For a creative AND compulsive person, Prolificity is a real Monkey on the Back. Lately, with moving and full-time nightwork and a now-long commute, my Monkey is an unwelcome screecher of a creature. He screeches THE SHOW MUST GO ON! and YOU’VE VIOLATED THE EVERY-SINGLE-DAY COVENANT! YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE! and batters my unbettered psyche.

Well, screw The Monkey. It is not an all-or-nothing world. I am happily romantically involved, gainfully employed, and I just became un-uninsured, so mostly things are sunny. (Still, it bugs me when an every-day streak ends.)

“Quasimodo” can be translated to mean “not completely formed,” and all of the images I offer on this post are such. Peter Lorre always seemed to me a quasi-Quasimodo, so this incomplete page of him–in glorious black and white, like the best of his movies–suits the theme exspecially well.

Doodles are almost always Quasimodos: we ever know when to stop. But hey, you fellow doodlers out there: a well-spent doodling hour can happen if you have a timer go off every five minutes or so, and you scan the doodle in its current state, and then continue. At the end of the hour, look at the scans in sequence, and you’ll feel like you’ve created something that’s Alive. You can also print the best of them and doodle yourself a new tangent. Warning, though: you have better things to do than doodle, and this can turn into a real time-suck if you get hooked.

Here’s something I did with my French Canadian friend Michel Lamontagne in mind. I’m hoping he’ll look at it and want to finish it. His mind is agile, and his image-sense startling.

Here are the words to “Secret Socket.”

Select eclectic trends if apropos
Elect electric-haired politico
Contort & make a body twitch & tic
Resort to form you rock with single click
Each win will amp the voltage that you mete
Teach Sinless Pride and Life just can’t be beat