June 2009

I didn't know if I was going to write about this, but over the last few days it has been progressively weighing harder and harder on my mind. There's been an onslaught of celebrity deaths over the last month or so, and usually even in the best of times this kind of thing serves to remind me of my own mortality. But Michael Jackson. There's a part of my brain that doesn't even believe it's possible.

I was never a huge fan, but I've liked his music since I was a little one. And I liked him as a person, and I think he deserved better than how he wound up. He seemed like a sweet guy--very troubled in a wide variety of ways, but a sweet guy. I wish I could have met him or seen him in concert or something before he died, or even just sent him a nice letter to tell him he's not the only oddball in the world, that I think he's a good person. Would it have made a difference? Probably not. But maybe it would have, in some small way. I agonize about this kind of thing, I'm sorry.

Actually, when I initially heard that he was going to the hospital, I sincerely believed he had been revived and would be fine. And that I would have the opportunity to send him a pleasant little card. That would probably have made me feel better than it would have made him feel, but I don't know. I really don't like that this amazingly skilled performer who's spent twenty years being a media punching bag died before he could have any public redemption. In death I guess he finally has it--it took him being gone forever for people to realize they loved him after all. That may be the saddest thing.

And I don't think he actually molested any kids, for the record.

A lot of people have ridiculed the sort of international grief that's sprung up in light of his death, but I think today's Achewood nails it. Chris Onstad really captured most of my feelings about the whole thing in that strip and in this little article, written in-character as Ray Smuckles:

What I think a lotta folks are feelin' now is a regret. Not regret that a man died; no. They regret that for almost three decades they been mockin' this guy.

And, in a nice counterbalance to the tragedy, here's a nice little humanizing anecdote about the King of Pop from someone who worked at a laserdisc store where he used to shop.

As you may or may not be aware, I have my dog, Sadie, enrolled in obedience class at our local humane society. In fact, she is enrolled in two classes--basic obedience and Canine Good Citizen certification. The trainer, Aimee, suggested I sign up for the second one overlapping, partly because Sadie is a good dog who catches on pretty quick, and partly because she had a CGC class that would fit my schedule and needed one more student to go forward. So here we are.

Sadie's doing well in class--this stuff is really starting to click with her, but more importantly, it's starting to become habitual for me, too. The purpose of training classes isn't really to train your dog. It's to teach you how to train your dog. It presents you with opportunities to reinforce your dog in novel situations that may be hard to replicate on your own, but really, the main idea is to get you, the dog owner, to treat your dog a certain way and consequently produce the behaviors you want and extinguish the ones you don't.

The thing that really delights me about these classes is how much I've noticed Aimee conditioning us, the dog owners. I hear the words "what does leash pressure tell the dog" and I immediately bark out "adjust" without thinking. And then she says "that's right" and I feel smart even though I'm well aware that this response was conditioned into me using the same techniques she's taught us to use on the dogs. We don't get cookies or wear special collars, but it's essentially the same thing.

I catch myself wanting to use these techniques on people, too. If there's anything this class has taught me, it's to constantly think about what behavior I'm reinforcing in other people and animals. The principles are the same regardless of what species you're working with, after all.

So I noticed this very interesting little warm-up exercise in comic creation, and I decided to give it a shot. Essentially, the idea is to use a brush or brushpen to make some squiggly shapes and smudges, and then to create a story out of those shapes.

I wound up using one of my old, dying brushpens for the exercise.

Here is the intermediate sketch, with the scribbles in ink and the details sort of penciled in. This actually initially started out as something about a cyclops but I really liked the second panel as being a falcon. And this turned out to be funnier.

Here's the final result:

For me, this all took around forty-five minutes.

This was a lot of fun. You should all try it.