So this artist I know posted a thing about feeling inadequate when she browses DeviantArt -- in part because other artists (some of whom are younger than she is) are so awesome (presumably more awesome than she feels she is, otherwise she wouldn't feel bad about it). I responded with some hokey-sounding pretentious (and totally sincere) bullshit that probably makes me seem like the old man that I am.

I almost never truly feel inadequate when it comes to artistic talent! I think it stems from an understanding of personal style: there are definitely people more skilled at certain techniques than I am, but I've never seen anyone who draws (or writes, as is more often the case) quite like I do. So I certainly look forward to improving my own skills, and I'm eager to learn from other people, but I don't compare myself to other people because they're not me. No matter how good those other people are, they'll never be me.

Like I said, hokey-sounding pretentious bullshit -- but I really do never feel inferior when I browse the work of others. On DeviantArt, that's largely because I feel that drawing isn't my artistic strength. That's not to say that I think I'm completely without skill, and I often feel that much more skilled artists are less suited to certain artistic undertakings than I am (I feel like I do a really good job of drawing specific people, even though I don't even draw people with noses and/or ears). But even when it comes to writing, I'm never intimidated or humbled when I read other people's stuff. (more...)

I guess I'd kinda forgotten about Wesoteric, huh? This site's kinda gotten lost in the shuffle with all the Facebook/Twitter/tumblr experiments I've been doing lately, but I'm totally keeping my domain and hope to resume posting here soon. I also need to grab the appropriate plugins to synch all of these things up, but in the meantime feel free to follow me on Twitter at @WesCrayon. Scary-Crayon also has a separate Twitter feed at @ScaaaryCrayon; I'm trying to keep things separate to some extent, or at least to keep my personal stuff off of SC. (more...)

Wow -- it's been ages since I've posted on Wesoteric! I wish I could say that I've been busy moving up in the world and being super rich and successful and famous and all that, but that's not the case: I've just been kinda neglecting my sites.

I have, however, done a bit of traveling since last time! During July I went to California for the San Diego Comic-Con (there's some stuff about that on Scary-Crayon; there'll be even more when I get around to posting it!) and visited my pal Mickey Glitter in the OC afterwards. Among other things, we went to Disneyland and rode the Tower of Terror many times!

And then, last month, I spent a week in Aruba with my dad. It's a really beautiful island -- I would have liked to stay longer! I have plenty of pics from that to post, and even a video of me feeding flamingos (the white balance was off, so I need to find a video editor that will let me correct that). Those will come later, but here are a few pics in the meantime!

Oh, and that thing in the title about me being older? Well, that'd be the case anyway -- passage of time and all that jazz; I'm older now than I was when I started writing this post -- but today's my birthday. Look what I bought to celebrate:

It really does taste like cake (especially the chocolate one).

Gotta run -- hopefully I'll post again soon! Take care, y'all. 🙂

Okay, I bought them yesterday -- since it's after 3AM now -- but still. I don't often buy CDs (it's free to download music, and I don't mean illegally; Amazon's got lots of free tracks and there's Freegal for library members, among the many free songs artists and DJs offer up on their websites), but the library had a $1 per CD or 5/$4 sale going on and, after browsing the selection, I decided I was probably going to get three of them. So why not get two more for just another buck, right?? That's how they get ya.

CDs purchased:

1. Peter Gabriel - Shaking the Tree
2. The Cure - Wish
3. Annie Lennox - Songs of Mass Destruction
4. 10,000 Maniacs - Blind Man's Zoo
5. This Mortal Coil - Blood

I also bought two books: The Haunted and the Haunters, a collection of ghost stories selected by Kathleen Lines, and Spider-Man: Midnight Justice... the latter of which was apparently not enjoyed at all by the author of the linked review. Oh well, it was a quarter and features VENOM. And might make for a fun SC review someday.

And I bought a DVD! Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People. I'd never heard of it before... but holy shit it looks awesome! And it's rocking a 6.4 on IMDb, which surprises the heck out of me for a film like this.

Aaaand that'll do it for this post! Now, because it's totally what I should be doing instead of sleeping, I'm going to head to the basement and photograph action figures. See ya next time. ;p

It's recently occurred to me that, while I often feel like I'm not doing enough writing, I actually do quite a lot of it! I spend a lot of time browsing and posting at length on various forums, and I frequently leave not insubstantial comments on web articles and blog posts that I read... to say nothing of all of the stuff that I throw out on Facebook and the like. Having realized this, I'm going to stop posting to these places so much and instead post what I would have written here and on Scary-Crayon -- which will hopefully let me keep better track of my writing while adding to the content on my own sites.

To that end, I'm going to kick off by reposting some of the stuff I added to a Facebook discussion last week, since I thought it was pretty hilarious. (more...)