Taken at Split Rock state park, which is hella scenic.
New project, page 1
So, here’s what I’ve been working on. This is the inked (but not colored or lettered) first page of a graphic novel I’m setting out on. This should be a pretty big project, and I’m actually not sure what my endgame will be as far as getting it out into the world- I want to have a big chunk of pages put together before I start thinking about whether or not to run it serially online, for instance.
The project is (temporarily) called Eyeball, and it’s about spyplanes in the early 60s. Or about not getting too lost in your job, depending on which way you want to look at it.
This one’s been gestating for quite a while; I wrote out the original plot and started scripting in 2006. I was really excited about the project, but eventually bailed because 1) I didn’t think I could draw well enough to do it justice, and 2) the thought of doing all of the visual research to get the look and feel right for a story set in 1960 just scared the piss out of me. But now I’m 6 years better at drawing (I still think it’ll be a challenge, but it’s actually possible this time) and, well, Mad Men has gone and done me the favor of researching what things looked like in 1960.
So we’ll see where this goes.
X-2
The X-2 suffers a landing mishap… which is apparently investigated by a ’76 British punk band.
X-1
A drawing of the Bell X-1, the first plane to break the sound barrier*. First flight in 1946. Design inspired by a rifle bullet because that was the only thing anyone could think of in 1945 that was supersonic.
*a German pilot claimed to have broken the sound barrier while diving in a Me-262 in 1945, but nobody really takes the claim seriously.
I’ll be drawing a lot of planes in the near future, as a warmup for the next biggish project.
Rockefeller Center
Another drawing done with my new Wacom tablet, using a picture I took as a guide.
OTTO is on indefinite hiatus
So, this is one mid-level-upsetting part of a larger, extremely upsetting situation: I’m stopping production on Otto, Protector of the North Woods. Or, more accurately, I stopped a week ago and won’t be starting up again.
What’s the deal? Well, frankly, the deal’s a pretty severe bummer. Some really, really tragic shit happened in my family last week. Bad enough that I’m still reeling from it, and probably will be for a while. At this point, I’m not really capable of creative work. But even after this upset eventually eases, the upcoming Otto storyline is largely about depression and suicide (in some ways, the whole strip is), and that’s not an area of my brain that I think would be healthy to spend a lot of time in right now.
I don’t know if the strip will eventually be revived or not. I know that eventually I’ll pick back up with some sort of creative work, but at this point I have no idea what that’ll be. Keep an eye on this space, I guess, if you’re the sort who cares.
Wall of Sound II
A drawing of a photograph of a sculpture.
Heroes (rough mix)
Heroes– wherein I take the David Bowie classic to strange (and terrible) places with my Kaosillator.
This is a very rough draft mix; I’ll probably need to bring some things up, take some things out, and add some tracks. But it’s too weird and to large in my mind not to put it out somewhere.
Like the American single version, I cut out two of the opening verses, but a different two than the ones Bowie cut– I think this one makes the narrative of the song a little clearer.
Eschaton Lite
This was originally housed on a side page of my Nowhere Band site; I realized recently that it makes a lot more sense for it to live here.
THE RULES OF ESCHATON LITE
rev 1.4, 2.9.23
GOAL
The purpose of this document is to produce a playable version of the game Eschaton as presented in Infinite Jest. As we’re making several departures/simplifications from the version laid out by David Foster Wallace, we’ll call this version Eschaton Lite.
Eschaton Lite simulates a Cold War nuclear exchange, using tennis balls thrown around on a large gamespace representing a polar-projection map of the Northern Hemisphere. Blocs made up of nation-states and treaty groups will flex their nuclear muscles at each other over a strategic prize, and all hell will inevitably break loose.
(for those who care, the departures from the full Wallace version of Eschaton are as follows: Wallace Eschaton is played on a space consisting of 6 tennis courts, arranged 3×2, and missile launches are conducted by lobbing the balls with tennis racquets; Lite’s space will generally be smaller, and balls can be thrown rather than racquet-lobbed. Additionally, Wallace Eschaton calls for heavy use of computers both before and during play; Eschaton Lite will put pre-game decisions at the Ump’s discretion and use a combination of Ump discretion and pencil-and-paper for in-game computing).
For purpose of example, this document will refer to a game scenario set in 1984, wherein the US, NATO, USSR, Warsaw Pact, and Israel will deal with a crisis in East Berlin.
The Replacements doing T. Rex
I think this is a case where it’s good that I didn’t hear about this back during my peak years of Replacements superfandom… I didn’t really properly appreciate T. Rex back then.
Wall of Sound
Hunter High Life
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the state of Wisconsin in one image.
The Gateway
This is actually the mouth of the Temperance River, flowing out to Lake Superior. The river was insanely high because of recent flooding, and was raging like I’ve never seen it.
The Twins
I think they look related.
SAVE YOUR EYES WEAR GOGGLES
Lots of good advice here. From a very old machine shop at Soudan Underground Mine State Park.
The Marshal Zhukov
An idea I co-developed with Chad Cook. You’d better believe that if I ever somehow get to fuck-you money status, I’ll be buying an old Charger and making this happen.
Woman of Mystery
Taken at Franconia Sculpture Park, which is rad.
Civil War Ninjas
(this originally ran on a now-defunct site called Modern Humorist)
by Keith Pille
Feedback on Midterm Paper
US History, 10th Grade
Richard:
I find it very painful to say this, but your midterm project is unsatisfactory in virtually every way an academic paper can be. I can only hope that this is a one-time occurrence and not a sign of deeper problems that could compromise what promises to be a fine scholarly career.
I must say that it was rather unorthodox to open your paper with what I can only characterize as a personal attack on me and my so-called “revisionist history.” While I grant you it is academically healthy to question the veracity of the information you are given in your textbooks, it is hardly constructive to couple your claims with crude statements about my family life, moral character, and mental capacities. I did my best to prevent my evaluation of your work from being colored by your opening remarks. Continue reading Civil War Ninjas
Derailleur- Lovers
Video for a song my band did, which isn’t about the love between a cat and his scratcher but might as well be.
A Bad Day to Be A Sturgeon
This is an essay I wrote in 2005 for American Nerd, a now-defunct web magazine I used to run.
1.
Some fish are beautiful works of natural engineering. Northern pike, for instance, are streamlined and powerful-looking and possess the same sort of deadly grace as a fighter jet. Or look at trout; for a hiker, there are few treats greater than hiking next to a clear, swiftly-moving stream and spotting a school of trout hovering in formation. You can almost convince yourself that the piscine evolutionary process includes an aesthetic clause, some hidden set of criteria that weights grace and beauty as highly as survival and reproduction.
The lake sturgeon is proof that this is a hollow conceit. There are uglier things in the world than the sturgeon, but not too many. Long, thin, and rubbery, an individual sturgeon looks like a beefed-up seagoing vacuum hose with a few perfunctory fins, an impression furthered by the limp sucker mouth hanging down from the bottom of the fish’s head. The bottom of the fish is your standard fishbelly white; the top is a dark brownish-green that wouldn’t be at all out of place in a diaper. A set of whiskers (barbels if you want to be scientific about it) represents the sturgeon’s only attempt to snazz it up, and, well, barbels as an accessory don’t even look that great on catfish.
Lake sturgeon, to put it bluntly, don’t look like something you’d want to eat, much less go to any effort to catch. If anything, they look like they’d be useful for scaring children or maybe leaving in someone’s bed if you wanted to send a particularly emphatic message.
It’s hard to believe, then, that the sturgeon is capable of inducing mass hysteria (well, maybe if a giant one rose out of Lake Michigan and started menacing the city of Green Bay). But that’s the case. Every five years, Eastern Wisconsin’s brief sturgeon-spearing season drums up enough excitement to cover the lakes with flash towns of ice-fishing shanties, each one full of normally-rational adults willing to stare for hours into dark water with a spear in hand, hoping for the chance to impale a butt-ugly fish.