Halloween Pics!

Jesse carved.






I carved.


Rah carved.


I got desperate and carved apples when we ran out of pumpkins. It was really easy, and I think I'll do a ton of apples next year.


The battery-operated Woe Ghost that greeted our neighborhood's kidlets when they came to trick-or-treat.


This is more autumn than Halloween, but here's a pic of Rah enjoying the fruits of her raking efforts this week.

Lots of kids showed up for candy this year, and we had fun making the jack-o-lanterns. (Last year nobody came to the door all night, and that pretty much sucked.)

We had a little girl dressed like a surgeon, complete with the little paper hair-covering, and a boy in a homemade cardboard costume that was a giant million dollar bill with a hole for his face to poke through.

Also there was a girl in a nice sparkly dress and I asked if she was a princess, and she wrinkled her nose and said "I'm a WITCH!" I told her witches were much cooler than princesses. At the end of the night we had some teenagers show up, one of whom was a chick in a sort of candy raver getup and white bandanna over her face. She said she was the Rainbow Bandit.

This town is awesome. I love Halloween.

DANGER: One Of Those Days

I woke up this morning with a cloud of ill luck hanging over me. I knew it was going to be one of those days and was not disappointed.

First, I had my first ever wipeout on the bike with El Stupido Hoondo. He decided to go play in the river while I was going down the path alongside, and while I was pulling to a stop, he came to the end of his leash a split second too quickly and yanked me over to one side. I went down in slow motion, contemplating the whole time: "Leg gonna get crunched...should be fine if I land right. Ouch, that hurts, but nothing is breaking so yay."

Didn't get the wind knocked out and I was already bawling him out the second I hit the grass. My leg got pinched between the handlebars and the crossbar, and I've got a nice big blue welt that may or may not turn fun colors tomorrow. Had my helmet on so I'm good, and the Captain just got his collar yanked a bit, which he's totally used to.

I staggered around for a couple seconds cussing and snarling while the Captain rolled over on his back and looked absolutely humiliated. Nothing else happened the whole ride home. Then he went to his kennel to wait for food, only I stopped to pee. Come out to find he's gotten impatient and knocked the food carton over and gorged on the contents.

I shut him in his cage and left him in there to decompress, then came into my room and promptly tripped on the extension cord that I use to power my workstation (which is located diagonally across the room). The power outlet gets pulled out of the wall, and while I'm trying to press it back into place, I manage to shut my bedroom door on my left thumb, and that definitely hurt like a bitch.

Next time I feel that haze of gloom hanging over me when I wake up, I'm going back to sleep.

Felidae

I found out today that they made a movie out of the Akif Pirincci novel Felidae. It was decent, although it's been so long since I read the novel that I can't recall whatall was cut off, but it seems like a lot. The script's translation from the German is a little clumsy, but the animation is totally badass.

The language and violence get pretty intense, to the point where I would say DO NOT LET CHILDREN SEE IT, but I recommend checking the film out if you can handle seeing cartoon cats getting killed in nasty ways. The whole thing is available on YouTube.

Nothing much going on today. T'was my day off, but I had a horrible headache so I mostly just sat around and prayed the Ibuprofen would kick in. When it did, I took the dog on a two-and-a-half mile bike run. Now I'm feeling mellow and sleepy.

Tomorrow, I will work on art all day long.

Update Post

New pages here!

Also:

Exorcism

Yesterday I got the bike out of the basement. I put it back together and wheeled it into the driveway, then obtained 1x poochito from the house. The idea was to get him nice and mellow with a walk and a hard play session at the dog park, then try him on the bike to see whether he'd enjoy running with me.

At first he didn't know what the fuck, and was shying away from the bike in that wary way dogs have, but as soon as I got on the bike and rolled a few feet, he figured out what I wanted and went right into jogging mode alongside. The leash I use is a 16 foot extendable deal, so I had plenty of room between the bike and the Captain and no slack leash to get tangled up. Lots of extra line in case I ever want to stop suddenly without breaking his neck or yanking my ass off the bike.

I didn't go full-speed, since I had to watch the road and the dog both in case of obstacles. Mostly I had enough warning when he decided to make a sudden stop or detour to slow the bike down and tug him back into line, and I was able to speed up some more.

Before I knew it, he was flying down the road (mostly on the verge, for the sake of his feets) with his jaws sprung wide and his tongue lolling out and bouncing around like crazy. By the time we got back, he was panting and shiny-eyed. The whole rest of the day, he was a docile and obedient little citizen who wanted to sleep more than anything in the world.

So today I thought, let's step it up a bit. Took him out on the bike first thing for a longer run, then back home for water, then we rode to the dog park. There were no dogs, so after a bit of lounging in the sun, I got back on the bike and we went around Northfield a bit. By the end, he was definitely losing his edge, so the ride home was pretty sedate. Immediately after taking off his leash, he fell over with his head resting on my leg, eyes half-lidded, tongue poking out a bit. Then back upstairs for the rest of his din dins and a nice long hibernation.

I'm trying to get him in the habit of spending a few hours of quiet time in his kennel alone each day after exercising, in case I get a job or ever want to, you know, have a social life. Hah.

Funny thing: He's learned to run upstairs, into the spare room, and tuck himself into his crate when I say "dinner." He'll wait in there quietly until I show up to feed him. I taught him "go to your room" but this other thing is his own innovation. He also has figured out that if you tell him to 'sit' and have a carrot in your hands, he should also sit up and beg without being asked. That dog is insane for carrots.

Befoer I start the next pages, I'm making up for lost time on the My Dog Rocks blogging front. Next up: photo post. Big one. 56k sorrow!

Let's see...what else.

There's a farmer's market here through the end of the month. It's only a few blocks away. Also, the air here usually smells like warm toasted cereal, though the flavor varies depending on what kind of cereal it is. I'm told Fridays are cocoa-puff-days. It is amazing.

I found a place by the river where they've dumped quarried stone to help with erosion. Digging around in the rockpile yielded SO many amazing crystal specimens. I brought home the smaller ones, though there's a boulder I need to drive over for. Unless I want to prove Jesse right in his prediction that I'll soon have nowhere to sleep for rocks in my room, I may need to think about adding a rock saw to my equipment.

Other than that, all is unpacking and photography.

Kagerou Updated And Raffle Ending Soon!

Two new pages. It ain't much considering how long I've been away, but I'm still chugging along.

Workin', workin', workin'. So many photos to share, but for now I've got to get cracking on the next pages. Rest for the wicked? In MY webcomic!?

<3

They're our rivals!

Oh boy. SomethingAwful finally found out about our friend Banrai, and the internet carnage was incredible. I was a little amused watching some of the goons pat each other on the back for digging up stuff I'd already gone over in detail when I put up the Files in 2005. I kept wanting to tell them LOL OLD MEME, but the thread was dead by the time I found it on the forum. Weird.

The Captain tripped running down the stairs today and fell about six feet. He fetched up on the floor, belly up, and sprung a leak. I checked him out and he seemed fine. Later on, though, he was kind of snappy at the dog park, and even got in a minor snarly-fight with another dog, and suddenly began favoring his left hind leg. I took him out, checked the leg again in case it was bitten or something, and we went home. He's resting in his crate now.

My camera never came home, so Seebs got me a Canon A570-IS and said if the A530 ever does turn up, we'll make it a studio camera. I've been taking a metric fuckton of pictures on our walks. Will post the best of them as soon as I have time. Still having some trouble figuring out the macro focus on this model. It tends to get a dime-sized area with complete clarity, then everything around it is blurry. I am reading the manual to see what settings I should be using.

Basically Seebs is awesome. A god, even.

Still working on the comic.

[Generic complaint about how I can't seem to find time lately to work on art, followed by apologies, promises and optimism.]

And finally, another plug for the HAUNTED SKETCHBOOK RAFFLE:

Live Hotmail Will Spam Your Shit

Just a heads-up to anybody else who still has an account there. I'm finally killing mine after seven years.

An amusing note--I had to manually transfer their spam messages (which are all from this week!) to the Junk folder in order to get a screenshot. Turns out, whenever I hit 'junk' on a Hotmail ad, it goes to the regular trash instead of the spam folder. How mysterious!

SO TIRED WAH BLOOGAH II

Spoke too soon on the 'back on schedule' thing, I reckon. Forgive me! I did it for love :(

I'm still knee-deep in household chores and unpacking and I barely have time or energy to work on my stuff. I am hammering away at the comic whenever I can steal a moment to myself, and pages are going to be done by THIS Saturday or else you can beat me to death with a hammer.

I'll post some mini-comics tomorrow as soon as I've got time to scan them, but for now I'm exhausted and too stupid to type properly.

PS - The Raffle is still going, although due to the moving hiatus traffic is down and not many people are going for tickets. Here's the link in case you missed it before:

HAUNTED RAFFLE! WIN LUKA'S SKETCHBOOK!

Mother Lode I

I found this enormous, filthy rock sticking out of the riverbank a week ago while doing rockhound recon. You can't see the good stuff in this photo because I took it before I washed off the worst of the mud and gravel, but I assure you I was motivated enough by what I found to go get the car, drive to a nearby parking lot, hike across the bridge, and carry the rock back to the car in my arms to get it home safely. I ended up completely caked in filth and my wrists and knee got borked a little.

Last night, right after taking these pictures, I spent about two hours scouring it with a toothbrush and scrubby-brush. It's still nowhere near clean, but I've managed to tweeze out most of the pebbles and bits of roots that had lodged in the various crevices and crannies.

I haven't been able to post any shots of the cleaned-up rock yet because I can't find my camera. I've been freaking out for days, searching the house over and over again, and it's just...gone. I even went through the cars and boxes I haven't opened since moving in. I borrowed Rah's camera to get these snapshots, but it doesn't like doing macro stuff, so I'll have to post the rest when I finally get my camera back (I hope).

Household stuff has kept me kind of busy lately, so I've been unable to work. It's better than it was, but not quite up to what I'd like. In a few minutes, I have to go run another errand, and then hopefully I can spend the rest of the day doing the comic.

Yesterday, I finally bought myself a knee brace. The pain was almost completely gone the moment I slipped it on before leaving the store (it hurt too much to wait another second). So now I've got three of my four limbs braced. Let's hope that last leg holds up okay :D

...I Got Better.

Priest "Only Pretending to be Gay"

The Onion had better look out! Real life seems to be yanking its material.

Luka Drops The Soap

I discovered the hard way that my dog likes the taste of Dove bath bars.

First I gave HIM a bath, because he smelled like shit and was covered in grime after wallowing in that fucking puddle at the dog park. He has become used to the indignity by now, and he will hold mostly still and merely lean on me for protection against the evil killing spray of cool water. His look of misery is priceless.

Then after I toweled off the worst of the moisture and send him out of the tub to have his PTSD shakes, I took my own shower to clean out the tub and get the smears of muck off my own arms and legs. As usual, he came over to investigate. I said hello when he stuck his head in through the gap between curtain and wall, and went back to the soaping up. Out of nowhere I felt this weird sensation on my leg.

Looked down, and he was leaning into the bath with both paws on the edge, licking off my soap. I yelped in shock and backed away, turning to rinse off. More licking on my leg and back as the hound pursued the delightful soapy taste. Then a loud CLUMP and I turn to see that Butthead has jumped back into the tub, braving the flashbacks and the harsh spray from the shower he hates so terribly, all in an attempt to steal the bath bar.

So Roomies, in case you're wondering where those fang marks came from; mea puppa culpa.

Shit's still a little hectic so the update isn't on time this week. Working on it!

Creepy Love, a Chick Flick Rant

Long-time readers can probably skip this, since I'm not saying much that I haven't already said before.

OH NO LUKA BEING REPETITIVE, IT IS RAGNAROK FOR SURE.

So I was bored and followed a bunch of random links this morning. I ended up reading this website all about psycho control freak ninja turtles manipulators and the tools they use to control their mates. Nothing too new, as I have some experience with "If you don't love me I'll kill myself"-type kookery.

However, this site had this neat little checklist of telltale creepy fuck-type behavior, and as I read them over, I got to thinking about chick flick plots, and how often the fairytale romances they portray as desirable and rewarding actually fit the pattern of an unhealthy and sometimes abusive relationship. I call this phenomenon 'Creepy Love.'

Anyone who's read my blog for a while knows that romantic movies and songs tend to cause me to vent unstoppable sprays of irrational fury across the internet. Creepy Love is basically inescapable in this country unless you prefer to live in a dugout in the woods and mail bombs to record execs. Yes, you'd think something so ubiquitous would stop bugging me by some point--but if that line of reasoning worked, lactose intolerance (and the certain types of unstoppable spraying for which it can be responsible) shouldn't happen either. STOP POOPING, YOU!

I think what really fucks me up is knowing that people take behavioral cues from their culture, even their shitty pop culture, and then wonder why constantly going for the hurt puppy boyfriend who just needs love to fix him doesn't end in flowers and ice cream cones.

I think one of the best examples of a chick flick with a disturbing twist on reality is the first 'Bridget Jones' film. I should have known better than to sink my eyeballs into this bucket of dogshit, but a friend told me I was being unfair by never giving chick flicks a fair chance, and I felt her criticism had merit. Also, at the time I found Renee Zellweger unbelievably hot. So I thought, why not?

So I watched it, and I have been farting blood and crying so many tears ever since.

You want Creepy Love? Check out this movie's squicky romantic climax:

"O hey Pookie, while you were in the shower I snooped in your bedroom til I found your diary. In completely disregard for your privacy, I cracked that sucker open and found out that you secretly thought I was kind of a jerk when we first met.

So now I'm going to storm out the door and leave the diary open on the bed so you'll see it when you get out of the shower, and know how betrayed I feel that you didn't always think I was the greatest guy in the universe.

But don't worry, darling--when you come running out of your apartment in your underwear and chase me down in the snow, you'll find that despite the implied threat of my action, I'm not actually leaving you. I'm just going to a stationery story to buy you a new diary, which I will give to you with the order that you'll write GOOD things about me in it.

Aw, you're apologizing for almost driving me away with your thoughtlessness! That is so sweet! So, hon, would you like one with a cute little lock on it? Then you can give me the extra key and I can check in from time to time and make sure you're not saying anything I don't like."

Audience: AWWWW! ^_______^ HE LOVES HER SO MUCH!
Me: *FART*

And then there's TV, most notably Lost. I could go on for hours about what a disgusting creep the writers' favorite character Jack is. Oh wait, I already have! (Summary: he screams at girls, pushes girls around, stalks girls and is generally a horrible piece of shit, but the writers talk about how he's a nice guy but emotionally closed off to a fault. CLASSIC.) You get the idea.

I find the idea that millions of women and girls are getting their Creepy Love programming reinforced by movies like this unbelievably skeezy and sad. It's even worse that they keep going back for more.

I wish I could believe people don't really believe the kind of shit they watch in movies, but I've heard 16 year old girls in full flow wailing about how they'd never find true love because they weren't paired off yet.

You can't blame ridiculous adolescent hormonal shit on the movies, though I do think there is a major influence on the way it manifests. Watching that junk and hearing your friends talk about how romantic it is probably isn't doing anyone any good either way.

I imagine it's kind of a cycle--the Creepy Love movies fuel the ardor of the adolescent viewers, who demand more shitty films just like it, which then go on to spread the dysfunction even further.

And of course the people who make the shitty movies and love songs don't really care about whether they're helping to reinforce the Creepy Love phenomenon, because they just want the money. There is only one solution:

STOP WATCHING CHICK FLICKS LEST YOUR TEEN DAUGHTERS BECOME PREGNANT BY BIGFOOT.

Update Post

Also, for those who missed it before: the Haunted Raffle is in full swing until the 28th. Check it out if you haven't already--you could win Luka's most horrible sketchbook ever!

Haunted Raffle!

The Haunted Raffle has begun! Click HERE for details.

Art Post, Macro

My room is full of box elder bugs. The dog is dreaming growly dreams on the floor. My knee is bad but Aleve knocked the pain out for 8 solid hours. The comic is coming along, and while it isn't my best work, it's better than the alternative.

That's pretty much it for tonight.

I Kneed You

I woke up today and my knees were feeling pretty good. The left one was cranky because I've been overusing it to give the right one some time off, but it felt fine after a few minutes. I didn't even need any pills.

Took Captain Stupid to the dog park and let him loose. A few minutes later, he comes streaking toward me with a terrier at his heels and BAM, crashes right the fuck into my bad knee. I staggered around for like thirty seconds nearly blind from the pain. It was worse than anything I can describe--human legs are not meant to bend that way!

This was the second time he's done that, too. I think if it happens one more time I'm gonna lose the damn leg.

So I'm wrapped in the wooly comfort of Aleve, with an ice pack over the knee, pissed off because I was looking forward to being able to go out walking and hit the gym again.

Fuuuck.

On the other hand, hey! I'm stuck at my art desk with two pages that need finishing and a lot of time on my hands. So it's not all bad.

All Shooken Up, Woh Woh

...I just heard an Omaha newscaster use the phrase "shooken up" to describe a carjacking victim's emotional state the day after her ordeal.

I'm still laughing over that one, especially since the ad that played before the clip was for Bellevue University. Oh dearie dearie me.

Adventures In Not Doing All That Much

The showers here are incredible. Gone is the piss-trickle of yesterfaucet--our new place has serious water pressure so I don't end up standing under the tap for eight hours just trying to wash the shampoo out of my hair. It's like standing under a waterfall. Also, the water gets hotter. I don't think I've had this much fun showering since the last time I--ah, but that would be telling.

The only problem is that my room is a perfect square with two unblockable doors on two opposite walls and a radiator and window on the third. This leaves one wall mostly free for bed installation, but my art and computer desks block part of that wall. If it comes to a choice, I'd rather move the art desk and have a proper bed. I've been sleeping on a pokey mattress on a rickety bunk bed for like two years and I'm ready to move on to something that won't stab me in the ass or squeak loudly when I turn over.

I've been pondering the idea of getting a bean bag that converts to a bed. Or a day-bed. Or a Japanese style futon. Hmm.

Today the Captain met a bunch of new dogs at the park. A very large, very dominant black lab pushed him around until he started showing teeth and growling, but they eventually got distracted by somebody who was throwing tennis balls and it became a sort of free-for-all dog race. The Captain wallowed in a mudpit for a little while, and as the other owners tried to discourage their own animals from imitating him, I realized that I'm the pet-owner equivalent of the paren of THAT kid. You know, the one who comes into kindergarten every morning smelling like he has ferrets stuffed in his pants.

We found a gate that opened on the river for dogs who like to play in water, so I was able to encourage the little bastard to go rinse off all the mud eventually. It took him hours to dry off, but he was mellow and happy. Come to think of it, he hasn't shredded anything since I first took him there... hmm.

Knee feeling lots better. I can manage the walk to the park and back without it exploding, and going up the stairs only twinged a bit. As soon as the pain is gone, I'm going to go back to the gym. I'm feeling kinda wooden and my energy level's gone down a bit.

Major goals for the rest of the fall: get some invisible fencing so I can leave Stupid outside to play more often instead of putting him on a tether, get a new curtain that is not pink, find a bed, and install shelves in the closet outside my room so I can put my clothes away.

...Wow, this post was dull. I promise I'm doing awesome and exciting things with my days, I just haven't felt like blogging about them. I did a pic last night, though, just messing with art styles:



Aight. Back to inking.

They Move In Packs

Today, I took the Captain to the dog park. It's only a few blocks away, and my knee was feeling all right after I took a few ibuprofen.

At first I was pretty nervous since his only interactions with other dogs thus far have been pretty limited, but the lady who was there with her yellow lab said to let him off the leash to go meet the other dogs and see how it worked out.

He was very timid and his hackles kept going up from his neck all the way to his tail, but it got a lot better as he got used to the other dogs. There were about six of them, coming and going at various times, and together they managed to just about wear the Captain out. He was ripping around the enclosure with three or four other animals on his heels in no time, playing little dancy-games and generally being silly.

Eventually the fight went out of him, so I dragged him reluctantly away from his new friends. He's been a calm, docile little citizen since we got home (although I think he stole the cat's food again when I was out of the room. Still working on that).

There were box elder bugs everywhere today, but they were nothing compared to the plague ofladybugs that appeared en masse to bite the living shit out of me. I can't believe I used to think those little bastards were pretty. From now on I'm going to treat them like especially slow-moving mosquitoes.

Also, the Cannon river is flooding in areas, so the Captain also got to go swimming where a few days ago there was a biking path along the banks.

Happy soaking wet animal-dog.

Got 1x New House!

Back online at the new place! I fucking love it here.

Inked most of a page of Kagerou today and my carpal didn't flare up at all. This is the best they've been in weeks, so I'm taking advantage of my good fortune before I help finish moving the rest of the boxes and fuck my wrists up all over again.

However: my knee went boom just as my fingers stopped going numb, so now I'm having to stay off it as much as possible. This is a problem since I live on the second floor of the new house, so going up and down stairs is a real adventure.

One benefit of having to sit on my ass all day while the knee mends: time for art! I think I'll be able to post an update and start the Sketchbook Raffle this Saturday.

At this moment, the Captain has taken his evening whiz, so I'm going to go flop down on the futon mattress I'm using for a bed and pass out. Bliss!