ray bradbury

the mechanical hound

"The mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the fire house. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber padded paws.

Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine."

--Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

451.2

451

Rough sketch of a Fahrenheit 451 illustration idea...

the art of joseph mugnaini

October. Finally.

The Sun Dome

From Ray Bradbury's "The Long Rain"...

"October Country"

"That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay."

--Ray Bradbury


Happy 1st day of October, my favorite month.

"I don't remember that I was ever President."

There's maybe never been a U.S. President who hated being President more than William Taft. His life-long goal was to be a Supreme Court Justice instead--his wife was the source of the Taft family's Presidential ambition.

Taft's presidency was fairly lackluster, and he remains the only President to ever come in 3rd in a national reelection (after Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, who was running as the Bull Moose 3rd party candidate).

Today he's mostly known as "the fat President". Yes, it's true that he often got stuck in his bathtub, and had an oversized one installed in the White House (it was removed years later). Though within a year of leaving office Taft lost approximately 80 lbs.

I'm not what you'd call a fan of the guy, I really just felt like drawing him (rather than, say, Chester A. Arthur). I suppose I admire the way he ended up, though, as a Supreme Court Justice at last--Chief Justice, actually. Good for Taft.

Not Taft-related: I walked into a gas station this week and saw this ad--

Now, my favorite opening line of any book ever is from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451--"It was a pleasure to burn." I have no idea how this particular ad slogan was created, but if they lifted it from that line, well, I have to have some kind of respect for that. Even if they're using it in such an outright evil manner.