Figurines

All the figurines I painted for my brother.

Sorry, I'm not very profound today, but I've been working on the material for this post for a LONG time. After I painted some little figurines for a friend (pictured here) then my brother asked if I would paint some little metal figurines he had cast as a scout (I think). They weren't the best quality but I figured why not. I have to admit I think the paint really did help too.

The "bad" guys.

The best of the figurines. It helped that the castings were a lot more detailed.

The Kitten's Crew

In a blog post a few years ago I mentioned how lies can be true. In other words, fiction is surprisingly accurate. A few months ago my friends and I decided to write a story where all of us and our larger group of friends were animals doing something together. We ended up writing it and here is a single scene from it. As I was typing it up so everyone could enjoy it I was struck by how extremely accurate it is. I think we somehow captured the essence of each other. The whole thing is chuckyjam full of inside jokes, ridiculousness and geology references, which is why I didn't post the whole thing. For reference my name is Phalanx, (which is a finger or toe bone) and I'm a chipmunk. My friend (Perlite) did the drawings.


Back at the vines, a debacle was ensuing. Arkose was tugging on Eclogite’s tail while he was tenaciously clinging to the vines with his little claws.
Garnet and Perlite followed Flurry to the scene.
Perlite, not seeing anything amiss said, “Hey guys.”
“Uh …” said Garnet.
“Figures,” said Flurry, just as Eclogite released the vines and slashed Arkose across the nose.
“Ow!” she exclaimed.
Flurry flicked her tail. “Eclogite, are you joining us for our fabulous fun?”
Eclogite rolled his eyes, and sighed. “Fine.”
Just then, Epidote arrived with Phalanx riding on his carapace. Phalanx thanked Epidote for the ride. He chortled and said “No problem!”
The kitten’s crew raced up the mountainside, leaving Epidote in the dust. As they scrambled along, a loud squawking sounded from above.
“Wolf-pack mentality is a very interesting psycho-social phenomena,” said the magpie, I O.
Before anyone could respond, he flew off. The crew shrugged as one and continued their journey.
“Halt!” Arkose exclaimed, her feet spread wide. “I can sense--” At that moment, the earth shook beneath them, causing them all to stumble to the ground, except Flurry, who floundered.
“What was that?” asked Phalanx.
“That was a volcanic tremor, ding dong,” said an exasperated Eclogite.
“Do you think we should turn around?” asked a concerned Perlite.
“We’re probably okay,” Epidote said, out of breath after hurrying to catch up with them. “Don’t you remember when Rapikivi told us about his hike up here? There were lots of tremors and he was okay.”
“I feel like we’re fine to forge ahead, then,” Flurry said.
“All right--let’s go then!” Garnet shouted and slithered onwards and upwards.
As the crew trudged along they outpaced Epidote the turtle once more.
“Hey, maybe we should wait for Epidote,” suggested Perlite.
Everyone agreed, though some were more reluctant than others. Just as Epidote arrived Arkose said, “finally, we can--”
“Look! Spunks and Porph are here!” shouted Perlite, before dashing off to say hello.
Eclogite rolled his eyes and began stretching, arching his back in disapproval.
“Hey, gneiss to see you all!” Porph said as they all exchanged greetings, “What brings you to the slopes of Ember Hot Cone?”
“We’re going to see Rapikivi at the top of the volcano,” Garnet joyously said.
“Do you want to come with us?” Perlite asked.
“Well,” Porph said, looking over his shoulder, “Spunks is chasing down that butterfly. We’ll meet you up there.”
“Good,” Eclogite said, “the less the merrier.”
Once again the kitten’s crew started up the mountain.
Flurry froze. “Friends! Where’s Phalanx?”
Arkose chirped and ran around searching for her friend while Eclogite ignored them all and continued up the mountain.
The other’s joined Arkose in the search for the little chipmunk. Finally, Flurry’s fantastic nose led her to a rib cage, where Phalanx stood amongst the bones looking upwards in awe.
“Really Phalanx? You’re looking at bones?” Arkose said.
“What?” Phalanx said coming out of her daze. “Wait! These are awesome. Epidote needs to see this,” she said as she scurried across vertebrae and around ribs.
Perlite scrambled up a rib, “I can see him coming from here.”
Annoyed at how long this would take, Arkose decided to leave. With a twitch of her nose, she ran off to join Eclogite. “Wait for me!” she shouted, “Eclogite!”
Without a backward glance, he trotted faster.
“Wait, is that the skeleton of a hodag?” Epidote asked.
“No,” exclaimed Phalanx, “it’s a wyvern, silly turtle.”
“Friends, perhaps we should flutter away and catch up with Eclogite and Arkose,” Flurry said.
“Agreed,” Garnet said.

Inadequacy: Rooted in Relative Comparisons

When I took a semester class on ASL I was surprised at how there didn't seem to be a word for big or little that was used by itself. Instead you make the sign for the opposite of what you want to say and say no, not that, and then make the gesture for the other. Basically it is all about the comparison.

Lately I've been thinking about how inadequacies often stem from comparisons. I never thought of myself as good with computers in my family of computer-nerd brothers, and growing up I thought I was terrible with kids because my sister was such a natural with them. I've learned that I'm fairly adept with computers... and I'm pretty good with kids. But with the comparisons around me I had a false idea of normal. It is ironic that inadequacies are based on comparisons, because the comparisons are all so relative.

Perhaps what is most frustrating about all this is that it is really hard to realize that you are making this comparison within a skewed group until you have been removed from the group. When this group happens to be your family this doesn't happen for a while, long enough for your skewed view of yourself to take firm root....

Beautiful; A Compliment

I apologize if I've written about his already, but I couldn't find that I had so here it is.... perhaps again.

I find the term "beautiful" extremely confusing. I feel like it involves a rather significant double standard. A visibly appealing sunset, flower arrangement, or woman are called beautiful simply because of their aesthetic value. Then in the next moment beauty is used as a term for internal? inherent? value disregarding or even in spite of visual appeal.

So basically beauty is a good thing but it might mean super shallow or the complete opposite.

And I'm not exempt. I do this all the time. Usually I use the term beautiful to comment on something aesthetically pleasing and then I find the term "beautiful" popping to mind when confronted with an old, haggard but genuinely good person. So basically, I blame English for being vague... 

The firehydrant picture is the picture my friend sent me for my birthday, and for lack of a better term I called it a beautiful picture... I'm not even sure which definition.... but I might be biased.

Natural Reset

I was talking to my Dad about this and really it was his idea but I thought it was interesting so I thought I'd write about it.
The idea is that throughout history you can track wars and revolutions and often these seem to come when the society has gotten so one sided (one group is just too powerful) that either a revolution destroys the government or another country comes in and wipes them out. Basically the war/revolution resets the government or society or both. The French revolution is probably the most common example of this.
Nature seems like it does kind of the same thing to some extent and in some environments. For instance pine trees grow up into a huge forest and block other things from growing but after a while the pines get old or sick and a beetle or a fire take out the whole forest leaving it open for other species to grow and take their place. And then in geology the whole rock cycle is about changing one type of rock into a different kind. Resetting its nature if you will.
Thinking about all these big, general reset buttons made me wonder about whether this could be related on a small scale, like personally in my life. From a religious point of view the natural reset button in all our lives is repentance with help from the grace of God. However, in my big examples I talked about wars, and fires, which aren't the most comfortable things... rather devastating actually, and repentance doesn't have to be that drastic. I try to repent often but it isn't a process that completely destroys my life, but I suppose my life isn't that out of balance either so perhaps that's why.

Consistency

​I have talked about boring things in the past and how you just have to adapt to them. Today I was thinking about how some tasks that are repetitive can be really enjoyable but often times are just indifferent. For instance, eating has to be done all the time and most of the time it is just something that needs to be done but other times it is really enjoyable. But either way you have to do it.
I feel like religious things, (going to church, praying, and reading scriptures) is especially like this. Many times when I participate in these activities I feel like I don't feel particularly edified. But then occasionally it's really really good. And other times it's somewhere in between. But if I never did it then I would never get those moments of enjoyment and/or edification which are so thoroughly helpful and satisfying. So even though I don't love eating every single time I do it anyway, because in the accumulation of doing it over and over again, it is worth it.