Big Muscle Bitches

Article by Nicky Dumbell (click below for more Nicky Dumbell)

http://piebald77.blogspot.com/2010/08/rep-for-rep.html

I was thinking of ten questions about the appeal concerning ‘buff birds’. The first and most predictable question would have been how can you possibly want anything to do with a women who looks like a man. This is the default defensive strategy question. I can understand where that question might originate from (perhaps ignorance and insecurity?), but such a sweeping generalisation makes for a pat argument.

There are no borders or boundaries separating masculinity and femininity, apart from the obvious common denominators. The rest are a series of increments and degrees that vary right across the board. It’s the proper BIG MUSCLE BITCHES who don’t so much as push the envelope but rather stuff the envelope who give everyone else a bad name.

The insults can get a lot nastier than man jokes, but what actually constitutes masculine features on a lass, any amount of muscle mass at all? Short hair? I’ll be the first to admit that one or two, without makeup, in a suit, with a cropped wig, could pass for a bloke. No problema whatsoever. I’m not standing here saying none of them look like men and I want to sleep with them all till dawn. I’m not saying any such thing. It’s my intention to say as little as possible about the matter, actually, and I hope that what I’ve said so far doesn’t seem like I’m getting defensive myself.
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Basically, it’s highly interesting to see how far some people are prepared to push the limits of human potential – ESPECIALLY WOMEN. A man in knickers, or a woman in knickers? You decide.

The fact is, pictures and images speak for themselves. You either like them or you don’t. Of course, as with anyone, you look at a member of the opposite sex and you judge them physically, maybe subconsciously, most of the time. You measure their attractiveness. You might think phwoar!, or eugh!

There are no subliminal messages with a big muscle bitch. They inevitably evoke a very conscious reaction. They’re like flashy concept sports cars. They’re extreme. That’s why they stand on stage, like rare breeds of exotic animals from forgotten islands. It’s ever so unusual to meet one on the street, in this part of the world.

Different story for men. Gyms, streets, nightclubs – you name it – they’re all teeming with muscle-bound ‘apes’. Why is it that so few females in comparison are obsessed by the shape of their physique? All that time spent on fashion and makeup but no interest in doing skullcrushers or kickbacks or butt blasters? Whenever I’ve been into a modern gym, which is not very often, there have been more women than men doing cardio exercises, using treadmills and cross trainers and the like. In that respect, i.e. inclination for fitness, it may be an even keel; not so true of the weights room, which is a predominantly male dominated arena.

I’m boiling this down to steroids, I’ve decided. That’s the penultimate factor in this. There’s no amount of natural physical toil a man or woman can do, unless they have freaky genetics to start off with, that can result in them looking abnormally huge. The natural way makes you look ‘developed’, whereas only the drug-enhanced way can make you look like a mass monster.

I guess it washes down to the perfect blend. Someone who has aided their favourable genetics with honest natural slog and then enhanced their honest natural slog with modest drug assistance. It’s no secret that genetics is the most important though. There will always be that individual with a God-given, stunning figure who has never set foot in a gym.

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The flipside is that all this vanity is skin deep. Furthermore, self-obsessive and meaningless.

Writing and Authors

http://piebald77.blogspot.com/2010/06/amichael-on-escaping-hazel.html

Printing is as stressful as recording music and recording music is as stressful as printing. CLEANING UP however isn’t stressful at all but is somehow much worse to do.

Fiction wise, apart from many a multiple copy and free distribution to sort out, things are up to date. It’s looking like ESCAPING HAZEL will definitely be the next novella, co-written with my cousin A.Michael, aka The Horror Apprentice. I’ll be taking care of the ‘escaping’ part while he spends his time contemplating the far-reaching tentacles of ‘Hazel’. See link at top.

The first chapter is done (included in 50% Rude) and the outline for the rest of the story, or most of it anyways, is also done. An outline is new to me and it’s weird knowing how things generally are going to end up. The tale already exists, it’s just a matter of telling it.

I couldn’t do it on my own. It’s too sombre. The mindset is all wrong. I almost don’t want to give it life. That’s why I’ll be writing solo on something else simultaneously. It will be called Mr. Ridiculous. The title was thought of yonks ago, and then the character Ron Todd came along and fit into it later.

Personally, I hate it when authors talk about their characters like they are real people; it can’t be helped referring to them sometimes, but please, don’t go overboard. Dean Koontz said that his franchise character ‘Odd Thomas’ spoke to him. Something like “My name is Odd Thomas, I lead an unusual life.” He dropped what he was doing (another novel) and wrote the first chapter on the spot. Forget Dean though – he needs to get out more. The dude literally pulls titles out of his ass. Not like King, who only writes 3 or 4 hours a day.

Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee is my favourite short story author. What, you don’t have a favourite short story author? Getalife.com! That’s another thing I hate, actually – when authors have a long list of their favourite authors and influences, like they are merely just showing off how many other authors they know of, and how many books they have read.

Tanith Lee is the biz. She’s the first I read in anthologies. Her prose teaches, and I learn. She’s so descriptively gothic she transports you to another time. I hold my hands up in the presence of a higher power within her pages. I know that A.Michael does too. There’s another thing I hate, as well – authors who say they don’t read anyone else’s work while they are working on something because it intrudes into their own work. Pish! These guys are the guys who do twenty rewrites and endless revising, rereading, and redrafting. I’d be sick of myself if I did that. Sick indeed, and very soon!
_________________________________________________________
DB TINKERBELL has loads of lyrics to add to songs but he is forgetting the fact that he can’t sing. Just because the option is available to him now, it’s no good reason to flood every melody with his deadpan monotone voice. If he had female backing vocals, maybe, but he hasn’t. He’s ready to complete the last song of his 3rd album today and then that’s it until a better microphone is purchased. The one he has cost 7 bucks. The guy who work in Dawson’s cost a 1000 bucks. He compared it to a bicycle and a Rolls Royce. DB Tink is taking his tunes to a new level, and that next new level has to involve some serious equipment.

Comeback Legs...and Singing

Dedication to Steel is to Embrace a World of Pain

For whatever reason, I stayed outta da gym for months. For an iron brother, it’s worse than cheating on your wife. That first time back after a layoff is the hardest. You just don’t want to go. You want to call it a day for good. The longer you leave it, the harder it gets. But I dragged myself there eventually with an hour to go b4 closing time and plonked my bony arse down on the seated calf raise machine.

On my way I nipped into Tesco and read FLEX. I didn’t know Tesco stocked FLEX. I was lucky because the mag wasn’t plastic wrapped. It only took me 5 minutes to read. I can’t believe I used to buy that rehash religiously.

Anyway, cutting to the chase, I had an absolute monster leg session. I wasn’t screaming or grunting, or rushing headlong into sets with the hunger and determinedness I had when I was 23 and hell-bent on getting huge, but it was...well, comprehensive. I remember one sesh in particular back in the day when my quads were the best pumped they had ever been before or since – the teardrops were drum tight and hard and taut beneath my trackies. They were humongous.

No, this was different. I took my time, and I didn’t especially push myself, but I COVERED ALL THE BASES. It’s one thing going all out on dumbbell curls for biceps, but there’s hardly any such thing as even taking it easy on squats. Let’s face it, squatting with an empty back is rather uncomfortable. And squat I did, first time in eons, straight after calves, which I always do first. Free weight, smith machine, and hack, front and back. I decided against sissy squats, because I’m not a sissy.

It was the COMPLETE leg workout (the only little thing I left out was a small personal movement for shins I invented myself which you wouldn’t understand). The main reason why is because I was UNINTERRUPTED. No chitchat. No exchanging pleasantries. It’s fine when you are in your pomp, and you are just topping up that almost constantly buff feeling 5 or 6 visits to the gym a week merits, but nattering with your buddy during a Comeback Legs workout doesn’t figure. No way. And people know it. They sense your vibe. Comeback legs is no field trip.

Today, I’m hurting. That’s standard. I get up from a seated position like an old man. Proper gritting my teeth every time. It’s beautiful though, in a morbid way. Tomorrow will be even worse. But that feeling of walking down the gym steps last night, after it was all over...

...FOR EVERYTHING ELSE, THERE’S MASTERCARD.

(shud of warmed up however. the squats shocked my nervous system. my legs were physically shaking)

~

Eat up or Shut up...it's a Gruel World---------------------------MUSIC----------------------------

DB TINKERBELL bought a keyboard about 6 years ago, but only learned how to mix his lyrics with some songs last night. It’s not straightforward – nothing is with a personal PC computer, apart from turning the hunk straight off at the wall* – but it represents a milestone of sorts nonetheless. Ironic that it should be just the beginning of a journey then, because his kind of lyrics involve a female opera singer and a children’s tabernacle choir on backing vocals. No mixed sex backing vocals, no deal. One man singing alone, no matter how good or bad, is not enough. He can’t believe his phone has that geofence tech (whereosphere) but no sound recorder. If it did, he could ask girls in the street for quick voice samples...the blond in TSB has the voice of an angel.

~

*Was waiting half an hour for this 30 second clip to upload, because it' was a Windows Movie, not a Windows Media (TM) movie, like that's important. It would have had me there waiting all night. Half an hour, for a 30 second clip.

Burning the Midnight Oil

The last 3 nights I’ve been up all night. I’d love to say writing, but that doesn’t happen. I was editing. Editing the produce of the last 18 months or so work. My hours have been erratic – talk about unpaid nightshifts – but by goodness they have been put to good use for once.

In three night’s work I've only written one original paragraph of new prose (apart from forewords, indexes and endnotes), which was to finish off a short story which had been canned for over six months. Oh, that’s nothing, it once took me 10 YEARS to finish off the last page of a book. I simply have a hard time doing anything that NEEDS doing. It’s that subconscious leap of getting stuck in that perturbs me.

It could be a phone call, or a chore, or, God help me, changing the bed*, or anything. If I HAVE to do it, I have TROUBLE doing it. Some people are incapable of sitting and doing nothing – I’m not one of them. Give me a kettle, Radio 4, Freeview, and I'm EaZy.

Most of the nocturnal burning of the midnight oil was editing, like I keep saying, and basic presentation formatting. It was tedious. Setting fonts and sizes to headings and so forth. Indents and tabs and all the rest of it. It wouldn’t have been half as bad but my mouse is crud and my mouse pad is crud so the process was jerky and repetitive and it was made twice as hard because the PC has a mind of its own and does certain things that defy sense and logic to peev you off. There's only so many tunes you can listen to on YouTube as well.

All done though. Big print off on Tuesday and a bigger one coming up this afternoon. It’s amazing the difference an artistic front cover makes, as well. Plastic spines for the binding and job's a good'un. Talking about Job, I never really read him in The Bible before. Just heard about it and stuff. It's a cracking chapter, you know. Awesome language. Call The Bible what you like, from a 'pile of crock' to the 'living word', but one thing for sure, parts of it are written with profound poetic power.

Profound poetic power...you see what I did there?

*Fresh linen is a winner.

Archer's Attack

http://www.redbubble.com/people/piebald77/art/6738429-1-archers-stand-off

This is a quick quarter hour variation of a 3 hour piece viewable at the above link. There's nothing really subtle about it i.e. it doesn't 'merit closer inspection', which is always desirable, but some arrangements are simply about position and placement rather than hidden treats and jewels. One has just been completed called SKULL LAND, which had so much potential for concealed landscapes and disguised secrets that it had to be finished off prematurely, rather than suck and drain hour upon hour, idling in an open folder. It's all about the finished effect, about when enough is enough - making patience surely one of the highest virtues. Banging things out, like a prolific machine - and thus moving onwards - is so much more pleasing. Okay, maybe not more pleasing, but easier.

Freedom Sonics

This VIDEO BELOW6 was created from start to finish in 4 hours. That includes finding a melody from scratch, matching it to a beat, practicing it, and recording it. That's pretty quick for the birth, concept and completion. EVOLUTION KEYS, for example, took 2 weeks of practicing it twice daily before it was even worth attempting to record it without making a mistake. That was the trickiest thing ever because one hand was flying over three quadrants of the board just tapping the keys and it was all about hand-to-eye coordination.

FREEDOM SONICS sounds very synthy, but the synthesizer isn't even on. It's the thick Saw Lead voice itself that has the synth sound. In fact, it overpowers most of the beat. There are only 3 more tracks needed to round off the second 11 track album on this machine, the Yamaha DJXII. It feels funny mentioning the word 'album', but whatever else is there to call it? When you speak about bands, many of them that I know of take longer than a year to produce an album, some of them much longer. It's like books or anything else that goes on here at the site - the quicker you reel them off, the worse they are gunna be, in to say the more similar and repetitive they are gunna be. The subconscious needs to cook in between projects. Am I right, or am I right? I'm right, aren't I? I am though, aren't I though? DBT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXDsMJPJPLk 3 Evolution Keys

Pottery Patterns

This piece must be two years old if a day. It was meant to be part of a bird bath tower and is supposed to have a finished look as it is but legend has it that if one were to paint each triangle in an assortment of glazes and different colours it would look ten times better...or perhaps ten times worse?
There's a secret to obtaining such a unique, textured exterior, to get it looking so purposeful and symbolic. It's called pressing the bottom of a MILK CRATE into the wet clay. Yeah, you heard what I said.

The above is a pottery-based A4 collage, or 'mood board', which sounds better.

Prescription Television

“You can either sink or you can fly,” my handsome doctor said to me. “So now then Dear Patient, what’s it gonna be?”

“Fly high-a-way in the sky, natur-ally.”

“If you are absolutely certain? It’s a lot easier to sink. What was it you said about your favourite film, Falling Down? Letting go is easier than–”

“KEEPING HOLD.”

A nod from my married handsome doctor implied he seemed to be able to agree with that. He often shared his mortgage and insurance anxieties with me. Could level with a home boy, when he wanted to, in his svelte suit, suave shoes, and lacquered haircut.

“I prescribe, for YOU,” he said, in his holier-than-thou accent, like some sorta magician revealing his signature trick, “Season One, of Everwood.”

Everwood? I knew of a restaurant called Evenwood, but no television series called Everwood.

Good ‘ole married handsome wedding-ring-wearing ‘doc scribbled the details on a note, then leaned across to push it towards the edge of a desk worth more than my first two cars. “Everyday, on Freeview Channel E4. It’s repeated, so unless you wake up after one pm, you’ll never miss it.”

I was curious. ”Is it like Smallville?” I asked. “Or Dirty Sexy Money?” Those were the only two Yankee TV dramas I knew about. And West Wing.

“Have you ever seen One Tree Hill, or Eli Stone, or Brothers and Sisters?”

“Is Brothers and Sisters the one with Emily VanCamp in it?”

My pompous good ‘ole married handsome wedding-ring-wearing ‘doc clicked his fingers like a rebel pimp. “That’s what I’m talking about! Just her storyline alone will soften your heart. In Everwood, she is younger, and will reawaken your teenage dreams. Make you whole again.”

“Those dreams were not bad,” I said. “I think I will give this Everwood a try.” Lord knows I'd been fractured by the likes of X-Factor.

That I did, and upon the closure of episode 22, I sought to seek the remaining 3 seasons. This was my life now, and I based my entire diary around it. Everwood, Emily.

by TAZ

© Okus Pocus

DNM Fiction 2012 edition

Tripwire Internal

Excuse the depression factor. I’m sure Ron Todd, if he had met Sebastian, would have told him to just ‘snap out of it’. As simple and as true as that. Ron Todd’s guide to a broken heart, or any problem, for that matter, is to get drunk, get a prostitute, and beat her up. While we don’t share that philosophy, we kinda see where he is coming from, by taking matters into his own hands rather than moping around and letting the world wipe its feet on him. Sebastian was very inactive, reclusive, and lonely towards the end, but, despite his disturbing, scarely veiled threats in his college newsletter column, died of natural causes, in his sleep.

Of two evils choose the least – So I worship Bacchus.

I was born Sebastian Worboys, and this is my favourite song on the brink of my demise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DwMJggG-vs Why not play it AFTER you read this? I’d appreciate it.

Who cares to know where it all started to go wrong? I know where I could have first tried to do something, and I know where I did actually try to do something, later on. But the time for forethought and action is gone. Now I lack the youth, the support, the finance, everything.

No matter who or what is to blame, aside from my dipstick fool-to-folly attitude, the fact is that I want gone. It’s almost unimportant, how things got to this. The truth is that they have. Regrettably. And I am haunted by my failures and mistakes.

I’ve not lost the ability to cope, it’s more like having lost the will to keep on coping. I could still plough on and appropriate something leaning towards relevant personal success, of course I could, but that wouldn’t be realised for a long time, if at all, and during the day-to-day meantime, all I see is barriers, obstacles, hindrances. And I’d fall, just as I have, again and again, lower and lower. I even see slight habitual annoyances potentially becoming mild episodes of psychosis. Once your thoughts are twisted, the knots tend to tighten your perceptions out of control.

All the good things I do best are only coping mechanisms in themselves. Art, writing, etc ... pointless. Born of conflict. It could be beautiful, viewed and respected, carried out there, profitable, but it won’t be, so it won’t.

Instead I’ve constructed an enemy inside my head, with my own hands, and I’ve realised, of late, that he’s here to stay. He’s me. My very own Tripwire Internal.

Chasing my tail for another how many years? No thanks. The formative years have been settled. I’d rather be tragic than sad. S.Worboys

~

P.S Just to make clear: I don't do cries for help. I genuinely just want gone.

That Time of the Month

Last Night...
It’s the end of the month. February Eve. The old diary has seen a lot less action since the inception of this blog. There’s nothing blanker than unwritten entries on untouched pages in a diary. 50 words a day is plenty, yet for weeks it goes unconsidered and unopened.

I haven’t lost a diary yet. That’s some accomplishment, considering I’d forget to breathe if my body didn’t do it for me. I have however scribbled diary entries on long-since strewn scraps of paper. What, you don’t care? Nor I. Writing for writing’s sake.

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Currently...
Rewriting 4 stories of 50% Rude. Trying to write about a woman in Nigeria who gets beaten up for changing into a cat. There is also something very short (couple of hundred words) about The Worst Secret Agent In The World. Not to mention Cross My Heart And Hope To Die, which will be all-out emotion, also very short. Ron Todd seems to have taken off as well, the character who will set me free. About 1000 words so far, in less than 2 flowing hours, which is a good start for a new book-length topic. That guy is self-sustaining. I wanna share the secret how. Maybe when it's published.

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ohreally Now is that time of the month

not so sure Now I'm ready to start

Bits of Blob

WOMEN AND CHILDREN LINING UP TO BE EXECUTED. The star piece of the 50% Rude collection, book number 13 which has been shelved for the last twelve months, is called Auschwitz vs 731, about German soldiers and Japanese death camp scientists who are surely responsible for inflicting the worst atrocities upon fellow mankind in all civilised history (it makes you wonder what went on before democracies and laws existed). It’s not until you see pictures that the holocaust even begins to sink in. True comprehension is nigh impossible. Just imagine having to strip and wait your turn in an open grave, listening to gunshot after gunshot as your kids hold onto you. To top things off someone is sticking a camera in your face too. It was merciless execution, put frankly. Unit 731 was quite the opposite – slow, excruciating, guinea pig style torture.

I am reminded of the comic’s quest to make light of everything, of choosing to laugh rather than to cry. I’m thinking of a possible sketch about a good-hearted German soldier who has a busy Monday morning schedule ahead of him slaughtering rows of innocent women and children. He used to think posting letters in the cold was bad! It’s his first day on the job and he ... well, that’s enough ... try checking the link beneath to see if you have the stomach for this kind of warped bizarro humour. Remember, we only make fun to cope (although in saying this, there is absolutely nothing funny about Auschwitz vs 731). It's as sober as, well, death. A.D

http://piebald77.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-deal-executioner.html

QUICK THOUGHT ON ALIEN ACTION MOVIE FILMS by A.J
I’m no sci-fi freak, but the difference for me between DISTRICT 9, SKYLINE, and all the other genre extravaganzas is that DISTRICT 9 and SKYLINE’S penultimate sequences were actually moving. That for me personally sets them apart from the likes of TOSSFORMERS and the like. MONSTERS was a waste of time apart from a nice piano score. I detest the way these movie films reveal a glimpse every now and again, confusing suspense with boredom, like a M.Night Shyamalan picture. It was only marginally better than CLOVERFIELD. DISTRICT 9 took its time to kick in, but once it did boy it hit you with an astounding full-on finale. Monsters never got going, and fizzled out. They shouldn’t call it MONSTERS if it isn’t about MONSTERS.


Coronation Street Tweet
@ KenBarlow Pull sum strings pal & get Baldwin back on the show so he can kick off in the rovers, preferably with Jim McDonald. U r greatest.

(2 million followers, and no friends. 3 degrees, and no common sense)

And Know This, As Standard:
Those guys who put bread in their mouth for a camel to lean in and eat it through the window in a safari park are the bravest dudes known to man.

Oh, and here's DB Tinkerbell's latest tune, poorly recorded just hours ago (although the quality is worse here for some reason). Anyways Partner, Bye for Now!

Bring Only Faith

Click below for the master image at RedBubble:

http://www.redbubble.com/mybubble/art/6632891-1-bring-only-faith/edit

Adobe Photshop is better than the Internet. Seriously. But it needs the Internet for images. Internet images + Adobe Photoshop = Freedom to Express Oneself. It’s the best combination known to Man. Better than food on the table and a roof over one’s head. Better than fish n chips.
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BRING ONLY FAITH was started and completed during late Saturday night/early hours of Sunday morning, so called because the tribesman at the foot of the stairs has his hands full of groceries. There was a film once which may or may not have starred Jeff Goldblum who came face to face with a deity at the climax and sank to his knees in its presence. The deity actually commanded him to drop to his knees, matter of fact (this was so many years ago that any hint of the movie’s name can’t be recalled). This seems like normal behaviour for a member of mankind, flawed with sin and fallibilities. In the proximity of a being so much more sentient than oneself, it seems only commonplace that one would drop to one’s knees. That would be unnecessary in this picture though, as obviously there are stairs to be climbed, an ascent to be reckoned with ... but surely there is no need for the man at the bottom to take his shopping bags upto Heaven with him!? What is in that bag that remains so important, even after death? What beverage is in his bottle?

Surely it must be Marks & Spencers...
You can’t beat M&S...
“My ultimate goal in life is to one day be able to afford to do the weekly shop there.” Anon

Snowy Solarscape

"Drawing is more about how the mind thinks rather than how the hand works."

D. Spartan Cavanagh

"Thanks to the above quote, the day when I put pencil to blank paper is close."
Andrew Donegan

ORIGINAL IMAGE IS AT THIS LINK

http://www.redbubble.com/people/piebald77/art/6621638-1-i-dreamt-i-conquered-a-tiger

Art Till Death®
“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Design is knowing which ones to keep.”
Scott Adams
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
Henry David Thoreau
“Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.”
Stella Adler
"Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.”
Jackson Pollock
"Thank f**k for Photoshop."
Dick Fudge

God, and My Death

Above: Postcard from the Heavens

Thou shall not be a feeble gibbering wreck

Thou shall not tweet on Facebook

Thou shall not be addicted to blowing things up

Thou shall not make an ass of myself by dancing across pelican crossings

Thou shall not pee in my mate Roland's washing machine

Thou shall not wipe dog poo on my good mate Roland's car handle

Thou shall not empty the petty cash tin in work

Thou shall not feel guilty if I empty the petty cash in work

Thou shall not feel mums' bums in dollar stores

Thou shall not write any more thou shall nots

~

I sat down for 3 hours the other night and devoured a very long short story of about 75 pages, called MY DEATH by Lisa Tuttle in Best New Horror 16. After 5 pages I almost jibbed it because it didn’t seem to be my style. It was all arty and factual. I stuck with it though and enjoyed it immensely. It was kind of a refreshing mystery tale which I don’t usually read, something I could really get into. The book has reached the end of its 9 week library limit this week, as is so often the case – I got this one in just in time.

I don’t read enough, but lately, when I’ve made the effort, I’ve been richly rewarded. It’s an alternative to watching a movie and just as good. You just need to set aside the time, and never last thing at night in bed because you just fall asleep. Remember, to read is to be in a state of 'low rapture'.

The very next piece in my personal pipeline will be a result of reading the ending in MY DEATH, estimated length a challenging 330 words. It’s good enough picking up techniques and style, but to come away with something in the making as a direct consequence distinguishes the excellent from the inspirational. A.D

Treelike Sculptures

People have commented that the above pieces look perfectly okay, but it's hard to agree when you know that they should actually bear the same lovely rich copper and yellow tones displayed in the piece below. Verdict: Failure. Reason: Clay.
The above 'Alien Dagger' was the first fantastic result of the new Copper Adventurine glaze. Looking into the sparkly shades really is a kind of adventurous glittery landscape of quartz, but the following two attempts with this glaze, on the much bigger log pieces, have come out burnt-looking and rubbish. The middle one here was a mixture of colours, which came out okay. The candleholder on the right looks decent because the clay is white - on red clay that spitter-spatter blue and yellow glaze hardly shows up. The black piece on the left was dotted with a green glaze thrown onto it straight from the bottle but the 3 heavy layers of plain black overpowered it. Will be going back in with some white splashes on it.

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The Ceramic Devision

ornamento-skulp

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Revenge of the Bagpipes

Deus Ex Machina Part 2, DB Tinkerbell's 3rd not-so-studio album, is halfway done. There is no rush to the song producing process whatsoever. The average rate must be about 2 tracks a month.

"This was laid down overnight," he says. "You're only as good as your latest offering. One of my very best, it does have to be said."