I have way too many tabs open, so I need to put this stuff somewhere.
- West Virginia Campgrounds | The Official West Virginia State Parks and Forests web site
http://www.wvstateparks.com/lodging/camping.htm - WV Cabin State Parks
http://www.wvstateparks.com/lodging/cabins.html - Cacapon Resort State Park (cabins)
http://www.cacaponresort.com/ - Maryland Park Service | 2007 Camping Info
http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/campinginfo.html
Dude, I want to go camping/cabining so bad. It was 80° two days ago. Why is there ICE ON THE GROUND now?
Too Lazy for Pictures! Edition.
(already??)
02. Catoctin Mountin Park / Cunningham Falls State Park / Owens Creek Campground
http://www.nps.gov/cato/
http://www.nps.gov/cato/planyourvisit/feesandreservations.htm (Camp Misty Mount)
http://www.nps.gov/cato/planyourvisit/occg.htm (#29 is where you want to be, dude. Easily the best site in the whole place.)
Catoctin Wildlife Preserve and Zoo
03. Amish Country! (aka Pennsylvania Dutch Country)
http://www.padutchcountry.com/
http://www.strasburgrailroad.com/
The restaurants and tours are always fun, but ideally what you want to do is drive around aimlessly among the farms. Also ideally, it will be snowing.
See also:
http://www.capemaytimes.com/
http://www.capemaycity.com/
Haven't been here since... 2000? Would like to go again.
The whole place is really quaint and gorgeous and full of Victorian homes and B&Bs, and is actually a lot bigger than I remember it being. There are these little things you can rent, like cars but with pedals (I'm sure they have a name, but I don't know it). The only downside is that, if memory serves, you have to pay to get on the beach. :<
It is 11:11 as I write this, just to note.
Anyway, it seems like such a waste to, uh, waste a journal. So this is where I am going to keep track of all the places I want to go and stuff I want to do, partly for my own benefit and partly for Jeremiah's (which will ultimately be for my benefit as well, haha). Maybe this will be the travelogue that the other one ended up not being. :)
Writing this from the lab--during classtime, even--but I figure that's ok being that this is FOR the class.
I don't know why I can never actually get any work done at school. Maybe I'm just not very inspired at 10:30 in the morning (or maybe I'm subconsciously trying to sabotage myself). So far I've got a couple of twitchy squares and a decent knowledge of how masks work, but mostly what I've got is an overwhelming desire to go back to bed.
Yes, well. I've been sitting here watching Sleepy Hollow on TNT (Mr. Depp--brilliant as always, but the story was just too much. There's a reason the original worked so well) (but I digress, again). I'm procrastinating, actually, if you can believe it. (Me? NEVER.) So I'm watching, and wouldn't you know it but Johnny pulls out a thaumatrope in the movie. Actually, the first time I saw it (the thaumatrope) (I missed the beginning, so it may have occurred earlier) was the weird chick in his dreams/flashbacks. But a thaumatrope! Of all the things to use but the relatively obscure optical toy I was supposed to be building. Clearly a sign: GET TO WORK.
So I did. I sharpened and resized and tweaked the Coney images and printed them out and did a test run and the pictures are just too fuzzy to tell what they are when they're flipping that fast. On the monitor, and even printed out, you can tell that this is a picture of the Steeplechase, but when it's flipping around it just looks like colored blobs.
So there goes that idea. Shame, really. I guess I was kind of sentimental about it.
I've got a few of the discs drawn, though; I'll finish those tomorrow. Fortunately I've got a good box design in mind, and I don't think that should take too long. But knowing my luck, this will turn out to be one of those projects that takes WAY longer than you think it should, or that it has any right to, for what it is.
Hopefullyprobablymaybe I'll get around to scanning the sketches, just for a more complete progress journal, but for now they're in my sketchbook. Depends on how much time I have left over. :)
OKAY, YES. I have something better.
This time it incorporates Ye Olde Timey illustrations and images of Coney Island (both archival and current). The idea will be the fading of innocence with the demise of Coney. I foresee a few problems going along with this and I haven't tested for them yet, so I'm going to cross my fingers. I've got the other skyline thing as a backup just in case. If there's one thing I've learned from Jeremy, it's contingency planning.
The only thing--and it's not a problem, exactly, just an observation--is that Coney IS KITSCH. And I'm falling back into that again. I guess on one hand I should appreciate my, uh, appreciation for this kind of thing, because I don't think enough people do. It could be my job to bring the word to the masses, or something. On the other hand, while there are many kitschy brances I explore (amusement parks--especially early 1900s; superheroes; spies; 1950s retro-futuristic whatever; 1960s mod culture; aliens/cryptozoology; robots), maybe the normal world (rather than Ghost World) would be worth delving into once in a while.
That's where spending next year travelling comes in. It's hard to draw from your experiences when you don't have many to draw from.
But that is a post for another time!
This is the site I'll be borrowing from for the Coney pictures. The whole ordeal breaks my heart, but that, too, is for another time.
Well hello, VOX.
So, starting with this thaumatrope. I've got an idea involving a city skyline and, erm, aliens. It's really just an excuse to draw the skyline again; it's really a simple motif but I'm all kinds of obsessed with cities lately.
I sort of hate to throw the aliens in there, though. I feel like I keep going back to the same themes, and they're all kitschy. Not that kitsch is bad! I seriously love kitsch--I think a lot of it is genuinely beautiful, not just in an ironic way.
Ah well, I'll work with this until/unless I come up with something better.
I really love that version of Sleepy Hollow. There's that special Tim Burton feel to it that made the film...... read more
on My oven can cook anything. My oven can cook...bits of oven!