My Angry Birdcage

I play Angry Birds almost every day, and what of it, Blog? I will not go to rehab, no, no, no. In fact, I was determined to celebrate my addiction with some sort of appropriate craft project. Hence...my Angry Birdcage.

Obviously polymer clay was the medium of choice for making some Angry Birds, so I thought about what best to do with some Bird sculptures. I considered jewelry with Bird beads, but worried that their little crest and tail feathers might break off. To keep the bitty creatures safe, what better solution than a cage? Of course, that would require a cage in the proper scale...

Optimistically, while out on a walk with Davie, I scored a nice fallen branchlet to use for perches in my cage. And then Saturday, while shopping the 99% useless and pretty scary Everything Must Go sale at our local closing World Market, what should I find but a perfect cage for six bucks! Kismet.

So I modeled my birds to the scale of the cage, which I won't deny was a bit of a challenge, Blog. Itty bitty beaks, itty bitty tails, and almost invisibly small eye pupils, oh my. And that Blue Bird? Kinda maddening to sculpt.

Our cat Selke will demonstrate the size we are talking about here. Keep in mind she is a very small cat.

The Red Angry Bird looked nervous as well as angry. Even after he was joined by his brethren, he appeared quite on the verse of swooning. Life would be safer in a cat-proof cage.

And so I installed my twigs in the cage, lining the bottom with some moss. I mounted the Birds with Fabric Glue, which I have to tell you is awesome for an application like this. It acts as if you are creating tiny, gripping rubber bands on the fly, that can be moved around a bit to secure Bird to branch. Thank heavens for that glue...it was a real pain (ship in a bottle variety) arranging those Birds.

Quite a fine habitat if I do say so myself, and the Birds seemed pleased as well as angry.  Green Boomerang Bird looks elated, and Black Bomb Bird looks thrilled, don't you agree, Blog? I mean, as well as angry?

And here are Blue Splitting-into-Three-Birds Bird, White Egg-Dropping Bird, and Yellow Zipping Bird, getting their party on.

You'll be glad to know we have the perfect spot for this cage to hang, in the faux tree o' lights in the living room. Check out how totally awesome it looks at night, like an Angry Birdcage Disco:

Soooweet! Now our only challenge is to keep the Toast-Powered Levitating Cat from dive-bombing the little critters....

Aggie FTW! (Hollywood Book Festival, that is)

Awesome news, Blog...and I couldn't wait to share it! The Hollywood Book Festival just announced the 2011 winners of its book competition, and Aggie's Nine Heroes won honorable mention in the Fiction book category. And they say it was a huge field of competitors this year!

Winners are chosen based on the author's storytelling ability (blush, blush) and the book's deserving  recognition by the film, television, game and multimedia communities.

So far Aggie is one-for-one in book competitions, so let's hope this will encourage more people to find out what makes it such a great book. Hey, don't take the author's word for it...ask the judges! :-)

Sometimes I'm cranky especially at dorks like this

Blog, I'm the kind of person who can be livid and no one notices. I just seem way nice all the time, or at least mild-mannered. Nevertheless, I do get really mad, especially at incompetence. And what I call "incompetence" is sometimes stuff that no one else even notices, I'm sure. Here's an example...

I really hate it when people behind the wheel are oblivious to the needs of other drivers around them. Today I experienced a classic example of this during morning rush hour. Here's the scenario, Blog. There was this huge line in the left lane at the stoplight because everyone was needing, one intersection further on, to be on the left to enter the freeway. I decided rather than get in that long queue, what the heck, I would get in the middle lane. I kinda figured I'd be able to merge to the left in the short block before that freeway ramp.

Why did I figure this? Because there's always at least one dork who doesn't move forward. Either....

1. they feel that one must leave three car lengths when going 10 mph, or
2. they are putting on their makeup and need to finish the lipstick before pulling forward, or
3. they just don't watch for the light to change

It's 3 that really irks me. If you are in the all important position of watching for the green light, you owe it to the people behind you to initiate motion ASAP. Your dawdling could cost some person (like me) two minutes on their work time clock if the light goes red before their turn.

So, this morning, natch, there was one of these #3 dorks at the head of the line. Here's your aerial view, Blog:

I am SO glad I didn't get into the left lane.  Here's what happened:

So I got skips over like 25 cars.  And probably saved two sessions of lights worth of time. No harm to the waiting cars, that would have been unused empty space had I not gone ahead.  And who knows, Blog, it might have been my passing and moving into the left lane that tipped off Stupid Red Car to notice the light changed.

I gloated. I only wish there had been a way to transport that car to the end of the line.

People, people...when traffic is heavy and lights are short, get your car through as fast as you safely can. Some may think this is the raving of a Type A personality, but I just think it's courtesy. Right, Blog?

The Toast-Powered Cat Levitation Device

Blog, we all know about the mind-blowing paradox of what would happen if you affixed a piece of buttered toast on the back of a cat and then dropped said cat. Because there are two immutable principles in the Universe:

1. A cat always lands on its feet.

2. Toast always lands buttered-side down.

I am not the first to theorize that were you to strap toast to a cat, the only possible result would be that it would remain suspended in the air. Now, what if you were to also contrive headgear for said cat that would allow it, via brainwaves, to control the direction of the contradictory cat/toast forces?

Well, you would undoubtedly get something like this:

Today I built an experimental scale model of the Toast-Powered Cat Levitation Device, including Toast Pack and Control Headgear. Don't tell me this isn't just awesome. In case you are too stunned to believe your own eyes, look again:

Sure enough, it IS real, Blog! In an artificial sort of way! And theoretical! No doubt you are dying to know how you too can make your own T-PCLD, because that is the natural human response to these photos. Never fear, I am here to provide complete directions.

1. The next time you throw away an old calculator, be sure to do as I did: take it apart and save the clear plastic circuitry sheet. Because you just never know, do you? Ditto the weird green bottle top, scraps of aluminum and brass, odd hardware doohickeys, leather lacing, and copper wire.

2. While it is possible to do this with real toast and a real cat, remember you are making a scale model and resist the temptation. Find a cat Beanie Baby and open a seam to remove the beans. (Q: What color are the beans in a Beanie Baby? A: Pearly white. Or as Davie would reply, "Magic.") Replace the beans with fiberfill stuffing, and resew the open seam. You may also want to replace the lame thread whiskers with nice springy ones made from Tiger Tail type beading wire, as I did. And take off the Ty tag, it will interfere with the brain waves.

3. Make a piece of buttered toast from polymer clay. This requires ivory and brown clay, textured with a toothbrush and needles, then painted toasty with brown eyeshadow. Make a nice melty butter pat of light yellow, and be sure to paint the pat with Future for shininess after baking your clay toast.

4. For the Toast Pack, curve the brass sheet around the cat's body. Determine the spot above the cat's body + equipment. Remove sheet from cat and drill a hole at the spot with your Dremel tool. Affix the circuitry sheet with a little Super Glue at the edges. Wrap with the aluminum strip. String colorless thread, doubled, or fishing line through the hole, and tie to a piece of bent wire inside the device. Secure wire and thread with clear packing tape. Mount toast to top of Toast Pack with Gorilla Glue.

5. For the Headgear, curl the wire with round pliers and bend into scientifically appropriate shape. Leave a long end to stick inside bottle top, threading also through weird hardware, which should fit snugly on the bottle top tip. Bend end of wire under head bracket to hold bracked in place against bottle top. Pack inside of bottle top with foil to secure wire in position. Run leather lacing through holes in head bracket, pulling tight to hold bracket snugly against wire and bottle top.

6. Slip the cat, hind legs first, into the Toast Pack. Put Headgear on the cat's head and tie leather lacing to secure. Tie the other end of the colorless thread or fishing line to a strong magnet. Now you can hang the cat from iron or steel objects, or use a large steel washer and pinch a flat mounting object between magnet and washer. It's portable! Of course!

Then let your cat fly and watch the amazing results. Birds beware! Dog, pooh on you! Firemen, no need for those tree rescues! NASA, eat your heart out! Okay, so that was hyperbole.

Blog, don't you love science? It's so exciting.

Stuff I wouldn't buy even if I were filthy rich

Hey Blog, ever daydream about what you'd buy with your lottery winnings? I know, what can an anthropomorphized disembodied being use, really? Well, this week a person in my life spent a carpload of money on a luxury item and it got me to thinking about the Two Categories of Luxury Stuff. You know, "Stuff I would buy only if I were filthy rich" and "Stuff I wouldn't buy even if I were filthy rich."

See, Blog, to each of us there are some things that people get all hepped up about that we don't covet at all. Things that make a person say to herself, "Jeez, imagine the great stuff you could buy with the money you threw away on that lame thing!" I'm sure everyone in the blogosphere is wondering what luxury items just leave me cold, so here are a few:

1. Jewelry that features giant diamonds.

2. Memorabilia items owned by famous celebrities.

3. Sets of super expensive matching furniture, and/or stainless steel appliances.

4. A luxury car like a BMW.

5. An iPhone and/or a Mac. Yeah, I'm that way.

6. Front row seats to a concert by some hugely popular artist/band.

7. Designer clothes, shoes, and/or purses.

8. Celery. I really don't like celery at all.

9. A private plane.

10. Tickets to the Super Bowl for life.

So, because everyone in the blogosphere really wants to know, here are some things I would buy only if I were filthy rich:

1. A boat and a lake property where I could keep it. And also someone to take care of said boat.

2. Some really awesome art like maybe a glass piece by Dale Chululy.

3. A rock wall and water feature built into my living room.

4. A private seminar on polymer clay art with Christi Friesen.

5. A home theater system with leather recliners and stuff.

6. Lobster for dinner on a regular basis.

7. A wing in my house that I could convert to a home for a couple dozen shelter cats.

8. A ton of advertising in every possible medium for my books.

9. A vacation home in a warmer clime where I could live in the winter when Wisconsin sucks.

10. Two weeks in NYC and tickets to every show on Broadway and to the Tonys. Annually.

So readers, what do you think? Is there a luxury item you can't see ever wanting to own? What would be your first luxury purchase after the windfall?

Oh, and I would not keep the Chululy in the part of the house with the couple dozen cats.

How many does a "successful" person sell?

Blog, in the past couple weeks I've received an amazing number of emails asking questions about how to sell more books. The question isn't amazing...it's that people are asking me. That mystery aside, of course all authors constantly ponder how to increase their sales. As do artists, musicians, photographers, crafters, and others who sell their creative output. Most of us can't shake the feeling that we aren't as successful as we should be.


But to me, the significant question is, what's "successful"?

Naturally, we artists measure success by what we observe about others engaged in our respective crafts. And whom are we looking at when making these judgments? Celebrities, of course. We can see the success of top authors in store windows, bestseller lists, and movie credits. Successful authors, apparently, are featured in magazine articles and do cameos on TV shows. People know their names. After all, we do.

By contrast, one cannot consider herself a success when her claims to fame are things like having a book featured on a bookstore chain table once, or doing a radio interview once, or appearing at a convention once. Those moments come and go (and don't even sell a whole lot of books, necessarily). Surely you're not a successful author if you haven't had a book sell in six figures, right?

And so, we artists think of ourselves as below even Z-list celebrities. It's a hobby, not a career. I haven't made it yet, but I'm still hoping. My big break could come soon, and then...Oprah! (Oops, Blog, we're going to have to find some goal to take the place of Oprah.)

Hold it, there, everyone. It's time to step back and wrap your mind around the reality of "success." And to do so, I want to crunch some numbers. For the sake of discussion, let's look at the art of selling books.

• In 2009 over a million new books were published in the U.S. (source: Bowkers)
• In 2009, 282 million books were sold in the U.S. (source: Nielsen BookScan) 

Let's say, very generously, that half of them were brand new titles. That would mean new titles averaged sales of 141 copies. Now, keep in mind that most of the sales went to the few highly publicized titles...so it's safer to say 100 copies or fewer was the average for "ordinary" books.

I found figures for non-fiction books (which always outsell fiction), and the average sales are 250/year or 3,000 for a non-fiction book's lifetime. Book sales are declining 5-6% a year, while the number of titles published has more than tripled in four years, so those figures are not going to get any larger.

I read that, depending upon the subject of your book, there are 100 to 1,000 titles competing for one bookstore shelf space. So, if an author gets even one title into bookstores (which may or may not translate into sales, of course) why shouldn't that constitute staggering success? Isn't being in the top 1% of your field a kind of success?

Blog, I totally understand why artists strive to have a bestseller, get a lead role in a movie, have a gallery show in New York, have their own brand of consumer products. I'm all for pursuing those lofty goals. But I think we all need to scale way back on our sense of "success." 

Think of it this way: When a person decides to get fast food, they have maybe a dozen options to choose from. If your franchise was in the top three, you'd feel pretty successful! Well, there are about 9 million book titles offered on Amazon. Even if only once a day, somebody picked your book title out of 9 million, why shouldn't you feel successful?

Or, look at the issue from another angle, that of a crafter selling her work on Etsy.com. Etsy sold $40 million worth of stuff in May--it's a good marketplace. Well...in May, 1.7 million new items were listed for sale. 2 million items were sold. That means if you sold more than one item in the month of May on Etsy, you were quite a bit above average!

You're getting the picture, Blog. We all need to remember that the marketplace is huge and fragmented. In this century, no one "corners the market" anymore but Google, Amazon, Netflix and Stephenie Meyer. I'm exaggerating a bit (but not much)...but my point is, it's time to recalibrate the meaning of success to today's market. To rephrase that old break-up line, it's not you, it's the marketplace.

If your video gets a thousand hits on YouTube, well, go you! If you sell two paintings or sculptures a month--bravo! If your book sells 300 copies a year, congrats, you're a real author.

The point is, your creations are are being experienced and enjoyed by an audience. You're not hiding your talents under a bushel.

You're a success.

Charlie Sheen vs. me, on being a 'rock star'

Blog, I'm right now picturing the interesting discussion that might ensue, were I and Charlie Sheen to appear as a two-person panel of experts providing advice on "how to become a 'rock star.'" Obviously Charlie's been pretty successful at the Celebrity Thang--getting headlines, attracting admirers, and so on. I, on the other hand, not so much. Still, allow me the presumption of placing myself on this panel and putting my ideas up against Charlie's. Okay, Blog, you can be moderator. Give us a question and let's see where this goes.

Blog: Right. Well, let's start by asking for your definition of 'rock star' for the purposes of this discussion. Charlie?

Fictitious Voice of Mr. Sheen Created by the Author: Obviously that would be me, Blog--duh!

Blog: Sure, okay. Diana?

Diana:  To me, a 'rock star' person is someone that others are drawn to, admire, and/or emulate. You want to be around that person, and it makes you happy to watch them, be in their presence. They seem larger than life, and stand out from the crowd.

Blog: Certainly true of my favorite 'rock star,' the Internet Movie Database. Okay, so what does it take to become this rock star?

FVOMSCBTA aka Charlie: Besides being Charlie Sheen? Nothing.

Blog: Adonis DNA?

FVOMSCBTA: Only if you're not already Charlie Sheen, moron.

Blog: Uh-huh. Diana?

Diana: Charlie's right that it helps to have self-confidence. But I'd like to suggest that you don't even need too much of that if you simply focus on the other person/people instead of yourself. Even an outrageously self-confident person such as Lady Gaga succeeds just as much by putting effort into making her fans feel important to her and valuable.

Blog: So a shy, introverted person can possibly be a rock star too?

Diana: Sure! My advice to shy people (and I'm kind of shy myself) is forget how you're looking, acting, talking, and get inside your audience. How is he/she/they feeling? Needing a sympathetic ear? Wanting to share something they feel is exciting? Looking for encouragement, answers, a laugh? Forget yourself and be what they need, and you'll find you're a bit of a rock star in their eyes, no matter what.

FVOMSCBTA: That's not winning!

Diana: Ah, but it is! Maybe not right at that moment, but someday your audience will treat you like a rock star, because you cared.

FVOMSCBTA: Aw come on, most of those motherf-ers will be users.

Diana: There's a few users in every crowd, Fake Voice of Charlie, but you'll figure out who they are and who truly feels grateful for kindnesses shown to them. There are always enough of the latter type to make it worthwhile and spread good stuff like ripples into the populace. Oh, and Blog, another tip....

Blog: Yuh-huh?

Diana: Be the best you can be. I mean, share your talents whatever they may be. My Davie, for example, is a Cleaning Rock Star, and he makes my life and the lives of many others easier. Do your job well and conscientiously...even if it seems you're under-appreciated. Rock stars perform well even for bad audiences, and even then someone always notices. Don't hide what you have to offer: sell it and give it away, both, whenever you can.

Fake Charlie Voice: Under-appreciated...that's this rock star all right. There's not enough money in the world to appreciate me properly, dudes. How do you put a price on being the funniest guy to walk the earth?

Diana: Mr. Artificially-Sheen is right in a way (well, just a small way). Never underestimate the power of being funny. Humor is a great gift that costs you nothing and everyone is happy to receive it. You might not have a towering wit...but you can tell a joke occasionally. Maybe you suck at telling jokes...but you can tease in a nice, friendly way. Maybe you're not good at teasing...but you can smile. And anyone can laugh at the humor of others, which is something those others will just love.

Blog: Is there one element you'd consider the most key part about pursuing the status of rock star?

Pseudo-Charlie: Pray to be my clone.

Diana: I have to say, take a genuine interest in those around you. That doesn't mean you never talk about yourself, ask for support, or make sure your own needs are met. But if you want to be a rock star person, a rock star human being, to me this is the most important element. Put yourself in their shoes and feel what they're feeling. Be mindful of what's happening to them, ask them questions, feel a bit of the passion they feel about what matters most to them. You will learn things, experience more of the world, grow as a person...so it's "winning" for both sides!

Charlie: Stop trying to make me look bad, woman. It's not possible.

Diana: I'm hardly a saint, Charlie-thing, I'm just as selfish as you are. Well, okay, not that bad. I'm not being Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama here, and sacrificing for others. This just seems to me the way that a person becomes a rock star, and that's not exactly self-less motivation, is it? I'm saying that when you make others happy, you'll be happy too.

Blog: It's sort of the way the universe works. And if I weren't an anthropomorphic, imaginary being, I'd sure try it too. Thanks for the nice debate, guys!

Charlie: I guess I'm kinda sold, too, Diana. Can I take you out for some tiger blood?

Diana: Aw, that's the spirit, Charlie! I'd like that.