Running a bit late to-day for errands I had to run--sometimes I really do wish I didn't have to eat. It's a raw deal, really, especially when you consider how much time and money it takes to eat healthily.

To-night I draw the last page of the first chapter. I'm still a little behind on colouring, but I've realised the real beauty of staying one chapter ahead is that I essentially have two weeks to catch up, several days of which aren't even reserved for the next chapter. By the way, I've moved up my launch date from June 15 to June 13--not only because it's Friday the 13!!! but also because I found myself feeling behind at times even when I wasn't because I started one day later in the week than I usually started Boschen and Nesuko chapters.

I started reading what I think was the beginning of Shadow Unit. I'm still not entirely clear on what it is, exactly, but Moira has been excited about it lately and I see it's co-written by Elizabeth Bear, whose blog I read from time to time, even though I've yet to read one of her books. Whatever Shadow Unit is, what I did read is well written and nicely absorbing. Looks like people doing good, hard work for donations, so check it out if you can.

Anyway, I'd better get to it . . .

Just two pages to go with this chapter. Having run out of DVD commentaries to listen to, I've been looking for new things to listen to while inking and colouring. Last night I downloaded all of the Shadow radio serials and listened to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. I think what makes that piece so particularly effective is the subtle despair that creeps into the voices of the radio announcers.

To-day I've already listened to Keith Olbermann's interview with Scott McClellan (click on "previously" and go to May 29) while colouring and eating breakfast. This interview took me past just feeling cynical about the Johnny-Come-Lately quality of McClellan's divulgences and got me thinking about how much of a coup this is, more, I suspect, than McClellan realised. I think he really did just want to cash in on the cow George Tenet had already tapped, but he'd been slightly blinded by the fact that just about everyone assumes as a matter of course that the Bush administration has been lying about practically everything. To a certain extent, the lack of ramifications for the overwhelming amount of legal evidence against the administration has rendered the truth irrelevant. But McClellan's book accumulates a little more mass to an object already exerting a tremendous, if sickly, gravitational pull, especially since McClellan was essentially the face of the administration for a time. Wilfully ignoring the dark planet in the room is getting more and more difficult and painful.

Anyway, I'm eager to get to work to-day. Here're some pictures of Toubanua in a fantasy forest that pointed me towards last night;

I spent all night working on my comic, stopping only to eat, use the bathroom, and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report--which I made sure coincided with lunch. So I decided to go on an adventure after I woke up this afternoon. I went to the Living Room and had a really nice cheese (provolone) and veggie sandwich on sourdough and I saw a water fountain mounted on the wall in the shape of a downwards pointed curled fish, the water apparently pouring from its mouth into a half shell. A sign next to the fountain read, "Do NOT pull on the fish's tail."

And that was to-day's adventure. I also went to BevMo and bought some sake and rum.

Reading about Bill Murray's wife filing for divorce, the first thing that came to mind was a story Harold Ramis told in the Groundhog's Day DVD commentary about the scene where Murray's talking to Andie MacDowell while she's sleeping, telling her how he loves her and how beautiful and wonderful she is (I don't remember the lines exactly). Ramis (who said he hoped he wasn't giving away anything too personal) said that the bit was suggested by Murray, who'd apparently actually done something similar, lying in bed with his wife just after they were married. Since the movie was made in 1993, I guess that would be his first wife, to whom he was married from 1981 to 1994. So a year before they got divorced, he was thinking fondly of this woman.

Maybe that's why the allegation of physical abuse seems unlikely to me in this new divorce. That, and the fact that Murray doesn't seem like he'd bother hitting someone even if it was justified. Now, the "abandonment", that "he would often leave without telling his wife," I can believe. And also the "alleged marijuana" and "alcohol use." It's not like I know Murray, but he's one of those stars, I think, who exerts a gravitational pull of sympathy automatically, which makes this all pretty sad.

Anyway, back to the drawing board. And yes, I have a drawing board.

ADDENDUM: Also, Murray's attorneys would also probably be wise to show this video;

Read the new Sirenia Digest this afternoon, even the Sonya Taaffe story. I really didn't think I'd be able to, but as with most things I dread, I find it's better to confront them directly. And indeed, it wasn't so bad. I guess I"ll never know if that girl hates my guts or considers me an insect, but she is pretty cute.

Caitlin's story, "RAPPACCINI'S DRAGON", was one of my favourite Sirenia Digest stories yet. I love how it seems to have so many plates spinning at once, but meshes them so well; it was like Eyes Wide Shut meets Pan's Labyrinth meets The Big Sleep, with the Sternwood family recast as the protagonists and fused into one character.

Anyway, I'd better get at the comic making. I'm doing page five to-day, so I'm past the halfway point. I'm exactly one page behind on colouring, so I think I'll forgo Second Life to-night. I was so deflated from a lack of sleep yesterday that I logged on early and had a nice time helping Dragoness position bondage equipment in her castle. I also played a game of chess against Larry, one of the best chess players around, matched only by his alts. I was about to beat him--he had just a king and I had a rook and a queen--but I accidentally hit a stalemate. I do that so often, too. That's why I always need so many queens.

To-day's the final for my class, so I have even less time than usual to-day.

I was sorry to hear Sydney Pollack died yesterday. I still have a bunch of tapes of when he hosted TCM's Essentials, and I still think he was perfectly cast in Eyes Wide Shut.

I'm awake now, bright and early at 3pm. Gods, the world exists at this time? Blegh. Ugh. I suppose I need to start flipping my schedule for Comic-Con, huh? I listened to a story on NPR a couple nights ago about E. coli flipping pancakes . . .

I'm up early because I'm going to my parents house where there's going to be a barbeque for my sister's boyfriend. Fortunately, my comic is so far on schedule and to-night's page looks like it's going to be easy. However bad it gets, I can look back at some of the most difficult Boschen and Nesuko chapters and know I got through them somehow. Just chapter 2 was a bog.

Last night I dreamt I was exploring a partially submerged land and city formally occupied by someone I suspected did not want to see me. I was there with Scrooge McDuck and his nephews. I returned without incident, but an Argonian hired me to kill a man in charge of a nomad tribe of warriors living on the bottom of the ocean near the same area. I started making my way back, but a building I was cutting through turned out to be a cruise ship, and it started moving before I could get off of it. I woke up before I could dive into the water as I planned.

You've probably already heard about this. But there it is again.

I've drawn the first two pages of comic. Fucking gruelling, especially yesterday, when I suddenly realised I needed a bunch of visual references for medieval castles. Google image searches were helpful, but I also took some screen shots from The Adventures of Robin Hood and La Belle et la Bete. Boy, that latter movie makes for some great screenshots, especially the ones that happen to include Josette Day.




It seems like working on Boschen and Nesuko was a lot less stressful. But maybe I'm just edgy because of how unexpectedly long Kim, Kimberly, and the Snake took. Hopefully my new colouring technique has rectified this and I won't have to live like a monk. I signed onto Second Life last night, even though I hadn't finished colouring the first page, figuring it'd be easy to finish to-day along with the second page. That's the old Boschen and Nesuko thinking; no matter what, colouring is easy. No reason to stress over it. Hopefully I can get back to that way of thinking or this project's just going to be torture.

Working on comic to-day, so I don't have much time. Here're some pictures from Second Life last night;


Tou. Tou! HEY TOU, I'M TRYING TO TAKE A PICTURE!


This is the first red hair I've gotten for Toubanua and I was amazed at how natural it looked with this skin.


I got it, along with a couple others, from a designer called Aden.


"I don't think anyone's coming, baby."


This place, called The Quiet, was made by the same person who made the Far Away wheat field I posted pictures of a little while ago.


Dragoness is identified upon entering the shot by her signature dragonfly.



A wash basin inside the house.


Some contraption in the main room.

I clicked "dream" on the bed and this happened;



Toubanua's only Victorian outfit. I got it at Ingenue, which actually specialises in clothes from the 40s and 50s.




Some strange, fantasy area nearby. Dragoness wanders ahead!


Yes, Toubanua can dress for any occasion. Especially the strange ones.


"Are you there, God? It's me, Toubanua. 'Do you need a woman to take care of you?'"


"Good, an audience."



"So sorry, Europe."


This still looks easier than doing a webcomic.


The nearby Princeton University campus.


George Washington fought for my right to use a female avatar.

New Morrissey single! Performed, along with an oldie, here;



June 2! With B-Sides composed by Gustavo Santaolalla!

And I'm already digging "All You Need is Me".

Lots of things happening in June. I'm also going to a Cure concert with my sister, and my new comic goes online (I've decided) June 15. Though I'll finish chapter 1 by June 1, I'm still keen on the idea of staying a chapter ahead. Fortunately, I've conceived of a new colouring technique to combat the problem I was having with stray white pixels I've been contending with for scanning at a higher dpi--which made it so I had to carefully go over each page colouring one pixel at a time. I've discovered a way of raising the contrast and lowering the brightness on a picture before reducing it to two colours (after which I increase it to 16 million again) that removes virtually all of the dots. I'd tried this before, but never got it to work.

I'm thinking a lot of that probably didn't make much sense. This is the sort of thing I had to contend with . . . Now, hopefully, I'll be able to make these pages as fast as I made the Boschen and Nesuko pages.

I'm extremely pleased with the script I wrote yesterday. To-day, I'll be doing rough drawings of the chapter pages, and to-morrow, it begins. I'm jazzed.

A couple more thoughts on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull;

Thinking about the Uncle Scrooge influence has led me to wonder if Irina Spalko was inspired by Magica De Spell. Maybe this would explain why I found Spalko to be so profoundly attractive, since I had something of a thing for De Spell when I was a kid.

I don't think I read any of the comic book issues where she appeared, so I mainly knew her through DuckTales. Apparently, hotness was the idea for De Spell, according to Wikipedia;

. . . she would not be in the image of the old hag usually associated with witches. [Carl Barks] wanted to create a youthful and attractive enchantress, so he took inspiration for her look from Italian actresses Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. He also wanted her to be seductive, amoral, and somewhat threatening. In a later interview, Barks identified a similar figure from the comic strips of Charles Addams as another source of inspiration for Magica, namely Morticia Addams of The Addams Family. Maleficent, the malevolent fairy from Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, first released on January 29, 1959, has been suggested as a third source of inspiration . . .

That's a lot to ask from a duck. Carl Barks may've had a screw loose in some wonderful way. Or having already worked on comics about duck people for about ten years at the time he'd created Magica (1961), his perspective was completely skewed. I can't say I was particularly as interested in Magica after I hit puberty, yet Magica with a pretty humanoid face and a woman's body really settles well in the primordial soup of my personality.

Of course, I'm also wondering if Irina Spalko gets her first name from Simone Simon's character in Cat People. It all comes full circle.

What else . . . I was very intrigued by suggestions of Indy's World War II experiences as a spy and his perspective on the Cold War. I kind of wish the film had been entirely about that. Maybe I just need to watch From Russia with Love again . . . But, no, there's a wonderful weariness about this Indiana Jones, especially in light of the easier fantasy world of the original movies. The melancholy of Indy aging would work as a nice parallel to the world becoming unimaginatively brutal and senseless.

Though, if you watched the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles*, you know Indy'd already experienced the senseless brutality of trench warfare. I was rather amused that there's actually a reference to one of the episodes in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, mostly because the movies and the series never quite felt like they existed in the same reality.

One other thing about the movie--John Williams kind of falls down. I suppose Mutt Williams must have a theme, but damned if I could remember it, or any other new melody, getting in edgewise with the almost constant reliance on themes from the previous films. Not just the Raiders march, but also Marion's theme, the Ark theme, even the Holy Grail theme. Maybe my ear just wasn't in the right place; I'd missed my afternoon tea and was in sort of a caffeine withdrawal headache. Who knows; maybe I'd like the whole movie better with proper fortification.


*Which, I admit, I did. No, Sean Patrick Flannery wasn't as good as River Phoenix or even really resembled Harrison Ford at all, but . . . good production values. Christopher Lee was in one episode.

So I ended up catching the midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In my defence, I finished everything on my schedule yesterday. Why do I feel I need to defend myself? Because I was on a hell of a roll. But I couldn't resist the call of Indy. I knew I'd need to get there at least two hours early, so I brought a notebook and pen and got a little more work done. I got a great seat, too.

I'm still sorting out my feelings about the movie. Mainly, I liked it. I agree with a lot of critics who're saying the last third is the weakest part of the film. The idea of aliens influencing ancient South American culture just isn't interesting anymore and there's really nothing new brought to the table. The focus on the meaning of treasure is kind of nice, but more as thematic theory than how it is implemented here.

Harrison Ford is great. It's nice to see him not glowering through a film and he's captivating. Though it felt oddly like he didn't have much to do--maybe it's just because he makes you want more. Cate Blanchett is ridiculously hot in this movie. That she and Indy don't end up together is the biggest of missed opportunities. Especially since Karen Allen just made me feel sad whenever she was on screen.

Marion was always my favourite of Indy's dames. She was an equal for Indy--Kate Capshaw mainly annoyed me (though I like her opening number), and Alison Doody lacked Allen's vitality. Plus, well. She was evil.

Gods, I want to see Irina Spalko in lingerie.

Er, anyway. Marion seemed an empty husk of her former self. Every time she smiled, I could practically hear Spielberg trying to coax her into it.

I was right to be wary of David Koepp's screenplay; the dialogue's truly abysmal at times, and the simplistic father/son thread has all the weight of a sub par sitcom. But the worst thing about the movie was the cgi. This is, by far, the smallest feeling Indiana Jones film, and, for most of it, the ugliest. Having just watched the second film again, I lamented the absence of the beautiful matte painting of Pankot Palace with the blue shadows or the Indian landscape. I miss the open deserts of the second and third film, Venice, and even the Raiders South America seemed somehow bigger. This cg South America just felt cluttered. And absolutely fake.

Watching the forest truck chase, I found it difficult to believe that Spielberg for a moment thought it had anywhere near the visceral intensity of the first film's similar chase. This had all the reality of a cartoon.

All the films strain credibility well past the breaking point, but so often it felt like this one didn't have any good excuse to do so.

I better start talking about the things I liked, huh?

Like I said, the first part of the film is the best. The drag race has a very fun energy and actually felt a hell of a lot more real than any chase that followed (positives, Sets, positives). My favourite scene in the whole picture was probably what is being called the "Doomtown" sequence. Funny and dead eerie all at once. Beautiful in insidious ways. Here, Indy escapes in a way that stretches credibility, but I completely didn't care. Because the scene was that sweetly horrific.

I liked Shia LaBouf. Riding up on his motorcycle, he was a dead ringer for Marlon Brando in The Wild One. I suddenly realised LaBouf has rather sensual lips.

Although the father/son stuff never works, I did like some of the energy between Indy and Mutt. I was reminded that the Uncle Scrooge comics were one of the inspirations for the Indiana Jones movies, and here Jones has sort of become Scrooge McDuck, and Mutt is Huey, Dewey, and Louie rolled into one. And a lot of good gags come out of this idea of a greaser completely out of his element.

There's a graveyard scene that was very cool.

So, anyway. Not a bad movie. Though it's definitely the weakest in the series. I won't spoil the ending for you, but prepare to be enormously disappointed. You might even enjoy it if you so prepare.

I have a lot to do to-day; I'm extremely pleased with how my project's shaping up, but I'm still having to talk myself out of seeing the midnight showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. To-morrow, maybe . . .

So, yeah. That's to-day's entry.

Both Dragoness and Mella having pointed me to this page on the snakes of Crete, I chose the cat snake for my half-gorgon (though I changed the colour).



Unfortunately, I had to lose the lovely scale pattern because of the time constraints of the comic. But I like the shape of the cat snake's head and the big eyes. Plus, as Dragoness correctly guessed, my half-gorgon is modelled after Simone Simon of Cat People;



I know it's not a perfect likeness, but that's pretty much how I wanted it.

I'm running a little late because of class and some errands I had to run. But to-night I'm working on the web site design and to-morrow I write the first comic script.

I did five or six drawings of all my new characters before I settled on anything, but I was happy with the first drawing of my half-gorgon;



Try and guess what famous actress I modelled her after. I'll be really impressed if you do as she didn't come out looking especially similar. Here's a hint; by guessing the actress, you'll easily be able to guess the species of my character's father.

I haven't filled in the details of the snakes yet. Does anyone know off the top of their head what snakes are indigenous to Greece? Wikipedia's being coy about it.

I listened to Ridley Scott's commentary to the new Blade Runner cut while drawing. The guy's gotten a lot chattier since his Alien and Legend commentaries; he seems to've learned the importance of avoiding dead air. He'd ramble on and on about random things at times.

He talked about how it was Harrison Ford's idea to affect a "Jerry Lewis" voice when he meets Zhora. Scott said Ford told him Humphrey Bogart had done something similar in one of his movies. "What film would that be . . . ?" mused Scott for a moment, and I couldn't help saying out loud, "The Big Sleep". I repeated it a couple times, but Scott wouldn't listen.

Here's one of my favourite bits from The Big Sleep, which actually just follows the scene in question;



And while YouTubeing, I thought this was an interesting pairing of songs;



Finally, buy some Caitlin R. Kiernan books;

Daughter of Hounds

Silk

Threshold

Low Red Moon

Murder of Angels

Tales of Pain and Wonder

It occurred to me to-day to look at the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus phenomenon in terms of Vertigo. Powerful, unseen men dress a girl, tell her how to behave, give her blonde hair, all in the interest of financial gain. The audience buys into this illusion of an innocently sexual girl, and trouble arises from a picture that suggests an earthier girl who might know all the sexual implications of her glamour. Oh, modern culture; Alfred Hitchock's still got your number.

To-night's my third night of working on character designs. I finalised the main character's design last night. I've been looking at medieval fashions, but I didn't want to just create a carbon copy of something, so I improvised here and there, eventually coming up with something that looks like a woman from 1450 who'd travelled back in time to 1250 and is making do with the available wardrobe.

I hope you don't mind if my girl's not innocent.

I watched the new Code Geass while eating breakfast, and it was an episode I particularly loved. "The world is full of lies!" says the Britannian Emperor at the opening (fansubbed by a group called Eclipse). "'Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not commit adultery.' These are all lies, all deceptions. 'I don't want to be killed. I don't want to be a victim of theft.' That is why they use lies like justice and morals to protect their weak selves. The original truth is the survival of the fittest. One must devour it all, whether it be other humans, wealth, power, or the world itself!" It was like bizarro John Locke talking.

We already learned last week that the character I thought had gotten a sex change, Nunnelly (the name itself is cringe-inducing), had in fact not gotten a sex change, but instead had become a governor. But this was still an improvement, and it actually led to a wonderful central conflict for the episode. In the first season, Nunnelly's brother, Lelouch, the show's main character, had become the masked insurgent leader, Zero, with the primary motive of creating a better world for Nunnelly. It always seemed like a really cheap, sentimental ploy to me, but it provided an opportunity in this episode for Lelouch to wrestle with this conflict of interest. My favourite scene began with Lelouch about to inject himself with a drug, but being stopped by his subordinate, Kallen (I'm pretty sure her name is "Karen", but all the fan subbers have settled on "Kallen"). He asks her to "comfort" him, but she won't give him this, and the reason is clear; his personal needs are less important that what being Zero means. "To wear a ring of power is to be alone," as Galadriel said.

I must admit this hits me at a rather personal level. It's something I've had to think about a lot as my personal needs for comfort and support have been denied noticeably this past year, though it's been a regular pattern for the past decade. And I see it happening to just about everyone I know, too. Sometimes I think working on something will help alleviate pain, but it never does. I have to keep working, though, because it's the only thing truly meaningful. While the established pattern of my life is that I invariably lose friends and things I care about, my own will is a constant.

I saw Iron Man last night, which was pretty fun. I always get a little weepy at superhero movies these days; this one got me when Iron Man goes and saves some civilians in an Afghani town. And I think; why aren't there Tony Starks out there? Why doesn't Richard Branson make himself a superpowered metal suit and go fight evildoers? I think we all know the idea's occurred to him.

I guess there's danger in thinking this way considering what's happened in Iraq, but I don't think anyone seriously believes the Bush administration had altruistic motives. Motivation is important, as is awareness of what one might or might not accomplish. It doesn't seem remotely strange that Stark doesn't want his suit mass-produced for the United States military. The greatness of an individual's power is too often contrasted with the reality that most powerful people are jerks.

Looking up Short Round on Wikipedia to-day, I learned that he "appeared in the non-canonical crossover story in Star Wars Tales, where he and Indiana discover the remains of Han Solo in the crashed Millennium Falcon in the Pacific Northwest." And I got all sad again. What happened, Han? What strange circumstance sent you to Earth, only to meet your death? Are you Indiana's ancestor, who dwelt for a while on Earth before deciding to die on the Falcon for sentimental reasons? Or did you just get here and die?

What's with me to-day? Hormones? Sheesh.

In lighter news, I see the lead character from Final Fantasy XIII, a woman for the first time since Final Fantasy VI's Terra/Tina*, is going to be named "Lightning". Let the Greased Lighting jokes begin.

*Final Fantasy VI is actually the last in the series not to feature a lead character in the manner of the games that followed, but you start out using Terra, so I kind of look at her as the lead.

I did finish the history last night and I celebrated with a tall glass of martini and a few hours in Second Life. So there'll be lots of drawing to-day, and I wanted to stop by Tim's house, so I'm short on time. Fortunately, I last night secured content for to-night's entry.

Showing off, amongst other things, the truly smashing new shoes Dragoness gave her, here's Toubanua pole dancing in Dragoness' Mogor, a land where chess is played and other things also occur.


"Alice's Right Foot, Esq. Hearthrug, near the Fender, (with Alice's love)."


But first, a little more of Leia's famous metal bikini.


There's Dragoness in the background, also dancing. The dancing animations she has on the poles are truly amazing, as are a lot of the dancing animations she's collected. Every time I think I've seen all of them, something new will happen.




And now, Toubanua dances while smoking, for your pleasure, ladies and gentlemen.


This was from an amazing moment that's not quite captured here where Tou slid down the pole while slowly exhaling smoke rings.

I got a 92 on my King Lear paper. Looks like I might actually pass this class. I could be turning over a new leaf. Sure, I'm only taking one class, and it's a subject I'm interested in, but those are two things that never stopped me from failing before.

To-day, I will finish my fake history I've been working on since December. I couldn't get to sleep until after 7am just for all the gears turning in my head. Since I've been rewriting the first couple chapters in my head all this time, there's been a sort of temporary, ghost history in my head, and part of the challenge was making it meet up with the one I've been writing. I figured finding the right way to do it would be like finding good rhythm in a poem, and I think I finally hit on the key just before going to sleep.

Earlier, I played two games of chess in Second Life, first against a guy named Nite who played me and Akiko at the same time--on two different boards. And he lost both games. I beat him just moments before Akiko did, but I played Akiko next and she, as usual, beat me.

Not much else to talk about right now. Here's a picture I took of Tou in a new green dress, standing in a Crete sim.

I managed to wait until 10:30 to make my martini. Well, partly it was just that I knew getting the crushed ice would create a lot of noise and I didn't think I oughta wait until my grandmother was trying to sleep. Anyway, I was happy to discover that I make a fantastic vodka martini. Maybe a little too much of it; I felt like I put in too much vermouth so I added a lot of vodka and ended up filling my goblet to the brim. But it was so good. I had to slow myself--gulping a martini just didn't seem the thing to do.

Extra martini, to me, demands extra olives, so I gave it three. Olives are one of the truly great things about a martini. They're like dessert.

So I somehow managed to write what I needed to write with the martini. Three concise paragraphs where I thought I was going to need eight. Looking at it this afternoon, thinking I was going to have to edit it at least a little, I found only a single word I wanted to change.

I've noticed inebriation doesn't seem to affect my odds of winning at chess, either. Maybe it's Zui Quan. Anyway, I won a game against Dragoness and then joined her for some shibari shopping. I managed to take some pictures (though none of shibari in action, I'm afraid), which I don't often seem to have time for these days as I seem to spend most of my Second Life time playing chess;


Here's one of those outfits I just had to have, of course. Tou's in a giant doll case here, and I thought the outfit seemed appropriate, although it might have been a likelier place for Jabba to store Captain Solo.


This is in one of the shibari shops, though it was largely free of shibari and big on atmosphere.


Some books don't need conversations, if the pictures are good enough. Yes, the Alice pinafore dress is another outfit I just had to have. I need to find better hair for it, though. Good blonde hair is hard to find--it's usually either too yellow or too bright. This one's colour is right, but as you can see, it just doesn't move properly.


"They lived on treacle," said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.

"They couldn't have done that, you know," Alice gently remarked. "They'd have been ill."

"So they were," said the Dormouse; "very ill."


"Do you hear the snow against the window-panes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside."


I'm not sure what on earth this thing was.


Lastly, Tou modelling her new green eyes. What did you think this picture was about? Stop looking at her panties, you.