"Shuffling His Deck Of Trick Cards"

Random thoughts for the day! Huzzah!

First off, mom said that they finally found Clif a new vehicle. They're taking it to him this weekend. That means the Great Cottrell Car Hunt of '04 is finally over, and we've all got wheels again. This is a load off all of my family's minds, I'm sure. Hell, they'd even enlisted my help in searching, and you know it's serious when they're getting the least-car savvy among us to help look.

Got the apartment cleaned up today, which is nice. Now I have clean dishes again, which means I can actually eat real food for once. The horror!

Chatted with my aunt this afternoon, and she was telling me a couple of things--first, that one of the bands my uncle plays in will be here in Norman next weekend (I fully intend to go see them play), and that I'll be mentioned in the liner notes under Special Thanks in the next Regular Joes CD. Now, this probably doesn't mean anything to most of you, but it's kind of a neat honor that the guys in the band think highly enough of me to want to thank me for coming and listening to them play. And here I thought I was getting the good end of the deal by hearing free rock and roll.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or something like that. It's some big thing where lots of people decide to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I know a few people taking part. I would, except that I've got research papers to write instead, and those take precedence over a novel I don't have a plot, characters, or a story for yet. Maybe next year...

Of course, I also still plan to do a 24 hour comic thing someday, but that hasn't happened yet, either.

Speaking of comics, I came up with an idea for a comic last night, and I'm writing up the script for it at the moment. It's a fairly simple story about a guy who goes to the laundromat and runs into a really beautiful woman there, and what happens between the two of them at the laundromat (that sounds like the plot for a porn, but I promise that's not the direction I'm going). The whole idea of the comic is to give me the chance to try telling a story with pictures rather than words. Whenever I write, even with things like Troubled Times, so much of the story is expressed in dialogue rather than images. I want to try something different and go a more graphic route. There will be some dialogue, just not nearly as much. I think there are actually a few pages in it so far that don't have any dialogue or words on them at all. Anyway, it's a more serious story than I usually write, so it's a challenge on many levels. It'll make me work harder as far as writing, art, and characterization are all concerned. Visual storytelling can be fun, even if it's so tough. I'll keep you posted.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Elliot Smith, "Angeles"