Yesterday marked the three month anniversary of me being with Petroglyph Games here in Las Vegas. It's always strange moving someplace new, but the experience has been both positive and absolutely surreal. Mostly I do concept art for production, but I've found myself doing 3D often enough as well. I will always miss Simutronics and working on Hero's Journey, but the current hush-hush title I'm working on is letting me use a different set of eyes than I used for a fantasy game.

I also have a house with a garage. It's taken me this long for it to really sink in that I actually have space to work on stuff, for the first time in about ten years. I've been buying a bunch of woodworking tools, as well as getting stuff together to do stained glass. I'm even almost done with that dummy MG42 I've wanted for so long. Damned if there isn't someone I miss so much it's like losing a limb, though.

When you move like this, there always seems to be additional mental overhead associated with even the simple stuff, so I apologize for not updating more often. I'm pretty much done with freelance for now, but I'm working on my book project again. This place has been really good to me, and I'll be updating more often in the future.

Edit: Also, I'm on Facebook now. God help us all. 'Mike Doscher' if you would like to stalk or be stalked. Derp.

I'm in Las Vegas now- I'm finally out of the midwest. I've been here for about thirty five hours now. It's hot, but I like my new place. I'm starting my new job with Petroglyph on Monday. This new position should be big step up for me. I'll mostly be doing concept art for their new MMORTS(Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy) title, and some other stuff besides.

This year has been one weird change after another.

June is an open wound.

The air is rank with the smell of life and the heat is like an anvil. The air is still and semisolid, it smells like rot and feels like aspic. Even the clouds are too heavy to move. It's just an high pressure system, but I feel like a Sea-Monkey. I've got Roncevaux(the workstation) moved out of the usual dank corner into another dank corner with better airflow. You should see it. In the afternoon the light makes the front room look like a cross between a detectives office and a low budget villains lair. It kind of has that mad scientist feel to it, but only in that 80s direct-to-video kind of way. You know the ones, I'm sure: The bad guy has glasses and the blond with the armored hair gets her clothes torn off 45 minutes in. Amusingly cheap and bleak.

Fortunately, yesterday was enough of a pick me up that I'm speaking English again. Or American, at least. It wasn't the deaths, either. (While the idea of using the death energies of the former a-list as a sort of occult NoDoze has a certain appeal, I'm not sure the process could be scaled up to what was needed.) It wasn't even the dress that Shulamith wore, though that shade of cinnamon suited her. Sometimes we see things and feel things and never know why, no matter how many hucksters try and sell us answers.

It was just all so goddamn beautiful.

The light turns the river to quicksilver this time of day, and becomes this glowing band between the brick and limestone of the old shops downtown. As you head down the hill it all hangs in the air before you in a sudden unity, singular and fleeting as a secret joy. There are a lot of hidden things here, as often as not in plain sight. You just need the right eyes, I guess.

The resumes are out, and my time here is perhaps short. I imagine when I go I'll take more with me than I'll leave behind. Then again, maybe more of me will stay than will go.

I, or rather somebody I was working with is looking for a concept artist to do some environmental and vehicle concepts for a gig I wasn't able to give more time to. Think science fiction skyscrapers with a deco influence, and a crunchy analog pencil look to it. I'd give more specifics, but the project is all hush hush.

If anyone here feels up to this, or knows of somebody who might be a good candidate please post here and I'll forward your info.

Thanks.

Also, I'm not dead.

Must.

Make.

Nice.

Sort of.

Facebook needs two additional buttons next to the updates. The layout should read: Comment - Like - Smile and Nod - Hit with a Stick. With these minor adjustments, Web 3.0 could be in beta by summer. With a little luck, the word 'friend' could be sucked of all meaning by Labor Day. It's something to shoot for, at least. I think at this point obfuscation might be a viable business model for Facebook. Failing that, the founders could always take hostages and demand a plane out of the country.

It's two o'clock in the morning and I'm wondering what I'm doing here. A bunch of different heres, and a bunch of different wonderings. Some people have their lives lying in tatters right now. Mine is merely wrinkled, but it bears some suspicious stains. The last five years hardly seem real, but I suppose that's to be expected. No, scratch that. They seem all too real. The present just seems like some sort of feverish infomercial for a cleaning product you can eat. Five years. Is that a long time? I can't tell. Like dog years and Canadian dollars, I can't keep track. Five years of work, distilled down into fifteen images and two minutes of footage. But what the hell. It's for the pros, who know what to look for. The art is in the editing. Knowing what to leave out, what to leave... behind.

Damn.

Don't get me wrong. It's time for new things, new challenges, and all those feelings that this very Shirley Jackson time of year evokes. I've learned a lot, and now it's time to put them to use here in this painfully bright dawn. Time to go... somewhere. I hear Austin is nice. There are always loose ends, but some are bigger problems than others. Some faces cannot be replaced. The simple truth seems to be that the journey is amiable enough, but that at each station stop we leave some fragment of ourselves behind. Some sliver slips into the black earth, to be replaced with a shard of what we're to be. I suppose the only real choices are to become something new or become an increasingly inferior copy of your present self. I have to wonder though, which would feel more like 'me'?

Zalgo will be coming soon, so I'd better wrap this up.

I appreciate all the support and suggestions concerning freelance. Something might come of it yet, but I like the idea of working on something big again.