Em oi! #353: Dog Dreams

I should have one more comic this week. Then I’ll be on vacation until January.

This is based on an actual dream of Bryan’s. It wasn’t that the dog was speaking which surprised him, but that the dog had started using appositives. But then again, she did receive an honorary DFA for her first birthday, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised when she begins to use advanced grammatical structures.

File this one under: BF1099.L35 L86 2011, for Parapsychology–Dreaming–Special topics, A-Z–Language and Languages.

Em ơi! #352: Open to Interpretation

Bryan tells me that this comic reminds him of #303: Playing it Safe. I think the swearing teddy bear is still one of his favorite characters. It reminds me of the previous one I did with Derrida and his cat (I can’t seem to find ANY of the Derrida ones offhand. Weird.)

I will tell you something about the last panel: When I started looking up female philosophers, I noticed that 2/5 of them (Hypatia and Tullia) had nude portraits on their Wikipedia pages. I’ve never seen a nude painting of any male philosopher, including Socrates, who was a dirty old man and totally asking for it. If you want to know what society values in a woman, there it is. Hypatia: Mathematician. Philosopher. Astronomer. Naked.

Seriously, I can count on one hand the number of female philosophers I read (Philippa Foot was the major one) and on zero hands the number of pre-20th century female philosophers I read. That’s kind of screwed up.

Anyway, enough of that.

This comic is filed under NX652.P47 L86 2011 for Arts in general–Characters, persons, classes of persons, and ethnic groups–By name of character, person, class of persons, or ethnic groups A-Z–Philosophers.

Em ơi! #351: Hardly Ever

I swear I will have a post which is not about my ankle soon. I actually have a comic drawn but not inked which is about philosophy. So maybe by the weekend that will be ready to go. I’m actually back to running on a limited (i.e., 3-5 miles at a time) basis; no speed work yet, I’m just happy to be back on my feet after seven fucking weeks. Don’t tell my PT.

Today I biked home at 17:15. Not too late, but now that daylight has been saved again the sun sets at 16:30 around these parts. I have a light on my bike, but before today I’d only tested it in somewhat “low light” conditions, like biking on a cloudy, foggy day, so I wasn’t really sure how well it was going to do in the total darkness.

A lot of the bike path between campus and my house has no street lamps. It turns out that my lamp, which is a little bluish-white LED, casts just enough light that I can see the edge of the path and the centerline and that’s about it. I have no reference for how fast I’m going beyond my own feelings of exertion. I have no idea what that crash in the undergrowth was–someone’s dog? A bear?

There are bears around here.

Eventually I turned off the bike path and onto the street for about the last three miles to my house. It’s hard to explain if you’re not a biker how weird and scary it feels to be biking down these streets at night, knowing that the blinking red LEDs on the back of my helmet are all that are protecting me from a broken neck. Drivers just don’t understand the power that their cars have, or they over-estimate their reaction speeds or their ability to multi-task. That’s why, despite all the studies of how stupid it is to text or talk on a cell phone and drive at the same time, people still do it. I see it all the time when I run in the morning, people on their cell phones swerving into the bike lane and out of it.

When you’re on foot, running against traffic, it’s easy to feel like you have some measure of control. If someone swerves into your path, you can see them coming. You have the option of throwing yourself into the ditch. When you’re biking, you go with traffic, so they come from behind you. You are also clipped to the bike. Picture this: You are making your way down a hill between street lights and suddenly headlights from behind overwhelm your little light. You think that this could be it, they could be texting and just not see you, despite the blinking red LEDs. You brace. And then they pull past you and the darkness closes in again. You and the bike fly onward, silently, in a little blue patch of light, hurtling toward infinity.

I’m filing this comic under RC935.T4 L86 2011 for
Internal medicine–Specialties of internal medicine–Diseases of the musculoskeletal system–Other diseases of the musculoskeletal system, A-Z–Tendinitis.

em ơi! #350: we must imagine Sisyphus…

As it says, about three and a half weeks ago I developed peroneal tendonitis in my left ankle. This is fun because it is the opposite foot from the one I hurt during my last marathon training cycle. As usual, I am surprised by how stupid my coping skills get without being able to run. This has really been a voyage of discovery vis-à-vis my terrible neurotic dark side. I’d like to claim I’ve learned a lot about myself and will no longer be bothered by the same problems. That might sort of be true…but I have a feeling that I’m not completely over some of these things.

But, my story: I was pretty depressed and feeling bad about how I was going to miss my marathon, and sort of in denial about the whole thing. I’d made a PT appointment but hadn’t gone in yet, and as I was biking down I came up with this script. Drawing this comic was really the first step in feeling better, because it was when I came up with it that I started to be able to laugh at myself again. So long as I do not take my problems too seriously, I think I can overcome anything. (And also I should point out that I overcame quite a bit of writer’s block, or comic artist’s block I guess? in order to post this. And I don’t actually even believe in writer’s block!)

For what it’s worth, the PT was actually very nice and told me about his own running-related injuries.

Learning from experience
The thing is, I should have known this was coming. Last year, when I subluxed my cuboid bone, the PT did a gait analysis and decided that I pronate too much. Everyone pronates a little (it means when you step, your foot rolls to the outside). But I do it a lot, and since I also have stretchy ligaments in my ankles, this puts a lot of pressure on them. If I want to wear the minimalist shoes I’ve been wearing (and I do), I have to do exercises to keep the muscles in my ankles strong. I wasn’t doing those consistently, so I got hurt.

In Baltimore, missing my marathon, a doctor friend gave me a brace to control the lateral movement of my ankle while I strengthen the little muscles in the area. In addition to preventing lateral movement, the brace prevents…well, it makes non-lateral movement difficult as well, I have to take a step with the good leg, then kind of post off the bad one–I’m sure it’s hilarious for all of those watching me. But I can run with a minimum amount of pain.

Yesterday I was hobbling around the track at the SERF and a guy blows past me in the outside lane. Not too surprising, I was running maybe a 10:15 mile (yikes, how the mighty have fallen). Anyway, he was going flat out, wearing Vibram FiveFingers, and he was really over-striding, so that he hit the ground heel-first pretty far in front of his body. I watched him do this pretty consistently for several laps (I had a lot of time to observe), and when I watched him stretch he was rolling out his ankles like they were bothering him. I wondered if I should have stopped and said, “Hey, you need to fix your gait before you wind up like me.” In my mind, one big problem with minimalist shoes is that it can be hard to tell if you’re doing it wrong, and to prove this both Bryan (who runs in VFFs) and I have been through periods of injury all summer (Bryan is sorted out now, thankfully, and I will be soon). Given that I know perhaps more than the average undergrad, and given that I was observant enough to notice all this, should I have said something?

I don’t know. I didn’t. If I see him again, I probably will.

Filing this comic under: RC1220.M35 L86 2011, for Internal medicine — Special situations and conditions — Sports medicine — Medical and physiological aspects of special activities. By activity, A-Z — Marathon running. Good times.

Em oi! #349: This is historically accurate

I’ve spent most of the summer reading about colonialism, specifically the French in Indochina.

I can hear you already saying, “Wow, that’s incredibly…depressing, that’s the word.”

Bryan actually teased me the other day, saying I don’t read anything that’s not about libraries, Buddhism, or colonialism. Which is largely true…and I still find myself wishing they overlapped more–for example, the book I was reading made mention of some colonial libraries founded in Cambodia, but didn’t give much information about them.

Anyway, I came to wonder how the French had actually wound up running Indochina–the book didn’t cover that aspect of stuff, and I slept through the last history class I had in high school. (Does this make me a poor historian? Is it bad I’ve spent my summer writing two historical papers for publication? Hm.) So this is what I came up with. Of course, I eventually looked it up and found that the French won Vietnam and Cambodia in the Sino-French War in 1884-1885. Then they won Laos in the Franco-Siamese War of 1886.

I’m pretty sure I had other stuff to say about this comic, but it has flown my head. I’ve had a busy summer and I’m really pretty tired. I wrote, as I mentioned, the bulk of two papers intended for publication; I rewrote a novella; I took (and aced) two semesters of Thai; I held down two jobs (now three). I ran an average of 47 miles and biked an average of 92 miles per week. And I slept…well, let’s not talk about that. I’ve also done five races–two triathlons (one of which became an Olympic-length duathlon, one of which was a sprint), a 5k (got 2nd in my age group), a 10-miler (got 9th in my age group I think), and a half marathon (came in 46th out of 300-something).

I have been busy, is what I’m trying to say. And now I’m tired.

This comic is filed under HC279 .L86 2011 for Economic history and conditions–By region or country–Europe–France–Colonies, which carries the note, “Includes exploitation and economic conditions.”

Em ơi! #348: Zombie Summer

ROWAN I FINISHED THIS ONE FOR YOU.

I had a lovely lunch with my friend Rowan today, and complained a bit about not having time to finish this comic, which I have been working on since the 5th of July. She was all kinds of sympathetic, and mentioned that she checks the site every Friday religiously. So actually I had another two days to finish it…but when my homework took until 21:00 to complete and it became apparent that no running would be happening tonight, I decided just to scan it and get it over with.

The comic is real though; if Maya didn’t pull so hard on the leash when we walked out the door, we would probably not move forward. I would just fall asleep on my feet in the doorway. Then the cat would get out and Maya would go crazy and something tragic would happen. The end.

Technically speaking, you’re supposed to teach the dog not to pull on the leash. And I do try to discourage it during every other walk we go on during the day (typically two to three of them). But at 6:15, my brain is not available to process that kind of information let alone act on it.

I had a lot to write about, but it has slipped from my mind, probably because it is so hot outside. Oh well. Next time, I’ll do something fun about colonialism, since that is all I read about nowadays. Whee!

This one is getting filed under NC825.M6 L86 2011 for

Drawing. Design. Illustration–Special subjects (Technique, history, and collection)–Other subjects, A-Z–Monsters.

It turns out there is no specific subject heading for zombies under drawing. However film and folklore both have zombie sub-categories. Clearly an oversight.

I should add that this was a trial with pen and ink–the dog seems like an ideal subject since she’s furry, and I thought pen and ink might bring that out…I may need a different type of paper though. And more practice. We’ll see.

Okay, bedtime.

Illuminations: A Picture for Jesse and Keith

My cousin Jesse got married in June to a really great guy named Keith.

I just looked through all of our wedding photos and was unable to find any with both of them in it! So here’s an amusing picture of Jesse alone with a large drink:

And here’s a photo of the two of them from Daniel and Claire’s wedding:

Click any of the photos to embiggen them, by the way.

Last year when Daniel and Clarie got married, I made a very fancy comic for them (this.) I knew I couldn’t let Jesse and Keith get married without doing something equally cool.

BUT there was a problem. I was around for all of Daniel and Claire’s courtship, so I could recount it in comic form. Jesse…was in Evanston, IL doing her doctoral work when she met Keith, and although I met him (through the magic of the internets) fairly early on, I wasn’t privy to the details of their life…and to call up and ask for some details would give the game away. So I had to come up with something else.

What I eventually did was an illumination. Jesse, see, is a medievalist, and Keith is…well, not a medievalist but he likes her. It made sense at the time. Go with it.

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment to post some of the in-progress photos, since this project consumed most of May and June and overall I’m pretty happy with how it came out. I’ll offer a little commentary on how I came up with the design, just in case anyone is curious.

On the left here we have my first sketch of the design. As you can see, I initially wanted to do Jesse’s name in a pseudo-Hebrew font and Keith’s name in a way that reflected his heritage somehow. On the right is a closeup of some early attempts at that. Above his name is the phrase, “A Musical Representation of Staggering is my Amy Winehouse Coverband.” So we can date this to the night we went to the Jonathan Coulton/Paul and Storm show at the Majestic, which I think was late April (around the 24th).

You might also note that this version of the picture had small portraits of both Jesse and Keith in it.

The Initials

On the left, an early sketch of the J and the K initials. The design for the J was fairly easy; Jesse had listed an illuminated Haggadah on the registry (this one, in fact) so I just tried to make the J similar. But what to do about the K?

First I thought, well, Keith is African-American, I could do something using African patterns. But A) what part of Africa? It’s a huge country full of lots of different cultures. B) Anyway, he’s not African, he’s African-American. C) Also, isn’t that kind of weird, like othering or racializing or…I don’t know. Something. I started thinking at this point about traditional African-American art…which is mostly musical. First I thought, “Oh, the blues were invented by Picasso because he couldn’t afford other colors of paint.“* So that should be an easy solution, just make it blue.

All kidding aside, I wasn’t entirely sure how to go from music to visual representation. And the main difference between me and a real artist is that I decided, instead of solving this problem, to change tracks. I made the Ks in the center and right. I put little finials on them in the style of the national wat in Vientiane (Laos) because Keith calls himself a “secular Buddhist” on his Facebook page.

I’m deep.

The first version of the Layout.

On the left: some various small letters. I was trying to learn Caroline or Carolingian Minuscule. Since I’m not a monk, it took a lot of practice. On the right, an early layout for the dog/flowers. Of course, when I put everything together, the layout had to change.

Putting it all together:

This one also shows some experimentation with the swirly orange things and the lettering.**

After I’d settled on a design, all that was left was sketching it, inking and coloring it, and then framing it.

That’s not a terrific photo, but it’s the only one I have. And it did end up blue, but more because of the Scrovegni Cappella by Giotto (in Padua, Italy) that I toured with Jesse in 2002 or 2003.

Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. I hope you found it interesting, at least. Now no one else get married for a couple of months, I need to finish my novel.

* I’m super good at art history. I even own a blue guitar. True story.
** Swirly orange things taken from a Tibetan tapestry I found, I think. Because of the Buddhist thing.

Em oi! #347: The Ride

Last Saturday I biked 33 miles. This was Bryan’s response when I got back home…apparently the combination of (especially sticky) sunscreen, bike chain grease, and road grit picked up by the wind is not a great one.

After I got home I went to my cousin’s bridal shower in Chicago. It was a lot of fun. When I had to come home (I left at about 22:00–oops), my muscles had frozen up from exercise plus sitting around all day, so I had weird leg cramps all the way home. Lacking a heating pad or any sort of ibuprofen, I tried to warm them with my coffee cup. It worked about as well as you might expect.

I don’t know why I made my shirt that color. Not only do I not own anything that color, I actively hate it and would not only never wear such a color but would actively discourage any friends, relatives, and potential future offspring from wearing it. I guess I grabbed the wrong marker.

There’s a special trick to going up and down hills like these–and yes, they really are that steep. Any eleven year old knows the trick: don’t brake on the way down, then pedal furiously as you hit the lowest point of the valley and start climbing the other side again. It has taken me something like two years of biking this course to get to where I can really do that without freaking out. This is possibly because the idea of falling off my bike at speed freaks me out.

File this one under: HE5736 .L86 2011, for:

Transportation and communications — Bicycles — General works.

(Previously: HE5736 .L86 2010a, HE5736 .L86 2010, and GV1048 .L86 2010. I don’t know why I cataloged#312 under GV1048–HE5736 seems like a better category overall.)

Em ơi! #346: There is a good reason

I have had other crazy accidents in front of Bryan, but none come to mind as more mortifying than falling over on the kitchen floor one morning when I was not wearing any trousers. In fact, I had just removed my jeans so I could put on my bike shorts (padded shorts I wear under my trousers for bike commuting comfort), and slipped on the wooden floor, which in my defense was slippery under my socks.

Bryan actually came sprinting out of the bedroom to make sure I was okay. The funny part is, I thought he was still asleep, and was getting dressed in the kitchen so as not to wake him. Also, I didn’t break my toe, I only stubbed it (on the fridge).

This comic is filed under PN1942.L86 2011, for Drama–Special types–Farces. Burlesques. Mimes–General works. Sadly there was no specific category for “slapstick” or “physical comedy.”

Em ơi! #345: Bumper stickers: A brief style guide

So now that I am sure that I have passed all of my classes, I can relax. At least until June 13th, when summer classes start. I have already learned the first seven letters of the Thai alphabet though (and I can pronounce five of them!).

I wanted to write a bit about the experience of running the two 50ks I did (last week and last month) but I find that I don’t have much to say about them that other people haven’t already said. It’s worth noting that terrain makes a big difference, and probably accounts for the one hour difference between my times (the first, a relatively flat 50k was run on roads and I finished in about 4:57:something. The second, an extremely hilly 50k run on trails, I finished in a painful 5:58:something). Another note is that running an ultramarathon alone is a lot less nice than running it with someone else, and I’m quite lucky to have found a couple of very nice women (experienced runners, too) who happened to be going my way at my pace who let me run with them.

Anyway, I should note that this comic is not intended to make fun of people who run races of any length, whether half marathon or Ironman. I personally don’t see the point of putting a sticker on your car that says 13.1, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be proud of your achievement. (I’ve not seen any 50k or 50 mile stickers, or indeed anything for road races longer than a marathon. I have a hunch that is because when you run farther than 26.2 miles, people tend to look at you as though you are crazy–much crazier than they suspect the average marathoner is. I have, indeed, stopped telling people how far my races are for this very reason. People ask, “What are you doing this weekend?” “Oh, I’m running a race.” And I leave it at that.)

I am, however, fairly serious about the idea that people should get their damn abortion bumper stickers off their cars. It’s a complicated issue, and the quality of public debate on it is not improved by the sense that anyone’s position can be reduced to one or two sentences. I should point out that the little figure on this sticker is a straw man (philosophical-speak for purposefully misconstruing your opponent’s position to make yours look reasonable and correct in comparison).

Also, a big congratulations to my brother Daniel, who graduated from his MBA program at the University of Maryland-College Park this past weekend, and to my sister-in-law Claire, who is graduating from her MFA program at Johns Hopkins later this week! I am sad I couldn’t be there in person, so I will send you some large and obnoxious gift later this week in compensation (okay, maybe just something nice).

This comic is filed under NC1400 .L86 2011, for:

Drawing. Design. Illustration–Caricature. Pictorial humor and satire–History–Special regions or countries–America.

If you’re interested in cataloging, the story of how I got this number might interest you.

So it seems there is no particular category in the LCC for bumper stickers, or, indeed, for bumpers. In order to circumvent having to dwell on this all night, I looked up a book about bumper stickers (in this case, Bumper sticker wisdom: America’s pulpit above the tailpipe by Carol W. Gardner). I took the ISBN number from Amazon and stuck it into WorldCat.org to get a list of all the libraries which have the book. One (the south central library system here in WI, actually) had cataloged the book under 827 .G22. Now that is a Dewey number and I use LCC. Luckily, ClassificationWeb, which is the tool I (somewhat legally) use to get my LCC numbers, has a DDC to LCC converter. This number was actually associated with several LCC numbers (827 is the rather broad category “English humor and satire”), so I then selected the most appropriate one. I’m a bit annoyed about “history” sticking in there, but I guess today’s politics is essentially tomorrow’s history, so I’ll let it ride.

Wow, I’m wordy tonight. (651 words, to be precise, at least as of the beginning of this parenthetical notation.) Hopefully I’ll have another (less extensively commented?) comic sometime this week or early next.