Future Style of Lawn Care Robot

Um, so I guess the title of this post is the title of the sketch, although the title could also be “Moonbot Mowing His Moon Yard.” Which I guess is mostly the same title, so, whatever. Anyway, if it wasn’t late I’d fix the fourteen things about the sketch that wandered away from the original image I had in my head, but it is late, so I won’t fix ‘em tonight, and really probably won’t ever fix ‘em, ’cause there are many other things I’ve gotta draw, and mistaken drawings are good for thinking about, at least, in a self-teaching sort of way.

Moonbase

Okay, this was supposed to be a drawing called “Megabase Lunatron,” but now it’s a drawing called “Moon Crystal.” What happened was, the crystal was going to be a crooked-style Fullerine dome, but then I couldn’t crowd in all the dumb little rovers and space workers and moon trucks I’d planned on drawing, so I drew it like it was a couple of folks out for a sort of outing. With, of course, their space dog and a future kind of digital camera, which will be bulkier than the modern kind. Again, I was going for a crummy chipboard look, like this thing was a linocut, cut with the dullest possible gouges and then printed with cheap sticky ink on the back of a newsprint pad. I guess, in fact, I could just do it that way instead of on the computer…but, whatever, maybe later, if and when there’s actual extra time laying about. Thing is, lino doesn’t feel as natural anymore as a Wacom tablet, so I’d have to relearn some muscle memory or something. Not that drawing’s ever natural. Anyhow, gotta go and take a break from the internets.

Starry Night

Although I reckon I’ve got a decent amount of astronomy knowledge (like, I mostly know the difference between a comet and an asteroid, and I know the Moon’s not always dark on its dark side), I hardly ever know one star from another. I mean, okay, I know Orion’s belt stars, ’cause they’re kind of really easy to remember: Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka. Pretty much impossible to forget if your brain’s one of those brains that gets obsessed by weird repetitive patterns of word-shapes and sounds. But, beyond that, who the heck knows Procyon from Spica, or Vega from Aldebaran. Or, I mean, okay, I guess nearly everybody does, except me, on account of how I stunk at cub-scouting, and therefore never made it far enough to then go and stink at regular scouting…if there is such a thing. But, anyway, I do try and keep this stuff straight, which means at the end of the work day, I often go out in the backyard and try to compare a star chart to the scattered wan stars I can see through the glare off the neighbor’s atom-powered floodlamp. And, well, tonight was kind of a jackpot night, ’cause plain as day I could make out Saturn and Mars and even Arcturus wasn’t any problem, since it was glowing all orange up high overhead like the tip of a cosmonaut’s cigarette. I couldn’t, of course, see Saturn’s rings through my binoculars, although I could halfway delude myself I could see the pale yellowness and bigness of it compared to nearby Regulus. Mars, meanwhile, was red like it’s supposed to be, which is something I’m not always able to make out with my funky patchwork retinas. Anyway, looking out across the void, it’s fun to think about how there are actual human-built machines zooming around those wavering little points of light, all of ‘em sending messages back and forth, sort of in a way extending the Internet out into the Solar System. Or something. I mean, in real life, deepness isn’t my thing at all.

Anyhow, that’s all I know on that subject, except I hope my neighbors didn’t think I was up to any sort of mischief with my binoculars. I swear, I was totally looking heavenward the whole time I was out there. (I mention this ’cause one of our neighbors gets spooked even by wrong numbers; she never thinks it’s an accident that people sometimes accidentally call her house instead of the house they were trying to call.)

Otherwise, here are some recent fortune cookie fortunes:

“You will soon be joined with an old forgotten friend.”

“A message from a distance is coming.”

“Many of your ideas are becoming real.”

“You will help someone in need.”

“You have a charming way with words.”

Obviously, these were all mostly misdirected fortunes…wonder who got the ones I was supposed to get instead, the ones that usually advise how certain days will be better than other ones for buying vegetables or new shoes. That’s advice I could completely use.

Oh, and, before I forget: last night, I dreamt I was semi-acquainted with Steve Gutenberg, and that I was telling my wife the story of how once I was an extra in one of his movies, and that during the shoot Steve told me he was kind of down about his career prospects, but I told him, just look at John Travolta, he’s had about seven comebacks, so hang in there, it’s gonna be your turn soon, which seemed to cheer Steve up a fair amount. Which, maybe that was the good deed predicted by my fortune cookie. Not helping save rainforests, like I should be doing, but helping an actor with an optimism problem. Guess you do have to start local, though.

And that’s all for now (as if any of this was anything at all). Except, here are a couple of very ancient sketches, to remind me of the huge amount of work I’ve got to do to catch up even a little.