We Killed the Hubble!

My parents bought a Wii today.

No shit.

They bought a Wii Fit kit yesterday and I guess they figured they should get a Wii with the quickness so they could use their other new toy.

We spent an hour this evening making Miis of the entire family XD Also, since I have my own Wiimote (long story short, I got it to make one of those giant Wii-powered projection whiteboards), we can totally play anything with 3 players now.

Next order of business: get a nunchuk for my Wiimote, get Dad to buy an HD cable for the Wii, and spend as much time over there as possible before we drive eachother insane and beat one another to death with our Wiimotes XD

And with today comes the very last comic strip on our twelve comic odyssey, a veritable tour de force of comedic wit. Or something. Anyway, obviously I'd had no plan with this whole thing, so wrapped the whole thing up magically in one giant swoop. Which ... was actually kind of sad, because once you get working on something (or at least, so I find) and discover who the characters are, different situations start popping into your head and the story becomes much richer (which is how sequels are born! ... and also in the bowels of Hollywood hell). Unfortunately for this particular project I was so jammed up with work I couldn't continue it, a problem that persists today (yet I am so very poor ... when does all this turn into a living wage? Sigh).

Your final comic strip for today. So thanks for reading, and I appreciate those who left comments. I hope you enjoyed the trip.

Well anyway, Comicon is only a week away. At this point the only must see panels for me are the Steve Purcell one on Thursday (1-2 pm) and the Pushing Daisies one on Saturday (3:15 to 4:15 pm). Anyone want to offer odds as to whether or not it'd be possible to actually get in to either one? People keep warning me about this whole thing, but at this point I'm still not sure what to expect. I'm trying to imagine that very first convention I went to crossed with the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan ... yet somehow I can't quite picture it. Is it possible to actually get into panels? What panels are typically madhouses and to be avoided? What does Lee Pace look like in person? God, I want to go to that panel ...

Since we're talking about Comicon, that is a very apt panel. Anyway. Your comic for the day. Second to last one!

Your comic for the day will follow shortly ... but first! I did a little interview with Wizard Magazine (yes, that Wizard Magazine. I know, I'm as surprised as you are) about, of all things, Demonology 101. They have a webcomic column, and they've posted it here. So click the link to read me yammering on about webcomics and villains and a bit about my upcoming stuff.

And here's your comic for the day. I have no idea where this joke came from. I shall call it ... my 'random-ness' period ... much like Picasso's Blue Period, just not as ... artistically fulfilling? Sure.

Oh, and a bunch of my LJ friends were doing that fun looking comic-related meme. I never get to do memes because they always seem to be about anime or fandom or things I don't really know much about, so it was exciting to find a meme that somewhat related to me. Obviously I need to get out more.

( Comic Meme Thingie ... very exciting, I swear. )

You know what's instantly funny? Deadpan recitals of Abba lyrics.

Seriously, try it. Next time there's an awkward silence, like at a work meeting or during a blind date or some other uncomfortable situation, make eye contact with someone nearby, maintain your composure, and calmly announce something like,

"Can you hear the drums, Fernando?"

or

"Dancing queen. Feel the beat of the tambourine. Oh yeah."

See? Hilarity ensues.

I'm not sure if this works quite as well with Ace of Base lyrics, but you could try it. That is, I could try it, since I have all of them burned indelibly into the surface of my brain. Unfortunately, everyone else in the world only remembers the words to "The Sign," and maybe "All That She Wants," so nobody gets my Ace of Base references. Abba, however, is like a part of the universal tongue of humanity. Like in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, you know? Memes, man. TOWER OF BABEL. Shit like that.

(Off-topic, I'm totally recording a lo-fi punk cover of "Beautiful Life" once I figure out this 4-track tape recorder I got off eBay last month.)

(Sort of on-topic, how do you pronounce "Abba"? My mom and I say AH-buh, but Entertainment Tonight says, AB-uh. Now I'm curious as to which is correct. I'd guess ET's version is right, since they probably had the opportunity to ask Benny or Bjorn for the correct pronunciation, but who the hell knows.)

I completely forgot to give you guys a comic yesterday. How rude of me! And I can't even remember what was distracting me... huh. Anyway, two comics for today, I guess.

Your comic for yesterday. Your comic for today.

And just earlier my cat puked on my window sill. So I turned around and yelled at her for puking, and she ran out of the room, and puked while she was running, so it went everywhere and it was horrible so horrible. BEHOLD the glamorous life of an artist. That's right.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone. It helps.

Here's the last picture I got of Mariko. I sold my little Panasonic camera to Dad after his ancient digicam freaked out and ate a memory card after he took a bunch of pics up on the Kootenai last weekend, and then I upgraded to the newest model. The cat was zonked out on Mom's lap, so we made her our test model while we compared picture quality between the old cam, the older cam, and new cam.



And here's a little scribble I did on the white board in the exam room while I waited for the vet to insert the catheter or whatever.

Your comic for the day (this one really makes me laugh, for whatever reason). A pity comics don't come with audio, because (of course) I'd expect the Abominable Snowman to have a British accent. At this point in my life I'm incapable of doing anything that doesn't involve something British. Because I am lame. Which I freely admit.

Anyway, Hellboy II was all kinds of awesome. Del Toro is a treasure, a gift from the directorial heavens. He almost makes up for the fact that Michael Bay exists (almost). He is a shimmering gem in the cinema firmament (© Singing in the Rain). And before the show I picked up Halo & Sprocket Vol 2 from Strange Adventures, and really liked it. I didn't know much about it before I bought it (it's about an ordinary woman who rooms with a robot and angel), but it made me go to my Skeleton Key happy place, which is a good place to be. Hey, whaddya know! SLG publishes some good comics!

She wasn't colicky. Her kidneys were failing, she was going into multi-organ failure, and she was so dehydrated they could barely get the IV in.

Dad lost it and bailed. He's not good with that kind of stuff.

I held her while she died. Afterward, we went home, cleaned up all her stuff, and donated it to the humane society. I think my parents might get another cat some day, but not in the near future.

Man, Mariko might have been a bitchy lump of craziness, but she was still my cat and I miss her already.

Fuck.

Oh, today is off to a bang-up start.

I have a rather large air conditioner in my bedroom, and I live on the corner of two very busy streets, so if I'm going to sleep late I wear earplugs. This is a problem when my dad comes screeching in at 9am on a Saturday. Apparently he called my cell repeatedly, banged on both doors, and finally resorted to rapping on my window. I only caught on during the last one and came out of my heavy mid-dream state and stumbled to the window to rap back at him before he drove off. In the process, I had to tear my eyes open without proper preparation, and I think I pulled the erosion loose again.

But wait, it gets better. Dad circles around to my back door, and I trip over a pile of clothes while trying to get my glasses, rug-burning my right knee.

Meanwhile, last night I was at my parents' house and they said the cat wasn't doing well. I thought she looked fine, in her usual grumpy-sassy kind of way, but I only saw her for an hour.

Dad's announcement this morning? The one that required nearly tearing my house down to wake me? Yeah, the cat. Dad says they got an emergency appointment at 10:30 and he thinks they're going to put her down. Mom won't go, so he wants to know how I feel about being there. Well, of course I don't want to stick Dad with the trauma of watching the cat die by himself, but goddamn, so not prepared for that when I've only been awake for 20 seconds.

I hope she's just colicky or something.

Woo! I spotted a stationary bike with a FREE - TAKE ME sign on it across the street from my parents' condo, so I ran back to the office, got my car, and nabbed it. Huzzah! Now I can burn calories while I'm reading or gaming or whatever.

HELLBOY II! OPENS TODAY! SO EXCITED SHALL SEE IT TONIGHT WITH FRIENDS! Can you tell I'm excited? I love you Guillermo del Toro omg call meeeeeeeee.


Your comic strip for the day. And we're half way through the whole thing. I like the descriptive sound effect. Wouldn't it be cool if that happened in real life? You ran around a corner and some Move Trailer Voice-esque guy would yell "TURN!" and "DASH!" and if you're me "TRIP, FALL ON FACE!"

... okay, maybe it'd get annoying after a while, but still.

I did a radio interview about Zombies Calling today. Hah. Hopefully I didn't come across like some sort of asshole. Which'd be normal for me...


Your comic for the day. And this is when it starts getting weird ... honestly, that's the kind of childhood I wish I had. I did do a bit of hunting, but it was mostly for unicorns.

A lot of my conversations, for some reason, seem to eventually wander over to the topic of How Much Transformers Sucked (it's a movie about robots blowing shit up. How do you mess that up?). This ultra-secret script leak of Michael Bay's version of The Dark Knight pinpoints quite accurately why he ruins Christmas every year. Why is it so funny? Because it's so damn plausible that that's exactly what he'd do with Batman. And it scares me. Hold me!


Anyway. Your comic strip for the day.

First, a note: my lovely friend Leisl has a comic strip in this Sunday's Chronicle Herald (in The Nova Scotian section), so pick up the paper to see her comics goodness this weekend! The Herald is doing a cool thing where they're running different strips from local artists in each Sunday paper, which I think is an awesome idea, and more papers should do it. So check the paper every Sunday to see nifty new comics.


And here is your comic strip for the day. I like drawing trees.

Wow, it is muggy today. I'm practically melting. But it's only 23 degrees. I am going to DIE in San Diego.

Anyway. Today's comic strip, in colour! I particularly like the "AHH!" panel. "AHH!" is always fun to draw.

So it's been one week since the comic strips I did for the Halifax Chronicle Herald stopped running (it was a 12 week run, ending last Sunday), and I'm now allowed to post them online. So yay, you guys get to see them. There are twelve strips in total, and I've decided to post one a day (both here and in my comic update journal, as it's a bit neglected what with me not doing much online at the moment) for the next twelve days. The strips are in colour with the exception of the first one, as I just can't seem to find the colour version of it for some reason ... I've no idea where it went. Lost in the bowels of my computer, I suppose. Anyway, I would love comments and stuff, so if you want to comment, please do.

I didn't have a plan for the strip, only characters (one girl, six brothers, all under the age of 10. Don't ask me how that's possible), so started out with a bit of a Calvin & Hobbes rip off, and then veered off somewhere weird, then realized I had to wrap the whole thing up in one strip, due to poor planning. Hah. Anyway, it was a very interesting experience, doing a comic strip for a newspaper, and a nice thing to have on the resume. Originally I was asked to do the strip for a year, but I didn't have the time, so 12 weeks was the compromise.
Without further ado, here's the first strip of Jenny Has Six Brothers (it was called Jenny's Brothers in the paper, but I like the longer title). The thing's too wide to be in my LJ properly, so you'll have to settle for a link.

Strip 02 will be posted tomorrow for all you lucky people. Oh, and it'll be in colour too.

SETTING:

Post 4th of July barbecue at my aunt's place in Elliston. Minor family reunion. Aunt Pat was there with, like, 3 of my cousins who I'd never met before. (Awkward moment award: introducing myself to someone I turned out to be related to by saying, "I'm Mike's cousin." She replied, "That's cool, because so am I." WHOOPS.)

CAST:

Me, obviously
Mike, my cousin, married with two children
Luke, one of Mike's sons (age 10 or so)

WHILE DISHING UP DINNER:

Luke: Dude, wanna hear something cool? So we were out shooting gophers with Dad's deer rifle, and he told me to aim low, right? And so I put the cross-hairs right on the gopher's butt, but this is the best part, I HIT IT RIGHT IN THE BUTT.
Mike: Heheh.
Luke: And it shot, POW, eight feet in the air!
Mike: It totally did.
Luke: And then we went over there, and I SHOT THE GOPHER'S BUTT CLEAN OFF AND ITS INTESTINES WERE HANGING OUT.
Mike: It was awesome.
Me: ...congratulations?

AFTER DESSERT:

Me: I gotta run. I'm meeting some friends back in town to watch the UFC pay-per-view at eight.
Mike: OH MY GOD, I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU LIKE THAT SHIT. It's so bloody and violent!
Me: ...
Mike: That's sick, Lace.
Me: Right. That's sick, but teaching your son to giggle at disemboweled wildlife is kosher.
Mike: ...
Me: ...
Mike: ...
Me: RIGHT THEN I GOTTA GO NOW OKAY BYE EVERYONE SEE YOU NEXT HOLIDAY KTHX FOR THE BEANS.

And here I thought I was gonna get my big mouth in trouble talking about politics.