HAZWOPER, Day 4

I honestly thought that I wouldn't have time to do any more doodling today.

For good or ill, I did.In case it's not clear, the bald guy with the smoke coming out of his ears in the immediate right center is me, realizing that I am going to have to sit through 10 hours of what I've just sat through 30 hours of...

And I should add that I had enough time to begin another sheet; it wasn't worth the keeping. I hope you've enjoyed these silly diversions. I have a lurking dread that I've betrayed parts of my subconscious that probably should have stayed hidden below layers and layers of civility. But what's drawn is drawn...

HAZWOPER, Day 3

OK, so I have to introduce this one.

Last night I showed the drawing from the preceding post, the product of the second day of weapons-grade boredom, to my kids (who liked it - it's nice to have an appreciative public). My son was VERY enthused, but for today he wanted a commission; "Can you do one with a kraken?" he asked.

So when I got to class today I started this and somehow got sidetracked onto this whole "WW2" thing, so eventually I ended up with a kraken, but with a Nazi kraken.Tomorrow we're doing some sort of hands-on PE and taking the test, so I suspect this is the final gift to you from the nice people at the Federal agencies. Hope you've liked them.

HAZWOPER Day 2

Can you tell that today was more tedious that yesterday?And there's yet another full day tomorrow. We'll see what comes of that.

Plus ça change,

I doodled this little thing in a spectacularly tedious class on "leadership ethics" during Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC) at Ft. Sherman, Panama sometime in December, 1986...and this one yesterday - what, 26 years later? - in the first day of my 40hr HAZWOPER class in Hillsboro, Oregon, 2012Sometimes not only does the damn plus c'est la même chose leopard not change his spots but the damn spots don't change, either.

Hmmm. Well, not entirely.

I do note that while as a broth of a lad of twenty-nine I appear to have been obsessed with women and have spent most of my time doodling about them twenty-something years later the places my head goes when it's desperately looking for a way out of the room are somewhat less venereal and more...interesting. Although I still do seem to like to draw women.

I find it interesting that the one repeated image - although not from the PLDC doodle I posted above, is the mermaid riding the torpedo. Here she is, from "Raiders of the Lost Parts"......and here she is on the wall of what is now Missy's bedroom (she got up on the old drywall as we were demoing the old backhall closet room, and you can read aaaaall about it here although she seems somewhat Asian in this one).For some reason she seems to be an image I enjoy drawing.

There are truly some strange things that get lodged in the human cerebrum.

But I suspect that there are more doodles to come. I have three more days of this HAZWOPER stuff this week. Eeegah.

Funny Papers 2: It Came From South Florida

This little comic adventure stemmed from the week back in 1986 I was detailed to provide medical support for an ARNG infantry brigade from Florida. For some reason they deployed to Panama for their Annual Training and requested - and got - a GAMA Goat ambulance, driver and medic (which was me) from the 2nd Battalion (ABN)(LT) 187th Infantry, my then-unit of assignment.They were an interesting crew - lots of Cuban-Americans - and provided a certain amount of amusement but also a hell of a lot of irritation. Their officers were...shambolic, to put it kindly. They had very little in the way of military skills - I think that their weekend drills were a sort of Cuban-American social club. And they were in terrible physical shape and the Panamanian jungle just flat wore them out.I actually started this in the field, and included a full page (Page 6) detailing a long and pointless bit of foolery that, on reflection, adds nothing to the story and is omitted here. The second and third pages were an extended and juvenile bitch about how fucked up the Guards were, which I now regret (having been in the Guard myself now and seen the other side of the hill) and have also used my aeditorial powers to delete.



The one thing I should mention is that at the end of page 3 I draw a little scene wherein we had something like a stray round go overhead (the 105s were firing on the nearby FA impact area). The Guard had a bit of a panic, assuming they were taking friendly fire. It turned out to be one of the base-ejecting illumination round canisters (that hold the flare inside the shell). We lost a lot of sleep over that, though, and that's where you come in on Page 4.I think the story largely stands on its own but I should perhaps add some notes to explain some otherwise in-joke images.Notes: (The page numbers are from the original pagination - look in the lower right corner; pages 2, 3, and 6 are omitted)



Page 1, top: The teeny little picture right below the caption is supposed to be the Panamanian DMV - "D.N.T.T.", a notorious hive of scum and villainy (and bribery) where you got your Panamanian tags and licenses. I had a motorcycle, which the "inspectors" seemed to find all sorts of wrong and fine-able with until I slipped them all a sawbuck after which they were my best pals and passed me out most quick smart.



Page 2, bottom: My medical platoon sergeant was a "fixer" of the Bilko breed and had managed to scrounge a M151 quarter-ton jeep which was supposed to have been turned in as excess when the battalion converted from the 3/5th Infantry (straight-leg) to the airborne/light MTO&E. It was strictly off-the-books and for his own driving pleasure. Well, the Florida Guard borrowed it on a hand-receipt and wrecked the fuck out of it. I have no idea how. I really did roll up to our Motor Pool and find it sitting sadly, looking just like that, right outside the main gate. I heard later that my platoon daddy actually cried when he saw it. He really did love that quarter-ton.Page 5, top: The Guard chain never bothered to give me their challenge/password - probably assuming that as a "notional" part of the exercise I didn't need it - but never told their gate guards to let me pass without challenge, either. We spent some fun playing word games at their trains gate while someone went up to the the TOC and then the battle captain waddled down and sprung me. Good times.



Page 7, middle: Our mortar platoon was live-firing on Empire Range during the Guard field problem, and they really did shoot out of the impact area and blew some nice holes in K-15 road, which was the main road through that section of the range. I found the shell holes, so I got to be the one to inform the mortar platoon leader, who wasn't half as amused by it as I was.



Page 7, bottom: I really did have a guardsman that practically assaulted me trying to climb into the ambulance to be evacuated for being a heat casualty. Liveliest case of heat exhaustion I've ever seen. And the other guy wouldn't say what his problem was (I couldn't find anything, either, which didn't help) other than he was "woozy". I think he was woozy at the idea of trying the fire-and-movement course with his buddies shooting around him, since their idea of fire discipline would have made a pack of savage Shiite militiamen on the roof of the Ramadi Holiday Inn gulp with disbelief.



Last page, center: I really need to write a post about the old M792 ambulance. It really was a horrible idea of a truck, but it was unique and a bit of Army history. Maybe in a bit. Maybe as a cartoon.



But GAMA Goats or no, that's the tale of what happened in Panama in December, 1986. Hope you enjoyed it.

Sympathy for the Devil

Speaking of comics and cartoons...If you have a moment you might look in on "Luci's Letdown", a webcomic that provides a slightly different take on the antihero of Milton's "Paradise Lost": Early days yet, but as a quondam cartoonist, I like what I see. Kick down some cash and give the Devil her due, eh?

Funny Papers

When I was just a lad I loved to draw.My early cartoons featured dinosaurs, rocket ships, and lots and lots of soldiers. They were of value only to my parents, who probably still have them around somewhere.

As I grew older I kept drawing, my skills got a little better, and the dinos and rockets disappeared. The soldiers, however, remained until I eventually grew old enough to become one myself.As a soldier, one thing I found is that when not actually soldiering one ended up with a lot of spare time.

This could be filled with partying and drinking, and while I enjoyed the partying and drinking I found I wasn't very good at them.

But drawing?

Drawing I could do.

(If this one seems out of place with the others, I did this as part of a series for my then-girlfriend involving famous ancestors of hers, usually in some sort of compromising position - there was one of her "ancestor" in Lexington, 1776, with Paul Revere pawing her bare breasts and leering "Now, let's see...were these two if by land or two if by sea?" with the redcoats leaning over the Dutch door. This was her descendent as Star Wars Princess. Laugh if you will, but she enjoyed them, and laughter is as potent an aphrodisiac as poetry or jewelry. Fuck Kay - many a kiss begins with a chuckle. Anyway, that's why this one's here...)

Posted to Panama back in the final days of the expiring Canal Zone era I had even more time to draw, and I did.

For a while I even put out my own little paper, a compendium of vanity and nothingness I called "Evac Section Newsletter". For years I thought I had lost all trace of this stuff until whilst pawing through my military paperwork folder I came across a file that had a bunch of these old drawings in it.

I don't pretend that these odd little comics have any more value than the old dinosaurs and rocket ships. But they do, to my biased eye, have a certain charm, they were a part of me back in the day, and the youngster I was then is still part of me today.

If nothing else they are an artifact of a time, and a place, that has vanished like the Etruscans; the American occupation of the Panama Canal Zone, circa 1986.So I will post up one or two of these things every so often, as much to amuse myself as anyone else. I hope you enjoy them, but if not, just remember that there's all SORTS of worse stuff published every day. Just check the magazine rack the next time you check out at the supermarket. Trust me. And just think; these may well turn out to be the Pompeii-wall-paintings of Panama in the Eighties, as well as a momento mori to the wide boy I was in the flower of my manhood.Ah, but I was a roaring cartoonist of a fella then, a regular broth of a boy! Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait,dammit!

Walt's Nightmare

My understanding is that Walt Disney was one of these people with an obsessive need for propriety.

Couple that with his corporation's voracious pursuit of profit and you have a series of virginal "princesses" smiling blandly from storybooks, lunchboxes, plastic sandals, and every other freaking thing a little girl might want to acquire. Being the daddy of one of these little girls, I'm very familiar with the Disney Princesses.

But not quite like this;Nice...a little series of Mucha-style DPs as the Seven Deadly Sins over at "Wildammo".

Here's my favorite; Princess Jasmine does "Wrath":Um. Wow.

Somehow I don't think that's going to make the side of the lunchbox.

While we're on the subject of Dincesses, here's a couple more I liked; "Hipster Princesses", courtesy of "Geek With Curves". Meet Hipster Belle:Hipster Mulan:and my fave, Hipster Snow White:That humming you hear is Walt. Got him spinning nicely, haven't we?

No more bloggage - it's late, and I have a busy day tomorrow. C'ya then.

Unsplit Ends

Took Little Miss out to dim sum this morning and then to her first real movie in a theatre.

Dim sum was good, as always; Wong's King doesn't disappoint.

But the pleasant surprise was that the movie didn't either.

I don't have much left in the way of expectations from the Disney factory. Outside of the Pixar shop, most of the horses trotted out of the Disney stable lately seem to have been the broken-down get of the old sire Walt. Given that the man has been dead for decades, it's not surprising that his progeny are starting to get more than a little, well, sickly looking. So I expected something that would be barely tolerable for a four-and-a-half-year-old.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

The story was nothing surprising - you can't exactly break the mold with fairy tales, right? And the "spunky princess" and the "rogue with a heart of gold" are chestnuts off many a tree other than the one in the Disney backlot.But the animation was lovely; bright and cheery in the Disney style but still rich with detail. The main characters, stock company troupers that they were, were rendered with loving care, well-written, and nicely voiced. The supporting "actors" stole the show (as they often do) in the form of the stalwart guard-horse and Rapunzel's little tough-guy chameleon pal.

Even the Bad Guy, who in this case was a Bad Gal, was rendered with care and attention; she was a villainess, yes, but one with flair and relish, a very diva of demonesses.So all together it made a really delightful hour-and-a-half for a dad and daughter to spend as part of a midday Saturday.

I think what made all the difference in "Tangled" was the sense I got of a genuine love of its creators for the two cartoon leads and the world they inhabited. I've sat through some of the worst of the Disney dreck - a father sacrifices for his progeny, sigh... - but much of the recent stuff the outfit produced since losing the Great Helmsman in the middle Sixties wasn't just bad, it was really soulless. By-the-numbers commercial crap with the heart of an adding machine and the soul of a cash register. The people making it hadn't just forgotten how to make a good movie; they'd forgotten how to make any sort of art at all.To make something of worth, you have to care. Your caring might come from love, or hate, revenge, anger, or desire. But if you don't care about your creation it will show, and it did.

The people who made Disney's latest picture may have had one eye on the bottom line; commercial art has to pay for itself, after all. But the other eye was on the characters they brought to life on the screen, and that eye was full of love.

Funny Papers

Whilst searching for illustrations for the post I did on Kid Vid one part of the work I enjoyed was browsing the great stuff that gets posted on "Deviantart".

Some of it was so good I wanted to share it with whoever it is that wanders in this place nowadays. So.

Remember my guy Zuko from "Avatar"? Well, here he is, "off-camera" cracking up his Uncle Iroh.

And no, Zuko, you really weren't born to do comedy.Johane Matte - who draws under the nom-du-deviance "rufftoon", has done all kinds of terrific stuff with the Avatar gang, including this one, which channels the truly gifted Bill Watterson;And just one more - this one managed to hit both the Avatar gang's story - in "Sozin's Comet - The Old Masters" Aang and Zuko DO go looking for the secrets of firebending - as well as King Louie from "The Jungle Book". Now THAT's fucking brilliant:I loved this Adam Hughes take on Jedi Master Yoda twitching through his libidinous fantasies of nubile Jedi; it's a perfect spit-take on the 12-year-old fanboy sexuality of the Star Wars universe.I wonder - how dirty is it possible to get when you're a 600-year-old dirty old man?

There is no reason for this. It's just a beautiful image from Alexandra Douglass, and I liked the cascade of blood-red leaves blowing across the white painting.A random nightmare, courtesy of Chris Sanders:This wonderful artwork by Arthur Parreira, titled "Samurai Wars" done in the style of 木版画 (moku hanga), Japanese woodblock print, even includes the dialogue from the duel scene in the film in kanji.Utterly fucking brill and just another example of the best work from the Lucas canon now coming from people other than the creator himself.

As is this, from the SW parody series "Tag and Bink", by Kevin Rubio, Lucas Marangon, and Dan Jackson.Because surely not all the kids the Jedi scavenged from around the galaxy turned out to be Jedi Masters, right?

No deep thoughts. Just pretty pictures on a rainy night. I have to be up early and you should probably be in bed too. So, g'night.