Ooooh man… sorry I’ve been away, I’ve been busy lately! Those two mini-comics I was working on, “Self-Indulgent #15” and “Shitman” are done, printed, only awaiting to be cut, folded and stapled! I can’t do this right away, my downstairs neighbour goes berserk whenever I start stapling or using my guillotine, well, he goes berserk when I sweep the floor or do most anything, including typing on the computer! Actually, he’s been quiet for months now, I just don’t want to tempt fate! While I was copying the mini-comics at the UBC Staples I also reduced a third mini-comic, “A Short History of the Longest Undefended Border”, about all the times that Canada has been invaded from the U.S. which is more often then you might think. Interestingly, it isn’t always the U.S. government that launches these invasions but U.S. citizens attacking Canada against the wishes of their own government! Then I went home and wrote another mini-comic, “The Littlest Gunne”, which I’m still working on the pencils and I’m almost finished the inks for “Bookworm”, about my life and literacy! Waaah! I’m on fire!

I’m also working on my Grudge, a 3-D card model for Jim Ramsey. Jim builds card models for the movies when he’s not blowing glass and he made up a bunch of these “Grudges”, a fictional 3 wheeled light truck, for various artists to decorate as they see fit. I got one. It’s pretty tricky, I haven’t worked in card before but I’m having fun seeing how much stuff I can glue on it. I’m making mine up to be a WW2 Canadian Army postal van in Italy around 1943, researched the insignia and everything! It’s fun and frustrating and I wish I had more time!

I’ve just been asked to do a one pager for the next “Vancouver Review” magazine (for whom I drew “Monster Versus The Pop Culture Nihilists” ) on the Nine O’clock Gun, a Vancouver institution! Since the 1880’s or so this 12pdr muzzle loaded left over from the Napoleonic wars has fired at nine PM so fish boats can synchronize their timepieces, important when your safety depends on anticipating the tide. I’ve done some research on the web already, I should get to work on it soon…

But how can I find the time, being such a social butterfly and all! Thursday was the James Kolchalka interview, Friday I went to a sale in Richmond in the morning (I am now officially really broke!) and went to my Trumpeter’s Wargames club in the evening, Saturday was the launch for the new “Cinema Sewer” magazine at R/X Comics (I illustrated a two pager on censorship in Cincinnati) followed by our monthly cartoonists jam at the Jolly Alderman!

Now I must decompress. Being a loner most of the time I find that if I go out and get social able for a few days in a row I get quite edgy & irritable. I need to withdraw and have some quiet time, work time, recover and calm down. Cat time. Time to paint figures, time to make flags for the Royal regiments of the siege of Quebec in 1759, labels for the militia’s of New France and there’s Brian’s Hungarian line troops to paint!

I’m not sure, but sometimes I wonder if my idea of being relaxed is different than other people. At times when I think I’m being laid back I’ve been told I was “intense”… am I ever really relaxed, can I ever really relax, particularly in public? I can only say I’m better than I was, that’s why I sympathise with social misfits I meet at parties, yearning and needing, begging for acceptance! That slightly hysterical air of jolly desperation. That was me, still is in a way but I think I hide it better these days. Well, better get back to work…

Oh, my favourite Soul Coughing song, “Screenwriter's Blues” on my CD of Ruby Vroom has just come on. I love this song!

“It is 5 AM, and you are listening to Los Angeles”