This pretty much sums it up. All of these images were taken by me in two different cities sometime before the the world became ravaged with pestilence, using Little Jeannie who has since retired to the great network in the sky. But time and the death of my old smartphone hasn’t diminished their brilliance any.
My next literary project is shaping up to be a rehashing of my previous work in progress, but from a very different angle. I’ve already got an idea as to the general narrative trajectory of the first several chapters; banging out a rough skeleton of that sounds like a swell NaNoWriMo project. The finished product most certainly won’t be called SILVER BROWN, hence the reason why the title of this site had to change. A new mascot was in order as well. For the first three years of its existence, this site’s visual branding was centered around the image of the Aardvark…
However, this mascot was a character from my previous work in progress — a Big Brother-like entity who I can’t see being part of the new book, outside of maybe one or two passing mentions uttered by gushing admirers. So I ditched him.
The Aardvark glyph was something I doodled up one afternoon about five years ago, on some app-within-a-website that allowed anyone with the knowhow (and those willing to acquire same from the school of hard knocks) to create their own vector graphics in a cloud-based environment. A website that doesn’t exist anymore, I’m pretty sure of it. It didn’t have all the bells and whistles of a professional-grade program; the whole point of it all was that it be easy enough for complete novices to get their hands dirty learning the basics of the art. As a poor man’s Adobe Illustrator, it fit the bill for me just fine at the time. But with the rich man’s Adobe Illustrator, you can really go nuts…
I initially started working on this graphic with the idea that it would be a visual representation of all five senses expressed as a single entity, but somewhere along the way it ended up taking on a life of its own. Looking like the result of a discreet encounter Grimace once had with Miss Piggy in a pet cemetery of the damned, located in the same eldritch Cthulhuvian alternate universe that begat antivaxxers and pumpkin spice. Utterly horrifying, but in a way that’s kind of the point. I might actually use this entity as a character in the new book. It would make a smashing corporate executive.
There’s no name for this thing yet. I just call it The Entity. I imagine its true name unpronounceable by human vocal chords; the closest approximation would cast a spell if uttered aloud, summoning an ever-agitated fireant colony to materialize in the speaker’s butthole. During certain times of the year, I might depict it wearing festive hats.
I celebrated a birthday a month ago today. For most of it, I was only dimly aware that it was my birthday. Felt much like any other day. Guess I’ve just gotten to that age. Either that or I was just high. It was one or the other. Probably both.
To commemorate this apparent eureka moment on the ultimate subjectivity of time (but more so to take advantage of some of those non-essential services now in case another lockdown happens later), I treated myself to a slightly expensive ornament to beautify my physical being. One I’m sure I’ll never accidentally misplace. Because it’s a tattoo.
The tattoo artist did a masterful job, as you can see. I almost felt bad for not tipping her an extra hundred on the way out. Midway through the session, she asked me if I was feeling any pain. I told her I’ve been through worse.
It was also through this (highly worthwhile) experience that I learned of specially formulated ointments available on the market for recently tattooed areas of the skin. A lot of them come in visually stunning bottles. Like this…
Five and ¾ Senses 