SKAAAATCH DUMP

Dear Blogger, this morning I killed two flies that were doin it.

Zombie Girl Fink

I'm going to make a practice of posting all my sketches (for better or worse) every once in a while. The full dump (lol) will be on pinterest, but I'll announce them all here for those who don't have a pinterest account or just don't want to follow me (but why though?).

Fair warning I do want to include everything I've sketched as a kind of honesty/growth/progress thing, so there will be Bad Art and NSFW on there. Check there if you want to see progress pieces.

Sketch Dump

I'm also posting my Pinterest profile. That will have a collection of all finished work and also a ton of boards with references and inspirations if you'd like to check those out.

I'd like to make an enamel pin out of this guy, but I need a bit more
 money before I start with that

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Dear Blogger, last night I dreamed that I was straight up slaying some monsters with my BBs gun. 

These last few days have gotten me thinking about how selfish I am. Last night I watched the Ricky Gervais vehicle Ghost Town (I don't know what "vehicle" means in movie speak, but I have a blog now so I get to call movies vehicles). It was your pretty standard women love being stalked rom-com. But it did have this incredible ground-breaking premise that grumpy old Ricky Gervais died for a few minutes and then could see dead people. Oh gosh then he learns how to be a good person by helping them and the dead people go to heaven! yay! Then he stalks a lady but, you know, romantically.

It did have this part where Ricky Gervais and chief dead guy Greg Kinnear talked about whether people could really change and it got me all introspective. Rat has been out of town for the past few days, rattin around in the dirt for her job, and instead of working my butt off I've just kind of been lazing around and playing video games. To be fair I did get a fair amount of work done. I finished my first print:

my first print!

And I did a fair amount of work learning how to print and price the damn thing. But I really didn't do very much work. I mostly just played video games and hung around. The first two weeks of me leaving my job I busted my ass, even this last weekend I put in two 12 hour days, but these last few days I really just treated like a vacation. And it's not. Rat is giving up so much of her life so that I can do this, the least I can do is really work hard. Also I don't pet my dog enough, which is pretty selfish as well (seriously, he's pretty lazy and doesn't seek a lot of attention but sometimes I do think that I just treat him like a stuffed animal--that I only give him attention when I want doggy time).

It's weird thinking about how leaving my job has changed me, and whether those changes are permanent or just some kind of freak-out about dropping everything. I was at that job for so long, and depressed and miserable for so long, that I fell into a lot of bad habits. And I'm starting to realize that these habits weren't just things I did, but ways that I thought. One of the big ones I think has been this idea that I deserve me-time. Every day when I came home from work and started drinking and playing video games it was all premised on the fact that I was so miserable from work that I needed to decompress. I think I let myself fall back into that thinking this week, this idea that I worked so hard the past few weeks, and especially the weekend, that I deserved a couple of days to just do whatever. But I'm not at work anymore, I'm not depressed or miserable anymore, and I don't need "me-time." Everything about this project, and all the sacrifices that Rat has made, has been about making my entire life me-time. "Me-time" isn't me-time anymore, it's just laziness (and scare quotes).

God, Ozzy just left this grossest most lingering fart next to me. Seriously he left the room like a minute ago, and it just started stinking up the place.

Anyway, it's weird thinking about change (maybe Ricky Gervais can make a run-of-the-mill movie about that!). I think we both expected that I would just change automatically once I quit this job, and while I have in a bunch of ways, I have to confront the ways that I haven't and be honest with myself (and my adoring audience).

Also I backslid a bit on the drinking. Nothing nearly like the Tuesday fiasco, 2-3 drinks two of the nights and then a bit more when a friend came over, but definitely stupid in light of the fact that we aren't buying any more booze for pretty much ever so I need to save what we have left.

This post has a lot of hyphens in it, but less parentheticals so... progeress?

Bad Dog; Betrayal at Puppy Ridge

Dear Blogger, last night I dreamed that shit person wanted my Rat...sexually.

I deserve a day off, just one. Having finally quit my job I deserve to just have a good day. No chores, no work, just sit back with a couple of drinks and a bowl and play video games all day. The shitdog disagreed.

After the Rat slow cooked the pork butt she woke up at the asscrack of dawn to pull all of the meat off of the bone before she went to work. She left the pork bone in a bowl on top of the kitchen counter. I went to work, put in my notice, and came back (the dog goes to daycare so there was no danger in leaving the bone out). I felt more free than I had in years. The idea that I would never have to go back there ever again (They were already in a hiring round so they wanted to waive my last two weeks so they could immediately hire a replacement, the money would have been nice, but meh) just made me euphoric. I came home and had a little party day. Just got a buzz on, played Black Ops 3, cooked up some delicious stir fry (cook with Sriracha, just do it), and didn't do any dishes. At 3 o'clock in the morning I woke up to a loud crash. Shitdog had went for the bone. Not a big deal in itself but he KNOCKED OVER MY HONEY.

Living frugally means I don't get to buy sodas, beers, or La Croixs. I've had to adjust to drinking tea, which I never really liked. I remedy this by putting a big dollop of honey in there and stirring it just enough so that it melts but still kind of hangs around the bottom of the mug in this delicious sweet hot honey water sub-layer. Living frugally, however, also means you can't buy honey. Honey is very expensive. My mom had just given me a big jar of locally produced granulated honey and it made such the most perfect addition to my tea that I genuinely look forward to a cup of hot tea. The price being what it is though once the honey's gone it's gone.

Because it's locally produced, however, it comes not in the plastic bear squeeze bottle, but a glass mason jar.

SHITDOG

There was so much honey left. So thick and perfect and just slightly bitter. Every time you took a spoonful the honey would drain out of the granules to fill the depression like syrup in an icee, leaving this little honey crystal crater with a lake of honey in it.

I spent a good half hour scrubbing honey off the floor and then scrounging the floor for glass shards. Despite how well behaved he was after his yelling at I knew that he would be back to lick the floor for any remnants of pig grease and the last thing we needed was for him to hurt himself swallowing glass shards.

That dog Judased me on my first day as a free man.

Quitting was much more amicable than I thought it would be. I was so afraid to disappoint all these people I worked with and respected I didn't think about the fact that they are my friends and that, after I had busted my ass for the past five years, they respected me too and wanted me to be happy. Even though I had left everyone in a small bind by dropping everything so quickly they just wanted me to be in a good place.

The shit person in question re: my dream is a prosecutor that worked on my last trial. Just an absolute liar. Malicious and vile in a way that only TV villains are. He was a big part of a reason I quit, not only did he break every rule in getting an innocent man convicted, but he was praised for it. I kid you not he fake cried during his closing argument and the stupid jury ate it up. It made the news. "Prosecutor chokes up in emotional trial."

Anyway here's the photo shitdog's headshot came from. I figured it was worth posting whole.

already in stripes

Tomorrow I Quit

fun doggy nonsense

The whole point of this last week was to decide if I was going to leave my job for good. I knew 20 minutes after my client died (I did that weird thing in movies where you just completely ignore it, and then break down a bit later, corny but true) that I was going to quit but my boss was right to give me a week to think about it. If nothing else now I know that I'm quitting because it's a good idea, and not just because I had a shit day.

Also now me and the Rat know that we can live poor (she has requested not to be called SO and since she's the only one that reads this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). Actually not only did we come in under our set budget but it's been a lot more enjoyable than imagined: the food tastes better, eating real food makes me feel better (my hemorrhoids cleared up completely the day after I decided to quit, and they were public defender BAD), and we have been having a lot of fun cooking together. 

Yesterday was a real "slow living" day. I hate "slow living," but nonetheless it was one, and we liked it. We woke up early, went grocery shopping, Rat bought 9 lbs of pork butt and put it in the slow cooker, I made Chinese pancakes and then scones from scratch, and we tested and mixed my most recent batch of corn whiskey. It took all day and it was the most relaxing and fun day we've had all year. 

whiskey cuts waiting to be mixed.

After all that we settled down to some delicious fried rice and watched the Invitation (really cool and unique thriller/horror which is also directed by a woman) and the remake of Amityville Horror. P.S. it's super hard to be afraid of a movie when Ryan Reynolds is in it because Ryan Reynolds doesn't act, he just Ryan Reynolds at things.

One of these is Ryan Reynolds being glib, one is Ryan Reynolds about to murder his whole family.
 Can you tell which one is which? No one can.

Anyway, the vacation ends tomorrow and I have to actually go in and give notice. I've always hated disappointing people, so this is going to be a bit hard for me, not to mention the fact that I'm going to be striking out into the wilderness with almost no safety net and only half of a plan. So it was a bit serendipitous that r/GetMotivated's pearl of the day is this quote:

I've spent a concerning amount of my morning photoshopping Ryan Reynolds pics.

Yes I signed up for motivational quotes and pics. When all you deal with is little (and sometimes big things) getting you down, it sometimes helps to have some little things just to help get you up.

Firsty's the Worsty

Dear Blogger, last night I dreamed that London has some weird ideas about public bathrooms.

A week ago today I got the news that one of my clients died. I have been a public defender for almost five years. We always struggle with burnout. It's a hard job and people resent that we are needed. Client's insult us to our face (Just last month a client told me I was "a piece of shit" because the police hadn't turned over full DNA notes yet), make false claims about us in order to change attorneys, and constantly make these ham-fisted attempts to manipulate us. Prosecutors think we getting in the way of justice (literally told this), and judges ignore us (the judge fell asleep every day of my last murder trial).

I haven't been handling it super well for the last year or two. I gained about 100 pounds, got in the habit of drinking every night, and was sick all the time. When my client died it sent me over the edge. She was someone I was especially close to for a client. A really great person and completely innocent. She was accused of aggravated assault for pulling a gun on a man who was smashing her head against a concrete floor. It was a classic case of self-defense, she even called the police immediately after fleeing her attacker and the responding detectives recommended against pursuing charges, but still she was charged. She had never been in trouble before, had no drug or mental health issues, and was in every way a completely normal person, not at all like most of the people that come through the system.

We'd been pending trial for almost 2 years now, which is pretty standard for someone that was not being held in custody. During this time she lost her job (normal for someone pending charges), was diagnosed with MRSA, and became addicted to the opioids that were prescribed to her while she was being treated. Last Friday her fiance called me to tell me that she had passed away, probably from a drug overdose.

I've had a client die before (suicide), and I've seen far too many innocent people go to prison (my last trial, the one with the sleeping judge, my client went to prison for life plus 60 years on a murder charge; all five eyewitnesses said it wasn't him), but this one was it. Her life was completely derailed for no reason and it led to her death.

My SO and I figured out that I could live off of her for a little bit and try to make money as an artist and distiller. I've been painting ever since a kid and making whiskey for a little over a year. So this is going to be a little diary of the process of leaving my job and, hopefully, improving my life. My boss was nice enough to give me a week off, and Tuesday is the day I give notice, so I'm pretty much gonna drop everything and see what happens. Weirdly, absolutely all of my friends saw me quitting a mile away, so... I guess that's a good sign vis a vis it was pretty obvious that I was miserable.

I've never really blogged or anything before, so bear with me. I'm not super used to talking about my emotions, and a big part of this blog is going to about me learning how to be myself.

The last few days have been pretty good, I was a bit manic up until I went to her funeral, but the last few days I've just painted and worked on my whiskey recipe, and I've felt happy for the first time in a while. I find myself smiling randomly, I'm nicer and more friendly to people I meet randomly, and I've worked harder than I've worked in years.

Tuesday was a bit of a hiccup. I got drunk, which in and of itself wouldn't be a big deal, except that my SO had just agreed to scale back on everything that she loves in order to support me financially, precisely so I didn't have the pressures that led me to drinking every night. So, not a great confidence builder...

Anyway, a bit about me. I'm 31, a dood, and here's me being fat at a pear (take that pear):

I've been drawing since I was 5, I got into digital painting about 10 years ago, and I've been making corn whiskey for a bit over a year. Zombie Kill Girls comes from a character I've been doing for a looooong time, which has more or less become an alter ego of mine (called the Zombie Kill Girl) and I'm sure I'll talk about her more in the future but this is getting kind of long, so I'm gonna wrap up for today.

My artistic inspirations are Taiyo Matsumoto (Black & White), Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl and Gorillaz), Ed Roth (Rat Fink), and the Disgaea video game series. I consider myself a big time feminist (a lot of ZKG stuff is, in my mind, about playing around with beauty standards and confronting the fear of female sexuality), though I know that may be hard to believe given that my list of artists is all male (I don't know a lot of artists so please feel free to send any my way that you think may fit my style).

I'll be writing here, here is where I'll be posting artwork, collections of my favorite artists, and reference material for those who want to see the process behind some of my stuff, and I'll post a link to my etsy shop as soon as that's up and running.


And here is the dog that's super happy about getting to be home with me all day every day:

He's not sad that's just his face.