The Chapman

That damn Billy had been sleeping, Thomasse thought. Why was he even here, if the fool couldn’t stay awake? But at least the business with Behar was more or less concluded. He knew the merchant would likely prove untrustworthy, but yet, what choice did he have? And anyhow the point was not so much the transfer, or the money, but the end of it. The end of it! How good that seemed, for the captain of the Samuel. He’d be lucky to escape the noose. He knew it. And if he had learned one thing in the voyage of the Samuel, it was that he did not want to die, and even more, was afraid beyond description of death, terrorized in fact. He’d seen so much simple death, and altho’ it had been much the same in England, with the sicknesses and plagues, it frighted him so much more when it occurred from the actions of men beyond his control. The terror of it. It shamed him and made him feel weak… but it was almost over. He stood in the dark room, and Behar the merchant stayed seated. Once, twice, he did that terrible hand gesture, and then it was done. The Jew remained silent, merely watching the two men, Thomasse standing rigidly, Billy stretching and swiveling about. Finally Thomasse said, “We’ll begyn unloading immed’tely, and the other two shippes will be under way as soon as they are able”. The merchant replied not, but nodded his head, and the two men of the Samuel took their leave, walking into the streets of Lascars, which was now lurking in soon-to-be twilight. The air was still, and the noise of the town trickled out fenesters and through the alleyways. They walked, and Thomasse said to Billy, “Return to the Samuel, and tell th’ men to send for the other ships; the dealinge is done, and it is tyme to liquidate and move onne”. Billy looked mild askance; and what was Thomasse going to do?

Coins, great, yeah. What kind of objects or artifacts did they find? That's what I want to know!

Astarte

Been working on woodcut drawings... The style turned out pretty well here. Next up is a ship picture...

astroturf

Off brand 'ritz' crackers with Monterrey Jack cheese. Signs warning for land mines (illustrated online, thank you) The Girl A couple I met on a train in Europe, years ago, who gave me an apple to eat.

^ Grey wool watch type cap from J Crew, which I got comfortable with wearing all the time, and now wear it a lot even when it's not cold. > A friend tells me it makes me look like a White Muslim... V What's the loudest color piece in your wardrobe?

Mad jack, I love your signature.

I should mention: I am also very thin and have crooked teeth. This made people endlessly confused, as I obviously couldn't be from the United States, as everyone knows all 'Americans' are well-fed and have perfect white teeth! (In England, later, when I was resting and getting the energy to come back to the US, I was so embarrassed by the behavior of US tourists I started lying to people and telling them I was Canadian.) When I was asked where I was from, and I answered 'Chicago', the response was (waving AK variant), "Oh, so you're used to this sort of thing!" with 'Rat-tat-tat' sound effects. I learned that the two most famous Americans there were Al Capone and Michael Jordan. I nearly got my head blown off over what I thought was an innocuous comment about Mickey Mouse. We were sitting around drinking, and this guy asked me if, being from Chicago, I knew Michael Jordan. I tried to explain that Michael Jordan was such a famous person he was almost fictional, and asking me if I knew him was like asking me if I knew, oh, Mickey Mouse. The guy went apeshit, pulled his pistol and was going to shoot me, and the host restrained him, hustled him out the door, and I was sitting there with no clue as to what was going on. Later I learned that under the UN sanctions, intellectual property was embargoed, including all Disney products. The flow of goods from the Magic Kingdom was stopped, except for black market stuff. Now, something else I learned is that Mickey is about the closest thing to a national mascot the FRY has; he is a national icon. Pulling Mickey from the country was considered a huge insult, so much so that the FRY government commissioned illegal cartoons of Disney characters to print for the kids. After the sanctions were lifted Disney Corp sued the FRY for copyright infringement and wanted damages. So, my comment was taken a little bit the wrong way...

Well, actually, my outfit consisted of this: -Croatian Rockport shoes -Genuine American Levis (not Turkish knockoffs) -Black button-down shirt (no T-shirt) -Slovenian wool sportcoat -Swiss Army cap -East German surplus coat -and yeah, a Serbian Orthodox cross on black thread around my neck -Black wool scarf -small round green-tinted sunglasses -American Tourister carry-on bag, made of Kevlar, with a sheet plate inserted in the bottom, with the 'American Tourister' logo ground off Personal effects: -Digital promotional watch from Burger King, with Michael Jordan on it, that I found in the parking lot of the Catholic Church across from my apartment -Paper cutout of the Archangel Michael in my passport case -Ten-dollar 35mm camera from Walgreens with never more than two rolls of B&W film -Maps -Drina cigarettes (or Bulgarian Marlboros) and matches -Notebooks for directions, translations and, well, notes -Swiss Army knife -A couple pages from phrase books, cut out of the books to save space and weight (I threw those away later, I didn't need them) -A paperback copy of Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO.

^ Me? Politically correct? No. > Well, kind of. I don't use racial slurs in conversation, if that's what you mean. My co-workers do, particularly in regard to Hispanic people, and it bugs me. So maybe I am. I get sick of macho posturing and sexual invective on the job, and actually prefer to work around women. So maybe. V Who has been your OLDEST co-worker?

Billy blinked, woke up, and looked firmly at the two white men before him, huddled pathetically in their dark hovel. They were plotting nonsense with their small minds. They couldn't comprehend the vastness and grandeur of the spirit world which swirled about them constantly, and brought valuable messages which Man ignored at his peril. He paused, caught a breath, and said quietly to no-one in particular, "...Ay'l die a wealthy manne".

I was in a bad mood the other day and posted this on my blog, not dreaming in a MILLION BILLION YEARS that it had already happened! Check out the link. Unbelievable. " I know what I'll reenact! A Balkan paramilitary! I'll swagger around in shiny combat boots, camouflage pants, and a black T-shirt with a skull on it that says, in English, "Kill'em all, let God sort 'em out". I'll wrap a bandanna around my head and have a Bulgarian Marlboro dangling from my lip. My T-shirt sleeves will be rolled up to hold a pack of aforementioned Bulgarian Marlboros, ala James Dean, and all the better to show off my tough guy tattoos. Let's see; I'll get high on Turkish hash, drunk on rakija, and pop fistfulls of cheap speed. I'll carry a Zastava M70 and a gymbag with a Chicago Bulls logo on it stuffed with spare magazines. Let's not forget the belts of ammo for the squad Sarac looped across my chest. I'll drive around in a Zastava 101, with its top torched off, loaded with looted small household appliances and televisions. I'll whimsically slaughter some things and people in my path, but not others, depending on how I feel at the time, all the while listening to bootleg tapes of Megadeth on my stolen Walkman. Oh, the fun I'll have! The friends I'll make!" http://www.croatianforces.co.uk/gallery.htm

Billy was dreaming, sleeping lightly. The world touched, receded, faded and disappeared, only to materialize again, in brighter colors, in a hot sun different from here, on the Lascar. The sun, the sun was bright, so bright, dazzling, in contrast to the darkness of the room had been in, and transported as he was, it took a moment to realize that the surroundings were quite different. He could hear the Ewe on the coast of Africa, it was his People, singing, and Billy, finding himself exiting the sunlight on a path through a small, sparse forest, followed the sound. He checked his neck for the sash and his pistol, just in case, and found himself naked from the waist up, clad in a wrapped cloth and unarmed, and painted in a dazzling design of great complexity, lines drawn on his breast like converging rivers. The lines followed his ribs and groin all the way to the ends of his legs, and while he didn’t look, he could feel a design of thick paint on the soles of his feet. The sound became louder, and he was almost upon it, he felt, when the forest opened slightly in a small bulge of openness, and there was a man crouching in this tiny clearing. The man was pausing momentarily to draw a design in an area of cleared dirt, singing himself, but his song was in tonal conflict with the song of the others. It was separate. He was writing, as well as drawing, and Billy looked over his shoulder, despite feeling it rude. He looked at crude pictures. There was a drawing of a village, and a line running from that village with a small boy attached to it, and the line continued, to a house, with a woman; and as the line continued it traversed another house, with another woman; and finally ended at the figure of a man. As he watched the man draw, the boy became a man, and left the village, and traveled to a sea, and fished. The fish leaped into the newly found man’s boat, and he prospered, and Billy saw the drawing change into another house, with a woman. The lines speeded up, the man’s skills cruder yet, his pace accelerating. The boat became something different, and Billy didn’t quite recognize it, at first, and then as large squares appeared over a blocky shape it became a ship. The ship filled with small lines, that suddenly grew more smaller lines, like hair, almost, and filled the hold, and these lines were human beings, and fellow Ewe. The man looked up, and looked down, and the stick he held as his tool morphed and faded and solidified again, into a stiffened snake, and Billy grew afraid of a hex put upon him, but the man looked again, and he felt no fear. The drawings had disappeared; and the man wrote, in English letters, the single word: DELA And the snake came to life and jumped out of the man’s hand, and slithered over the word, and the word became: BILLY At that Billy/Dela backed away, and turned and ran, frightened, and ran through the opening into the sound-filled clearing, the space filled with people, his People, the drumming filling his existence, the whip-man appearing behind him, and grinning, and shouting his approval for he, Billy/Dela, had been gone far too long, and it was his great day. The drummer-leader jumped from the crowd of whirling, sweating people, their devotion and worship apparent to the most jaded disbeliever, and guided him through the passionate crowd, shouting his joy. Billy/Dela looked about, and saw for the first time, the hole, that women were standing around, shouting and swaying, and he walked over to the hole, shaking off his guide the drummer-leader to sate his curiosity. In the hole was his wife. She was dressed in the greatest finery he had ever seen, and he had forgotten how young she had been. And he knew that she had not looked so finely the last glimpse he had of her, and it gladdened him to see her. And she had moved on. The drummer-leader caught him, and grinning and shouting, dragged him bodily to another place, and the crowd in their joy momentarily lifted Billy/Dela off his feet and swept him along. He didn’t think the song could intensify but it did. The hole appeared abruptly. In fact it looked as if it had suddenly dug itself. Billy/Dela gazed into this carefully scraped entrenchment, and saw the man at the bottom, dressed in the finery of an English Lord. He puzzled over this, and what its meaning could be, if it was a spell somehow, and as he watched, he knew the man in the hole. It was his greatest day and his burial was the finest ever known, and the man in the hole was himself. Thomasse shouted, “WAKE OPP!”

^ Inside, the kitchen. Close to the fridge for more beer. Outside, porch, weather permitting, preferably front to watch the world go by (although not as close to the fridge for beer). > Spent the day indulging myself in my hatred of people who drive in pouring rain in silvery-gray cars with their lights off. V Squirrels: feed them or try to run them off?

I only come here to look at Red Wake's logo...ZZZZZZZZZZZ

HA! 'Red Harvest'!

^ 1) It's on a pallet jack; always bad! Anything on a pallet jack isn't art! > Tim Curry in IT! (the miniseries) V a neighbor girl came up to me after, oh, three years of knowing me on Halloween, and said, "Hey, that's a guy in a clown costume!" Revealing her perceptions of the figure as... some sort of... other being. Scariest clown? Hey?

^ In my humble opinion, getting rid of it; for me, it feels like I've eaten a large lump of cement. Which is why I spent my time eating Lebanese salad at kiosks. > I have to go to work, and I don't feel I accomplshed enough over the weekend. V I'll pass that along; the best part? the beans? Wot?

THE HOI AN HOARD After being discovered by fisherman this became the only shipwreck to come on the market having been carried out as an archaeological excavation. The Vietnamese Government protected the site and Mensum Bound became site excavation Director, and with his team at Mare, the maritime archaeological branch of Oxford University the ceramics and other artefacts were recorded and recovered. The boat was probably Thai as it was of teak construction and betel-chewing equipment was found. It was large, about 30 meters in length possibly carrying 25.000 ceramics items. It sank in the Dragon Sea not far from Vietnamese town of Hoi An. As well as this immense cargo many items from everyday use were found, food for the crew, cooking pots, and even some of the passengers and the crew themselves, 20 rat sculls and ONE CAT SKULL were also recovered. Tentatively dated c. mid-1400s.

Brazilian Jews were scattered around in the New World after the Portuguese retook Brazil from the Dutch. Jewish merchants were very much a part of business life in the Caribbean, but, as usual, they were discriminated against and ghettoized, on Barbados and Jamaica, and the other islands. British merchants attempted to regulate and legislate the amount and level of Jewish merchants' involvement in the Caribbean trade; and personally I don't find it at all unlikely that a refugee merchant from Brazil would find his niche as the middleman between pirates and the ultimate destination of goods: 'legitimate' British merchants.

The three men sat in the dark room, surrounded by papers and wooden boxes of papers, the single lanthorn glowing. Why was it so damn dark in here? thought Billy. It was quite seasonable out doors. There were windows, but they were tightly shut. Behar, the merchant Jew from Brazil, sat quietly, carefully perusing the lists of goods recorded on paper, setting neatly on the table. He folded his hands, opened them like a delicate flower (Billy noted the softness of his palms and finger pads), folded them again. This went on several times, in cycles, as if pleading with his God to release him from the burden of business. He began to speak, caught himself, cleared his throat, no, no dialogue. Only study. Riffling through the pages (of there were eight, closely written, some by Thomasse, some by Byrd), Behar revealed nothing. His eyes were dark pools, wells of considerating blankness. It was like playing Hazzard with an effigie, Thomasse thought. Finally Behar spoke, his English perfect in structure but affected with the slow slant of Portuguese. “This is a very long list, with very large cargoes. Some of it may have to go to the Northern Colonies, I may not risk taking it here.” Thomasse, his eyes wide, straightened suddenly and started to speak, but Behar furrowed his brow and added, “Who wrote this part of the list?” He pointed to a particular section, obviously written by Byrd, with a swirling ‘B’ in a heading. Thomasse replied, “Some man of the crewe. No-one of importance, but literate enough, I s’posed”. The merchant nodded, and then looked up from beneath his brows, not at Thomasse, but at Billy. He said, “The penman reminds of someone who is, I’m sure, dead. No matter”. Behar pushed from the table, adjusting his broad-brimmed hat ever so slightly, to a more advantageous angle, and Billy caught him in a contradiction; between obedience to custom and his vanity. It was a useful thing to know, he thought, that Behar was human and therefore vulnerable. Thomasse reflected on the man’s statement, and returned to the subject at hand. “Wot d’ye mean, can’t take it here? You have to take it here. Man, look at it! Look at all the goods!” Behar responded with his hand gestures again, flowering, retreating, flowering, retreating. Billy looked over at Thomasse, and noticed his English color coming into his neck. He suddenly felt amused at how this little man was playing with Thomasse; but then the realization that the Behar man was also playing with him, and the rest of the crew, sobered and angered him ever so slightly. He regarded Behar more carefully, assessing the merchant. Thomasse fought for control of himself. It was true that any delay in selling the three ships would likely result in the crew doing something rash… what was this slimish man up to? He had to sell. The damnable merchant began his hand play again. Thomasse found himself feeling beaten, suddenly, and just ever so briefly remembered the feeling of the last ship, of being rooted to the decking; and it frightened him and he shook it off, thinking of riches and privilege. He spoke clearly and firmly to Behar the Merchant Jew: “We need your price, as it is my understandings all these treasure are yours for a practical bargain. We need it now. You have until this eve, and we sail away or offer to another middler than you”. Thomasse looked the merchant in the eye. “Agreed?” Behar flipped through the papers again. And to Billy’s endless boredom, the discussions went on for some more time, until finally he dozed lightly, and he dreamed.

^ A guy I'll call B. >When I managed SSI apartments I went to one of the buildings to find B, one of my tenants, chopping up the parking lot with an axe, prying chunks out with a giant bowie knife, and placing them in a shopping cart. When I asked him what he was doing he replied, "I'm digging for gold, my spacemen friends told me to, and it's going to fix all my problems". I went inside and called his caseworker, who panicked, screamed at me not to go near him, and called the police. They sauntered up about two hours later, by which time B was long gone. I never saw B again. That's not really the craziest, but... some of the others nobody really needs to hear about. V Who is the most talented person you've ever been friends with?

In writing stories with a cast it is refreshing and relaxing, I find, to switch viewpoints. It's why my little funtime is my dumb little thing in RR. I typically write/draw historical fiction in the visual format of graphic novel, which, because of just the nature of the beast, almost always features a single dominant protagonist. Why is that? I have my theories... I do need to write that up sometime soon, a theory of how the presentation of a visual work to a mass audience, by whatever means, is linked to a function of similarity to national symbols, like Uncle Sam, or the British Lion; and that creating a 'popular character' (like, say, Jack Sparrow, or Spiderman, or Bugs Bunny) creates a kind of ad hoc nation, and the protagonist or main character is acting as a 'national symbol' of sorts. Also, that these national symbols or icons occur in predictable patterns throughout human history in the use of popular cultural icons... which means I'll have to dig through the thousands of scans I've got of narrative art from the dawn of time to now. Bummer. Comes to mind because I've been reading Hobbes' LEVIATHAN again, and thinking about how much the illustration of The Leviathan influenced me a long time ago...

^ I drive, and get paid by the hour not the mile, and am almost never in the shop, so the answer is a lot. Personal errands, reading the paper, taking pictures, pretty much anything I can get away with without arousing too much suspicion I'm wasting time. > Today I checked out the harbor in downtown Kenosha, WI, because one of my deliveries was within, oh, five miles. V Passing along, please, it's a fun question.