My very talented sister (who also has a blog, which I frequent) makes, among other things, figurines and puppets for "dimensional illustrations," which are incredibly intricate and beautiful. (Also she just taught me how to hotlink. I'm gonna have so much fun with this!) A little while ago she gave me her little friend Olaf, who I intended to take on adventures and make my own photo sets of him (which I obviously haven't gotten around to). Needless to say, I love her figurines. I think they're brilliant. So imagine my joy and surprise when I opened the box containing this little guy:
That is, of course, the Miserable Clowne Man from my story of the same name. Anna's made illustrations for me before and they were awesome, but she's never made a puppet for me before. Apparently he's posable, but I think his posture here says it all... she's very good at capturing the essence of my characters, and this little dude is a perfect example. Also, we got a wooden robot to boop him on the nose.
Boop!
Jess and I were also proud of these, which we made for my momma:
Also, I had to write Clarion an IOU. My present to her this year was going to be a series of DVDs made from some of her old video tapes, but I ran into some problems... When Clarion read the letter out loud, Mom said I should put it on my blog, so here it is:
Dear Clarion,
I feel that I should point out first that this is not an excuse. The "I didn't have the time!" that you got last year, that was an excuse. This is not. It is merely an explanation. Your present is not ready, and it's not because I didn't have time or "just forgot" because I didn't forget, and I did have time, and I used much of the time I had. Really, video conversion is pretty easy... you hit a few buttons and wait for signals to be turned into different signals, and a few hours later you do some fiddling around with some supposedly reliable software and you're done.
See, that last part is where I ran into problems. I don't know why anyone would make a piece of software that converts analog video into a digital format that it can't actually read, but somebody apparently did. I also don't know why somebody looked at Windows Movie Maker and said "this program has too much built-in functionality and usefulness. We should take all that out and make it an utterly pointless waste of space for the Windows 7 release."
Okay, so I just went to my dictionary and looked up "excuse" and I guess that yes, this totally is one. So sorry, I lied. But there is a silver lining: you won't have to wait much longer. The time frame for completion has been changed from "eventually" to "very soon, so I can have the last laugh." see, it's personal now. Never has so much software failed so spectacularly in such a short frame of time. And to think that I trusted it! But no, I will not be made a fool of by this fiendish modern technology! I will, in the end, be victorious, and the creation of your DVDs will be the exclamation point at the end of all that has happened! I WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED, YOU HEAR ME?? NEVER!!!!!!
*ahem*
So, uh... Merry Christmas. Your present will be done soon, I promise. With any luck I'll have them to you by the Gogol Bordello concert.
Love,
-Ivan
