Never learnt not to touch the stove-top when it's on.

I imagine it would have helped, but I probably never will.
How people can resist it at all, ever, is just Simply Beyond Me.

photo by Chriz Miller

Lounging and listening to music yesterday...

I realized that some people collect alot of stories to feel as though they are living their lives completely, and some people don't need alot of stories to be living their lives completely. 

Closer. (thank you, Patrick Marber)

Ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist wrapped in blood.

drawing, drawing, diy comics-primer

I am completely exhausted today, but can happily say it is as a result of five hours drawing which led to COMPLETED work, as opposed to stuff I'm going to likely sit down and just erase to nothing tomorrow morning. Awesome.

Also, I did final edits on a diy self-publishing primer I originally wrote for the Xeric Foundation when they gave me a grant last year, and that Jim Munroe, No-Media-King-extraordinaire, so kindly offered to post on his site. And now, dear reader(s), it is! Up on his site! Here!

ordinary life.

The mother of a friend of mine who I stayed with periodically during and after high school once said that I was ruined for ordinary life. At the time, I of course took this to be a compliment of the highest degree.
Last night I lay awake wondering if this is in fact a good thing.There is alot of ordinary life to be lived, what does one do with it all in contrast?

Anyhow. I'm without my computer for a week due to a faulty logic board, which keeps it from going to sleep. (Here I thought it was just taking on its owner's characteristics)
Needless to say being at the mercy of other peoples' computers at work and otherwise is going to drive me just shy of Completely insane. God. Where's that heroin, again?

Of course this bodes well for drawing, so yay!

Top Shelf two point OH!

I am thrilled to the tits (ahem) to have been asked to have work on Top Shelf's amazing online publishing compatriot, and the first of my Details books (Carnival) is now up here for your online viewing pleasure.
Dearest reader(s), do remember, if you like what you see, you can still buy a BOOK (yes, a real printed book of the matter) from ME! They are available here.
Just think: you can bring books to bed with you, while Top Shelf 2.0, is restricted to computer viewing. (Unless, forsooth, you are prone to bringing your laptop to bed. If this is the case, likely you have far more entertaining materials on there than my small booklets, and can therefore feel free to forgo the rest of this posting)

TopShelf2.0 will see the five (completed) episodes of The Details find some life online, followed by an online reprint of The One-Night Stands, (which has alas sold out of paper copies), followed by a new project called The Fairy Tales, which will be launching at this year's Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and subsequently in New York at the MoCCA art festival.

And so on, and so on. Work Work and more WORK!

Although I frequently forget

Every so often I am reminded of the intrinsic reason I have built my life this way, and why I love it so. The other evening, I was invited to attend an editorial meeting of a literary journal that has asked me to do some illustrations for them (about ballet dancing.) (Ballet Dancing!)

We drank red wine and spicy tea and ate home cooked glorious food as we discussed the this'n'that's of the magazine, the pieces already chosen for it, etc. Then we lounged in a cozy salon-like picture filled living/dining room of Uncle Monty-esque furnitorial (sic) splendour. And whilst a cat named Mr. Book curled up beneath my chair, we discussed everything from Obama's hands, to the gender dynamics of traditional ballet, to the struggles of Paul Klee, to the anatomy of dancing feet, to the collapse of the world economy and beginning of a new world.

Biking home, I remembered a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, that being around a large ratio of extraordinary people means that one often becomes inured to that very thing; Extraordinariness. How utterly lovely when the veil lifts again. Dear reader(s). It is, impoverished and stressful though it may be, a Good Good life.

Receiving this by (e)mail the other day

made me realize how many friends I still have that have known me for over 10 years. (about 12 that I'm still in contact with, to varying degrees, and despite many clamorous moments, in some cases)
Which means they have know me over many chapters, really.
Here's to sending that in the mail. 

(click on image for full size)

Paper. Fire. Deaf.

The building fire alarm went off THREE times last night. 

You know, I appreciate the need to wake people up in times possibly fraught with danger.

The need, however, to DISEMBOWEL THEIR EARDRUMS with relentless unstoppable high-pitched beeping seems highly unnecessary.

Anyhow, the fire department got called the first time around (the second and third I just stayed in bed. Perishing in the flames, I decided, would still be preferable to opening my door that sound again.)

But yes. The first time. In a highly foggy manner, I thought to myself perhaps this could be an incident fraught with some danger, and I collected up my drawings, in case I should have to vacate in a speedy fashion. I put my laptop in my bag, and my camera as they are the only expensive things I own, and stood in my living room, thinking about the end of my world. 

Why, you ask?
There are five archival boxes of completed drawings in my home. At least a dozen more drawings/paintings on the walls. We won't even attempt to count the books, visual ephemera at least 500 postcards strong, etc etc.

And then I put all the drawings down, save the present unfinished six. 

Let's face it. My entire life is made of paper. If I'm going up in flames, it's over.

Then I stared with no small amount of irony at a photo on my wall of me spinning (fire) on Toronto Island last summer. 

Conflicting interests, could we say?

Dazzle camouflage.

Someone told me, some time back, about a military technique of disguise called dazzle camouflage. It was a technique of painting war ships out at sea with bright patterns and colours as a form of camouflage during WW1 and WW2.

It seems an odd technique, given that it draws attention to the ship, out there by itself in this vast stretch of water, rather than hiding it. But wikipedia explains that the purpose of this method was confusion rather than concealment; the bright covering made it difficult for visual rangefinders* to estimate its speed and bearing, whether the bow or stern is in view, whether the ship is moving towards or away from the viewer. 

I am curious to know how well this works. How many colours, how intricate the patterns, how much of the ship has to be covered for it to reach its destination unassailed?

*Rangefinders were based, so I've read, on the coincidence principle, with an optical mechanism that is human-operated. The operator in question would adjust this reader/mechanism until two half-images of the target lined up to form one whole. Dazzle worked because the clashing patterns looked abnormal when the two halves were aligned.

courtesy of Em and Lo.

"One should avoid asking oneself, "What would my mother think of this arrangement?" And one should definitely avoid asking one's mother, "Mom, what do you think of this arrangement?"

Banned Together.

Yes. Dear Reader(s). It is not news that I have been to many book launches in my time. They are funny animals. I love them, but that is because, frequently to always, I love (Love!) the people involved in them, either writing, producing, or promoting said books. 

I do find them a bit incongruous with my nature, the actual reading parts that is, as I am a pretty traditional reader as it were (alone, in the comfy chair, with the book). I don't like being read to, I can't register the words properly, I feel like I'm being cheated somehow, can't tell you why.

BUT.

Tonight I went to a reading sponsored by PEN of books that have been banned. Banned Banned books. And Derek McCormack read from Are you there God, It's Me, Margaret and Michael Helm read from Charlotte's Web and Dennis Lee (BLESS HIM) read from his own highly offensive children's poem about murder and cannibalism (Lizzie's Lion), and other passages included the talking asshole passage from Naked Lunch (YES) and the opening page of Lolita, and I.Was.Enraptured. 

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE BOOKS. LOVE them.

Years ago I had a boyfriend who had some excessive addictions. And when the shit hit the proverbial fan, he pointed out to me that porn and booze would always be there for him, while I could not  make the same guarantee.

And he was right. He treated me like shit, and I dumped his ass less than a month after that disagreement. 

To this day though, this comes up in my mind. I had No argument for it. I have No argument for it. It was utterly impossible to prove him wrong. (Nor did I want to, really. You treat someone like shit, they dump you. Simple math. Sad and simple math.)

Every so often I worry about arguments like this though. About mathematics like this.
Why, you might ask? Why, dear reader(s)?

'Coz Books don't dump you.  

'coz ya never know.

So the New Model Circus Army has invited me to spin with them next week, and the people who asked them to perform put out some sort of press release, and when we received it today, it was rather funny to note that the photos they had were in fact of us, from our Nuit Blanche performance. Well, except for this stray shot of me, which was, oddly enough, from a Kensington jam. I don't even have ANY idea who took this, or when.

But, dear reader(s), it is FIRE. FIRE, FIRE, FIRE. There are few better things on earth.

From Harpers Weekly

Some Republican governors said they would refuse stimulus aid that required their states to expand unemployment insurance. "If Republican governors do not want this money," said Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association," Democratic governors will put it to good use." Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele announced an"off the hook" Republican publicity campaign, targeting "urban-suburban hip-hop settings." "We need to uptick our image with everyone," he said, "including one-armed midgets."

nothing noble or important lasts forever.

I finally have a chance (and the determination) to post this extraordinary link and it has been apanthropinized. PANTS!

To be in Europe, perchance in Angoulême

Words to live by, courtesy of the Editors

...It breaks when you don't force it
It breaks when you don't try
It breaks if you don't force it
It breaks if you don't try...

And in today's news.

Or rather, what didn't make today's news, but really should have:

Baby meerkats!

Also of note in the New York Times:
Career Options for Ex-Wall Street Workers : Among other choices, a laid-off financial district worker could begin to give tours as a tour guide.
AWESOME.

Reverse Cheerleaders.

The Best People You Could Ever Hope For. Ever.

No word of a lie.

Cheesy but true.

"Hope is a thing with feathers and no brain."