Early Thursday morning Julie started her long voyage, first to Paris and then a long flight to La Réunion, where she will finally begin her brilliant career as a university prof.

Réunion is an island east of Madagascar. It is an outer department of France, and is geographically the extreme edge of the EU. The population is over 800 thousand, and the island is roughly 2500 km2. It has been a part of France since 1649, older than our own republic, the States.

Julie was a precocious child, who had a book published at the age of 11. She was a gifted student and achieved the highly coveted agrégation. As a highschool teacher, she cared passionately about her lessons and the progress of her kids. Last year, she completed her doctoral thesis on Nieztsche. Her doctor mentor was none other than the most prominent Nieztsche scholar in the country. I was a witness to her defense in Paris last winter, and I’ll never forget how those in the audience practically leapt out of their seats as she faced her jury and paried their objections as if they were slow motion flies.

She’s now in a place that could be described as a paradise, where winter doesn’t exist. It’s also a place with a fair share of poverty, and I don’t think you can drink the tapwater. She’s facing all the challenges one normally faces when starting a new job in a new place, but she’ll be going completely alone.

I think she’s going to be fine, but even the pro ballers love a good crowd cheering them on. If you’d like to send her a little message to let her know that we are thinking of her, this is her email: juliedumonteil, then the “at” symbol. Yahoo.com.

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love animals.  But many animals do kill other animals.  We human animals (sorry Dad, we are animals) can kill any animal.  But we also can make choices.

After the non-news story of our president killing a fly, I was pretty annoyed at the resulting sub-non-news story where Peta was made to look stupid.

Peta is an organisation–my parents can attest to–I took an interest to mid-college (around that time all the interesting girls decide that they are really lesbians, or so I’ve read).  Though I’m not a card carrier (I eat meat, for one) I respect their point of view and it is some way applicable to many other issues one faces.

So I was pretty annoyed, after they were baited into saying something about the Obama fly thing that after what they said was pretty lukewarm and non-shrill, they were still treated to such a mob lambasting.

That said, I know a really good way to take out houseflies.  It works almost every time, but you really have to want it because it is kind of gross too.

The fly (call it the target) must be on a flat surface, parallel to the ground otherwise it might not work.

1. With your body centered on the fly, hold open hands slightly less than shoulder width on either side of fly (see the magnificent 7).  Hands are about 4 inches above the surface the fly is on.  Make sure there are no empty bottles or Hummel figurines in the way.  This is the hardest part.
2. Clap your hands together quickly.  Pretty quick.  If you are super quick you might be too quick.  If you try to be quick but not too quick, you are too slow.  So just do it regular quick.  Clap those hands.
3. Be astounded by the squashed fly in your hands.  Or throw the live fly out the window and shut it quick–super quick.

How does it work?  Some kind of vacuum?   No, stupid.  When the fly sees your hands closing in–they have remarkable reflexes–they take right off.  But they take off not like planes, but like helicopters:  up.  They fly right into the trap.  And get squashed.

It’s kind of gross: you get squashed fly on you so you need to wash up.  But your fly is dead so it is a pretty damn fair trade, eh?

Me being all faggy not-anti-peta and all, I don’t really enjoy killing the little bugs, even the tiniest ones, when not necessary.  So this presents the next challenge, fanboy.

A Real jedi knight can just clap his cupped hands and release the critter — then shut the damn window!

This of course is much much more challenging, but Yoda could do it like in his sleep.

On Guru.com, I’m currently the top ranked illustrator.  Hail to the king, baby.
Guru.com – SeeZenImation – SeeZenImation — Cartoons Animation Illustration

Still from an ad for a lobster delivery service

Stupid Facebook is killing my blog.  I can’t manage to make posts to both.  What to do, what to do?

The Whistling Island | Atlas Obscura

They could communicate from miles apart by whistling.  A language of several thousand words.  I love this website.

Red Bean Veggie Burgers

This is a recipe I came up with last July 4th in Paris.

1 can red beans, drained (but keep the liquid)
Approx 1/2 – 1 Cup bread crumbs (about 1/3 of 4 day old baguette)
1 onion, diced
1- 4 Garlic cloves, cut up way tiny
1 small hot pepper, minced
approx 1T cumin
Salt and Pepper
Worchestershershirestershire sauce
Oil
Flour

I wanted to add egg, but they were 86ed and it turns out weren’t necessary anyway.

Take half the beans and pulse them shortly in the processor to make some chunks — don’t puree. The other half can be chopped up quite nicely with the garlic, onion and chili, cumin, adding just a tad of the bean can liquid to help things along.

Those, along with the breadcrumbs mix very quickly with a spoon in a large bowl, adding the salt and pepper, a little splash of Worchestershire and maybe a tad of olive oil. Just a little sprinkling of flour helped make it stick together a bit more.

This mixture makes about 4 or 5 patties, which you can let chill for a few minutes while getting a few other things ready.

We had a few red potatoes that looked pretty pitiful, so I made fries out of them. Hamburger buns are more readily available in Paris than, say, Dresden, but they are not very good. I used a pack of four small mini chiabata rolls, the prebaked kind. Liberally sprinkling them with milk before baking them makes them not quite as tough.  If you have time, the best buns you’ll ever have are homemade ones: use a regular bread recipe and half – half bread flour and whole wheat flour.

The patties fry on each side for maybe 6 minutes, but handle them carefully as they are somewhat fragile.  Or brush with olive oil before grilling.

We didn’t have much in the way of standard condiments, but this turned out to be a good thing. After all, no matter the recipe, veggie burgers will never be the same as real meat, so why not take it in another direction? We had them on the toasted ciabata rolls with strong mustard, sliced cornichons (there were only 3 left) and lamb’s lettuce (Mache, Feldsalat)

Badly Drawn Roy, in two parts.  A very sweet documentary about a cartoon boy born into a live action family in Ireland, no less.  The mom’s voice is like Rice Krispys and milk.

A few weeks ago, a nice fellow interviewed me for a project in one of his animation classes.  I thought I would publish my answers here, too.

How did
you get involved with animation?

In fourth
grade a few friends and I started making flip books.  Usually involving stick figures, guns,
defecation and the occasional rocketship. 
Years later, in college, I made some animated gifs.  That was before Flash came out.  After university, I got my hands on Flash 5,
and soon realized I couldn’t live without it.

Now, I
should point out that I didn’t study animation or art (although I wish I
had).  I have a degree in music.  So I was doing some teaching and gigging on
the side when I started learning Flash. 
I started taking on freelance animation and illustration jobs after
that.  That went on for maybe 5 or 7
years.  It’s really only been in the last
two years or so that I’ve made a concerted effort to earn a living solely with
animation.  I can’t say  that I’ve “arrived” yet, but my perseverance
has certainly paid off.

How did
you get your first job in animation and what it was like?

I
convinced my boss to pay me to make a cartoony website for the school.  It won some kind of local website award, and
so he was willing to hire me again to make some animated Ecards and banner ads
etc.

Do you
have any advice or tips for university graduates on how to get involved and be
successful in the animation industry?

As trite
as it sounds: stick with it.

Would you
recommend working freelance rather than directly in a company?

I’ve
always worked freelance.  It’s probably
pretty nice to work for a company if you can find one who will hire you.

Which
computer programmes do you use most often?

Flash,
Photoshop, Cubase,  various sound editing
software, Illustrator

What
equipment and materials for characters and sets are used most often in your
animations?

Paper,
pencil, and Wacom

Could you
tell me roughly how expensive equipment, materials and programmes for graduates
who wish to be freelance animators will cost?

I don’t
have a light table.  I wish I did.  But I have a tablet.  A graphire 2, and recently I bought a bamboo,
which was less expensive but just as good if not better.  I’ve worked on the larger intuos tablets and
I don’t find the larger drawing space to be advantageous.  So I’d say go with the bamboo for 50 EUR
roughly. 

Flash is
something like 200 or 300 bucks, I can’t remember exactly.  Some programs come with hardware — I got an
LT version of photoshop which came with my graphire, also music software came
with my midi keyboard.

Do you
have any advice for finding work and meeting deadlines?

You’ll
need a demo reel, and a webpage.  Even
one of those free blog pages will suffice to show off your work.  Even when you are starting out, never take on
any work that doesn’t compensate you fairly. 
If they try to persuade you with promises of  “exposure” or the like, politely run for your
life.

I think
that good planning is the key to meeting deadlines.    And metaphorically speaking, start with the
brush possible.

What was
the hardest job you have taken and what do you find as animator is generally
the hardest part of any job you undertake?

The job
I’m working on at the time is always the hardest, for some reason.  

And I’d
say the hardest part is good planning.  
Sometimes, I’ll have panels in the storyboard which are really vague and
I tell myself, “ah, I’ll deal with it when I get to it in Flash”.  It always comes back to bite me in the ass.

What do
you enjoy most about your work and animations you create?

Working
in Flash, most of my animations rely on “cutout” type animating.  Occasionally I find an excuse to do some
traditional animating; I get a real kick out of the times when it  turns out good.

As corny
as it sounds, the most rewarding thing is the rare occasion when my work  causes 
a genuine emotional response from the viewer. 

We are packing up tomorrow, and heading off on Monday.