4/30/2008
4/29/2008
How to...Blame the Media
Dave Pirkola
In college I used to walk a couple miles, sometimes through deep Michigan snow, to buy comic books at Apparitions. I went there at least once a month for the 5 years I lived in Grand Rapids. I remember talking to Dave about Carl Barks--he was big fan--and his cat. He's a classic cranky/jovial comic book store owner, salt of the weird earth. The other week when I was in town I stopped by but Dave wasn't working that day, and the guy who was, who had a mustache that curled at the tips into actual spirals, told me the cat had died and Dave was feeling pretty down about it. I bought an old Pogo collection. I just learned that Dave was shot last Friday night during a robbery but he's hanging on. We're really hoping for a smooth speedy recovery and that they find the shooter. Here's a link you'd like to help him out with medical bills, etc. I hope to have some art in an auction they're putting on, and I'll update with info once I know what's up.
The Stand-Alone Brain and the Thickly-Beating Heart
"...Under normal circumstances, experiences are had by a person, not by a stand-alone brain. The brain of an experiencing person is not isolated[...]it is in a body. Corresponding to this is the fact that when, for example, I see something I like, or someone I love, my brain, or some small part of it, is not the only part of me to light up. My heart may beat faster, or more thickly; a smile may appear on my face; and my step may be a little jauntier. The effects do not stop there. My body is located in a currently experienced environment; and, since I am human, that environment is situated in a world that is extended in all spatial, temporal, cultural directions. This world, too, may be transformed by my encounter with the loved one’s face, and I may think differently about it. For the extraordinary thing about human beings – and what captures what is human – is that they transcend their bodies; that human experience is not solitary sentience but has a public face; it belongs to a community of minds. This is a process that has developed over many hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of years since hominids parted company from the monkeys. The neuromythologist, trying to find citizens and their worlds in neurones, stuffs all that has been created by the collective of brains back into a stand-alone brain; indeed into a small part of such a brain. True, we require a brain to participate in the community of minds; but that participation is not to be reduced to activity in bits of brains."
-from Raymond Tallis, here
4/15/2008
4/12/2008
The Feathered Ogre Appears
For a slideshow I'm doing next weekend at my old alma mater,* I've been going through my notes for the 3 stories that originally appeared in the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase #1. Here's a note to myself about how the F. Ogre appearance should go down. I'll try to put some more of these notes and sketches up here, but no promises. You can read more about the Feathered Ogre in my book Curses.*located near the original 28th Street, how could I resist?
4/03/2008
4/02/2008
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