The things I do when I’m not here: secret winners and very impressive artworks

I’ve been supremely lazy the past couple of days, to the point of seriously not wanting to do anything but sleep. But! Important things need to be discussed, dammit! So I am DISCUSSING them! THEN I will sleep like the DEAD! Well, except of course I will wake up. Dead people don’t often do that. Except maybe zombie-people.

First, thank you all for making the royal rumpusness of my second bloggiversary week a rousing success. Two years! Huh. That’s impressive, right? And kind of scary.

I wanted to do SOMETHING for my readers for my bloggiversary but I am out of oomph. My oomph up and left. My oomph hit the road, Jack. Left me a Dear John Amy letter on the counter and hiked it on outta here. One could, I suppose, keep waiting for one’s oomph to return, but that doesn’t seem likely. So I suppose the only fix is to go around oomphless. Or do things DESPITE the lack of oomph. Kind of as a big eff-you to that dastardly leaving-me-high-and-dry oomph.

Dammit, oomph. Why you gotta hurt me like that, yo?

SO, I conducted an unbeknownst-to-you top-secret giveaway over the past week. I KNOW! How tricky was THAT? I didn’t even tell sj. And I tell sj almost EVERYTHING. (Not everything, though, because sometimes I want her to be surprised, and sometimes I do embarrassing things that I don’t think she needs to know.)

Everyone that commented on any of the posts over bloggiversary week got entered into a top-secret drawing. Well, no. FIRST, you all got put on a LIST. Then I wrote everyone’s name on that list into that randomizer website that people use when they want to do giveaways like a grownup.

(I realized after I did this I probably should have taken screenshots because I always get at least one person who’s all “YOU CHEATED! Ha ha just kidding” but I don’t think they really are. I believe the technical term for a comment like this is “passive-aggressive.” The technical term for what a comment like this makes me is “stabbilicious.” But I didn’t, because I was very tired and not feeling the best and did I mention I HAVE NO OOMPH? OK, great, just in case you missed that paragraph, awesome.)

So, the randomizer (which apparently randomizes based on the earth’s atmosphere or something, I don’t know what the hell) did its work and TA-DAH! We had a WINNER! Out of the 21 people who commented all week, A WINNER!

(Now don’t you lurkers feel bad about not commenting? You should. You could be entered in secret giveaways and NOT EVEN KNOW IT!)

Our winner is…drumroll please…

HEATHER FROM BECOMING CLICHE!

WHOO-HOO!!!

Now, before I totally embarrassed myself and Heather by writing this whole post, I of course had to contact her, congratulate her on winning a contest she didn’t even know she’d entered (that makes me sound like one of those spammers that sends you an email that you’ve won the U.K. Lottery, doesn’t it?) and see if she was down with giving me her address so I could send her a prize.

WHEW! She totally was. She loves secret giveaways. I’m so glad Heather didn’t think this was all a scam so I could either stalk her or get her bank account in order to drain it of all the cash moneys and go to Aruba.

ARUBA BABY!!!

I have a secret prize all picked out for Heather. It’s not going to be as oomphy as last year, because as stated, NO OOMPH. However, it is going to be awesome, and I know she will love it (and I ran the idea past sj, and SHE knows Heather will love it, as well.) I cannot tell you all what it is because what it will ruin her surprise-factor, but once it arrives, either she will tell us, or I will. YOU WILL BE KEPT IN THE LOOP!

Thank you for accepting the winnership of the secret prize, Heather! I’m so glad you were excited! I hope (KNOW!) you will love it when it arrives!

OK, next, who wants to see art-time? Oh, you all know you do. Art time was ALWAYS the best part of elementary school.

So sj and Susie are having a contest. It is a zombiecorn contest. If you write a short piece of zombiecorn fiction, you can win any one of a plethora of prizes. A PLETHORA I TELL YOU!

(I think sj spells it zombicorn. I randomly throw that extra e in there. That’s the way I roll.)

A zombiecorn, by the way, can either be a zombie that is a unicorn or a unicorn that is a zombie. It’s totally up to you.

Anyway, I was in charge of the third-place prize. Originally, I was going to draw a zombiecorn, but I realized about a week into that plan I can’t draw worth a shit. I can draw trees. That is all I can draw. Obviously, a zombiecorn is not a tree.

However, once upon a time, I was playing with collage work. Once upon a LONG time ago. And I wasn’t terrible at it. So if I couldn’t draw a zombiecorn, I could maybe collage one.

So I went to the weird Christian craft store and I got a plethora of paper.

PLETHORA OF PAPER!

Oh, you know you want a closeup.

Ooh, aah!

Then I had to sketch out a unicorn. As mentioned: I can’t draw. So I hit the interwebs and found this site where they teach you how to draw a unicorn.

I don’t know why it’s half-gray, ignore that.

Read that text at the top. “You must get it PERFECT in order to get a unicorn!” Well, that’s scary as shit.

I did my level best.

(My unicorn was fatter. He’s a chubbicorn. But I was super-impressed with his most prestigious mane, and I think it’s the best part of the sketch. Maybe I could get a job sketching manes for a living.)

Then I started to put paper on the unicorn in various combinations based on the outline.

At first, I wanted to do a lot of different colors. But I didn’t like how this looked once I did it. (But I DID like the shiny rainbowy horn.) Luckily, I hadn’t glued anything down yet.

My second attempt was MUCH more pleasing.

All I kept, as you can see, is the horn, mouth, and eyebrow. I had this pretty pearly paper. It seemed more unicorny. Also I decided to use all the different colors in his mane. He’s kind of a punk unicorn. He’ll be a zombie later. (That sparkly paper is the bomb, yo. I got a whole lot of that stuff.)

This is him done, without any flair. He has skulls for hooves. And he’s pretty badass, no? But wait til he gets his FLAIR. (He doesn’t like to talk about his flair.)

DONE! He has ALL the flair now. Bloody flayed places. Blood coming out of his mouth. A skull tattoo on his…um…I don’t know, what’s a horse’s hip. His flank? Rhinestones all up in his business. And he’s FLYING THROUGH THE AIR, YO! I know that’s a pegasus thing but you don’t know what zombiecorns can do.

And here it is framed and hanging on my wall that looks like a barn wall. No, I don’t know why I have a wall that looks like a barn wall, either.

You totally know you want to win this and have it in your very own house, right? RIGHT. It looks scary, but it would totally protect you from all sorts of bad juju. It wants to belong to you. Also, I signed it so it’ll be worth a billion dollars when I’m murdered by the clown in my closet.

And, in news of sometimes my life surprises me with the awesomeness, I might have the opportunity to do one of these things for someone for a larger audience for…gulp…money. Yes. This is a thing that randomly happened to me the other day. I KNOW. I’m not going to talk much about that until it’s done, because a., it’s not my thing, as much as it is the person who’s paying me’s thing, and b., that reeks of chicken-counting to me, you know? But I’m fairly sure if I got paid for doing art, it would make me an artist. And when I told Dad tha, he laughed and said “YOU WILL HAVE A  GALLERY SHOW OF YOUR VERY OWN!” Hee! Yep. Of zombiecorns and ghost dogs and possibly robot wildebeests.

OK, I could ramble more, but I’m sleepy, yo, and I should get some sleepy-time in. I have a long post in draft-mode that I’m hoping like hell to have up for you tomorrow if all goes well. Have happy Thursdays, all. Write some zombiecorn fiction, and who knows, you could be the proud owner of your own protective badass zombiecorn. I think you could even name him Larry if you wanted, but I’d ask him what he thinks about that first. He might be more of a Raoul. And if you DON’T win, well, I might be well on my way to being a fancy artist now, maybe I could make you one. You never know what might happen. My life is filled with utter adventure at every turn, really.