Watercolor

I've been really into watercolors lately. That's significant because if you had asked me when I was thirteen if I would ever be into watercolors, I would look at you like you had just asked me if I believed the Backstreet Boys were ever going to break up. That is to say, I would have thought it was extremely unlikely.

Two Scoops

Last week Eva's cousin T, who was seven months old, died in her sleep. Eva's mom called to let me know, and I could tell she'd been repeating the news a lot. She had the kind of dull thud to her voice that sits just outside of grief -- a sort of fuzzy autopilot that flutters into gear in the wake of necessity.

Streetcar

Yesterday I got a rare gift. I was in the Lower Garden District (probably the most inconveniently far-away neighborhood from house in New Orleans proper), when my bike got a flat tire.

Craigslist Personals: Subcategory - Dinosaurs

Lonely Sinornithosaurus Wants To Make You Soar: I'm usually not good at describing myself but here it goes. I'm a big guy; charming; a gentleman; covered in feathers from head to toe. I'm not avian, but I can pass for avian if that's your thing. I'm not too classy (Read: PRETENTIOUS) for a little role-playing! I'd prefer that you were single, a little demure, and also feathered. It's not a deal-breaker if you're not, but I tend to do better with other feathered species. It's not that I'm a bigot or anything, I just find it hard to get excited about girls who don't have feathers. Anyway, if something I wrote here piqued your interest, there's more where that came from! Just make sure that when you reply to this ad you put in the subject line "I'M FEATHERED." That way I'll know you're a real (feathered!) girl who read my ad and not a robot, or SPAM.

Flappy Noodle: Tap on your device to make the noodle flap. Flap to try to avoid obstacles like "being eaten" or "being eaten by a bird" or "being eaten by a dog." Ultimately, flapping is futile, because you are a noodle. Noodles are powerless to do anything. Gamers have lauded Flappy Noodle as "harder than Flappy Bird." Nietzsche scholars have lauded it as "relevant."

Bending

I don't make plans on Thursday nights. My two roommates and I have Family Dinner on Thursdays, and it's sacred. It's the most important plan I keep, and I accept hands-down that the dinner will take the entire night.

Substitute

Sometimes I look at substitute teachers and think, "Hey. Most substitute teachers seem pretty sad and fat." Yesterday, while substitute teaching, I realized that there is a reason for that. The reason is that substitute teachers deserve to be sad and fat. What I mean to say is that they've earned it. It's a very depressing, fattening job. I want to buy all the world's substitute teachers vats of ice cream and jars of fudge -- the saddest food combination out there -- just to say, "I get it."

Torrential Downpour

I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. to the kind of rain that begs you to submit to it. It sounded like the sky had found millions of tons of dry rice and was emptying the grains mercilessly onto the sidewalks.

The Archaic Torso of Apollo

This Rilke poem, "The Archaic Torso of Apollo," has come up in my life many times. This weekend, it turned up at the wonderful Mel Chin exhib it, which just opened at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Here's the poem.

A Lid For Every Pot

I recently decided to be honest with myself about the kinds of people I like to be around and act accordingly.

In middle school, here was my policy: if a person was willing to spend time with me, then I liked to be around that person. There were no exceptions to this. The person did not even have to be nice. As long as the person would put up with me for more than 15 minutes, the person was my favorite person.

Everything Is Magic

I've been playing with gouache lately. I wanted to try a comic with just two colors, but I think this is a failure. Oh well. Keep trying!

30 Americans

I had meant to spend yesterday afternoon working in sulky solitude on all the projects I have to do but have no interest in doing. Obviously I failed at that because I have virtually no self-regulation. Instead, I ran into my friend Ned at the coffee shop (where the work was supposed to be done), and he said, "Do you want to go to this exhibit at the Contemporary Art Center called 30 Americans right now?"

Valentine

On Friday (Valentine's Day), I was asked to substitute assistant teach in a kindergarten classroom at the charter school that had employed me for five years. I spend a lot of time at this school anyway, since it is one of the closest approximations to a home I have ever really known.

Four Truths

Yesterday I got a letter in the mail from a pen pal in Portland. It was written by a girl I thought I was going to hate -- she was dating one of my best friends from high school, and I'm really picky about the people my friends date. I want them all to be dating humanitarian celebrities, since whomever they marry is going to end up one of my new best friends, too. It's all very selfish. Anyway, the girl turned out to be incredible -- like, if you read her character in a comic book you'd say, "Man, I love everything Dan Clowes does, but frankly, this girl is too good to be believed."

Insomnia

When I was six years old, I had insomnia, and it was cute. I was little, and I had adorable fears the way children do: lizard monsters, cave monsters, bed monsters, closet monsters, invisible monsters. Just your basic monster stuff.

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