Fitter Happier

Here at Bibliowhining, I put my popularity and ad revenue above all else, and change with the times to pander to today's audience. I've noticed that the formula for success, as demonstrated by VH-1 countdowns and what Cracked Magazine has become, is to make all your shows and articles in list format. Sometimes I browse through the magazines at the CVS. MAD, Games and Nickelodeon Magazines aren't there anymore, but there's always this magazine called Cosmopolitan which looks exactly the same each time, and has the same lists on the cover every month: "192 Ways to Please Your Man," "10 Ways to Get a Flat Tummy"...the lists go on!

In hopes of pleasing my audience, here's Five (5) Simple Ways You Can Lose Weight, Slim Down, and Reduce Excess Fat!

Five (5) Simple Ways You Can Lose Weight, Slim Down, and Reduce Excess Fat (c) 2010, Chrissy Spallone

I also got a new cat last week. His name is Rover.

Cars

Bibliowhining is back, and that means our favorite jerk Dunkin Swine is also back!

"Dunkin's Drivers" (c) 2010, Chrissy Spallone

Six Pack

Here I sit like someone out of the "Stuff White People Like" blog, transcribing stuff into my text editor from my Moleskine notebook. At least it's not a Mac.

Those of you lucky enough to have watched the short, hilarious film from my last entry may have learned that I don't define myself or dictate my happiness through my work, as in the kind of job I have, but through something that will probably never offer me any financial stability -- my hobbies!

I enjoy working in libraries, and I get plenty of satisfaction from helping others with their research and learning bits of trivia in the process, but right now I'm enjoying the fact that my freelancing job, if silly, takes very little of my time while providing me with the financial stability I need to feed myself goulash and tea every day and live in my beautiful, quiet apartment. I briefly felt some shame and guilt in not being able to immediately "work" my Master's Degree, but I'm not alone. The economy is down, and I'm doing what I have to do to make ends meet in the mean time. Actually, I'm doing more than making ends meet. I'm really making mad bank right now, I'm not gonna lie. "Mad bank" for me, as it turns out, is equivalent to like, I'll be up front with you here and could care less if you think this is chump change, $600 a week, but that is way more than I need. I have this amazing power to stretch and save cash, even though I'm one of the last few people around who pays money for (a whole lot of) music. It's magic!

Besides making mad bank, this freelancing gig is also giving me lots of appreciated free time to do a different kind of freelancing -- and that kind of freelancing requires a Moleskine notebook.

Me and the Moleskine have been BFFs since I first discovered it in 2004 as "The notebook used by Van Gogh and xyz important person". Being sort of a modern-day Van Gogh myself, I couldn't resist! Initially, I used the Moleskines to record some of my deepest personal feelings and reflections on my daily happenings. What a waste, right? When people come over to visit and flip through the Moleskine library on my desk, expecting brilliant nuggets of wit, scripts and raw artwork, I silently hope that they'll lose interest before making their way to the older, more emo volumes of yore. I was just a 20-year old kid back then. I didn't know any better.

Now we're in the bronze age of Moleskine. These notebooks are where all my comic scripts are born, and where I sketch people on trains and other public places to inform future, more "serious" drawings. The only thing the Moleskine doesn't do so well is absorb ink. Sure, there's the watercolor notebook, but that's just too precious! I want a notebook that lets me sketch people in pencil, just like in the sketchbook, but also allows me to ink over my drawings with a dip pen. So I'm going to make one!

How To Make a Low-Rent Moleskine Notebook

The first thing I did was cut all the pages for my notebook. I'm using bristol board to fulfill my need for a "cartooning" sketchbook. You can use any type of paper you please, but be aware that thicker paper is more difficult to work with. I used a ruler to measure, then marked off the dimensions of my paper according to the original Moleskine size -- their pages are 7"x5.5". It's a good size. These papers must be folded in half, though, so I'm marking off 11" x 7" pages which will later be folded in half. I absentmindedly marked my dimensions backwards in this visual aid, as I now see. Darn it. I should tell you now that I figured out a lot of this stuff from Michael Shannon's Moleskine tutorial, but mine isn't as fancy as his.

Next, I used an x-acto knife on a hard, unvaluable surface to cut out all of my pages according to the guidelines I drew above. Depending on how thick you want your notebook, you can cut out as many pages as you like, as long as it's a multiple of six. I wanted my notebook to be three signatures thick, so I cut out 18 pages.

SEE THE REST OF THE TUTORIAL UNDER THE CUT!

What I'm doing in this picture is something called "folding". It is important to fold the sheets you cut out so that you'll have a nice Moleskine-sized book rather than a bunch of sheets of paper stapled together. I "kissed corners," as my first grade teacher explained folding to me, and used a pencil to make my folds sharp. I did this with each and every one of my sheets of paper.

Here's where my blog title comes from. I have "packed six" of the folded sheets of paper together, like so, to make a signature. Of course I've done some sloppy cutting and whatnot, but the most important thing is to align all the spines and make sure the bottom of the stack is flush. It's okay if the top and side edges are a bit crooked, or cattywompus (sp?) as Dr. Lavender likes to say.

I made three signatures in all, each with six of my folded papers.

Who knew that that binder clip would ever see the light of day again? I collected all my signatures together, making sure that the spines and bottoms were even, clipped them, and marked the spine for where they will be sewn later. All the needle holes have to be in the same place for the book's signatures to be even in the finished book.

Then I separated the signatures again. To make holes for the sewing needle, I folded the spine over the edge of my CD case. You can use the edge of any unvaluable surface. I used a pin to poke holes in the markings I made earlier. I did this for all three of the signatures, one signature at a time. Again, make sure that the spine and bottoms of each page are even as you do this.

Check it out! Here are my three signatures with their perfectly placed holes.

And now for the sewing supplies. Needles, thread, and wax.

I waxed a couple inches of the needle side of the thread, since I didn't double the thread like when I sew fabric. Don't double up the thread. The wax will hold it in place (or should, it slipped a few times for me). Thread a long strand, you can cut it later.

Sewing the first signature now. I left a little bit of thread (about 2 inches) hanging out where I started. I just threaded the holes I already punched.

In this pic, I'm marrying the first signature to the second signature. When I finished threading the holes in the first signature, I entered the thread into the first hole of the second signature, then went back and forth between rethreading the first holes and threading the second signature's holes for the first time, to "marry" the two together. Then I "married" the second signature with the third, last signature using the same back-and-forth threading. Isn't this complicated to explain. Does it make sense to you? There was also bloodshed and I'd recommend a thimble if you're using thick paper.

Here's what your spine will look like when you've threaded all the signatures together.

Paste gauze onto your new spine, and cut away excess gauze. I know that my cutting techniques are the best you've ever seen.

When the glue dries, trace your little Moleskine innards onto another sheet of paper, which will ultimately be the inside cover. Trace the spine, too so you'll know where to fold and glue. You'll notice that I've drawn an extra panel on the right there, with some tabs. I like and use the Moleskine pocket, so I made a pocket for my low-rent Moleskine.

Cut out and fold like so...

Now glue the spine of your signature pack onto the spine of the inside cover. Also, glue the tabs down to make a pocket. I sandwiched a ribbon between the signature spine and inside cover spine to make a little notebook.

Isn't this fun? I then traced and cut out the outside cover onto a piece of cardboard, a material of which I have an abundance. You can use something a little more classy if you wish. Just make sure it's sturdy enough to meet your needs, and will hold glue well. To finish, I glued the whole outside surface of that "inside cover" page, and glued all over the cardboard and married them together. To make sure the glue held well, I closed the book and pressed it between my two CD cases. Or dictionaries or whatever are fine.

Now I have a ghetto moleskine!

Another Brick in the Wall

Sabbatical's over, and the second season of Bibliowhining has begun!

To celebrate my return to the blogosphere, enjoy a video in which my friend Karl and I discuss art, technology, education and our futures. It's worth a viewing, and there is new original artwork contained within. See the man behind the pig mask.



My personal life? I have a new place now -- a bright, spacious studio apartment in South Jersey, right off the Patco speedline to Philly. Much better than my old apartment, which I didn't mind so much, but that place was definitely a boy's club. I had one girl over there during my two years in Syracuse, and got an extended earful from her about the unacceptability of my living quarters. The only thing missing in my apartment is a pet... if you or anyone you know has a surplus of male kittens, sent one my way. A gentle cat with a nice disposition, not one that enjoys excessive scratching and gnawing. Neutered would be great.

Come visit sometime. We can have fun drinking good tea, listening to vintage punk albums and reading weird comic books.

Michael Jackson

I'm sure that some readers have noticed my use of a Michael Jackson song title for each of my posts (with the exception of "Eat It", a Weird Al Parody of "Beat It"). It's becoming increasingly difficult to find a poignant MJ song title for each entry, so from now on, I'll just use the titles for songs I like. Who knows, maybe I'll introduce people to some great music that way.

The theory of the Bibliowhining "business" is to share my artwork and art tips. Have you seen this one yet? From 2006...

 Christina Spallone, 2006

Don't give up on Bibliowhining. I'm in a transitional period right now...I just moved out of Syracuse and am currently unemployed and living with my parents. I really liked Syracuse -- there were certain things about that town that were ideal, and I will miss it. I doubt I'll ever find a better cafe than Recess Roastery...I always felt comfortable there. The owners were friendly, and their coffee drinks, sandwiches, and desserts were excellent. I appreciate when people take pride in their work. I had a dream about one of their mysteriously-named coffee drinks, the Kuato. I dreamt that I asked what a Kuato was, and the answer was that it's a coffee drink made with one's own blood after getting a piece of flesh torn open. I'm sure it's nothing like that, though.

Halo Tattoo was also ideal. I got my first tattoo there, and, knowing nothing about getting a tattoo, I went in with this ridiculously complicated sleeve design, a combination of Jim Woodring's panels from The Frank Book. This design consisted of an onion-top house with surrounding pebbles, rocks, and mountains, and a starry sky with windstrips in the background. One of the artists, Mike, looked at this and was all excited about doing it. It turns out that he's a big underground comics fan, and has been for a long time -- he has an original copy of Boiled Angel and everything. The tattoo took three sessions and about ten hours to complete, during which I listened to appropriate tunes such as "Fresh Flesh" by Fear. Now I have this awesome tattoo that is unlike any other tattoo I've seen. It's really a work of art. I wanted to get another one, but there's a limit to what I can afford. I don't know if I'll ever find another tattoo artist like that -- I got really lucky in finding the perfect tattoo artist for the job. I joked with one of my friends, who is staying in Syracuse, that he should get the tattoo for me and then we can exchange skin grafts. He was a little creeped out by my joke -- perhaps I should ease up on the dark humor.

I even liked the job I had in Syracuse. Some people might think that cataloging is boring, but I didn't mind -- I appreciated working in a field I was actually studying, as opposed to making sandwiches all day. My boss was respectful and had a good sense of humor, and I could pick my own hours, which allowed me to wake up, go to work, and then have the rest of the day to myself to read or work on my hobbies.

Syracuse has a prominent hardcore scene which I would have liked to check out. The thing is, I don't have any friends who are into that kind of music, and I'm shy about going to concerts by myself. It takes a while for me to get to know people, and I've never been the type to just go up to a person and strike up a friendship. I've had friends in the past, in high school, who were into punk rock, but they've all either moved away or took a turn for the worst. It's really sad getting to know a person when you're just a kid, sharing secrets, going on adventures, and then seeing them grow up and waste their lives on drugs and/or alcohol.

What do you think? Is it weird to go to concerts and stuff by yourself? What do you do in those situations?

Well, I'll miss Syracuse. Overall, it was a positive experience, and I really hope someone gives me a chance to prove myself in the workforce. I can't wait to get my independence back, and apply the skills I learned in library school.

I'm watching Edward Scissorhands now, one of my favorite movies. I really relate to the main character.