What Should be Seen on the Red Carpet

It's Sunday. The Sunday before Emerald City Comicon, as I posted a couple of days ago. The day I should be madly shopping for sweaters, cleaning house, tracking down our box of pristine copies of Heathentown...

But instead I'm waiting for the Academy Awards to start and playing on Twitter, which is filled with Oscar tweets. And a fair amount of those are red carpet tweets. Which made me think: what would I like to see more of on the red carpet?

The answer, of course, is trilobite tattoos. Why do celebrities shun them? That's a riddle that may never be solved. Luckily, google didn't let me down though. Want to see what I found?

This one is pretty impressive, I think, and fairly true to life. Yeah, I'm a little envious.

Hey, it's a steampunk trilobite! I have no idea what body part this adorns, though, and that freaks me out a little.

Trilobite in action! This guy seems to be zinging through the Paleozoic ocean which sits atop this persons foot. This is a very jaunty trilobite tattoo in my opinion.

Yeah, I know this one isn't a trilobite, but it's quite impressive anyway.

So there you have it. A virtually content-free blog post full of pretty things. Just like watching the red carpet pre-oscar show!

Emerald City, 2011!

Has it really been a whole year since the Emerald City Comicon, where you can see great art and the Space Needle?

I'm not complaining though. Gabriel and I love Seattle, so we're really happy to be back in the Emerald City next week! We'll be at Table C-07, selling copies of Heathentown, meeting tons of cool comics folks, and Gabriel will be doing sketches.

Want an original Gabriel Hardman sketch for yourself? He's not taking pre-orders this year, but you can get on his list at the con. The price list is as follows:

9x12 single character pen and ink: $75

9x12 two characters pen and ink: $125

Hope to see you there! The con is three days long this year, so take a moment to stop by and say hello. And yes, we are happy to accept donations of those fabulous chocolate covered cherry things they sell in the Pacific northwest. How nice of you to ask!

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Winner!

And the winner of the Tiny Tapir Art is.... Comment Number Three!


Laurrren will be receiving Gabriel's beautiful artwork, and I know she will give it a good home because her work is lovely too. Please don't hesitate to visit her etsy shop, The Intermission (I just love that name), for gorgeously designed graphics work.


I want to extend my thanks to everyone who entered. I really enjoyed reading the comments; this has been the most enjoyable giveaway I've done by far!





Sad you didn't win? Nothing in my etsy shop can compare with Gabriel's gorgeous tapir, but I still would like to offer everyone 20% off if you use coupon code TINYTAPIR.

Thanks again, and congrats to the winner!

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Tapir Giveaway Time!

Wow, over 500 followers on this blog! Thanks so much to everyone who drops by, follower or not. I really appreciate it! And, I do believe it calls for a giveaway.

Gabriel Hardman, talented comic book artist for Marvel and story board artist for films such as Inception, has graciously agreed to provide a baby tapir sketch card to one lucky winner. Sketch cards, for those who don't know, are tiny pieces of art, 2 inches by 3.5 inches. This one was done in pen and ink.

Enter quick, or I'm keeping this!

Like Gabriel's work? Then you should check out his etsy shop and his twitter feed!

And, because one of my missions in life is promotion of tapir awareness, that's the theme of this giveaway. To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post with one fact about tapirs. Never heard of a tapir before? You're not alone. Check out the Tapir Preservation Fund's website for a plethora of facts. Then come back here and enter to win! I'll use a random number generator on Thursday, February 17th, 2011 to pick the winner. Good luck, everyone! 

Wordless Wednesday featuring a Hungry Giraffe

Gone to Be Snakes Now... And Again

A donkey and a zebra grow tired of hearing about Gone to Be Snakes Now

I know everyone is sick of hearing about Gone to Be Snakes Now, the novel by Neal Bell that I was plowing through in a previous post. So why am I posting about it again? For one very simple reason: it blew my mind with its unrelenting disregard for plot, character, consistency, and anything approaching a coherent world view. Heck, it didn't even have a coherent timeline! Folks, a book this weirdly, spastically, one might even say aggressively, incoherent deserves an audience. This was not your garden variety bad novel. This is a forgotten gem of awfulness amid the ruble of  sci-fi philosophizing.

It did leave me with some questions though:

* Was the fire that burned down the gigantic pickle barrel supposed to be allegorical, or merely tragic?

* Where did all the chickens come from?

* Where did the man dressed as a giant bird get his supply of strontium 90 water? And aren't there quicker ways of killing someone than giving them bone cancer? I mean, if your goal is to eat them that evening?

* What killed all the snakes? Did they come back to life in order to terrorize the community theater company, or were those different snakes?

* And while we're on the subject of snakes, wasn't it a bit heavy-handed to call the mutant snake woman Eve?

I could go one. I could write an entire post about the shear inanity of the fact that many of the characters lived in giant gas pumps. But I won't. I will, however, leave you with this image, because I can't sum up this book without resorting to Lolcats. The Frog Bag Blog: appreciating terrible science fiction so you don't have to. You're welcome!

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