Pixel Bot and Dog

I can't help myself.

Your Tragedy

They're coming. Don't get got.

Her Father's Love

Open

This the front of a bar in Hamilton. I took it last summer when I was visiting my brother who was going to Brock at the time. He teaches school in Fort Hope, ON. Fort Hope is 3 hours north of Thunder bay. 3 hours by bush plane.

Gear Car

This is a picture I took last spring at the railway musuem in Revelstoke, B.C.

I did all of the paint and texture parts using paint and glue. All I used a computer for was scanning and some moderate colour adjustment.

Pump Up The Volume

TV never prepared me for this.

I was wrestling with the platesetter at work when my cell phone went off. The caller ID displayed MomandDad so I picked it up hoping I'd get to talk to Dad and everything would become clearer. Dad has a way of putting every little thing in perspective. He does it without trying and without really saying very much. It may just be the sound of his voice.

Well it wasn't my Dad, it was my brother Tim and he didn't calm me down, but he did put every little thing in perspective.

Mom had a heart attack.

I took down some phone numbers and left work early. I phoned my girlfriend Karmen from my car in the parking lot at work. I told her my Mom had had a heart attack and that she wasn't conscious yet. My voice shook a bit, but I didn't cry.

I reminded myself that this was a normal day for the rest of the world and drove home slowly.

I was in bed with my computer trying to find a flight out when my Dad phoned and told me that he had some terrible news. I told him that Tim had already called. He told me that Mom had died. I'm still not sure if I was breathing. I had never heard my Dad's voice shake like that. He told me that her blood pressure had dropped and that she was gone.

Yashica

My very favorite program in the world is Adobe Illustrator. I love it because it is pure math. All of the lines and shapes are vectors and the colours and gradients are also numerically defined.

Anyhoo, I drew this using Illustrator.

FunWithFimo

What the F

Sometimes I miss the eighties. Sometimes I miss thinking that fibreglass, plastic wood and woven nylon could hold the whole world together. Back when space shuttles were still new.

Somewhere there is a photo of me in the eighties, I'm, at once, full of hope and full of terror. Terror that I had to go to school and all the other kids would be smarter and tougher and hope that I would somehow break my leg and have to miss my first three months of school. Just like my friend's brother's friend got to miss a whole term of school because he fell really badly while skiing and broke his leg in a complicated way.

And now that guy gets to work at a garage and he drives a sweet Oldsmobile Cutlass with a T-roof. The one with the fox tail hanging from the rearview mirror and the biggish tires on the back. Why can't I fix cars now, I'm sure I can figure it out. Why the hell do I have to go to GRADE ONE. I wore a nervous smile, a pair of dark blue jeans and a canvas Big Bird knapsack. (The one my aunt sent me in July and my Mom wouldn't let me use until September.)

I'm sure my mother had given me a cute haircut the night before. Sat me on a telephone book on a chair in the kitchen, in the middle of the kitchen so she could have room to work. Golden blond hair all over the linoleum floor and a big mustachiod smile from Dad when he got home from work. Me, not so sure I wanted my Dad to think I looked "cute", it might blow my chances at a ski vacation and an early career fixing cars for money.

Well I went, and I fought, and I cried and one day I threw up before my first day of high school. Unsure of how I would cover my ubiquitous boners with my new shirt which my mother insisted on making me tuck in. Found out that a strategically placed mixture of textbooks and binders could keep any shameful penis activity at bay, or at least hidden while raging. First kiss, joint, beer, acid trips, smoking and a bit of driving and a bit of screwing and I was set loose on the world.

What the F