday! I am astonished by how beautiful it is.

I’ve spent the last two days building the dead dog and have process shots for you, but at the moment, you’ll have to content yourself with this one of the skull.

I will tell you that we have dubbed the dog “Flacie,” short for flaccid because she is a limp, dead dog. The build is going extremely well.

I’m just too tired to be coherent with process stuff, but it’s 2 am, so I figure that’s justified.

On his way to the Hour of the Wolf, Steven stopped by our place. We have stayed up too late talking and now I am too tired to properly record today.

I’ve mentioned the whole temping thing and today, my gig took a strange turn. My boss sent me to look at furniture for his office. The name of the store? Dallek. ¹

Yeah.

No one understood why I laughed.

1. For those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Who. The Daleks are his most famous nemesis. [↩]

And I thought my job was a conversation bombshell. After -e- pointed out the Dermisted Beetles on the Skulls Unlimited employee page, I swung back to take a look. All the employees seem happy and are posing in front of pristine skulls, except this one photo. I looked closer. Then enlarged the photo….

Yep. Their Master Flenser and Brain-remover Technician is standing behind a table piled with flayed monkey heads.

That must be some interesting conversation on the airplane. You know how it goes. You’re sitting next to someone. “Flying for business?”

“Yeah. Heading to a conference.”

“Oh really? What do you do?”

There’s a pause. “I’m a Master Flenser and Brain-remover Technician. What do you do?”

With Halloween fast approaching, it seems like a good time to do a little project. Check out Skull-A-Day, which has a Papercraft Skull that you can make at home. The jaw moves via a tab that sticks out the back.

Via Puppetbuilding

Edited to add: Peterbilt spotted this “…amazing paper interpretation of Transformers’ Bumblebee, complete with Priceless translation from Chinese artist’s statement.” I gotta say, it is amazing, particularly the building shots. Each piece is made from a carton chosen for its color and then intricately folded.

I was walking to the subway today on twenty-eight and realized that I was in the flower district. It’s confined to one block now so calling it a district is a bit of a misnomer, but still, it’s a block filled with growing things. I was tempted into a shop and walked out with an orchid and a little palm tree. The orchid is up on top of a bookshelf so the cats can’t get to it.

The palm is in the window. Marlowe spent a little while happily gnawing on it. I asked the florist for something that wouldn’t poison my cat. He said this was popular with cat owners. It’s hardy and can stand up to some punctured leaves. It’s nice to have green things in the apartment.

With my fourteen year old nephew’s permission, I am linking to his story, the king saved the king of popcorn. He is striving for a dadaist sensibility — he told me so. I think this story succeeds admirably.

Here’s a teaser.

“omg! i have a bad imagination. so i have hired a few zombies to come and take out your brains! they will be here in a hour. then they will give your brain to me so i will have a great imagination! hahahahaha!”.

Bizarre. I designed these puppets years ago and evidentally they are being used in a remount now. Willamette Week reviewed the production and had this to say about my work.

The puppets, designed by Mary Robinette Kowall [sic]¹ , are detailed, lifelike and sometimes capable of expressing quite nuanced emotions.

1. Oddly, I only ran across this because, for the first time, I ran a search on a common misspelling of my name. The review was posted today. [↩]

Senses Five Press has a really good interview with Steven Segal in their latest issue. When I read it, I thought that every person in genre should read it. Behold! They’ve got it posted online.

It’s the first rule of magazine publishing: Have an identity. There are way, way too many magazines of all kinds out there on the bookstore shelves for a publisher to be able to get away for long with producing a magazine that isn’t uniquely appealing.

Puppetry isn’t all fun and games. It’s got a long history of being used as a means of political satire and in Burma, that got two puppeteers and comedians arrested back in 1996.

U Pa Pa Lay and his cousin U Lu Zaw, “The Moustache Brothers”, spent seven years in jail, while Amnesty International have campaigned for their release. Their crime? Performing a routine in which they joked about their governments and Myanmar’s generals.

UNIMA, the international puppetry organization, reports that the Moustache Brothers have been re-arrested.

“We strongly urge you to denounce this situation to the media of your country and write to your Ministry for Foreign Affairs so that they take an interest in these artists’ situation and their release!” UNIMA International: 18 Oct 2007

There’s no puppetry in this clip, but you can see the dozens of gorgeous puppets hanging on the wall behind them.

And in this clip they talk about being arrested.

Via PuppetVision

I’m starting by using a real skull for the dog head. I’d planned on just getting a resin dog palette, but lo! There’s Skulls Unlimited has a giant collection of dog skulls.

Now, I’m not going to be using the Chihuahua skull in this picture, but had to share it with you. Does that not look like an alien? No wonder they so often look creepy.

I ordered a large B-quality domestic dog skull. Once it arrives, I’ll enlarge a picture of a dog’s skeleton to match the skull and use that for my scale rendering. It should be an interesting process.