journal page 19

august 23 and 24, 2001
"kids and grown-ups love it so"
2:19am and 9:16pm
this blue slurpee was pure liquid heroin today. i got a pair of heavy fireproof cases recently to store all the stacks of finished animation papers as i go. increasingly paranoid now about all these paper stacks, previously all kept piled under my bed, going up in flames and watching an entire year or two turn to ash. but i'm not really sure how well or how long paper will hold up inside of one of these safes in the middle of a big fire. i was at the post office yesterday when suddenly i see fire engines race by and smoke billow up into the sky from behind the trees, right in my neighborhood. i speed home to find a big fire consuming a different building on the other side of the block. i am now wondering if you can put a fireproof safe inside of a bigger fireproof safe.

brian is keen on shooting a documentary about the making of this current film and it's hard for me to imagine a more boring subject to watch. have been doing nothing but inking these last few days and just wrapped them up and ready to plow forward ahead. going to bed at about 6:20 these days (nights?) and it has been really pretty seeing the sun rise every night (morning?) before i go to sleep. in fact my daytime errands still demand that i need to get going again just a few hours later so come to think of it i haven't been sleeping very much at all lately which partially is why i wager that not only is this sentence so poorly structured but also why it is kinda hard to write this entry at the moment. but hey here's something fun: if you consume enough caffeine and sugar, the mild "error" beep and other sudden alert noises that your computer makes from time to time become STARTLING AS HELL

back to work for a bit. have to pencil in some faces..

don

august 10, 2001
"all the troubles you have will pass away very quickly"
5:57am
increased my blood-sugar levels to new heights and have been blazing through animation these last few days. finally got over a bunch of hurdles and it's smooth, boring sailing again for atleast a little while. feeling ok. weather is good. listening to sigur ros tonight. it is very floaty. but when i look at the workload ahead compared to what's done so far, my shoulders sort of slump and my eyes get squinty and i make an exhaling noise that sounds quite a bit like, "hhhheehhhhhhhhh." i could very well still be animating this beast a year from now (knock on wood)... maybe not, but it just grows and grows. which would push the dvd collection release to 2003. let's not think about it. if you all keep sending in sugar products my output may in fact increase. draw, draw, rdraw

christine mailed us these little wire models in little plastic cubes that she made, which are downright darling... you are such enterprising little scamps. the decor in the studio continues to improve. sorry these pics are kinda lousy. the sides of my head are really really itchy right now.



thanks christine!

well the plunge has been taken to join the 20th century and i finally have a dvd player. as soon as i got it i strolled off and got the stanley kubrick super deluxe box set, with the magnetic decoder ring and the limited edition plastic stanley mask and the moon boots. have been in touch with the local government departments and should be receiving the certificate and accompanying documents declaring that i am officially cool now.

i read somewhere the other day that caterpillars and butterflies share just about none of the same dna. every cell in their bodies before and after their cocoon is entirely different. so even though they are the same individual, they are arguably entirely different animals. you buy a hatchet. over the years, you replace the blade three times and the handle two times. is it the same hatchet? you probably think of it as the same hatchet even though it's not the same physical one you bought back then. it occupies the same space in your mind and that takes precedence over its physical makeup somehow. to you, it has the "aura" of being the same hatchet. the cells in your body die and regenerate constantly. you are not made up of any of the same bits and pieces that you were ten years ago. but everyone refers to you as the same thing. scientists were able to sample a chunk of brain cells from a fresh corpse and keep them living for quite awhile independently in a dish. is there identity to the undead piece of brain? is it the same fellow in there, or are his individual bits something else? are pieces of lost thoughts or memories still swimming around inside the neurons?

when the caterpillar spins the cocoon around him, does he think he's dying? does the butterfly have any memories of being a caterpillar?

if entirely different parts can make up the same individual, at least in our heads, we therefore seem to value "aura" space over physical space. otherwise we'd be changing our names every decade or so in light of all our brand new parts. so nothing is ever the sum of its parts. we just give things names and our minds associate them with a given space and time. and then those things, to us, become "the same." this is my hatchet. all of its parts have come and gone over the years, but it's still my hatchet. this is bob. he is not the same bob he was 30 years ago but he is still bob somehow. the only thing we use to differentiate these "same" individuals and objects in different bodies is time. so physical reality is not as dull and definite as most take for granted. objects in reality are dependent on mind to give them presence and identity. and then figure this: in quantum physics, the end result of a physical experiment may actually change, depending on whether or not there is a passive observer there to witness it take place. even though he's not interfering, the mere fact of that conscious observation actually alters unrelated physical events on a subatomic scale; the experimenter cannot be separated from the experiment. amazingly, consciousness and mind, at least on a quantum level, appears to play a major part in dictating the very physical make-up of matter and reality in the universe. all of the little parts that make up the universe, on the smallest scale, are affected and altered by the mere presence of conscious life. i need to sleep.

don

july 24?, 2001
ha ha ha
ho ho ho
after midnight
before you read on, this is more important ---> http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/issues/grassroots/featured/2001/g8genoa.html

it's been a long day of chores and now i have to perk up and start drawing. my head is all swirly and light at the moment which is usually the best time to write in this journal i used to really like sleeping, especially sleeping in, but lately falling asleep actually really scares me somehow and it's best avoided until i am so exhausted that i practically pass out. this is far too complex an issue to get into at the moment, but the point is, elephants need to be shaved quite frequently. chrisopher walken just said that on tv.

say, i heard i was a big hit at the comic con and i wasn't even there this year. i might be on to something.

don

july 19, 2001 11:52pm
just saw the new jurassic park movie because i heard there were dinosaurs in this one. you know, i'm no expert on paleontology but it's amazing how these dinosaurs are always really upset and hungry. just like lions or alligators, right? because you always see lions and alligators endlessly tromping around roaring in the wild, pissed off about something, and they never stop running and hunting. it's not like these animals eat just once a day and hang out snoozing most of the time. always starving and furious about something, those dinosaurs. i am grading papers this weekend and give a final exam next week and then i am done with the class. teaching was sort of fun, it was just a single quarter experiment, but it will be nice to have full time to animate again. inking all night tonight. no, i won't be going to the comic con this year because well, i was really scared of all of you last year and there were far too many people shuffling around in one place for my liking.

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