Beauty and the Robeast: Life on Patrol

I've been sulky and strapped into the Blue Lion for days now. NO showers. NO joy. Just the endless pacing back forth in a hell of my own making. Sulky, sulky buttons indeed. Did I take this opportunity to post here? To do something fun? Or profitable? No. Screw all that. Apparently, I'd rather sift through the cultural detritus of the interwebs and make connections. Connect the dots of the information with the people, everyone so accessible all the time. Just reach out through cyberspace and e-meet people however tangentially through this torrent of pixels and white noise. I totally need a mood regulator or those damn mice to sing to me. I completely and utterly agree that I am a sourpuss extraordinaire right now, but the princess in the tower, she goes a little crazy now and then.

You know what helps? It is a comfort to me when I find someone who's work I find both visually stimulating and fraught with meaning, especially when it is of the twisted variety. It makes me feel less alone with my crazy brain in this great big universe. I've been reading through old comic books (expect a new feature soon) and revisiting some of my favorite things, like brown paper parcels wrapped up in string, in an attempt to not let the fires of life ebb totally down to zombie levels. I must maintain my royal poise at all times, and I find this tiresome and wearying. I guess this is all a fancy way to say I've been depressed and watching Chi Chian again makes me less so. I first found Chi Chian in comic book form *ohsovery* long ago. I stumbled on a comic in a sale longbox; this comic book to be exact,

and I was struck. The visual style, the sculpting, the oddly organic tech, and post-environmental-apocalyptic storyline, where women control tech with their minds, combined to form what will forever be one of my most favorite things in this star system and all others, the gloriously dark wonders of Chi Chian.

Fortunately, it was then that I discovered the Scifi Network had commissioned Voltaire, the artist/author, to make a episodic flash animation of the whole thing; I was in heaven. Voltaire, who now teaches stop-motion animation at the School of the Visual Arts in NYC, is a goth musicican/writer/animator. Very dark. Very broody. His work is arresting. You may have seen some of his station IDs for MTV, Scifi, or the Cartoon Network; he also did some music for the Grim Adventures of Mandy and Billy. By the way, I'm combing the internets for his station IDs, particularly the Hieronymous Bosch based MTV ones. *Please help a poor lion jockey on endless patrol out.*

Or, maybe you've read Oh My Goth Humans Suck. Maybe you listen to the Oddz. Chances are you've never heard of him, but you should have, and you should watch Chi Chian, because it's gorgeous and I love it. Giant cockroaches that waltz. Worm trains and a Professor that is a robotic teddy bear. Bio-organic environmental protection suits that fall in love with their wearers. Evil insect overlords. It's a world warped by pollution producing mutations and horrors, but it's just so damned beautiful and textured that I can't look away. Nor do I want to.

If you go visit the Scifi.com site to watch some or all 13 of the short episodes, remember this was all done an age ago in Flash 4 (how quaint), so loading times are a little long by today's instantaneous information standards, but it's totally worth the wait. It's actually very life-affirming and providing hope for even the darkest kind of world view. I guess that's because Voltaire is always looking for the beauty and the humor in the pain. For this, I salute you sir.

I think of a few of my favvvvorite things, and then I don't feel sooooo bad.