PicoBlog

WELCOME BACK EVERYONE! - Today we’re doing a drawing class, and taking on one of the most ubiquitous, yet weirdly impossible objects to draw: The humble bicycle. (Not actually that humble, some of those fast carbon fibre ones are totally full of themselves) Anyway, enough chit-chat, let’s get into it! First of all, you’re going to need an upside down triangle. Then you’re going to need another triangle, and whack it onto the side here, because if there’s one thing better than one triangle, it’s a bisected diamond.

Share Recently while engaged in a scrolling binge on the Substack network, I stumbled upon the work of New York city-based Tawny Lara, affectionately known as The Sober Sexpert. The author of Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without Booze, her book title immediately caught my attention.  My first thought was, this is not a book I would normally jump in bed with. But as I’m apt to do, I did a deeper dive into whether it might be a read that would capture my interest.

You’ve probably heard this phrase before: “How does a mouse eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Essentially it means that to reach any large goal you’ve got to break it down into bite-size pieces and eventually over time you’ll achieve it. There are other versions that include laying one brick at a time to build a wall, for example, but they all mean the same thing. The typical analysis of this riddle is that it’s a way to view an intimidating, challenging, or outrageous task and make it manageable, palatable, or less anxiety inducing.

Since Mother’s death, I’ve been mothering Dad the way I’ve always wanted to be mothered. I learned to be a mother by caring for my younger siblings and newborn cousins in the cult into which I was born, until I partly grew-up and had four children of my own.   I was never a child.   I grew up on a mountain, preparing for the Apocalypse, by parents and grandparents who believed the end of the world was nigh.

Most people have had a “bad” manager and never want one again. Here is how to find a good one. Most people skip this step. Perhaps they feel it is inappropriate or have never thought of doing so. They look for a job. They research companies and groups, work hard to choose between this role and that role, but rarely take extensive steps to vet the manager. Yet your manager has more impact on your happiness and your success than the company or the specific job role.

Nihon Falcom, one of the most influential and vital developers of Japanese role-playing games, turned 40 years old back in March, and they’ve been celebrating for most of the year by having a whole bunch of their games on sale throughout most of it. Sadly, nowhere near the full library of Falcom titles is available on modern platforms, or even in English — huge chunks of Falcom’s history, even the parts that made it from PC to consoles, are either somewhat lost to history or are only available in Japanese, as neither the publishers of Falcom’s games nor fan translators have gotten around to changing that.

Hello, friends! The daffodils and tulips are up, the trees are leafing out and my Rhododendron is blooming. Everything around me is springing to life — including my fescue-clover lawn. I’ve heard from many of you wondering how to fix brown spots in your la… ncG1vNJzZmiilajAqq%2FAnZimoZGjvG%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2ign6x6tbuMn6CxZZKnvLi6jKynqKyjYravediorKtlnJbErw%3D%3D

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my old L.A. writers group via Zoom, and it came up how damn near impossible it is these days to get a book deal. A book deal, in this case, to mean a traditional, “Big Five,” New-York-publisher-with-an-office-on-6th-Avenue kind of book deal. Most people know that it’s easy to self-publish a book on Wattpad or Kindle. But to convince an outfit like Simon & Schuster or Little, Brown to publish your novel or work of nonfiction?

Hello! Hola! Bonjour! As you probably already know if you are one of the 14.8k people/bots who follow me on Instagram (and let’s face it…if you’re reading this newsletter you probably follow me on Instagram*), you’ll know that I recently returned from yet another luxury cruise, this time through Spain and France. I’ll be getting into all of that next week, which is fitting because we’re a little over a year since I first launched this newsletter with a recap of my trip to Spain.