[Laghail]

 

[photo credit: Gloucester Cathedral Exterior, by Chris Dorney]

 

Quote

One thousand years ago, superstition and the sword ruled. It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear. It was the age of gargoyles. Stone by day, warriors by night, We were betrayed by the humans we had sworn to protect, frozen in stone by a magic spell for a thousand years. Now, here in Manhattan, the spell is broken, and we live again! We are defenders of the night! We are gargoyles!

 

Join me for a month of posting about medieval church decorations, a 90's cartoon and it's spin-offs, and the 90's voice actors who shaped my millennial childhood imagination. There'll also be habit cultivation and productivity and self-development shiz. I suppose. 

 

Time Traveling Habits

 

• Dead Tree Time - Read a book bound with dead tree parts. Comics, poetry, novels, non-fiction; whatever - 2x/week
• Creative Time - Dedicated 30 min sessions for beading, sculpting, resin, poetry, or watercolors. Or whatever - 3x/week
• Trad Time - Dedicated practice sessions for trad banjo - Wednesday Night or Friday Night, 1x/week
• Bed Time - Meditating before bed at 11pm - 4x/week
• HIIT Time - 3x/week
• Early Bird Time - continue Duo streak in the morning - 2x/week

 

SMART Tasks

• Complete draft of exhibition statue by 5/5
• Sort camping gear from the attic by 5/5
• Donate camping gear giveaway by 5/15
• Store remaining camping gear in totes in the garage by 5/15 
• Collect artwork from 15 artists by 5/15
• Pack up the attic glassware in the garage in totes by 5/15
• Complete final draft of exhibition statue by 5/15
• Print exhibition statue by 5/16
• Paint/post process statue by 5/17
• Deliver art work from 15 artists by 5/18
• Find Pensacola FL area open mics by 5/24
• Attend one FL open mic by 6/1
• Borrow a gas mower to knock down "no mow may" lawn jungle on 6/1

 

[Broadway and Lexington fanart by Fluttershythekind]

 

Design Notes

Spoiler

Theme: Theme should be harvesting fan art while reading the Gargoyles saga, and sometimes getting nerdy with archaic church decor. 

Habits: Intentionally chosen to have some degree of redundancy. A bad week can have me on easy mode counting a songbook as a dead tree and trad practice as creative time. Best case scenario, everything is it's own thing, but bad days happen and we're trying flexible goals this month.

Tasks: 90% things I'm already committed to doing, with self imposed SMART due dates, and most of them due before to a family vacation EOM. Open mic while out of town sounds like a fun evening, especially while spending time with our friend, the Sri Lankan Open Mic Goddess and her Italian Himbo partner. 

 

[sarakingdom]

Allow me to introduce you to a whole playlist of Gargoyles fanservice moments.

 

 

[Sea-to-sky]

 

awesome theme. Adore gargoyles so this is right up my alley.

there is one on a medieval church near here of a bird on a nest with chicks. I adore it, but it is hidden and can only be seen at certain times of day when the light is right. 

ps. Sadly this is the only gif from the gargoyle animated tv series they have on here 😭

 

[TimovieMan]

Gargoyles!

 

[Ann of Owlshire]

OMG. Gargoyles was absolutely formative to me as a child/teen. Elisa Maza was my rolemodel. I was obsessed.

 

I still am.

 

Also, I don't believe in the spin offs.

 

 

Good luck on the challenge! Here to cheer you on! 

 

And for Gargoyles content.

 

[Laghail]

1 hour ago, sarakingdom said:

Allow me to introduce you to a whole playlist of Gargoyles fanservice moments.

 

 

 

This shit right here? This is why we frens.

 

1 hour ago, Sea-to-sky said:

awesome theme. Adore gargoyles so this is right up my alley.

there is one on a medieval church near here of a bird on a nest with chicks. I adore it, but it is hidden and can only be seen at certain times of day when the light is right. 

 

Bro, I will legit pay you cash prizes (and by that i mean memes and gifs, or learn a trad song of your choice) if you can snap any pics of gargoyles or sheela-na-gig or such for me?? I'll snap you funerary statues in return. Usually midwestern American funerary art is what you'd expect, but my local graveyard has been in use for a thousand+ years. So, basically the same as any graveyard by you. 🤪

 

1 hour ago, TimovieMan said:

Gargoyles!

 

"I just read MILF in the about me section, I didn't get that it stood for monument"

 

Please always supply me with guitar power-ballads about gargoyle/human dating. That was amazing. No notes.

 

1 hour ago, Ann of Owlshire said:

OMG. Gargoyles was absolutely formative to me as a child/teen. Elisa Maza was my rolemodel. I was obsessed.

 

I still am.

 

Same. Same. ACAB, except for Elisa Maza.

Def ACAB for Matt Bluestone. What a choad illuminati fanboy bootlicking POS. 

 

1 hour ago, Ann of Owlshire said:

Also, I don't believe in the spin offs.

 

I'm worried myself. I haven't read TGS since I was 17 and I'm concerned that what was amazing to a high school junior won't be readable anymore.

[Laghail]

Tuesday April 30th

 

[Brooklyn and his son Nashville, from the Gargoyle Comic 2022]

 

Time Traveling Habits

• Dead Tree Time    ✅
• Creative Time       ✅
• Bed Time              ✅✅
• Early Bird Time     ✅✅

Life Updates

• Art show is coming up and I'm awkwardly doing the family vacation the same week it kicks off, so I need to have all my shit and my local artists' shit together by midmonth.
  • My first exhibit is going to be a pole god statue and that's covered in the Tasks part of this challenge
  • Second exhibit is 3/4 done after a fun creativity session last night, but I need to talk myself into showing it. I'm very on board with art and religious objects being more a fuzzy set than separate domains, but the piece I made is kinda sorta sacred. Because I'm displaying it in a corprate breakroom and because people I don't know are going to see it, I'm allergic to putting meaningful pieces in front of the mass market (which my campus breakroom is not). Sorta a luxury of doing art as a hobby, I get to mostly do artz for fun and spiritual expression, and I mostly don't have to think about who is supposed to understand the pieces. Because I don't need to sell my pieces, it's felt easier navigating meaning and the sacred, without etsy or amazon whispering that I won't make rent if I don't sell this fucker, so I'd better make it mass market legible. Anyway, here's the WIP: 
    • 
• Delighted to participate in No Mow May with my city this year. Is solar-punk still punk, when there's now a city form to fill out and an official yard sign to pick up from city hall?? Anyway, fuck lawns and monocultures.
•  Vyvanse is off national backorder. This is proof there is a loving god in heaven, and she maybe likes me.
• Put an offer in on a duplex on Friday and got it rejected Saturday. Honestly a relief, the price was higher than I wanted, despite being in the perfect industrial neighborhood. Here's the map, with the two northwest circles calling out a great bakery and a mediocre cafe within walking distance for a disabled person:
  • 
• The plan is to buy a satisficing (cool new word meaning "good enough but not great") second duplex this year and live in one unit with the whole family again, then buy a third property in 2025/2026 that can actually fit the family comfortably. All landlords are bastards, and this is also the only way I know of to get housing for me and two disabled family members on 1.5 incomes, while also building some retirement security. Dealing with the dissonance by being extremely demanding with the purchase price on our properties, so we can keep giving our tenants a 25% discount below market rates, and by making sure we live in each building for a few years while fixing it up to standards suitable for my family's needs. Trying to use the ethic of "planting trees in whose shade I will not sit", even though that aphorism is bullshit when I own the property that I'm improving and I literally did sit in that particular shade for 12-18 months. Also investigating the regional tenants union to mitigate some of the power imbalances, but it's still putting lipstick on a pig. Metaphorically anyway, pigs are amazing animals and deserve any cosmetics they want.

[Picture credit: Jeff Bennett, by MinecraftMan1000]

[Sovalis]

Here for this. 

[Whisper]

Loved Gargoyles as a kid! Real like your themed challenge format. 

[sarakingdom]

7 hours ago, Laghail said:

This shit right here? This is why we frens.

 

I thought it was this shit right here:

 

 

[Scaly Freak]

I don't think that is an either-or thing.... or mutually exclusive.

 

Also, here for gargoyles, because they are awesome.

[Sea-to-sky]

9 hours ago, Laghail said:

Usually midwestern American funerary art is what you'd expect, but my local graveyard has been in use for a thousand+ years. So, basically the same as any graveyard by you. 🤪

 

Very cool. But i think your underestimating how long some of out local stuff has been going here. We have a ton of bronze age burial mounds and crud. 
Sadly they werent much for gargoyles, but it i manage to spot any decent opportunities i will snap some. Most gargoyles require either scafolding or a telephoto lens to get a decent pic though (neither of which do i possess, mores the pity8

[Mad Hatter]

Yay nwhat a fun theme! I love gargoyles and grotesques and hunky punks! I thought I had a bunch of pics but I think (hope!) they're on my computer in storage. 😭

 

Also I just realized you live close to one of my favorite museums - The National Mustard Museum. 🤌

[Heidi]

20 hours ago, Laghail said:

Join me for a month of posting about medieval church decorations, a 90's cartoon and it's spin-offs, and the 90's voice actors who shaped my millennial childhood imagination.

[Heidi]

17 hours ago, Laghail said:

ACAB, except for Elisa Maza.

Hard agree.

[Heidi]

15 hours ago, Laghail said:

All landlords are bastards,

Also hard agree.

For those who want to know more, pelase see anything by Emma Goldman or Angela Davis.  

[Laghail]

11 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

Very cool. But i think your underestimating how long some of out local stuff has been going here. We have a ton of bronze age burial mounds and crud. 

 

Cool as shit. Liam and I are talking about hitting similar mound burial sites in Ireland on honeymoon, maybe next year. 

 

11 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

Sadly they werent much for gargoyles, but it i manage to spot any decent opportunities i will snap some. Most gargoyles require either scafolding or a telephoto lens to get a decent pic though (neither of which do i possess, mores the pity8

 

Right? I feel fake about it, but a lot of times my pictures of cultural sites and artifacts are so inferior to what a professional with a good lens can do, that I'll compose and take my shitty iphone pictures to familiarize myself with the subject, but then I'll share a professional picture when I want to convey a sense of the subject to someone else.

 

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Also I just realized you live close to one of my favorite museums - The National Mustard Museum. 🤌

 

I just went this past fall!! There's a great diner outside the mustard museum and the museum itself is so weird and fun! Also, wildly rare for a museum to be so damn guilt free. Zero stolen artifacts, zero colonialism, just weird Madison fuckers that love them some mustard.

 

[Sea-to-sky]

25 minutes ago, Laghail said:

Liam and I are talking about hitting similar mound burial sites in Ireland on honeymoon, maybe next year

Awesome choice. Hope you have a blast.

 

26 minutes ago, Laghail said:

but a lot of times my pictures of cultural sites and artifacts are so inferior to what a professional with a good lens can do

You can actually take some really nice quality photos with a decent camera phone now adays. A friend of the family if massively into photography and the majority of his shorts are on a phone. It takes practice and getting familiar with how to use the editing software. Often there are manual camera settings options in a phones camera function as well. But you can get some lovely pics with a phone with a good lens. Even something cheapish can take nice snaps.

 

will it equal a DSLR with the right lens and a tripod? No. Obviously. Can you still take great quality shots. 100%. Just takes practice. 

[Laghail]

Wednesday May 1st

 

[Demona Lisa, by emily-lorange]

 

Time Traveling Habits

• Dead Tree Time
  • ✅✅
• Creative Time
  • ✅✅
• Bed Time
  • ✅✅✅
• Early Bird Time
  • ✅✅✅

Life Updates

• New art, who dis
  • 
  • Resin cast opossum skull with found objects: skull harvested from a specimen that passed in my backyard last summer. Discovered her after a few weeks of decomposition, then de-fleshed the remainder of the skull and upper jaw and cleaned her in a hydrogen peroxide bath. She sat with me for 9 months on a river stone, before I cast her in resin, colored with ginger, turmeric, and local honey. Included blue lotus petals and shredded gold foil (which of course clumped in the mold and looks like a gum wrapper, because opossums gunna opossum), and her river stone as a head rest. Final layer of the sculpture cast in clear resin with willow leaves and soil from where she passed, crumbs from a cookie I split with her, and a pinch of kitchen salt, so she always has guest right.  Six pomegranate seeds are in her mouth and there's a whiskey soaked euro to make sure she has an easy time coming and going. Her name is Sweetpea.
• Working with a loved one while they are in a PTSD spiral lately. Weird because their trauma is centered around workplace abuse instead of more stereotypical violence/threat of violence, and it's made navigating their emotional reactivity more unpredictable than normal. Not someone I live with, which makes things easier, but very odd experience. Apparently PTSD / cPTSD with a diffuse trigger - cases stemming not from violence, or disaster, or a single point-in-time emergency - it lends to more "reality gaps", or incidences of false memories created by a hyper-vigilant system to force an easy-to-understand narrative onto situations that bear some resemblance to their initial traumas. The more you know.
•  Dead tree book of the week was found at a bizarre artists collective down the street from my house. Deets on the collective later in the week, but rust-belt midwestern towns are doing amazing things with art and culture in the remains of our industrial hellscapes.
  • 
     

[Photo Credit: Marina Sirtis, the voice of Demona, with a Demona cosplayer at Wizard World Des Moines 2017]

[MaeradCase]

On 4/30/2024 at 1:01 PM, Laghail said:

• Dead Tree Time - Read a book bound with dead tree parts. Comics, poetry, novels, non-fiction; whatever - 2x/week
• Creative Time - Dedicated 30 min sessions for beading, sculpting, resin, poetry, or watercolors. Or whatever - 3x/week
• Trad Time - Dedicated practice sessions for trad banjo - Wednesday Night or Friday Night, 1x/week
• Bed Time - Meditating before bed at 11pm - 4x/week
• HIIT Time - 3x/week
• Early Bird Time - continue Duo streak in the morning - 2x/week

I like these time traveling habits you've listed. Also, way to make reading a hard core druid activity. 😆

[Scaly Freak]

6 hours ago, Laghail said:

Right? I feel fake about it, but a lot of times my pictures of cultural sites and artifacts are so inferior to what a professional with a good lens can do, that I'll compose and take my shitty iphone pictures to familiarize myself with the subject, but then I'll share a professional picture when I want to convey a sense of the subject to someone else.

 

There is nothing fake about this. It's just a different way of sharing something you saw and like, in a way that best conveys the part of the subject that matters to you. 

[Mad Hatter]

 

15 hours ago, Laghail said:

I just went this past fall!! There's a great diner outside the mustard museum and the museum itself is so weird and fun! Also, wildly rare for a museum to be so damn guilt free. Zero stolen artifacts, zero colonialism, just weird Madison fuckers that love them some mustard.

Exactly! Nothing pretentious, just fun and silly. Don't know if it's the same diner but I went to one that was amazing, it was so cliche American diner that I thought I was on a movie set. I had cherry pie and the waitress called me honey. I honestly didn't think those place were real. 😄 

 

15 hours ago, Laghail said:

Right? I feel fake about it, but a lot of times my pictures of cultural sites and artifacts are so inferior to what a professional with a good lens can do, that I'll compose and take my shitty iphone pictures to familiarize myself with the subject, but then I'll share a professional picture when I want to convey a sense of the subject to someone else.

I see no problem with this whatsoever, unless you claim it's your own pic. I often find the same with landscape photos, a phone photo just can't convey the vibes or scale of a place. It just looks like generic trees/rocks/fog/whatever. Or maybe you could do it with a phone (they really have become amazing!) but you'd still have to get there when the light's the best, find the best location etc. But then the experience becomes something else entirely.

[TimovieMan]

16 hours ago, Laghail said:

I feel fake about it, but a lot of times my pictures of cultural sites and artifacts are so inferior to what a professional with a good lens can do, that I'll compose and take my shitty iphone pictures to familiarize myself with the subject, but then I'll share a professional picture when I want to convey a sense of the subject to someone else.

10 hours ago, Scaly Freak said:

There is nothing fake about this. It's just a different way of sharing something you saw and like, in a way that best conveys the part of the subject that matters to you. 

47 minutes ago, Mad Hatter said:

I see no problem with this whatsoever, unless you claim it's your own pic. I often find the same with landscape photos, a phone photo just can't convey the vibes or scale of a place. It just looks like generic trees/rocks/fog/whatever. Or maybe you could do it with a phone (they really have become amazing!) but you'd still have to get there when the light's the best, find the best location etc. But then the experience becomes something else entirely.

This is precisely why I seldomly take pictures.

 

Taking one of yourself (or the kids or whoever) with a monument / view in the background feels like a tourist-y thing to do, and I don't really feel like I have to "prove" that I have been there, so what's the point?

And taking a picture of just the monument / view is even sillier, because there's no way I can get close to the quality of what I can find online by actual photographers, so why bother? 😅

 

And there's something "old school" about actually looking at stuff with my own eyes, instead of through a lens... 😎

 

[Sea-to-sky]

3 hours ago, TimovieMan said:

And there's something "old school" about actually looking at stuff with my own eyes, instead of through a lens... 😎

Agree with this. I love taking photos (grew up in a house addicted to photography) but if im going to an event or i see something amazing I want to fully experience things. Not spending half the time looking at my phone. 
Important to absorb stuff.  Or you might miss your chance. 

[Whisper]

I'm a bit in-between on the photography stuff. I love seeing and experiencing things unfiltered, but I also have a poor memory and having something to help spark that memory can be really helpful. I also take pictures of things I think I would like to paint, and to share with family