Eye Trouble is apparently a sketchblog of some sort.

I know, I know, I’m supposed to talk about the drawings instead of droning on about completely other stuff. The thing is, right now, I’m sort of busy trying to see if I even remember how to operate a pencil or a pen, since it’s been about 100 years since I last attempted any kind of remotely art-like endeavor. The reasons I ever stopped doing it are all boring reasons, and the reasons I’m restarting the engine now are also not super interesting. Just a little curious, mostly, to see if there’s anything left in my head besides how to do other people’s jobs. Now, instead, I’m just trying to do the one job I should’ve been doing all along…but, anyway, I always knew I had a million miles to go before I was anywhere close to where I wanted to be with all this junk, so even if it’s a little dispiriting to look at old sketchbooks, it’s also giving me a little bit of a kick in the ass, which is always nice. Even if the way to actually talk about stuff, like why I drew a thing this way instead of that way or whatever, that skill, if I ever had it much, is still pretty much dormant. Guess I’ll work on it, though, in-between the 9000 other things I equally need to work on.

I’ll tell you what’s lately caught my eye about 90 times more than Second Life: it’s this website called Catalog Choice, which is a place where people can tell companies to stop sending ‘em catalogs all the dang time. Which, I guess that would make First Life a little nicer, if we could possibly help out with not denuding the Amazon and wherever else there might still, for a while, be trees. Like, I for sure don’t need Bean’s catalog for lobster boat captains, or the one they send to people they think might be interested in moose-themed dinnerware (why on Earth they think I’m one of those people is a pretty complete mystery; I’m more of a caribou person). And, well, I suppose I also don’t need the catalog that’s full of pictures of Charlie Sheen wearing different styles and colors of bowling shirts, or the catalog that has nine million jigsaw puzzles in it, eight million of which feature scenes of life in the Netherlands. Plus, I definitely don’t need to be reminded every month about all the delicious remaindered books I could have for various low, low prices, ’cause me and books, we’ve got some bad history to sort out. Anyhow, this Catalog Choice thing’s already been talked up a bunch by people who talk better than me, so I’m out of here. Just thought I’d mention how it seems like a good idea, if it works, to have one-stop shopping for telling people you don’t wanna shop via paper anymore. I waste enough paper as it is, scribbling pictures of god-knows-what.

So, I agonized for approximately ninety-seven weeks over getting the New Yorker Magazine DVD archive thing, but then a remaindered copy showed up on the Amazon for a pretty cheap price, so I stopped agonizing, or at least agonized slightly less than usual, and went ahead and got it, and it’s a good thing I did, ’cause this thing’s been endless fun ever since. Like, I remember back in college having a subscription for a while, and reading whatever I could read before and in-between classes, and for a long time since then I’ve been slowly disremembering all the interesting stuff, like the story about Elmore Leonard’s researcher and all the various Roz Chast cartoons and everything John McPhee ever wrote about geology or the merchant marines or whatever. So, since about all I’ve got in my memory anymore is just sort of this index card file of notes, instead of full-blown detailed images, films, and texts, it’s kind of nice to know the stuff I can just barely recall, but would like to recall better, isn’t totally lost but is instead just a couple of clicks and search terms away (not that a DVD is much more permanent than paper, in the long run). Anyhow, now I guess instead of worrying about what all I’m forgetting, my headspace can get freed up for more important pursuits…which, what those might be, I’m not sure. Can’t cure malaria or feed the hungry with doodles, I know that. Maybe, though, there’s a way to harness the energy of doodling to power zero-emissions airships or to help run the soy cake factories that’ll be feeding us in the not-too-distant future.

Still, though, I need more junk like I need another hole in the head, so I hope Mad Magazine or Art in America never ever come out with DVD archives, ’cause then I’ll have to get those, too, and where does it ever stop, once you give in to that kind of temptation? Plus, the time to look at stuff isn’t exactly super-abundant.

Dang, obviously, it’s late and I’m making less sense than usual. Gotta work tomorrow on getting stuff together for some sort of portfolio, plus there’s a ton of other work to do, lists of tasks scattered all about, so that’s gonna keep me from sketching for a day or two, but maybe this blog-like thing’ll be like giving myself assignments, ’cause art is work, after all.

Oh, and yeah, my wife and I watched Mr. Soderbergh’s “The Limey” the other night, and when Wilson tells someone that he’s come to L.A. to “do a job of work,” that phrase kinda stuck in my head a little, for no better reason than I like weird phrases.