a time without mirrors

about a week ago on Twitter, I believe it was Jamie Keiles (for whom I uploaded a pic on Flickr devoted to her Seventeen Magazine project) who mentioned the blog A Year Without Mirrors. its gist is, the woman behind it got so sick of obsessing over her looks while shopping for a wedding dress that, six months before the wedding, she decided to avoid mirrors for a full year. that takes guts regardless of the massive fuss involved with planning a traditional wedding.

at one point she had a poll in the sidebar, asking how often you look at yourself in the mirror: never, rarely, sometimes, or all the time. with sheepishness, I realized I belonged to the last category. despite my lifelong struggles with body image and identity, I check myself out in the mirror at every turn. see, I never used to think I was "hot." I was prepared to wallow in fat obscurity for the rest of my life. then someone I found attractive found me equally attractive. I figured he was the kind of guy who could get any woman he wanted, and he chose me, however temporarily.

it's been downhill ever since. not only am I still not happy with my body, I'm strangely vain about it anyway. I feel okay with finding myself attractive, but if another shares the sentiment, I wonder what's wrong with them, or that it must be a joke. mirrors have helped fuel this narcissism. I dress up, I put on makeup, I strut out the door thinking "damn I look good"...and if no one else seems to feel the same way, I come home crushed and regretful. I'm sick of constantly checking my face for new laugh lines or making sure my cleavage is just so. I'm sick of trying to emulate models or actresses or even tarted-up cartoons. none of those is real, but I am. the two concepts don't jibe.

so I took down the huge mirror screwed to my front hallway wall. if the super complains I'll put it back up, but with curtains covering it. (I hope he doesn't, I found an old painted-over mirror panel behind the hung mirror!) I need to figure out how to cover up my triple-mirrored medicine cabinet doors; fabric scraps should take care of that. the only real problem I see is, I often use myself for reference whilst drawing comics. I think I can handle a utilitarian glimpse now and then in my portable half-length mirror.

I can't help but feel this will be incredibly freeing. I'll still look the same overall, only now I won't be a slave to that fact. I'm also hoping to get in touch with my body, in a way; to feel its inner strength for myself, instead of relying on my eyes. I want to love myself on a level beyond physicality. most of all, I just want to be.

a long, full life

my grandmother on my mother's side, Marion, passed away this morning. she'd just turned 90 on Thursday. she was the only grandparent I had left. my sister wrote a wonderful post about her on her blog. I considered letting that speak for the both of us, but I had a different experience, different memories, and a different reaction.

my memories of Grandma are, unfortunately, piecemeal. we lived in Michigan when I was born, while my grandma lived in Wisconsin. since it was about a five-hour drive, I didn't get to see her very often.

then in '87, we moved to the Chicago suburbs. with the drive pared down to two hours, I got to see a lot more of Grandma. I remember fussing over me when I was little, which I wasn't used to. mom and dad didn't act that way towards me. but a grandparent, who only had to stand me for a few hours at most, could hug and kiss and give me all the candy she wanted.

I remember her old house very well. I played with Lincoln Logs and old purses in the back room. sleeping in the spare bedroom was kinda creepy; the bed was way too high for me back then. the basement would get loud when lots of company forced the overflow down there. the men would watch sports and drink beer. I'd go back behind the dry bar, but not very often; I got the sense that it was an "adult" thing that I didn't quite get. there was a strange cabinet in the basement that must have been a broom closet or a coverup for pipes or something, a tall wooden thing with a gold mesh screen on top. my young mind imagined there was a killer robot that would come to life and destroy us all one day. a few years ago my sister found the house for sale on a website. now I'll never know for sure what was in that closet.

Grandma struck me as a no-nonsense type, at least according to the stories her children told me. raising four kids (two of them twins!) must have turned her into quite the ballbuster. by the time she got to me she had mellowed considerably, but I could still tell she wasn't to take any guff from my aunt and uncles (and mom, of course). not that there was really any guff to take. we weren't a family of drama, just one that got together from time to time and shot the shit, reminiscing about the old stories again and again.

Grandma moved down to St. Augustine in Florida in the early '90s, so I didn't get to spend that much time with her. I remember visiting a few times, dates unknown. I re-met my younger cousin Laura down there when she was 12; I must have been 15 or 16. even though I was an aloof teenager, she seemed pretty cool for her age. :) Grandma lived in a mobile home and seemed very satisfied with it. she wasn't the type of woman that we had to worry about, even when my grandpa had to be put in a home. she just carried on.

less than a year ago - I don't remember the timing, just that it was a ways from her 90th - I got word that Grandma was in the hospital. I held my breath that she would be all right, and she was, though compromised. due to a stroke, she couldn't take things on by herself anymore. after her 90th birthday party, she got very bad very fast, and passed away this morning.

I'm getting all this information secondhand because I...just don't talk to anyone outside the immediate family. if not for Facebook, I wouldn't have known Grandma was in the ER at all. such is the nature of a low-key family. we may not have knock-down, drag-out fights, but we're also barely connected to each other in some ways. Kim and I always talked about going down there to see her one last time, just to spend some time with her. my memories of her were always pleasant and I think I could have learned a lot from her. now...

I regret feeling uncomfortable talking to her. I held her in the untouchable reverence of the very young. that's what's upsetting me so right now: that I was the one that could have broken through. I knew there was more to find than just a doting memory; there was a woman with a long, full life of which I only saw glimpses.

I'm sorry I never got to know you better, Grandma. I hope you didn't suffer, and that you were surrounded by people who knew how to love you better than I. rest in peace.

the dating game

time to bring douchebaggery back.

so I've been on OkCupid, the dating site, for a long time. I actually joined while I was still dating one of my exes, if that gives you any indication of how great that went. (interestingly enough, while never at any point would I describe myself as a heavy drinker, I apparently marked myself as such in my profile. not a great coupling, that.)

for the past eight months or so, I've tried to use it as a legitimate service, with dismal results. some highlights:

• the guy in the Army who, right this second, is stationed in Afghanistan. he also cannot live without his gun.


• the guy into "postmodern theory," who most likely would only get along with others who are into postmodern theory, because the rest of us don't know or care what the fuck it is.


• those who can barely string two sentences together, usually intimating sex. double if they claim they write as a hobby.


• guys that rattle off the three words that describe them. it's very stilted and usually not reflected in the rest of their profile anyway.


• is there an unwritten rule that everyone and their godmother has to travel to at least three continents?


• how many variations on "bearsfan" or "chiguy" can there possibly be? how does that distinguish you in the least? this means your defining characteristic is either that you like sports or that you exist.

those are just the ones I can remember. keep in mind these are the guys the service has picked for me. also, how is it that I can't choose to not be paired with guys who have kids, especially when I've specified I don't want kids? seems like kind of a big deal.

so far I haven't gotten a single date out of the thing, but in lieu of a steady stream of men waiting outside my door, I'll stay with it...

collapse

i don't know how this is going to sound. i had a bit of a breakdown tonight. i've doubled my workload on the comic voluntarily the past few weeks and have experienced some growing pains, to say the least. my therapist questioned drawing double what i'd been doing when what i'd been doing was killing me, but i didn't really listen. cartoonists are supposed to be crazy anyway, but i wonder if they're supposed to be this crazy.

i was trying to draw a blueprint and kept having to do it over and over, when i started saying to myself, why did i even start doing this? why did i bother? i could have gotten another job, a job i liked, instead of trying to do something i can't do twice a week. something i'll never do as well as the people whose work i love. not even as well as people whose work i hate. and in the midst of all that self-doubt, i heard an old, familiar voice: my father yelling at me. real old, like when i was really little. i don't even know what about, but the tone was clear: you're lazy. you're worthless. you can't do anything right. you're a pain in my ass.

i've spent most of my life buying into that message. i didn't know any better. it showed in my lack of direction in life; my failure to enroll at not one, but two colleges; most of all, my poor choice of boyfriends. i always expected men to turn on me somehow, even as i tried to pick men the furthest from my father as possible, at least on paper.

i've tried to deal with it through humor. whenever my sister or my mother and i talk about my father, there's bitterness, but it's always tempered by eyerolling. as if reducing him to a joke takes away his power. yes, it works. but when it's a Bandaid to cover up a seeping wound, sometimes the pain still bleeds through. i really think i believed it would never get me again. the worst thing is...i don't know how an adult who suffered emotional/verbal abuse as a kid is supposed to feel. am i supposed to be this screwed up? just from that? from something that was always around as long as i could remember? i really have no concept of how deep the hurt can go or even the extent of what i suffered. even typing "suffered" seems over the top, like i'm trying to trump up things in my own journal.

if i had a car, this would be where i would take a long, long drive, but i don't. i still have a comic to finish, too. will i throw on another sheen of balm just to get things done? i don't have the strength right now to refute the voices in my head. and who knows how i'm going to get to sleep tonight.

reassessment

I started my own webcomic in November of 2009. I did a four-panel strip twice a week. after work, I'd go pencil in my studio, or ink at my computer desk. it didn't leave much room for a social life, and I did tend to slack and play games sometimes instead of draw, but I got things done.

I quit my day job in February. the hours and environment had always been repugnant, but it paid well. so I took the money that I'd saved and said "sayonara." I still think about them sometimes, fondly here, not so fondly there. they'll be doing that job (or something like it) until they retire or die, and more power to them. it just wasn't my scene.

my biggest fear when I quit my old job was that I would turn into a Howard Hughes-type recluse and basically lose all my marbles. I went through a very rough patch after high school; my friends went onto college, while my plans fell through. I holed myself up in my room all day, not seeing anyone but my mother for weeks at a time. I withdrew into IRC and video games, making shotgun friends with people across the country while knowing no one in my town, questioning my sanity at every turn. I became a shell of a human being, culturally dead, useful to no one.

deep in my heart, I was terrified the same thing would happen again, once I doffed my work shackles and concentrated solely on the comic. indeed, it has been...difficult. I try to get out of the house by going to Starbucks or just for picturesque walks. despite doing the comic for over a year now, I still don't have a decent work (or sleep) schedule worked out. risk/reward has fallen heavily towards the former so far.

over the past few weeks, I made a decision to make my comic more of a full-page thing, rather than just four panels. (I start out with an eight-panel layout and mess with it until I get something I like.) I'd wanted to do it for a very long time, but wasn't sure I could pull it off. after a year's passage yielded only two chapters, I wanted to try the change.

so far I've done three of these super-sized comics, still on my biweekly schedule. although the format gives more room to tell the story I want to tell, once again, I haven't figured out scheduling yet. I wrote an outline for the entire chapter on Saturday, something I haven't done before, which felt really good. but. this meant less time for drawing, so I spent all of Sunday - and a large chunk of Monday - penciling and inking this comic.

the next one is due on Thanksgiving. I've got several new characters to sketch out. I still need to learn perspective. soon I have to design floorplans and decorate a five-story lighthouse from scratch. I also have to do laundry, shop for groceries and bake a pie. I've been going to bed at 4 and 5 am. the thought of going out with friends is a joke. the only thing keeping me from going completely bonkers at this point is music and MST3K.

and yet, in the middle of being exhausted, lonely and always feeling on the edge of tears, I don't want to give it up. it still feels like if I can only get my act together, I can really make this work. from the outside, it almost looks like a form of self-torture, but I would rather do this than go back to the corporate world. I've met some great people as a result of this endeavor, with more yet to come. most of all, I've found I really want to tell my story, if not just to please others, then to prove to myself that I could.

experimenting

this past weekend, I went camping out in Iowa, very near the state line. I'd been gearing up for it all week; my excitement was doubled by a new recipe I was trying out on my fellow camp-goers, homemade Pop Tarts* with breakfast treats in them (eggs, bacon, and cheese). when I find myself looking forward to something with great relish, it tends to overwhelm my consciousness at night, making it hard to get to sleep. I had the same problem during my Rush period. (their calmer songs were too upsetting for my taste.)

couple that with the fact that I sleep lousy on camping trips in general, and you got a very cranky Shannon come Saturday morning. my sister informed me that Benadryl or Xanax would put one out not unlike a light when sleepytime is nigh. she just happened to have a Xanax with her, of which I took half on Saturday night. I was curious as to what it would do with my anxiety, too, as well as what it would have done if I'd wanted to stay awake, but that's another situation for another day.

I took the half, as layperson-prescribed. the first thing I noticed was that yes, it did indeed make me sleepy. the second thing was that as soon as I closed my eyes, I saw pre-dreams I'd never seen before. usually my hypnogogia is chaotic, stream-of-consciousness and, due to looking at small screens almost all day long, only takes up a portion of my inner field of view. when my head dropped on the pillow, great fractal-like visions filled the entirety of my eyelids. my subconscious spit out calm, organized images, tessellated to the edges of my brain. and brother, once it was over, I slept. I slept like Bob Seger.

now that I'm back home, I keep seeing the monitor in front of me as a tiny slice of a huge swatch...that my Paint the Line wallpaper is indicative of a voluminous landscape. add that to the rolling contours of eastern Iowa and the disconnect of webpages becomes fascinating again...

* if you make those homemade tarts, do not use that dough recipe. that thing was conceived, literally, in Hell's Kitchen. find something with less butter.

the tradeoff

long, long ago - I know not through what channels - I started reading an offensive, bong water-soaked webcomic using Microsoft Comic Chat as its medium. it was called Jerkcity, and its name was apt. stock MS characters joked about how queer they were, how many cocks they could gobble in a minute, how much Windows/Netscape/IE/et al sucked. (the funniest joke ever strip is still one of my favorites.) it was counter to everything decent in society, and I ate it up. it's still a guilty pleasure, though the quality has diminished somewhat, IMO.

part of the draw of Jerkcity is: who would write this mindless garbage? was it one guy? a bunch of guys? sometimes there'd be a fuzzy .gif image of an unshaven man lurking in a panel here or there, usually ingesting copious amounts of ganja. was this the guy, or a red herring roommate or friend?

poking amongst the Jerkcity links, I found a blog purportedly from one of the characters, Rands. and what do you know - even if he was the main proponent behind Jerkcity, he wasn't a total nimrod. something about his obsession with and personal mastery of Vegas spoke to me. his description of Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder (or N.A.D.D.) eerily shadowed my own habits. I still knew almost nothing about the guy besides his inclination towards strippers, but I liked what I was reading.

fast forward a few years to the Twitter age. I joined up last summer our of curiosity and potential self-promotion. not long after, I discovered Rands had a Twitter account. cue futher mystique breakdown. most of his tweets deal with design and office management (the latter a little hard to swallow due to my last job), a pithy missive here, a well-timed link there. it's a link to his own blog that prompted this blog post.

after perusing his latest post, a wish for the perfect store unhampered by anonymity and marketing jackals, I noticed he had a link to his Amazon wish list on his sidebar. curious, I took a look. I now know more about him, his tastes, and even his state of mind than I ever dreamed possible. the Internet has bridged the gap between creator and audience, stranger and stranger, possible friend and potential stalker. no privacy was invaded; he put up the list on his website for public browsing. undoubtedly, he has preferences and hatreds he has not shared with the public at large. still, I can't help but feel a little weird at this peek inside someone I'll never know in person.

the final countdown (c'mon, i had to)

so...it's Quitting Day Eve. I can't believe it's really happening. I've been more emotional than I expected about this whole thing. but then again...it was nearly six years of my life. six years of 9+ hour days, waking up WELL before my Circadian rhythm demanded, working in a field I never cared about. let's get the crap stuff out of the way first.

what I won't miss:

• the constant blather of CNBC in the background.
• lack of privacy.
• tone-deaf warbling along with the classic rock station.
• having to drop everything for the most important thing ever, only to be trumped by the next most important thing ever 30 seconds later.
• the grandiose stories of getting hammered, wasted and/or shitfaced.
• MI-waiting-to-happen coworker's struggle to breathe whenever she moved.
• the resulting numerous late or sick days from the preceding.
not really waking up until at least 10 am.
• dressing really nice and no one noticing. hey, maybe I DO enjoy being ogled once in a while. ever think of that, mr. businessman? sheesh.
• carrying ten drinks from Starbucks at a time.
• not having the day after Thanksgiving off. can't do it cuz people need to have access to their money cuz of the 1929 market crash. now that ATMs are always reachable, how lame is that?
• the obnoxious New Yawk coworker's nasal tone over the hoot 'n' holler.
• ordering Christmas gifts, though I've gotten out of it the past two years.
• staying ungodly hours to do IT work, since I can't do it while everyone is working.
• no lunch breaks.
• going to Brigg's (RIP) or Marquette Inn for a greasy breakfast hangover run.
• worship of money above all else.
• feeling cheated out of a social life due to early bedtimes.
• not connecting with my workmates on any kind of deep level.
• lack of creativity.
• being so stressed my mind is obliterated.
• feeling helpless trying to explain just how much this job has affected me.

what I will miss:

• the best paycheck and bonuses I'll ever have.
• not having to budget myself.
• jock coworker's zealous, incongruous use of the word "glorious."
• the sense of routine.
• being forced to socialize due to office structure and the nature of my job.
• the occasional kickass Youtube vid or rock song on the radio.
• "rally songs" in the morning, though we haven't done that in years (that I know of). mine was "Mamma Said Knock You Out."
• free lunch and breakfast. so many tasty Loop lunch joints!
• the genuinely nice, interesting people who made it worthwhile.
• no one to bake goods for.
• smirking self-righteously at the boys after a big night out.
• the occasional bursting into of song.
• March Madness.
• carrying ten drinks from Starbucks at a time. (it does kinda make me feel like a badass.)
• knowing what everyone's usual is.
• the fact that I knew how to deal with my rich, arrogant masters.
• kicking ass at a highly strenuous job I never would have taken if I'd known.

it's really over, and I will grieve. but there's so much to look forward to I can't even begin. I surprised myself when I took this job. now it's time to surprise myself after it.

the inevitable

I woke up this morning, groggy and incoherent for the umpteenth time after a night spent ill at ease. it’s always this way on a Sunday night; my 5:20 am wake-up time comes far too early, truncating my nights and prolonging my days.

as I struggled to jump-start my day via Starbucks and thrusting myself into my work, I came upon a CNN article (thanks, Joe). it was about four young black men in Greensboro, NC who sat at a white diner counter at Woolworth’s fifty year ago today. I’d probably heard of them in passing, part of a grouping of factoids in American history class.

but the interview garnered from one of the protestors struck a few chords in my heart. the fact that the Greensboro Four were terrified to do what they did, but they did it anyway. the fact that although they got support from some classmates, most of the people they petitioned thought they were crazy. the title of the article says it all: “Never request permission to start a revolution.”

so I quit my job.

it was not a true revolution, per se. I didn’t confer with anyone before acting, partially so I wouldn’t lose my nerve, mostly so I wouldn’t be convinced I was as crazy as I knew I was. it was a personal revolution, something that needed to be done. and it still scared the hell out of me. I’m scared stiff as I write this, ready to burst into tears again at the thought of the wide open space underneath me.

the article can’t take all the credit; I’ve wanted to do this for a long, long time now. I remember starting as a temp and hoping earnestly that I’d be hired to get my benefits, wondering at the same time how long I’d actually stay. my fourth official year ended yesterday. (my unofficial sixth year would have passed in April.) last March I got a wild hair and started to peruse job listings, updated my résumé, wanted more than anything to get out of this place…except I forgot to quit. I don’t think I quite forgave myself for that. luckily it was a fantastic year and staying on meant I could pay for wonderful things like PAX and SPX and three CP cons…but the fact that I’m getting more and more into those wonderful things meant something had to give.

besides improving Wighthouse, I don’t know what I’m going to do now. this is the dumbest and smartest thing I've ever done. I've got the usual two weeks; there’s the technical stuff, like making sure my health insurance is extended and wrapping up loose ends with my coworkers. I am convinced I will not be paralyzed by this change, but energized by this freedom. eventually.

I still have to freak out just a little.

status report

• I got less than five hours of sleep last night, thanks to chatting on Skype. I daresay it was worth it, though.


• I'm also still quite sick from contracting some minor plague over New Year's. it’s reached the lung infestation stage, to the point where I welcome productive coughs so that I will be rid of it. also, I’m gross.


• there’s an email from Kris Straub sitting in my mailbox I’m scared to read, for its mere presence implies rejection…in my mind, at least. (I asked for permission to use something from CSS in my own comic.)


• I need a smartphone oh so badly. according to T-Mobile I’m not eligible for a Nexus One upgrade yet, but I’m not sure I’d want one anyway, what with them jerking their long-time customers around in exchange for new ones. I hate Blackberry, and I’d rather have Android than iPhone cuz I’m not a Mac person and it just makes sense…I dunno. options look slim.


• I've been playing games again, but I'll cover that elsewhere.


• can’t stand being at work today. however, part of the reason I’m still here is I’m allergic to job post jargon. me opening up Craigslist is eerily akin to Bart reading about the Supreme Court.


• today feels like the kind of day where, 20 years ago, I’d be curled up at the family PC with piles of my dad’s Big Blue Disks and UpTimes (which I still have). oh Dungeons of Kroz and Moraff’s Revenge, how I miss you. shit, that's how I came upon Zoarre, too. *sniffle*

those that giveth

what's the coolest gift you've ever gotten from a significant other?

i've been given gifts in the past by boyfriends. seeing as how i frequently date poor guys from other states, they haven't been numerous. but i was reading about the chaotic nature of Christmas ornaments, and was reminded of a gift i was given in junior high by my first huge, life-changing crush.

it was a 3.5" floppy disk with a program on it that made fractals. i don't know if he thought i would like it or if he just thought it was cool himself.. it seemed an unusual choice. he didn't seem particularly science-minded; as i recall, his main interests were industrial/metal music and slacking. but here was this disk, with a nifty program on it on a subject i enjoyed, that he didn't even have to give me. i'd say that qualifies.

of course, if some enterprising young man were to bequeath an Intuos unto me, i'd have to change my mind...

grinding along

well. I seem to be going through a bit of depression. pretty bad this time. now this is by no means a recent phenomenon – in fact, feel free to file it under “not news” – but suffering through it in the context of a webcomic launch…it puts a different spin on it. so what do I do?

in fourth grade I had an incident in the lunchroom. food was placed before me and I didn’t want to eat it. just the thought of ingesting it repulsed me to no end. that refusal, and the following outburst, wound me up in the principal’s office. I felt the same repulsion last night when I sat down at my desk to work on my comic. my brain balked entirely; I would have rather canvassed the neighborhood with a gaggle of Mormons. I just couldn’t take it.

but I’m logical enough to know that if I don’t plow through it, even if my mind is throwing a tantrum, nothing will ever get done. back on the horse, full speed ahead, etc. etc. no one said this was going to be easy…in fact, all evidence I’ve heard has been to the contrary. got to concentrate on the good things, no matter how out of reach they seem right now.

the ABCs of webcomics

so I plowed through my first weekend of hardcore comic-making. as an exercise in self-ass-kickery, I choose a launch date relatively soon, forcing myself to stop dicking around and get my bearings. it worked…for the most part. my observations on webcomicking so far:

• Webcomics.com and Blambot are awesome resources. it’s great that some of the biggest in the field want to lend a hand with the up-and-coming. very helpful indeed.


• a tight updo contributes to eyestrain headaches.


• I’ve written more scripts than I thought, but I need more, always more.


• the Chicago Board of Trade building is a BITCH to draw in Photoshop. first I drew it by hand, scanned it and tried to ink it in PS. I didn’t like how it looked, so I inked over a couple reference photos instead. not 100% pleased with how those looked either. process: two entire days. I’m not too fond of the straight, clean lines of Art Deco anymore…


• when in doubt in PS, zoom the fuck in. while doing the CBOT, I got the urge to make a huge banner over my desk that screamed “ZOOM IN, YOU TWAT.” wonder if Kinko’s could help me with that.


• with “inside time” maximized, I became more domestic than ever. I cooked far more than usual; did my laundry with only a weeks’ worth of clothes; threw out my six-month-old pizza boxes; cleaned the litter box; painted my nails about a thousand times, trying to get rid of bad colors…lengthy drawing periods necessitate many breaks, allowing for small cleaning breaks and other things to break up monotony. the important thing is to not get too distracted by, say, TV or YouTube or vidja games.


• speaking of distractions, I turned down an invite to a bar. a friend came over to borrow my Internet while hers was down. I mentioned a new place with a good-looking menu (Allagash White and Lindeman’s Framboise on tap? mmm mm!), saying we had to go there sometime. her response: “are you hungry now?” I was, but I politely declined and made my own (scrumptious) pizza instead. this…this will pay off one day.


• despite basically doing the same things I’d do otherwise on a typical weekend (sitting at my desk, barely going outside, etc), I felt 10x lonelier. I don’t know if it was the constant drawing, listening to podcasts instead of a live stream like last.fm, or not giving myself the option to go outside if I felt like it. maybe I get out of the house more than I realize. this leads me to consider taking on a roommate with similar interests.

now to repeat, ad nauseum.

choose wisely

"You need to get out more," says my therapist. "It's hard to find someone to date locally if you don't put yourself out there."

She's right, of course. I'm not going to meet anyone in this city if I sit around at home. So I do what comes naturally: I devise plans for a webcomic, thereby eliminating all possible free time for encounters of the opposite sex. Brilliant, no?

I think I'll have some more wine.

even softer worlds

Joe started a TF2-themed hash for a softer world on Twitter, so naturally I had to follow... (click for full size)

a softer world tribute

I'd been pointed towards a softer world before, but I never really got into it. however, now that I'm going to SPX at the end of the month (where the authors will be too!), I figured I should brush up.

I'm digging it more than I thought I would. it could easily lend itself to emo hipster douchebaggery, but mostly it's really funny in a cutting way. it also lends itself to easy parodies... (click for full size.)

brain leakage

la la la.. I have no idea what I'm doing.. whee hee..

okay. somewhere, somehow, I got the following brillian idea: hey, I'm hanging out with all these webcomic peoples, I'm really getting into this medium again...I know! I'll make my own webcomic! not just any webcomic, but a relatively complicated one involving an architectural docent in Chicago who inherits a historical lighthouse that turns out to be haunted, thus insuring a plot-driven story!

oh wait, Twitter and the collective Internet has destroyed my attention span. also, I haven't really written anything since I took some community college English classes back in '02. plus frequent late nights mixed with work and stress are destroying my thought process slowly but surely. and whenever I read anything remotely clever, my brain shrivels up and dies from intellectual jealousy.

welp, I know what I need to do to make this thing successful: steal, steal, steal.

chainsawsuit tribute

so the past few months, I've become a huge fan of Kris Straub. he's one of the old vanguard of webcomic artists; he's an alumnus of Checkerboard Nightmare and currently draws Starslip and chainsawsuit. Starslip is a self-advertised science-fiction comedy with a continuous storyline; chainsawsuit is completely random weirdness with boobs and naughty words. the latter definitely appeals to my "wtf" side.

long story short, I woke up this morning with an idea... (click for slightly larger version)


this is quite possibly the grossest thing I've ever drawn, if not in actuality, then in spirit. you're welcome.

Mark me

I believe that, in general, there are two kinds of hauntings. One is brought on by a singular, intense event, such as a murder. Take Resurrection Mary: girl goes to dance, girl gets killed, girl spends rest of eternity haunting nearby stretch of road. The other is disturbance of the dead. Bachelor's Grove is another good example. There was nothing wrong with BG until people stopped taking care of it, inviting vandals and thieves to wreak havoc. Now it's reputedly one of the most haunted sites in Chicago.

That's exactly what's going to happen to Burr Oak Cemetery. Hell, only the gravestones were desecrated at Bachelor's Grove; rumors of disinterrment are thought to be unfounded, the wishful thinking of a morbid public. But when 300 bodies are dug up and tossed into a disused part of the cemetery? That's fucking Poltergeist.

This place...this place is going to turn into a vortex of tortured souls. It defies all logic how the accused could discard dozens of human remains for something as meaningless as money. It absolutely destroys me. Despite my nonreligious stance, I cannot deny that those bones have power. I hope that power literally comes back to haunt them. You just don't fuck with the dead.

musing

there's a song called "Your Mind Belongs to the State" by Meat Beat Manifesto that i skip past a lot on my iPod. it makes me uncomfortable. not because of the subject matter, which deals with individuality, insanity, violence, etc., subjects that might rub someone the wrong way in their own right. my discomfort comes from a sampled sentence repeated every so often of a man asking simply, "what do you want from the rest of your life?"

i never know how to answer that.

having delved so far into Joe's Ustream (i'm pretty much a fixture at this point, sun-thurs) and getting caught up in drawing again, it reminds me of how many people told me i should draw for a living. my parents would get me character-drawing books. my grandfather wanted me to send me something i'd drawn. (i never did; too paranoid.) my sketchbook was a matter of public record from 5th grade through high school, passed around and doodled in by all manner of friends. so why the slowdown? i'm kind of angry at myself, not so much for the flurry of activity now...but why the dry-up for months, years beforehand? and what's keeping me from taking it on seriously?

(flashback to living with druggie ex, both unemployed, making a point to draw every day on the rooftop of our building...i did it once and never again)

thinking about it, though.. it's not just drawing that gets me. my true desire is to make people laugh. drawing (and storytelling) is a means to that end. there is also the fact that several of the webcomics i read are much bigger on story than graphics...but i think i'd end up frustrated and unsatisfied if i took that route.

no matter what, it's something only the strong can survive. am i ready to test that strength?