Nerdwatch!

Well, this past weekend was a lot of fun. I’ve always like AnimeUSA, ever since I started going to it a few years ago. Something about small conventions, with just a couple of thousand fans, makes it feel more comfortable. AUSA always has a good selection of recent anime (not always licensed, of course) for viewing, their dealer’s room although small always has good companies, with good selections of “stuff” to buy. This year I made a pretty good haul, I bought some wall hangings for the first time, bought a droolicious Yomiko Readman figure, and snarfed enough anime DVDs to keep me dazed through the Thanksgiving holiday.

This AUSA is also the first one I’ve participated in as an “artist”. I painted a picture of Fuu staring into the sunset, and got quite a few compliments (although I wasn’t there, my friends relayed some of them), plus the biggest compliment of all, someone bought the painting! Some of the comments were interesting, in what they said about the kinds of things that are being displayed at anime convention art shows lately. It seems that more and more people are creating “paintings” using Photoshop, and very few are taking brush to canvas. Some people were surprised (and the guy who bought the painting said he was pleased) by the fact that I had actually painted a picture for display. There were also a lot of prints of paintings by very good artists, but I’ve seen the same prints from the same artists at con after con this past 4 or 5 years. The person running the Art Show said that this year she had only seen about half of the works that were in the show just last year, and I’m wondering if the crowd is just getting tired of the same things, or if fans don’t have the time to create, or worse, that they no longer have the motivation to do so. It’s a bit worrisome, especially if it’s a trend. I intend to find out at next February’s Katsucon, where I plan to have at least 2 and maybe 3 paintings done and displayed.

I told my friend Speaker that I’ve been slowly participating in the con-going experience, first by attending, then last year by cosplaying (I made a passable, if very overweight and old Jigen from “Lupin the Third”), and now by participating in an Art Show. If my talents went in that direction, I’d make an anime music video, or possibly amateur animation, but those are extremely time consuming, and I don’t think I’ll have a lot of time once I get a job (if I can get one, grumble grumble). Also, if I did make an AMV or something, and it went over well, Speaker’s head may explode from the sheer amount of incredulity! (He was astonished by the fact that I sold my painting, and mentioned it more than once during and after the con. Heh. ^===^ )

At any rate, AUSA is always fun, and I’m looking forward to Katsucon! Anyone reading this, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Today, November 15 2006, would have been my mother’s 90th birthday. Delphy Diseker was an unusual woman, private, strong-willed, independent, and often frustrating. She was the last child of her family, her parents were married around 1893, and all the stories about her say she was intensely shy. Of her children, I seem to have inherited that trait the strongest. She married my father Norman Diseker in 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, in the coal camps of Kentucky. My brother and sister were born not long after, but I wasn’t to come on to the scene until 1958. It was a dangerous time, most 42 year old women didn’t have children, and just as she and my father (who was 57 at the time!) were getting ready to figure out how and where to settle down, they get stuck with a newborn. But, they raised me just fine, and Mom made sure I learned how to take care of myself early on. I know now that she and Dad were thinking they weren’t going to be around much longer, but thank God they both lived into their 80’s, my Dad living long enough to see me graduate college, and my Mom long enough to see me settled into a good career. I miss them both terribly, but I think I miss Mom most of all. I never had a chance to tell her goodbye, she suffered a stroke on Christmas Day 1996, a little over a month after her 80th birthday, and she lapsed into a coma from which she had arranged not to be resucitated from. I had no idea what was happening, as I was feeding her lunch that day in her hospital room, she started nodding off, in a strange way, and she became less and less responsive. I tried to get a nurse interested, and her doctor was off that day promising to come in later (he showed up about 10 hours later), but no one really seemed to care. I kept watch by her bedside, as she slept, wishing I could contact my sister or my brother (my brother was over 100 miles away working himself, and my sister was nearly that far, taking her daughter to the airport). I kept talking to Mom, holding her hand, trying to wake her up, and also letting her know someone was there. Just before she completely lost consciousness, she tried to say something, but it came out a mumble and I don’t know what it was she was trying to communicate. I wish I could have told her one last time, while she was awake, that I loved her, but like a lot of times in my life, I missed my chance.

Years before, when she had her first mini-strokes, she had filled out a “living will”, which she reiterated down through the later years, requiring her not to be given “extraordinary means” for resucitation if she suffered a major stroke or other brain damage. She loathed the suffering that people she knew had seemed to go through, hooked up to machines that kept blood flowing and breath pumping, but without the possibility of the release of death. She wanted none of that, and made sure her kids knew it. So, one day in December, a couple of days after her stroke, her doctor told us the results of her CAT scan, which showed major damage at the base of her brain, which was allowing her autonomous system to function, but which had disconnected her consciousness from her body. The doctor told us that the terms of the living will stated he could not do anything like respiration or inserting a stomach tube for feeding, but that as relatives we kids could override the will. My brother and sister told me they would let me make the final decision, and agree with whichever way I decided. I knew how I wanted to decide, but I also knew that, on the miniscule chance that she regained consciousness, she would have despised us kids for the rest of her life, because she would know we couldn’t be trusted to carry out her most important last wish. So, I told the doctor to honor her will, and so he disconnected her IV, and allowed us to spend as much time with her as she passed. Because her body was so strong, she didn’t pass on for nearly 3 weeks, which the doctor and nurses marveled at. I made sure that I played her favorite tapes on a portable cassete player by her bed, and talked to her as much as I could on my shift with her. I don’t know if she was aware of it, or if she was truly cut off from the world, but I had to go on the assumption that something of the world was getting through. I pray that she heard me tell her how much I loved her and that I was making sure her one last wish was fulfilled. I can’t think of a harder thing to go through, or a harder decision I have ever made, but I’m thankful that my parents raised me and passed on their strength to me to handle this last duty to them. They sent me to church, but taught me that having faith in God (or not) was my choice, and I believe God gave me some strength to help me to help Mom on those last days.

I think I sometimes irritate my friends and acquaintences by not taking many “important” issues of the day very seriously, and basically living my life with little stress and not much thought or worry for the future. I believe it is because of the last lesson my parents taught me, a decade apart from each other. There is only one big thing that can happen to you in your life, and that’s the end of it. Everything in between can be survived and overcome, both good and bad. The bad never lasts, and neither does the good, and if there’s nothing I can do about it, I don’t have to worry. I believe that’s also what Jesus was trying to get at when he told his followers “take no thought for tomorrow, for the Lord will provide” or words to that effect. I greet each day thankful for living through the night, and if I survive the day, I thank Him again. I make some plans, of course, but I never fully count on anything, because “the best-laid plans of mice and man gang aft agly” and no matter how much I expect certain things to happen, they seldom do. Sometimes this makes me seem pessimistic, but as I tell my friends, “pessimists are never disappointed, and optimists are never pleasantly surprised.”

Boy was this rambling, and I never expected to put so much of myself into a posting like this, but on this day “it needed doing.” Thanks, Mom.

Okay, so, here’s the deal: When I was in college, and giant reptiles ruled the earth, I used to paint pictures. I don’t know if they were any good, but I liked them, and I really enjoyed the effort to create them. I got the same kind of mental feeling (many people call it “flow”) that I got when I was deeply involved in creating and debugging software. Some say that creation stimulates endorphin receptors, but I don’t know. All I know is, I had to give up painting for 20 years, while I spent all my free time working for companies that, for all my sacrifices for them, only gave me back more requirements and more demands on my time. I’ve been out of work for a few weeks, now, and finally worked up the will to put paint and brush to canvas again. This is what I painted:

It’s not really finished, but I never did “finish” a painting to my satisfaction, I just had to stop before I made it worse. This is the first painting I’m going to show at an anime convention (AnimeUSA in Tyson’s Corner), and I hope someone bids on it at the auction. If not, I get to bring it back and show it with my other paintings, and I’ll start work on the next one or two for Katsucon in February. I have a couple of ideas that I want to paint, I can visualize them, but now all I have to do is paint what’s in my head (that’s “all”, he says! 🙂

Well, it’s nearly 3:00 AM, and I can’t sleep, even though I’m worn out. So many things going on, so many things to do, and even though I’m not working (shrinking bank account for the lose) I still don’t have all the time I want. It’s probably a good thing I’m not working, in a way, because I am able to spend a lot of time studying Japanese. JAPA 330 is harder in many ways than the earlier classes (which is to be expected) but in some ways it’s actually easier. The hardest parts were learning to read and write the alphabets, learning basic grammar rules and learning some common vocabulary, but the way the classes were taught, the rules have built on each other, and after much repetition, I’m finding it easier to think in Japanese. Knowing how to conjugate verbs enables you to build more and more complex thoughts, because the mechanics of the rules are simple and common. There are just a lot of them to keep track of, more so in some ways than English, but less than other languages I’ve tried to learn. I have a hard time listening to native speakers talking in “full gallop” as it were, but I can start to pick out ideas while watching “raw” anime episodes, now. If the person speaks carefully and not too slowly, I can get by, I think. What I have to do is try to build up my vocabulary, because I have a good feel for the rules, and I can recognize them being applied, but I have no idea what some of the words mean. Knowing that someone is using the past tense of a verb doesn’t help if I don’t know what they are talking about doing in the past!

Well, this was a rambling post, and I’m nowhere near being any sleepier, so maybe I’ll work on my painting. I’m getting back into painting pictures, for the first time in 20 years, since my university days. When I started work, I found that I had no time to devote to art (or at least, what I call art) since I and my fellow drones were expected to give up all for the company. If the company had a deadline, we were supposed to work all hours for no more pay, and to sacrifice private personal time to solve the company’s problems. Well, I’m too old and tired to do that anymore, so in future I’m going to spend some of my time on myself. Selfish, granted, but the older I get, the less total free time I’m going to have before I die, and unless I win the lottery, I’m going to have to devote a big chunk of the rest of my life to someone else just to be able to pay my rent and buy my food, so I value my free time more and more highly.

The painting I’m working on is an interpretation of a scene from the closing credits of “Samurai Champloo”, an anime favorite of mine. The closing credits show scenes from the childhood of one of the characters, Fuu, and the scene I’m painting is a profile of her looking up at the sky at sunset on the seashore. It’s a striking scene, and I hope I can do it justice. I plan to have the painting done by the time the next local anime convention starts, which is AnimeUSA up in Tyson’s Corner, in about two weeks. I don’t know if they allow only one artwork for show, but if someone likes it, maybe they’ll bid on it and I can make a bit of money, and they can enjoy the picture. I’m not greedy (although I am a bit mercenary) but if I can make a few bucks while creating something people like to look at, why the heck not?

Well, that’s all I’m going to write for tonight, maybe it won’t be a year before the next post! Anyone reading this, check out my other blog, “Systemic Cheese” at http://systemiccheese.blogspot.com.

I decided to dust the cobwebs off of this journal *cough* *cough* and
see if it still works.  It’s been two years since the grand Nerd
Tour, and I’m preparing for another Grand Adventure in 2007.  Yes,
it will be “Nerd Tour 2007: Japan!”  I plan to go over to Japan
with my friend for Worldcon 2007 in Yokohama, and hopefully spend a couple of months just roaming the country afterward. 

I decided to start preparing early, by taking Japanese courses at
George Mason University.  So far, I’ve taken JAPA 101 and 102 in a
brutally intensive Summer session.  Each class lasted 5 weeks,
averaging 9 hours per week of classwork, and an equal amount of
homework.  It was like the proverbial “drinking from a firehose”,
but I managed to make a B in both classes, and more importantly began
learning the language! 

I’ve gotten two of the three writing systems down pat, hiragana and
kataka, and will start learning kanji this semester in JAPA 201. 
My vocabulary is still sparse, and I have a very hard time following
the teacher (she is a native speaker) due to my poor hearing, and my
even poorer brain!  But, apparently I can pronounce the words I
know well enough to be understood, so I guess that’s something!

I’ll try to post here occasionally (I’m not as comfortable with this as
Speaker), to update the world (yeah, right) about the preparations for
“Nerd Tour 2007: Japan!” as I make them, and any milestones I set and
reach.  Hopefully I’ll be able to insert some にほんご as I learn it,
so that anyone who knows Japanese can get a good laugh!  🙂

That’s it for now, stay tuned campers!