Friends

Then I looked up at his eyes, and said "I'm calling an ambulance now," only probably in tones more like 'sheer terror' than 'calm and sensible'.

I think he was trying to talk to me, but really, I didn't actually care, because once I got him lying down on his back, I was dialling the ambulance. Where I proceeded to freak out on the phone - there was nowhere near as much blood as I thought there was, later! I managed to mangle my address, give a bad report, and generally not be anywhere near as calm as would have been useful. Keith was awake, but kinda out of it.

Essentially, he'd split the whole front of his forehead open, right down all the muscle layers, so the wound was very scary to look at. He also nearly bit through his lip, bit his tongue, etc, though I didn't find that out until later. I was very worried he'd bashed his front teeth in given all the blood. He was lying down and we were using a teatowel to hold the two sides of the wound together with hard pressure to try and stop the bleeding. I was convinced he'd cracked the front of his skull open, so was extremely frightened as the wound was astonishingly deep and about 10-15 cm long, from below his brow up into his hairline. And it bled. Everywhere. Over our hands, the floor, his hair, the pillow I had for him, the towel I put on him, everywhere.

To make what seemed like forever short, the ambulance arrived and two guys got out and did the usual checks, then peeled away the tea towel to check it out.

"Pheewwwww, that's really impressive!"

They were pretty nice, and by then I'd grabbed a bag with essentials, like shoes for him, and I got a ride in an ambulance to the hospital. Straight to treatment, skipped all the waiting. The nurse checked it out, and I was calming down a bit. We went into surgery, and the doctor eyed it all and said Keith needed stitches in his lip and forehead, a CT scan, and tetanus injections. I stayed there to hold his hand, and the surgery was painful as he was metabolising the locals incredibly quickly even though they kept jabbing him with more. Much to my embarrassment, I suddenly felt woozy and nearly blacked out, so had to spend most of the time sitting on the floor.

It took quite a while to stitch him up, which was pretty miserable as he could feel most of it (he was very good about it, but it was clearly extremely unpleasant), and it was morning by the time everything was done and they could clean the blood off his hands and face. After we waited through observation, and the scans came back okay, we called a taxi and went home.

The blood all got mopped up, we both had quick showers to wash the rest of it off ourselves, and then fell into bed. I'm not at work today as he needs observation due to the head injury, and frankly I'm exhausted after running around most of the night panicking. And the house smells a lot like blood so I'm pretty queasy. Keith looks okay, but will have a scar which unfortunately will not be in the shape of a lightning bolt.

I got some good recording time in with The Local Skank! Saturday we finished up the drum tracks, spending a few hours replacing my electronic drums on the demo with real drums. This is a VERY difficult and potentially frustrating approach; almost everybody knows that you start with the drums and THEN add the other instruments. Doing the reverse is enough to task the patience of all but a few drummers. But their drummer Darryl is quite good and with some retakes, managed to get editable tracks that sound a lot better to my ears than the drum & cymbal samples (sorry, Drumbot!) Hanging out for much of the session was Dr. A Rachnid, who was looking forward to getting lots of recording done during this coming week. As am I! I'm also particularly impressed with the Shure Beta 52 microphone I borrowed from Filbert for recording the bass drum... WOW, fantastic sound! Damn, I've gotta buy one of those myself! Wonder what it would sound like on an acoustic bass or a bass guitar cab?

The girls (and guy) in this band have really inspired me with their energy! For instance, aside from recording, the girls were spending the rest of the entire weekend working on photographing a theme calendar they're going to publish in time for Christmas. Wow, what I could do if I had that kind of enthusiasm at hand... we've already upped rehearsal from one night a week to two (one night for practice, one for writing/recording) and I might add a third one in 2010 to get more awesomeness (shooting a video) accomplished! It's been a LONG time since we shot any video... we've absolutely gotta change that!

Sunday was time for another Saints rout, this time of the Buccaneers. But I had to take a break in between quarters for a long distance interview, via Skype, for the Morgus documentary. My subject was an Emmy-award winning producer in Los Angeles. Great interview, assisted in L.A. by my friend Odin Lindblom.

Then it was time for the Oak St. Po-Boy Fest! We arrived in time to catch the last couple bands, a bunch of great food, and of course free Leidenheimer po-boy bread. Great scene, and I ran into a few friends out there too.

Tonight's rehearsal, which is gonna be fun; we've got some shows coming up to prepare for, one in New Orleans on December 11th with The Local Skank and Clockwork Elvis. Then the next night, we're performing in Pensacola at a great looking new place called Creative Instinct Warehouse - aside from us, C. Martin Croker (Zorak from Space Ghost! Dr. Weird from Aqua Teen!!) will be presenting a bunch of groovy stuff from his animation collection on film. Sounds like an absolutely killer way to spend an evening...

http://www.rtqe.net/ObliqueStrategies/#1­73

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2009/11/a­pplying-prestondisney-principles-to-my.h­tml

Do not panic. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Joe and I baked a pumpkin pie for reals while this was going on, just so you don't think I am useless :D

http://www.dummcomics.com/index?sid=540

Just the Facts, Mom - by Ricky Garduno

I was investigating why Battlezone 1 hardware rendering crashes on Windows 7 last week, and the Windows 7 Program Compatibility Assistant worked its voodoo on the release build. Now I can't run the application at all, since it crashes deep inside the compatibility layer before startup. Fantastic.

Renaming the application makes it work again, indicating that this is happening on the Windows side, not in the application itself. I'd like to clear the compatibility settings for bzone.exe, but haven't found a way to do that so far. The real solution would be to fix the crash in the compatibility layer, which is something only Microsoft could do.

I started a support ticket with Microsoft, but they basically suggested rolling back to a previous restore point. Considering it's been almost a week, that's not really an option.

furtech

ruggels

What was cool is that I reconnected with a number of people I very seldom see from school days, including my old layout teacher. I also ran into another student who was a junior during my freshman year (he gave me a free book that he did-- I guess because I bothered to stop by and say hi to him!) I also ran into old CalArts and Rowrbrazzle friend Garrett Ho, who I had not seen in some years. The person who sells Tracy Butler's materials was there as well, and I actually got a chance to chat with him since this wasn't as crowded as ComiCon. I also saw Scott Shaw, and several other CalArts people.

The depressing part was that everyone seemed to be out of work. The usual keywork was "I've been doing freelance," which is double-speak for "I don't have a job and am barely scraping by with irregular gigs," or just a flat-out lie in lieu of saying "I'm unemployed." I could count the actual employers there on one hand, and of those I don't think any of them were seriously looking to hire, but were there more for public relations. The rest of the booths were individual artists selling their work, larger book dealers (Stuart Ng Books was there. I could drop a fortune at his table if I had it), people peddling their animation software, and a few schools.

It was a mixed thing. While I loved seeing and talking to my old friends, it was also horribly depressing to see how very many desperate unemployed there were, and to realize what I'm up against in the pursute of work. If i had the resources I'd seriously consider doing what xianjaguar is doing and switch careers, but I can't afford to go back to school (even if my tuition was paid somehow, I still need to make X amount of money monthy to help cover household bills on top of any tuition) The best i can do is keep looking, and hope that one of my old contacts, old co-workers or bosses, actually comes up with something.

The Bhut Jolokia pepper (a.k.a. ghost chili) is the hottest pepper in the world, at one million Scoville units. It's twice as hot as the Red Savina Habanero, the previous record holder. Naturally, some people have to try it for themselves...

The Bhut Jolokia Owns All