update post

I updated the comic!


Also, my favorite Chinese/Thai place sent me a $15 gift certificate and card for my birthday. I also got a hand-written card and coupon for a free visit to a chiropractor (LOL CHIROPRACTORS) from my gym.

Not to say their bribery worked, but I know where I'm going for lunch and weightlifting tomorrow!

OBESITY: THE GREAT DECAPITATOR

I really should be finishing the comic right now, but I had this great idea for a funny cartoon and had to get it on paper while the getting was good.



From the DA description: If real life were like American television, fat people would be walking around without any heads.

PS - I will make a high-calorie human quiche out of the first person who preaches at me in the comments about the so-called OBESITY EPIDEMIC. And then I will EAT the quiche and become EVEN FATTER, and the cost of your health insurance will RISE.

HA HA HA.

My Hamster Wheel Heart

I'm feeling lonely and abandoned, and Mom is getting more dead with every passing day. (There's your spoiler. Now you don't have to read the rest of this entry! You can just skip on down to the final paragraph).

Sometimes I feel like it's gonna crush me if I don't keep moving. I don't have anyone I can talk to, so I keep finding new things to distract myself with, and that keeps on being just barely enough.

I wish I knew how real people dealt with major life crises. I'm not doing so hot, from a purely practical standpoint. Emotionally I'm recovering, but there's this whole 'real world' where things seem like they're fucked beyond my ability to fix them.

I've got an unpaid YMCA bill because I forgot my membership when Mom got sick. Do I call and tell them what happened? No. I don't want to be on the phone anymore. The phone is a place where terrible things happen far away and can't be taken back, and I don't want to tell a stranger what happened to my mother and hear the words coming out like some kind of cheap excuse for why I didn't pay my dues. So the bill's gone to collections and my credit's fucked even more.

I've still got that bank snafu that's been going for months. I'm on Mom's Wells Fargo account, and they might have ME on the hook for her credit payments now, but do I call them and tell them she's dead? No. I can't seem to handle even that.

The emails been building up for months. My brother is leaving angry messages on my phone about the bank thing and whatever else is going wrong. Do I answer them or call him back? No. I don't want to know what else has fallen apart.

It sounds like such a bloodless and lazy way to dodge responsibility, but that's only because I can't put into words the unbelievable enormity of the helplesness and inertia and that's been with me for months. I've been overwhelmed by emotional extremes from every direction and now all I want is to be left alone. I don't know why I can't fix this. I'm good at doing so many things, why can't I handle a few simple phone calls?

This winter, not two months after Mom died, my best friend since the age of 12 dumped me. These were two kinds of loss I'd never had to deal with before, and suddenly they both were happening at once. It was like being smashed between two Mack trucks headed in opposite directions at high speed.

To put it mildly, the timing sucked. Rain got me through the whining and hysteria. Mostly we watched movies and drank bizarre alcohol. And then, having ignored the real world for months at a time, I found that I was starting to feel a little bit less like dying.

And then Rain moved out.

She'd been intending to go for months and months, but needed to save up the money. I had made my peace with her leaving way back in the fall, before everything turned to shit. But now she was packing up her stuff in the aftermath of two other people leaving me, and bad things always happen in threes.

I was also chock full of self-pity because I felt like I wasn't outgoing or social or interesting enough to make her choose me instead of the many awesome and hip friends who were waiting for her in Asheville. But when she moved and didn't die or stop talking to me, I calmed down again. Sort of.

Fast forward to late June: I'm still standing in the wreckage of all the things that fell apart in my absence. Want to know my shameful secret? I barely care about what a mess I've made. It's like it's all happening to someone else. Maybe this is my brain's way of coping with everything--depersonalize and screw the consequences. I dunno. I'm not a shrink.

I do know that if it's not immediately connected to getting me from one day to the next, I don't want to hear about it. I'm obsessing over soft and comfortable clothing. I'm taking long leisurely walks by the lakeside. I'm hanging out on the internet reading stupid drama that people actually think is important. I'm reading books again, something I haven't found time for in years.

I'm getting by. I'm even happy, most of the time. But then I'll see some kid losing his mom in a comic book or remember something Mom said and start to cry, and that kind of fucks it all up for a while.

But it's not so bad, as isolated depression goes. At least I never have to look forward to losing my Mom again, wondering if the next phone call will be the one letting me know she's died in her sleep. No more standing over her at night, listening to her breathing, afraid that she might stop if I leave the room.

No more wondering just how much misery I can stand--I finally know. Anything you throw at me. I won't land on my feet, and a judge surely wouldn't award me points for style, but I fucking dare you to try and stop me getting up again.

Here endeth the ruminations. I hope you guys liked reading it as much as I enjoyed wading through all that pent-up negativity yet again! It was a blast! :)



On the happy side, I spent 4 hours clambering around the Lilydale hillside and riverbank. I took pictures, collected dead dragonflies, ate homemade chicken onigiri, and stuffed various marine fossils into my pack. Turns out, I do all right on my own.

Hey, it's a start.

Return of the Fat Bastard

What wacky adventures have I had this week?

Click and see!



And part II:

Song For A Mississippi Riverbank

Went for a walk along the river yesterday and took about a thousand pics of the things I found there. These were the best of the crop:

One Piece Announcements

If you're not into the show, move along. Otherwise:



Argh, it figures. The one year I can't make Anime Expo WOULD be the year I end up kicking myself for missing it.

Update Post

Two more pages are up this week. Read 'em here!

Everything in Perfect Motion

Elephant Song
by Sky Cries Mary

There once was a day
When the elephants thought they were clouds
And one day when Buddha was teaching a group of small children under a tree
One cloud forgot it was an elephant
And came crashing down through the branches, crushing one child
From that day on, Buddha condemned all elephants to walk the earth
And so as they walk
Their cousins' duty to follow, the clouds
And so as you see
When elephants walk, it is known that rain is to fall

From high and low
They exit at the axis
The fall of bodies
Falling through the womb of space
They are exposed at the lotus of her sex
The sleep-abandoned figures descend within a horizontal avalanche
Passionately perceptive to their cores
They know that now for now is the fitting time

Now is the fitting time
The judgement is down
The rain-bearing figures are condemned to walk the earth
And so they are excreted
In an excess of rapture
A torrential revolution of blood and nature
And so descends every elephant from that day on

Now look at her
This beautiful creature
As she walks across the sculptured world
She remembers a day
Before a long time ago
When the roots grew up towards the sky
And the erotic clouds, their dear dear cousins, drifted overhead
As crying volcanoes emptied themselves into the sea
Endless days of the sun making love with the ocean

Everything in perfect rhythm
Everything in perfect motion
Everything in perfect rhythm
Everything in perfect motion

When you see the clouds overhead
It's going to be rain
It's going to be rain
It's going to be rain


Listen to the song. It's one of my favorites.

Chickenman

Only the Indigo Girls could write an entire song about roadkill and have it turn out to be amazing.

Got up at 5, ate cereal, worked out, showered. Today is going to be awesome.

On Bad Writing

OMG spoilers ahead for Lost and the Dark Tower!

The producers of Lost recently went on record to explain how they listen to fan complaints and have altered the show according to viewer wishes, and this is why much of the last season has sucked.

Well, duh. At least they finally admit to it. But do the producers place the blame on themselves for being so bad at planning and telling a story that they actually have wiggle room to allow the audience control over their brainchild?

No, they blame the fans... for having bad ideas!

This weak shit really reminds me of that time when Stephen King stopped the final Dark Tower novel cold in the middle of the climax to bitch out the readers at extreme length because he imagined we might want to find out what happens next in the story.

We were the worst sort of people, he chastised, unimaginative human potatoes who would gleefully deny Frodo his nice peaceful retirement and probably caused the Holocaust too. Wah.

After a buildup of three decades and seven books, you're goddamn skippy we want to find out how it ends. If you didn't want anyone to know what Roland discovers waiting at the top of the Tower, you could have, oh... never published the book.

Me? I'm reading to the end of what you wrote, and screw the fourth-wall-breaking lack of writer's craft that led you to shame me for it.

There's a difference between asking a writer to add pointless sequels to a finished story a la FF7: Advent Bad Movie, and wanting to know how the book ends in the first place. Similarly, there's a difference between criticizing a story element and demanding to be given control over it.

In neither case is "Fine, I'll give you greedy little shits what you want, and I hope you choke on it!" an appropriate answer.

And so, Dear Lost producers/writers/dogfood, I know how heavily you rely on fan input, so I hope this is useful for you:

Your audience complained that the supporting cast is populated with unimportant, pointless warm bodies. To address this, you abruptly thrust two boring extras into the spotlight out of nowhere. You did this without any lead-in, and without showing us why we should even care about these two people in the first place.

It was obvious from the start you were merely fulfilling an obligation. Yet you promoted this development as a major leap forward in the story. Extras will now be people! Woo! Only, not really. Everyone else on the island was still nothing more than a blurry background motion--exactly what people were annoyed about in the first place.

Several episodes later, you decided that the fans weren't warming to these suddenly overexposed characters quickly enough for you. The audience wasn't buying it, and so you decided to spin this into proof that you had been right all along. See, you still weren't getting it.

And so you wasted a full episode saying "I Told You So!" by killing off these two pointless new main characters in a manner I can only describe as 'nakedly retaliatory.' And now, the failure of Nikki and Paolo has given you a perfect excuse to never try anything new or take risks with side characters ever again.

Sweet deal, we could always use more scenes of Kate weeping with indecision over the unwashed penis buffet God has seen fit (in His inscrutable way) to serve her.

And now you're in an interview, gleefully rubbing the fans' faces in the whole debacle as proof that they had no idea how to tell a story.

Guess it takes one to know one.

Sweet Hot Come, Sweet Hot Come...

Has anyone else noticed that Nick Cave says "sweet hot come" no fewer than eight times in a single love song? You can try to tell me he's trying to enunciate "sweetheart come," but I know what I heard. And thus it's one of the few romantic tracks I let stay on my computer, even though I actually dislike the song itself.

I woke up feeling kind of sick today. How am I going to treat myself, you ask? Well, I'm going to eat rehydrated chicken stew from the REI camping store for breakfast. I have perfectly good food, but I want to see what it tastes like. I might be immune to nasty freeze-dried goods, though. I lived on a giant can of rice-and-peas mixture for weeks when I was a kid in the backwoods of Missouri. Pretty much explains how I turned out, now that I think of it.

BREAKING NEWS: I'm doing my laundry.

Live on the edge, folks. It's the only way to go.

Lilydale Photos!

A jumble of unsorted pics from today's trip to Lilydale Park:

Dispatches From The Brink of Serious Injury!

I don't do many video blogs, because I'm ugly and my voice sounds feminine, and it's not like this world really needs another wannabe YouTube celebrity.

But this? THIS is a special occasion. I present for your edification and amusement a Luka original, filmed live and on location, thirty feet above the prestigious Lilydale Brickyard!





Geraldo, eat your heart out.

Photos from the trip coming soon.

Hypothetically

I have decided that I want a golden retriever. Not only are they exceptionally pretty dogs, but they exude a wonderful air of calmness and nobility. Mellow dogs are the best dogs in the world, especially since I tend to be an authoritarian sort of alpha and prefer to settle the power struggle as early in the relationship as is practical.

So, if the humane society gives me any sort of choice, that's what I'll do. Unless they miraculously get an Australian shepherd in.

I still hold out hope that I might run across an Aussie. I am a little fixated on the idea, because the best damn dog I ever had was an Australian shepherd. I still have his collar on my shelf, and he was shot to death by an insane neighbor when I was 13. (Mom gets most of the credit for keeping it through most of the ensuing years; she loved him as much as I did).

They are delightfully quirky dogs, and established the beauty standard by which I still tend to judge all dogs. They're also pretty high-energy. Ishna was a runner, which kind of sucked since I was the one who generally ran to get him back and ended up playing 'tag' all over the fucking town. But he was also devastatingly clever and given to herding small and confused animals, which was charming.

There's a golden rescue in the area, but they do home visits, which bothers me because our yard is city-scale, and I hate the idea of having strangers scrutinize my housekeeping skills. I understand wanting to make sure the animal will be provided with plenty of exercise in its new home, but there's nothing wrong with taking your walks on a leash instead of frolicking in a fenced meadow.

My paranoid fantasy is that the home-visity person will come over, take one look at my fat ass, and decide I'd rather die than leave my smelly, cheeto-stained couch for five minutes. Completing my shame, s/he will tattoo "DON'T LET ME HAVE A DOG EVER" on my forehead before leaving. It probably won't be nearly that bad, but still.

The journey for Hypothetical continues, dot dot dot.

A Living Cat Macro

I woke up with a pain in my neck so bad I've had to tilt my head the other way just to avoid whimpering. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and decided that, with this pose, I look like I should be saying "Que? Que?" or possibly "Excuse me, WTF r u doin?" Yes, I have become a living cat macro.

Also, the wrist on that side is sore and pressing on it causes the entire hand to fill with a sensation of extreme heat. I do not recall getting my ass kicked while in the Matrix yesterday, and so am at a loss to explain these strange injuries.

Meanwhile, I've cleaned the fridge, moved my herbs outdoors and re-planted them in larger pots, sauteed some onions, chopped six cloves of garlic, and popped the whole mess into a crock pot with six chicken breasts for the soup tonight.

I still need to pick up some fresh celery, Minnesota wild rice, and marjoram later on. Adding the rice makes the soup taste a bit like the way a spoon smells after you lick it, but in a good way. Also, it makes the soup thicker and more filling.

There might be rockhounding in the day's events, or there might not. Now that I know how to get to the fossil area from the interstate, I can go anytime I want, provided I have someone with me. When we went there yesterday, there was a hobo living in the parking lot. The place is quite secluded, but my list of reasons to get a dog has gone up by one: Instant buddy system!

During the same trip that led us to the hobo's back yard, Seebs and I discovered a very nice trail running along the bank of the Mississippi river. A bird shit on my nice clean stripper shirt, but other than that the place was paradise, complete with a jogging/biking trail. Check it out:










I had no idea there were places like this in the Twin Cities. And it's not even that hard to get to, if you know where to look.

I expect to be out of the house a lot more this summer and fall.

Update Post

Let's talk about sex, baby! Let's talk about NUDITY!
Let's talk about all the pubic hair that's showing suddenly!

"Yo, Pep, I don't think they're gonna play this on the radio."

One Dog Story. One Cat Story.

Yesterday at the lake: I was floating around all serenely in the water, kicking with my hind legs and enjoying the awesome sunset, when something bony and sharp came crashing into my head and back.

I had thought I was the only one still hanging around in that part of the lake, but when I turned, I found somebody's very concerned dog splashing around in the water next to me.

A man had been throwing sticks into the lake some distance away to train the dog for duck hunting. At some point the canine samaritan had seen me motionless in the swimming area, assumed I was drowning, and came to retrieve me instead of his stick.

The rescue left a painful welt on my back, but I suppose it's the thought that counts. And it was good for a laugh.

Also yesterday, back at home: I was holding Mai-mai when she got bored with my attention and decided to climb up and vault to safety from my shoulder. I decided to make the jump less painful for both of us, and bent over to let her walk down my back and jump off from a lower point.

Instead she padded down to my lower back, sat in the hollow, and curled up.

I stood there for a good half a minute yelling at the damn cat before she got the hint and jumped down to go find a less mobile place to sleep.

12 years later, I finally GET Tamagotchi....

Oh sure, I could have gone to bed early and helped to fix my sleep schedule. But no, I had to train my Nintendogs to do a little dance.

This game is like crack. Seebs gave me "Dachshund & Friends" and his old DS the other day, and it's hilarious. My beasts are named Tanuki (Pug) and Shorty (Min. Dachshund). I originally had a golden retriever named Butt Munch (spelled War Dog) but I got tired of having to say her name over and over and over again. It's a little weird having a voice-activated virtual pet that yips in pain if you poke it too hard with the stylus, but very nifty.

My biggest fear is that I'll leave them alone for too long and come back to find a shivering, skeletal Shorty lying on the floor surrounded by the picked-clean bones of Tanuki. This game doesn't work like that; your puppies can't die and they'll only get hungry and need a bath if you ignore them, but I can't stand the idea of neglecting even an imaginary animal.

It's rather like all those times on Chrono Trigger that I kept Magus alive because I couldn't bear to kill him, knowing he wasn't a bad guy after all. Plus, his triple techs are awesome. But anyway.

A real dog is still pending, but I'm not much closer to finding it yet. Been reading your suggestions on where to look, by the way. Thanks for sending those in! I've had several dogs in my life and am pretty proficient with the actual training/teaching/obedience portion of ownership, but I've never been the one who acquired the animal before. I have a decent wad of ready cash from the raffle and cons, so I'll be able to take proper care of whoever I end up bringing home. As long as the dog isn't $400 bucks to adopt, anyway.

Last night I had a dream that the sun went out. When I woke up, the power in the house had been cut by workers outside somewhere. Heh.

The best thing about the dream was that when the sun vanished, it left its rays behind, so we could still see. But we all knew we were doomed, and that was pretty heavy. I remember that at one point I realized there were no other planets we could go to and be saved, and I felt rather ripped off by that.

And now, bed. Tomorrow I gotta pencil the comic, fill some studio orders, do some dishes and clean up athe house a bit. Somewhere in there, I'll try to find time to decant my road trip stories, before I forget them entirely.

Wuv, y'all.

SNORRRRRRRRRK!

We went to Green Mill for breakfast tonight, and the food was really tasty. I'd never been there before, and was digging into a big plate of pasta when this really tough looking dude in the booth right next to ours started SNORRRRRKing back huge gluts of viscous phlegm. At first it was just one or two times, but then suddenly he was doing it every five seconds. The entire room was shocked silent, so the only noise was his awful, vibrating wet snotty gagging sounds.

I swear to GOD I could taste it.

I tried to keep eating my delicious pasta, but it was no use. Jesse and I both ended up getting the giggles, and I boxed up the rest of my food to take home and eat in peace.

Also, a troll in stupid_free made fun of my precious, beautiful looks. I worked really hard typing up a proper response, but when I went to post, the entry was deleted. But because it was really funny in general, I'm gonna repost the whole exchange here:

Anjee (**********) replied to your LiveJournal comment in which you
said:

> Her hair looks like a poorly trimmed merkin clinging to an oil-slick.

Their reply was:



oh GOD.



My tearful response:

You took the time to seek out my Deviant account to find an ugly picture of me to post, yet somehow managed to select the least horrible one on the entire gallery.

Why didn't you use this one instead? I look like a retarded person and my eyebrows are covered in henna. It looks like poop, for crying out loud!



I am all for making fun of my own appearance, but you've got to do your part, too, or it'll never work. This is your only freebie--in the future, you're on your own.

I feel it to be a wordy, but sufficient, reply. Sadly she did not agree, and deleted it from her personal livejournal. Oh well. This past few months, I don't really enjoy LJ flame wars the way I used to, anyway.

The Raffle Endeth!

No, wait, that's not the right image. Hold on a mo...



There we go! Okay, on with the show.

The Not Quite Dead Yet Raffle is over! Go see who won here.

Well, it's that time of year again...

It looks like my planned summer internet sabbatical begins now.

I needed an excuse to not hang around the computer all day, and the last Harry Potter book seems like a good one. If you want to avoid the madness, you might want to start doing the same. There are already assholes trolling LJ with questionable spoilers, and we all know how that turned out with Book 6.

I'll still post stuff (comic pages and blog entries and so on) but I won't be around much to pay attention to what goes on in communities, with my LJ friends, or my DA comments until the insanity ends.

If you want to talk to me while I'm gone, use my hotmail address (username: muzukashiitanuki) and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. I'll also be on AIM again as electric kagerou, if you PROMISE not to flood me with "HELLO? HELLO? HELLO?" posts while I'm away from my desk, which is often.

Now, on the topic of contacting me: I've been finding a few extremely outdated Studio Whipping Boy order status queries while reading comments left on my DA and LJ accounts, instead of the studio email. Some of these messages have gone weeks or even months without my having seen them.

Please don't do this!

If you send Studio-related questions to my private accounts, they risk never being read! I don't tend to check these accounts for long periods of time.

Other, more organized members of the Studio are in charge of processing and keeping track of orders and making sure everything is sent out on time. If your message is in the form of a DA note or LJ comment, these well-trained monkeys WILL NOT be able to log in as me to read and respond to your posts.

To contact the studio, always email whip at plethora dot net so your question will be seen and answered promptly. To those of you whose queries have not been answered via the other methods and are thinking we just don't care: please re-send to the proper address so we can help you out.

Hypothetical Dog

Now that I'm done with cons and won't have any long trips for several months, it's time to revisit the old debate: should I get a dog?

Judging by how long I've been spending on Petfinder, the answer is yes. Specific reasons:

1. Companionship. I am alone for perhaps 20 hours out of every day. The cats are nice, but they're also loners. Hypothetical would be a good listener who I could put in a crate when I had to go run errands. How awesome is that?

2. Therapy. Having somebody else to think about and take care of, needing to maintain a schedule in order to keep that other person from dying (feeding, grooming and exercising) will help add structure to my life and give me more responsibility and confidence. I'm kind of a lonely person these days, and I'd really like to have a friend who won't go away.

No offense, Rain. (You whore.)

Some people have babies to fill this role. I am not that stupid. Babies are like tiny rubber air raid sirens that shit hot lava twenty times a day and die if you set them on fire for even a minute. Why bother?

3. Protection. In this neighborhood, a good deep barking fit when someone's sneaking around the back door would really come in handy for the whole household. Sufficient training can help ensure that the only barking fits we hear is related to an actual emergency.

4. Boredom. The cats aren't very rewarding when I seek them out for attention. They're cats. Dogs, however, are a laff riot any time of day. There's a reason they're referred to as "Nature's President Bushes."

5. With enough time and patience, I can teach a dog to do some highly amusing tricks. Oh, I've got ideas. See also: #4.

6. I like dogs, and I miss having one. I miss having any pets, but since this household is not ferret-friendly (too many things it could choke on, be crushed/poisoned/torn to pieces by, etc) a dog is the next best thing.

I don't think I've got room in my heart for another cat; Stokes and Mai-Mai are like having five normal cats as it is. Stokes alone makes three, due to sheer physical immensity. I'm not being melodramatic; that fucking cat has a moon, he's so big.

(Hi, Stupidcat!)

7. Speaking of which, we need something for the cats to humiliate and torment now that Stupidcat has stopped fear-peeing at the first sign of danger. Though I shall miss those halcyon urine-stinking days spent perched on a footstool trying to coax him out of the attic ceiling. Not.

8. Emergency food supply.

Now, the real question is--where to get the animal from? Some rescues charge a lot and insist on home visitation to make sure you have a big yard with a fence. This will be a mostly-indoor dog that goes on walks in an area where there are parks every ten feet, so the small yard we have isn't really that much of a problem.

The humane society has a rather limited selection. It seems like the only unwanted pets they have half the time are lab mixes, and I just don't really LIKE labs that much. Also, they're chewy. But they do have animals that need the most companionship, and the often high cost is a donation toward a really good cause.

I'm very leery about pet shops, but I'm not sure where else to look outside snobby breeders for a small puppy. I didn't like the looks of the puppies they had at the Roseville place (eye snot, wallowing in their own shit, slightly limp animals. It was kind of depressing despite the unspeakable cuteness of the puppies).

I suppose if I found a pet store that carried healthy Australian Shepherds I MIGHT be tempted to go against my vow to have nothing to do with those places... but only for an Aussie.

I could also check the want ads and see who has an unwanted litter, but frankly I'm not so thrilled about the idea. I don't like meeting people, and who knows what would be wrong with the dog.

The other possibility is to wait until a dog comes to me. This has happened in the past, but the downside is that it might take years, and that I won't get to choose the dog.

I would rather get a puppy because you can train them from an early age and thus never develop the worst of the dog habits that turn people away from owning dogs in the first place--barking, shitting, pissing, chewing your shoes, and eating the neighbor boy's face.

Getting an adult or a senior dog is also not out of the question, but I'd want to be DAMN sure I liked the animal to start with, in case I might not be able to change its more pernicious bad habits later. That can happen, especially with traumatized animals.

I wouldn't mind damaged goods (medical condition or abuse trauma), as long as it isn't something beyond my ability as a lapsed pet owner to handle in a starter dog.

So, the search continues. I plan to use this summer to train and bond with Hypothetical, which means I'd best get cracking.

Kagerou Update!

This post marks the triumphant return of Kagerou from its three-week break. I give you...two pages!

READ 'EM HERE!

Epic Fail + Helpless Flail

Ok, so I'm made of AIDS and fail. Remember how I told everyone I'd be updating on the 9th? Yup, I blew that one despite my best intentions.

I've been basically half asleep since I got back in town and work has been going slowly as a result. I'd already penciled half of this update by the time I left for the road trip, so the pages are a good ways along and aren't going to be too terribly late. Still, I have yet to finish the coloring and shading and texting and all that good stuff. Add in scanning the minicomic and drawings I did while I was away, and that's a couple of hours at least.

Shouldn't be too bad, though, since it's only 2 pages and (when I'm awake) I'm working like fury on them.

That said, I can't wait for a day off! I probably, in retrospect, should have skipped THIS update and returned next week, but meh. I hate being away, and what's a little clinical exhaustion between friends?

The other thing is that I wasn't able to check the post box for the final snail-mailed raffle submissions this afternoon. Yup, I was (surprise surprise) asleep.

Tomorrow's a Sunday, so the raffle drawing will have to be delayed until Monday afternoon. That gives you super-late folks one last chance to get in any last-minute entries.




A bit of a rocky return, eh? My worst fear is that this is becoming a habit for me. Naughty Luka.

That Dog Won't Hunt!

WATCH THE VENTURE BROTHERS. IT IS THE BEST CARTOON ON TV.

Five Seconds Of Poorly Worded Activism

"EVERY 3 MINUTES A WOMAN IS BEATEN. EVERY 5 MINUTES A WOMAN IS RAPED. EVERY 10 MINUTES A LITTLE GIRL IS MOLESTED."

Geez, I'd hate to be either of those women or that little girl. Talk about a crappy life.

Today Happened

It's almost 1 AM. I spent most of today sleeping and am still tired beyond belief. I did really well on the drive and at the cons, but the fatigue is kicking my ass. It seems like I can't even sleep it away.

Today definitely beats yesterday, though, so I hope tomorrow will also be better than today.

I want to get back to the gym and work out for a couple of hours to make up for lost time. Maybe take a walk around the lake or go rockhounding now that the site's open again.

But now, RIGHT now, what am I doing?

Am I cleaning the kitchen?

Am I making a delicious and tasty meal to pacify the curiously insatiable appetite I seem to have developed along with the fatigue?

Am I checking my con finances to see if I can afford to adopt a puppy?

Am I drawing to drain off the unbelievable inspiration that's taking up half of my brain?

No.

I am surfing around on eBay buying little chunks of blue rocks, and bitching shamelessly to whoever will listen about the hippie twaddle that keeps popping up in the item descriptions.

I think the reason I buy little things online (other than the fact that the crystals on eBay TOTALLY KICK ASS) is that I like having something to look forward to when the mail comes in. Does that make me pathetic?

Don't care. Got four chunks of celestite to make up for the big piece that turned out to be broken.

Harrr. Photo gallery is being updated. Will keep you posted on that. Have lost ability to use pronouns.

End.

Sucks To Be You Story #44

Check this out.

Thanks to a now-closed loophole in Georgia child molestation laws, this poor bastard is serving a 10 year jail sentence because a 15-year-old girl gave him a blowjob at a wild party when he was 17. After Genarlow Wilson gets out of jail, he'll have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

The best part is that if he'd just fucked the girl instead, there would have been no child molestation taking place in the eyes of the law. After all, they were both children at the time, and there's a "Romeo and Juliet" law intended to shield minors from pretty much exactly the penalties Wilson is facing now. It just didn't cover blowjobs at the time.

And so, let this be a warning to you wild youngsters out there. When you're at a party full of hot teenaged nymphomaniacs and there's a video camera rolling, always, always, always stick it in the pink.

The Scrubs Season Finale Ate My Balls

According to the writers of Scrubs, the right thing to do when a child asks where babies come from is to lie to him or her and say Mommy and Daddy "made a wish." Telling children the truth about sex is mean, and strips parents of their chance to vicariously relive their fantasy of what it's like to be innocent. Or something.

Scrubs later goes on to advise the audience that when two people who don't love each other get pregnant, the best choice is to grit your teeth and stay with the person for the sake of the baby. Even if there is no hope of reconciliation, several objective characters insist that the expecting mother should be humored and lied to in order to give her hope.

And with that, my patience for this show has run out. Halfway through the season finale, I discovered I was done. I had no interest in even finishing it, even though I paid $1.99 for it on iTunes. I eventually did watch the rest, since I felt it would give me sufficient authority to slag it off in my blog as the worst thing since moldy sliced bread.

I wanted to think that this latest bullshit is an attempt by the writers to get us to see how immature the characters are, by allowing them to convey their flawed logic without a narrative overlay of reality.

But this show just isn't smart enough to pull off something as ambitious as that. And just listen to the inspiring emotional music that swells when the bullshit moral is conveyed. The music has been used to hammer home life lessons and hard truths for six seasons now.

I cannot trust a creator who brags about how he has no interest in dragging a certain "will they/won't they" relationship drama out for year after year, yet still makes the "will they/won't they" relationship drama the focal point of the show six years running. Yeahhhh...

The Scrubs gravy train has congealed and now glides along, greasy and cold, on its rusty circular track. The characters have been paired off and handed darling clever little babies to fill the gaping hole where a funny hospital show once lived. Watching it now is like being chained to a wall and forced to watch Garden State over and over, except even more shitty.

These days, I have trouble telling the preaching and moralizing apart from the punch lines of the jokes. And speaking of jokes, I think I can safely say that Season 6 can be summed up in twelve words:

"Some of the people on this show are black. Oh hey, BABIES!"

That's three whole more words than when the show started, people.

This show jumped the shark two seasons ago, and even though I used to hope it was showing signs of life, it's clear now that it will never recover. I could keep watching it for the sake of the children, but frankly, I fucking hate children.

And speaking of Luka being in a position to watch and be disappointed in television programming, I'm BACK! The road trip ended yesterday and all was well. I have many stories, but they'll have to wait because I'm too tired to write it all down.

Update will be on the 9th, as promised. Until then, I'll toss in a reminder that the Not Quite Dead Yet Raffle will be ending with the update. If you still want a chance to appear in Kagerou and get your ass killed, now's probably a good time to get those tickets.