heatherbeck

The Girl in the High Tower - Chapter 3

Roger winced when the drone made touchdown — not the most graceful of landings, and for a moment, he was concerned that the small craft had come in too hot and that he might have broken the thing. But the most cursory of inspections revealed that the machine still worked. And with that, Roger powered down the unit, picked it up, and ran across the roof to the stairwell. 

His apartment door never felt so far away as it did at this moment. And with each step closer, his mind spun f...

And then there were 8.

If you haven't heard of him, Google Ralph Steadman. He's an 80-something Britiah dude who worked a lot with Hunter S. Thompson back in the day, but was a pretty talented political cartoonist in his own right.

He didn't isolate himself to a single style, but he is certainly most known for this ink splatter aesthetic.

I've loved his work for years, but didn't know a lot about the guy himself. I was expecting him to be this dark, brooding, weird fellow. Turns out, he seems like the ...

Freak Hair

No picture with this one, because it wouldn't be appropriate. 🤢

But, have any of you ever heard of a "freak hair?"

It's that one errant follicle on your body that lies dormant for a while, until one day, you wake you to find one super long, thin, fine hair is just, all of a sudden, there.

We're all mammals. And as a result, we all have a base-layer of body hair, carried over from our distant ancestors in the trees.

That's normal. I'm talking about the one that su...

Celebration

...of the lifting of my Instagram "shadowban" wherein this picture was removed for violating terms of service. Yes, nipples are baaaad, m'kay?

Aaaanddd...

Speaking of which, since a lot of you recently expressed a want to see more day-to-day randomness... the I-don't-care-if-it-gets-ruined Official Painting Shirt of Heather Beck.

With any luck, it'll be in the Smithsonian one day, next to Elvis's jumpsuit and Mr. Rogers' cardigan.

Gettin' Ready to Paint.

I need a visual outlet. So, I finally procured a set of inks and some super-basic supplies to putt out my inner Ralph Steadman.

Landscapes? Bowls of fruit? Nah. I'm thinking of something a little more in the vein of "self portrait."

The only concern? I literally have no idea if I'm in any way good at this stuff. So I suppose I'll just do it with no expectations and see what happens? It's worked out before.

Hope you'll enjoy whatever the hell comes from it. 😁

Should I Just...

I feel like I need to make a statement every time I post something here, sometimes. But if I don't, and I just want to say hello, is that okay, too? Random thoughts, stupid missives, things that just pop to mind?

It's just, I look at this patreon sometimes, and say, ah! I want to post this thing! And then I don't, because I don't have the complete package...

No need to respond, unless you've got strong feelings one way or the other. But the more I think about it, the more I thin...

Re-Inventing the Bra

So, one of my faithful patrons (you know who you are) got in touch a little while back with an idea. He's got some serious engineering skills, and after one of my recent bra-related kvech-fests, he threw it out there, blueprints included!

See, as I've said before (in super-short), the physics of traditional bras — straps, bands, underwires — break down once you're solidly out of the D range. And in my case... yeah. I fall way out of that category. 

But his notion seemed d...

This isn't a fun post. But, hey. Me.

Some of you I know. Some of you, I am meeting for the first time.

My name is Heather. I drink. A lot.

My admitting this isn't the result of something happening to me. I didn't get into dire straits. I didn't stumble out of a bar and get mugged 30 seconds after. I didn't drive a car, get pulled over, and get a DUI. I didn't have a fight with a friend. I didn't forget where I put my keys until the next day, and still couldn't find them. I didn't fall on the way back to my front door...

Girl in the High Tower - Chapter 2

(Edit... Now includes a illustrations by the great @hefty_cuties . In a way, I would like to say that the story inspired his incredible sketches, but also, this sketch inspired the story. Isn't collaboration great? Thanks, @hefty_cuties :-) )

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The roof of Roger’s building wasn’t hard to access. There should have been a lock on the door leading out onto the barren top terrace of his building, but the latch had been frozen open years ago, in his estimation, ...

ASMR (Headphones Recommended)

A little while back, I was mindlessly wandering around YouTube, and at some point, I stumbled across this thing called ASMR. At first, I disregarded it pretty quickly, because it seemed like the kinda weird evolution the internet would take. For those of you who aren’t familiar, these videos (which can have, like, 10 million views) generally feature a woman in full makeup, sitting in a dark room with a couple of microphones in front of her, making a whole bunch of weird noises with plastic ...

Fuck Symmetry.

In my long and illustrious history of being self-conscious about any number of things, there's one that's been creeping up on me the more time goes by. 

Don't get me wrong. I know there is literally no such thing as a perfect body. Body positivity campaigns the world over rightfully tell us to be proud of the skin we're in, and we all should be, dammit. It's just a little hard to do sometimes when Hollywood tells us that the truly virtuous among us have a little thing called "symme...

NASA (Again)

A lot of you folks will recognize this video, which oddly enough, was (I think) my "greatest hit" on Instagram (last time I checked, I think it had like, 150,000 views or something, which is a little baffling? But, you know. Boobs.). So I apologize for the redundancy.

Thing is, when I logged into Instagram recently, I was given a big full-page message that informed me that this video (which has been up for more than a year, and was one of my first postings) had been taken down because i...

Petrichor

Back in the 1960s, a couple of hippies were stumbling around the Mojave Desert (Technically, they were grad students, but they were grad students in the ‘60s, so I guess they technically had to be hippies, right?). 

Anyway, they were stoned enough to want to figure out the answer to a question we all have probably asked at one point or another: “Dude, like, what’s that crazy smell that happens when it hasn’t rained for a long time, and then it rains, and then, there’s tha...

AABBA

When I was in college, there was this Irish pub. The owner was just a cool dude. And sometimes, he would get up on stage with his guitar and sing a bunch of dirty limericks, Irish folk tunes, good solid drinking music.

My best friend, and a couple of casual acquaintances, would usually hang out there on Thursdays or Fridays. The owner liked us, and thought it would be a cool if a bunch of girls were to get up on stage and start singing the dirtiest limericks ever, to this sing-songy tun...

Haters Gonna Hate (a.k.a. An Unsolicited Music Review That 'Rolling Stone' Didn't Wanna Pick Up?) or, My Favorite Album.

I realized something somewhat recently.

Something that interfered... at the crux of my lust for individuality, and at my want to find something greater than what I could contribute (at this point):

At the intersection of what is popular, and what I can adapt for myself as an individual.

I want to make this clear. I have an almost *fervent* hatred for that which is popular culture. I always have, since my earliest conscious days, when I eschewed bell-bottomed jeans (yay, ear...

Yellow (Well, White) Submarine

I adore working with artists. I always have (even back in the days before I was a boob-ed glam-ish model-esque type of person on Internets. (Got to work with photographers, designers, illustrators, etc., back in the times when I had a real job, working at a magazine with... people).

Artists see the world in a different way. They're nit-picky about things that are worth being nit-picky about, that the rest of us wouldn't take the time to nitpick over. (Like recreating the intricate desig...

Maybe for Brunch?

Have been going on a clothing purge. Finding the pieces that are, at this point, too worn out to be acceptable. 

It's a shame that I have to part with this top. It was a reliable old thing, and oddly enough, it fit my shape really really well. Granted, I would usually wear a blouse or something underneath because hey — it's not like I could get away just going as-presented-above if I were to head to a Sunday service. Not that I'm the most church-going of gals, but you get the ide...

Eine Kleine Housework

I've gotten to the point where I'm a dynamo with dishes. But every now and then, an accident happens and some... flooding occurs. Nobody's perfect. 

Still, the drudgery is alleviated somewhat by re-runs of one of my guilty pleasure favorite TV show.  Some of you might be the cool kids who always got picked first for kickball, and may not recognise the theme song over the end credits. Some of you, however, might be raging nerds, and will get a pang of joy at hearing the mysteri...

A Cup by Any Other Name

There’s been some confusion, I’ve found (at least in the countless inbox messages on IG, asking “so, what bra size are you?”). So, it’s time for a little public service announcement. Gentlemen, listen up: your advanced knowledge of bra dynamics might earn you some bonus points with a lady one day; and ladies… listen up, too! You ever hear that statistic that says something like 75% of women are wearing the wrong size bra? I wouldn’t doubt it.

Back in my small-boobed days (...

It's a thing I'm doing now.

Bonus points to the first person who can tell me which book this pic is the plot to.

Don't worry. More "fun" stuff is comin'. Tgis is a fun little teaser in the mean-whilst.

4 Delicious Flavors

I was, until recently, one of the insufferable anachronistics with a flip phone. It took me a while to finally give in and embrace the whole smartphone thing, so I'll hope you'll forgive me for having the same fascination and level of amusement for photo editing on a phone that most of y'all did back in 2012 or so.

I've been fooling with this app called Photo Lab. Take pics, make them look artsy with crazy filters. It's fun. Because the interpretations change completely.

In the to...

"Heather and the Farm" - Chapter 3

This chapter was so much fun to write — apparently, Paploman (@paplomancomics , patreon.com/paploman) thought so too, and decided to do three images to go along with it!

I hope you enjoy where this is all going. :-)

Tina and Me

Some of you might recall that a little while back, I said I had been passed along a bootleg PDF of a book. It was written in the 1980s, and is attributed to a woman named Tina Small; an obscure blonde, exceptionally British mini-icon who did a lot of photosets back in the film days, a couple of absurd softcore porn/sci-fi movies, made a couple of books, and seemingly, faded into oblivion. 

I’ve chatted with a number of you about Tina Small, so I guess she’s pretty popular with ...