Sheldon Cooper's Fun With Names

"Sheldon Cooper here, along with my talented assistant, Amy Farah Fowler. Tonight--and I'll get to that in a minute--we're going to examine caveats about naming your kids."

"Here's an example," Amy said. "If your last name is Moore, don't name your daughter Mona."

"Did you catch that?" Sheldon grinned. "It's quite a romanticized--"

"Yes, Sheldon, I think they can figure that out. Why don't we introduce our guest, who has an unusual name."

"Right, and she's the reason we're here at night, because she's a vampire." Sheldon rocked with glee, getting into the game. "She has a curious aversion to cameras, and prefers to sit over by the window. I must say, the way those curtains rustle in the moonlight creates quite a ghostly effect."

Amy took note of Sheldon's increasing infatuation. "Be careful, Sheldon. This woman is some kind of succubus."

"Really, Amy, that's a curious statement from one who holds a doctorate in biology."

"Biology is exactly what I'm worried about."

"Nonsense. Let's bring her into our discussion.She's known only as Cambris. Tell us something about the etymology."

"The last two letters," said the mystery woman, "are a legacy of Norse settlers who migrated to the Caucasus. It is not my legacy, as I am from Magyar and Slavic stock."

"May I say," Sheldon began, "it all came together in a most pleasing way."

Amy discreetly smacked his thigh. "Miss Cambris, I noticed how you applied lipstick without using a mirror."

"Now how could she use a mirror?" Sheldon grinned hugely.

Did nothing strike this woman as funny? "I am adept at applying cosmetic, which of needs is consumed by use of spell craft."

"Amazing!" Sheldon actually clapped. "She's brought a new angle to the genre! I'd also expound on what Amy said, seeing how your eyes are drained of color. Contact lenses, of course, but how do you explain that in your paradigm?"

"As I indicated," she said, "pigment is leached by magic. Their amber iridescence shall be restored when next I feed."

Sheldon slapped a knee in delight. "She has it all covered! I wouldn't be surprised if you can tell us the town where you became a creature of the night."

"The town of Split on the Adriatic, where I was wife to the village alderman."

The topic of names was now the topic of Cambris. Feeling the first tingle of dread, Amy brought out a small mirror where Sheldon wouldn't see it.

But Cambris did. Her upper lip curled to expose the roots of fangs.

"Amy?" Concerned, Sheldon gave her a little shake. "It's your turn to ask her a question."

"Oh. . . .okay. I'll ask her in person." Amy had been working in her purse, joining two pens with tape. She approached Cambris out of camera view and sprang her makeshift crucifix, which had positively no effect.

"It is powered by faith," Cambris said, rising. "Yours seems to be deficient." Soulless eyes locked hypnotically with Amy's.

"Really now, Amy!" Sheldon's intervention broke the spell. "We mustn't prevail on her to perform that old shtick." He came to offer a hand. "It's been a pleasure, Miss Cambris. Say--you're really cold. I'm--"

Amy drew him away in mid-sentence.

"Amy, that was rude! Wait--where'd she go?" Curtains wafted at the open window. "What a trouper, making a realistic exit that way! I just hope she doesn't fall from way up here."

"Somehow," Amy said, swallowing her fear, "I doubt that will happen."

The Script Serling Found Implausible

One simple way to get half tones is the old fashioned horizontal line. It's tedious, though, especially when modern copiers are light years ahead of the old Xerox machines.

The Outworld Connection

On this summer night, the Wicca Horror Show did its live segments at Ocean World. The three mermaids from Six Forks flew in for a special appearance, performing close to the viewing glass in a private space to thwart photo bombs from dolphins and orcas.

From their press box, Wicca and producer Ed had a good view of the mermaids. In addition to the cameraman, they were joined by a furtive, hooded figure. The main problem for a vampire like Cambris was all the phone cameras she failed to register in. Thus, she was here incognito, and Ed had  good reason for keeping her close.

The movie back at the studio paused for a commercial.

"Now a word from Woofy Pill," Wicca announced. "It's only for men--something about enhancement, whatever that is. Side effects include panting, fleas, and toilet drinking." She gave Ed a snide look. "And you say we're complicated." The nearby sponsor clapped hand to face in disbelief.

Wicca took time to sign her latest poster for a few fans who had actually seen the show. This one was more cheese-cakey than the norm, but managed to look sinister all the same. Signed ones had "Wix" slashed across one corner in lurid violet. "Now then--let's see what the fish women are up to. The blonde in white is Binia; the black hair in blue is Sirtis; and the redhead in green is Ellie."

Ed watched how they were able to stay under for so long. Each had a conch shell she would bring to her face every couple of minutes. Most likely they were suction-activated compressed air devices, with digital counters to show remaining breaths.

Binia "poured" from a pitcher for Ellie, who pretended to drink, then followed up with an undulating napkin. Sirtis read a newspaper, no mean feat underwater. After a short stint of submerged Frisbee, they surfaced to applause at a miniature pirate ship. This would ferry them to a private dock for getting into a truck.

"By infernal night," Cambris intoned. "What wastage of noblesse is this?" Fortunately unnoticed, she became a mist and flowed toward the gigantic pool.

"Krikey." Ed prepared to race her to the scene."I expected her to be a little spacey after three days without a nip. Quick--find us a suitable target."

"She thinks they're real?" Wicca grinned. "Why not. We have mermaids in the Outworld. You know, Vern?"

Ed used his credentials to access the private dock just as Cambris materialized on the stern. The girls had met Wicca before, and knew about the supernatural. But this was something else.

"It's cool," Ed assured them as he threw a mooring line. "That's Cambris. I was showing her a story some guy wrote about a vampire mermaid."

Ellie put fingers to throat. "A vampire mermaid? That's just wrong."

"You mean. . . ." Binia slid Cambris a wide-eyed look.

"Right," Ed said. "She's the real deal."

Cambris glided closer, and the mermaids looked ready to dive overboard. "Not since doomed Atlantis, birthplace of you, my sisters of the sea, was there such exploitation. Who has done this to you?"

Leaning near Binia, Sirtis said, "She thinks we're real. Should we tell her?"

"No," Binia said. "I want to see where she's going with this."

"Allow me to answer that." Ed motioned Cambris back toward the press box. "She's looking for a meal." He looked sheepish. "We have rules, and everything. Only bad guys." He hoped Wicca had scrounged up a suitable mark in her crystal skull. Keeping a nervous track of the vampire, he returned to the press box.

"How about this," Wicca began, displaying an image in the talisman. "Here's a guy handing out anarchist flyers. I don't know what you're looking for, but that doesn't sound very nice to me."

"Boogity," Ed said. "Miss Cambris, you don't have to limit yourself to a nip. Go ahead and break the bank." Cambris' eyes shrank to predatory pinpoints as she awaited a clarification.

"Writers." Wicca rolled eyes. "He means it's time to cull the herd."

Cambris became a mist again, and flowed unseen toward her target, who conveniently lurked in the shadows.

Dreary Cold Dusk

When it's wet out, you can have a colorful sky even when only a minute of light remains. So finds the child playing in a wagon of cold rain water. She'd better get home before someone turns that light out, though--it's the only landmark. Acrylic, 16x20.

Drawing Elements

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/49398927150650673/
Some of us are self taught artists while many of us want to fine tune our skills to create a more professional piece of artwork.  Some artists take a while to get back at it when they have had a period of producing little art.  Some skills are rusty getting back into it.  One of the various ways that seem to be most difficult is the technique of shading with graphite.   While in my many first drawing courses, instructors would lend advice of what worked for them. For example, one process is to try out various pencils of various shades for the effects of your piece.  Perhaps it is mechanical pencils.  Somehow I prefer the mechanical pencils but the leads go up to 4B as I have recently searched on Amazon.com.
I tend to go back and forth a bit.  I prefer a toothy to smooth drawing paper such as bristol or other kind of bond paper.  As a frugal artist just looking for angles in my sketches, I just use regular computer paper then tracing paper to make the points of sketches to perspectives of my subject. 

In shading with graphite, it comes down to the direction of light and shade on an object.  I got to experiment with various still lifes to gain more practice and paying attention that each object on the display were just shapes and fabrics and how light fell on them from a window on a sunny day.

To draw shiny objects, lots of practice on metal objects such as wrenches, tools, and I do have letter opener swords as well.  It's kinda like making up a story with your still life as you display it how you want.

As I gravitated from my books to the illustration process, a bit rusty but nothing I can't handle by brushing up skills.  One of the challenges of illustrations in graphite is snow on a mountain slope.  Not deep powdery stuff but a light snow with patches of grass.   

Thinking back on my insttructors tips, if you can draw and shade well in graphite your paintings will be even better.   Keep in mind of the elements of art.  Line, shape, color, form, value, texture, space. I also want to add unity.  Art has unity as in nature.

How has your journey as an artist been similar or different? 

The House of Oreander

For Artemus Jaxson, the close of visiting hours meant his job had just begun. This latest excavation at Pompeii had caught his notice in a journal of history, leading him all the way from England to hide behind stacks of amphorae. Whatever the horizontal urns had once held was long gone, as was a reputed magician called Oreander who dug this basement. But there was a third sub-level Oreander wrote about in his cryptic notes. A scholar like Artemus was able to worm out the details of period Latin, right down to local idioms and current events of the day.

Hearing the gate shut above in the atrium, Artemus crept out of hiding and headed for a boxy stone, on which a corpse sat pensively considering the disaster which had befallen him. When this chamber was cleared of ash, excavators scanned for signs of body-shaped voids. This they carefully worked around, leaving intact a realistic shell complete with melted facial features.

Artemus played his light over the mud mummy. "Sorry, old boy, but I must disturb your master's repose." He set about searching the base for a hidden panel. There he found the lever for an ingenious counterweight, and the gruesome sculpture grated aside to reveal a round hole. Dank cold air rushed out, along with (perhaps imagined) a sepulchral sigh.

Spiral metal stairs reached down to a secret well. Dripping water echoed along a stagnant concourse barely ankle deep; the pending eruption of Vesuvius had dried up the city's water supplies. Artemus tucked his nose into his shirt against the cloying swamp odor, sweeping his light in both directions. Stygian voids presented at either end, but the niche he sought emerged from the gloom.

Carved from rocky soil, the arched chamber featured recessed shelves stocked with rotting tomes, braziers, and a desk. A figure had hands on it as if in the act of rising.

"Quintullus Oreander," Artemus said. "I've come to see what you have bequeathed the world." He tried not to look at the specter, whose toga hung in tatters from parchment flesh. Upon the desk lay an open scroll. Artemus blew away the dust, recognized the writing as an incantation. As he spoke the words, reality shifted.

He was looking down a forum littered with bodies and overturned carts, looming from a nightmare world of black snow. Animals brayed, dogs barked, people shrieked in despair. North, past the old ruins of the temple of Jupiter, there appeared the author of this apocalypse. Vesuvius sent tongues of flame into a black sky that danced with sheet lightning, the roaring thermal vents giving notice of the pyroclastic flow that would soon end all life.

No one paid heed to the oddly-dressed man who staggered under a hail of pebbles and pumice, who crawled toward the dubious shelter of the cloth maker's guild. Artemus had to laugh at the trick played upon him.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

Authorities were perplexed by the man in rich period costume who emerged from the House of Oreander. He only spoke Latin, leading them to suspect he was a deranged history buff. Yet the man wasn't at all bothered at being detained, exhibiting a childlike wonder at everything around him. One of the guards joked about the guy having been asleep for two thousand years.

Archetypes

Never a man to share the spotlight, Horst backed a tanker truck to a remote tributary of the Rhine. He feared neither his quarry nor the need to hunt at night. His reputation as a myth buster swelled his confidence to the level of bravado. He'd lost count of how many mythical creatures and local legends turned out to be freaks of nature or hoaxes.

Horst used a red light, since red didn't carry far in the dark. He waded through rushes, the sloshing covered by razoring bugs and croaking frogs. With the trap set, he quickly covered the water truck with foliage, ready to receive its denizen of the deep. He scanned the waters with night-vision binoculars.

Mixed opinions assailed him as he breathed the night air. The mermaid lore of this backwater village based itself on something. No manatees could survive here, leading him to suspect a hoax. Tonight, some woman in a mermaid suit was due a reckoning.

Horst gave the child mannikin another tug. He counted on the quarry's maternal instincts when it came to children lost in the dark. The ploy bore fruit faster than he'd hoped; a head broke the surface, leaving a smooth wake as it approached. Whoever it was didn't use arm strokes, but rather flippers or some kind of suit.

Now it rose to waist height, an astonishing semblance of the real thing. Was it possible? Greenish scales gradually faded to pale flesh at the sternum. Dark hair sported garlands of aquatic growth. By the time the net enveloped her, Horst knew he'd made the catch of the ages. He dragged the struggling bundle close to the bank.

A hand shot out to grip his throat. A force compelled him to cut her loose. The fangs and burning eyes seemed out of place.

"No," Horst gurgled. "You can't mix archetypes like this. It isn't fair!"

"Neither is it fair," said the merpire, "what was done to me centuries ago."