Girl on Girl
(email excerpt)
Your email with the Nick Cave naked lady on lady drawings got me thinking female relationships so I drew these two nice ladies having tea. The one on the left is thinking, “You see me,” and the one the right is thinking, “I feel validated.” Actually, I was reading on Reddit about the difference between male and female friendships. The Redditor said that women have face to face relationships and men have side by side relationships. I am not sure about all that. What does that mean to you?
*****
B
B is for bugs. I was working outdoors at a cafe in defiance of common sense during the time of the coronavirus. While making some scribbles during a very important work related meeting, a dead cicada dropped out of the tree above me and landed on my notebook. I pulled out my ipad and drew it lying there on top of my scribbles That drawing is attached here in a .png file titled Bug1. This past week I have been collecting dead cicadas as I come across them and they are everywhere. Bottoms up on the sidewalks, stuck to the side of trees or the screens of windows. Frozen in their death rigor. I have been grabbing them as I see them, popping them in my shirt pocket and then tossing them into an isopropyl bath when I get home. Some need a little help getting to the afterlife so they go into my freezer for a day before the isopropyl jar. It is cruel to gas bugs. It is much more humane to freeze them. So they soak for a week in the isopropyl bath and then I pin them in little poses to a canvas covered board. When they dry, I remove all the pins except the central pin that pierces their thorax and display them on my wall in a shadow box. If I did this to people, I would be considered quite the psychopath. I am developing quite a collection. I've attached two other pictures I drew on my ipad. Bug2 and Bug3. These are also cicadas on top of a notebook page with scribbles. I think the cicadas I have collected here in my little corner of Illinois are annual cicadas. They stay underground as nymphs for one to nine years sucking on tree sap from tree roots, and then they emerge as adults to eat, screw, and die all in about a week or two. The adults suck some more on tree sap. The males make a loud enough noise to cause hearing damage, that's about 120 decibels. The cicada version of, "Hey, girl. Can I holler at you sometime?" Then mission accomplished, eggs fertilized and layed, it's off to meet their maker.
B is also for boxing and brain damage sports. I love watching boxing. I have been watching some great fights on youtube before bed. I watched Lomachenko v. Linares last night and Inoue v. Denaire the night before. I like watching the light flyweight to super lightweight fights. They're so quick. Lomachenko studied dance as a youth in Ukraine and it really shows in his movement in the ring. The heavies are classic but there is just so much finesse with the smaller guys. This Inoue fellow is crazy good. In the fight with Denaire he caught Denaire with a low left hook to the liver. After a split second delay, Denaire pulled away from Inoue, ran a little ring around the referee and then dropped to his knees for a nine count. Someone in the youtube comments wrote that Inoue has destroyed more livers than Jack Daniels. Denaire got his jabs in as well throughout the fight. Although ultimately losing by decision to Inoue, he worked his opponent's face pretty good fracturing Inoue's right orbital and breaking his nose. I was going to draw a picture of Inoue getting his face punched in by Denaire, but I took a nap instead.
The Boss
*****
Here are some doodles I made during meetings. I bring colored pencils and markers with me to meetings that I know are going to be really long. I also have them close at hand for web-based conferences.
Am I paying attention to the meeting content? 80% to 90%. I am a solid B/B+ human being. There are, of course, meetings that really count. Then I am 100%. I've discovered the following about senior level leadership:
1) Everyone wants your attention. It takes at least six months in any new job to be able to intelligently determine what you can ignore and what you need to pay attention to.
2) 10% of your employees will cause you 90% of your problems.
3) People like to hear themselves talk (myself included). Try to listen more.
4) Bring colored pencils and markers to really long meetings.
Three songs from an overworked man.