So, about a year ago, I did Nanowrimo (aka National Novel Writing Month). I wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure style book, primarily as a means to test out the Storypath system I'd recently built on Writaur.com. Anyhow, I liked what I wrote, and have spent chunks of the last year editing it and finessing it and all that good stuff. Well, it's finally done, and is available for the low low price of $10 at multiple fine internet establishments, namely Createspace and Amazon.

Quest for the Fountain of Life can also be read online for free! This way, people can preview the book first, and hopefully share the link with their friends.

I'm still trying to figure out how to market this thing, so I appreciate any suggestions on that, as well as any feedback on the book itself. Thanks!

So here's something exciting: Forrest's card game (Furoticon) is now live, and I have art in it! Yay! So this means that I now have two instances of illustrative artwork that is published, neither of which I can put on a resume, especially together. One is art in an erotic furry card game, and the other is art in a book titled "Jesus, Priceless Treasure".

In other news, I made a super snazzy dance mix CD. It is strategically designed to be played loudly in your car in order to get your booty a-shakin'. While sitting in a car, but pretending that you are actually in a club with light-up floors and John Travolta. In fact, it will cause you to see all of the other drivers around you as actually being John Travolta. Such are the benefits of such a mix CD. Here are the songs, in order (with my way awesome TI-99/4a Winamp skin), on the mix CD:



I'd love to make extra copies and swap with people if they feel so inclined. I will also accept baked goods in lieu of mix CDs.

So here's a rundown on how I did at the Black Market this past Thursday. I made a bit over $40 total, got rid of some stuff, and now have more stuff then I need. I made a bunch of jewelry in anticipation of people potentially wanting jewelry. However, for what I made, this was the wrong market it seems:



I had high hopes for the dice necklaces. I was selling them for $8 apiece. You can get ones just like it from Thinkgeek.com for $10 apiece plus shipping, or from Etsy.com for $15 plus shipping. Alas, not as many nerdy types there as I could have hoped for, so no go for any of them. I may try sticking the rest on Etsy to get rid of them, or hold onto them for future sales. No one was interested in glow in the dark bracelets either. I wonder where all the kandy raver and cybergoth types have gone, anyhow. I also did "experimental" jewelry involving keypads and beads. They looked rather tacky, so I'm probably gonna disassemble them. It's a shame, I really like the look of computer and keyboard and phone innards, and I feel there's much potential for jewelry use there, but hell if I can figure out anything attractive to make out of them. Oh, and for some bizarre reason no one wanted a bracelet that says "phallus".

I did, however, make lots of money off of the brownies I baked. I also sold all of my remaining Magic card packs. Apparently someone out there loves some Homelands. No takers on the CDs, which was a bit surprising at first. But then I thought about it, and realised that part of the reason I was selling the CDs is that I prefer to just have everything on my computer rather then deal with pesky extraneous disks all over the place. Someday I will own no disks, just a teeny pile of memory sticks and hard drives that will hold everything in the world that is important to me, minus a Drew. And then I will be so infinitely portable, and can carry all of my worldly goods on my ultralight and fly around with geeses.

It's the moment that you all have been waiting for...Salami Day shirts are finally available to the public! There's two designs at the moment (and hopefully two more to come in the near future), available in a select variety of shirt styles and colors. September's just around the corner, so get your Salami Day t-shirt now!

salamiday.spreadshirt.com

So you know what's really stupid? Pine Sol. Have you ever read the back of the bottle? It is not recommended for wood floors. In fact, the things it recommends using the stuff for are tiles and ceramic type surfaces and whatnot. Why mention pine in the name when you can't actually use it on wood? Which, uh, I've been doing up until I read the bottle today. This is because I am super bright. I will just console myself with the thought that it's all just soap in different packaging.

By the way, if you want to waste hours of your life in a most entertaining way, this is the method I currently suggest.

I bought a new domain. Impulse buy, couldn't help it. (http://www.ambulophilia.com, to be precise). I hate how there's no centralized and easy to use means of finding hiking trails out there on the web, one that uses google maps and has all sorts of search options. There's some good resources, but they tend to be more localized and not too searchable (i.e. park websites). Or there's other resources that look like they're superuseful but only have like 3 trails total for the state of VA. Anyhow, I'm just gonna make my own.

I don't think I'd mentioned this here yet, but a few weeks ago I got all excited over a working scanner and scanned a bunch of art, all of this mostly inspired by someone who contacted me regarding acquiring prints for a school library display she was doing on dystopian literature. So I had a few days of hardcore scanning...and rotating and delicately fitting things together, as the scanner is 8.5" x 11". But anyhow, if anyone needs art for their walls, I can hook you up (or rather, you'd hook me up by buying art!):

http://varoper.imagekind.com

I've got some other stuff I need to scan in, but it's all lodged in a ceramics studio at some mall or another.

I've been working on some Salami Day t-shirt ideas, and am remembering the vast bridge of differences between Photoshop and Illustrator. D'oh! Progress is slow but progressing. I'd love to be able to print up a bunch myself (assuring they'd be good quality and a reasonable price), but I think the initial cost is more then I'd be able to handle, and I'm just gonna end up doing cafepress or zazzle or another of such sites (higher price for the final product, but little to no overhead). Maybe once I get an idea of if the random public might be interested in some quality salami-related clothing, I can consider beyond those options.

I made a video to enter into a video contest (the "Avocado Video Bowl") sponsored by Avocados from Mexico. My video stars two of my utensils, Ms. Spoon and Mr. Spatula. They are doing a cooking show about how to make ceviche. Please watch it, it's super cheesy and super exciting!



Five videos get selected for round two, to be in the running for $5000. I'll know if mine makes the cut soon I hope!

Ok, this isn't technically a quiz. It's more like a 'click a box and get a result'. Still, in the interest of working some Illustrator skills, as well as spreading the Adsense love, it done got made. So, here's some holiday entertainment!

This holiday season, you'll be getting...A Furby

Some people are just packrats, and sometimes those well-intentioned people buy gifts, wrap them, and then rediscover them about 6 years later. Just ignore the fact that you never wanted one of these even when they first came out, it's the thought that counts, right?

What bad holiday gift will you get this year? - Created by ptocheia

I've been playing around with stereogram stuff (AKA Magic Eye), because it's super fun. I've kinda figured out how to make them in photoshop, basic ones at least. Can you see anything?

Holy cow, I forgot I made this!

Many moons ago (and by 'moons' I mean 'months') I was really bored, and needed something extra for Drew's birthday. So I made a really bad website and spelled out 'Happy Birthday' on it and emailed the link to him.

I dubbed it the Disco Inferno 4000 Processing Unit, and boy is it tacky!

What I should have done is add bad background music. But if I remember correctly, I ran out of two key ingredients for such things, time and ambition.