I Hate it Here

Another exciting adventure in insomnia! Comic pages!

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:13:13 GMT

Here are some more comic pages... Jaymz... so sleepy! 2AM!

I should be sleeping right now...

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:50:30 GMT

But alas I am not. Al is away in Houston for work and there are sounds in the house making me paranoid that I am going to get murdered.

In other news, I have been working a lot on an old comic of mine that I drew old school style on Blueline paper about ten years ago. I've been scanning the old pages and re doing the line work in Illustrator; then coloring in Photoshop. The original pages were in black and white so it's interesting to see the characters in full color (as they appeared in my head). I have them hosted over on Facebook, but I wanted to post them here since they will be larger and easier to read.

I started thinking while I was working... do I have any of the story actually written out? I tend to store all of my stories up in my brains... which is no good because I often forget certain things that happen in the story and I'm at a loss to figure them out again. Luckinly I have this accordion file folder box thing with sketches, notes idead, etc. in it to reference. I found some very detailed layout pages that I forgot I did for this comic. They were so cool... I am not sure what I am going to do when I run out of pre-drawn pages or layout pages... must think of new page ideas!

This comic is about five teens with super powers and it's made me realize just how out of touch I am with today's youth... I was reading over some of the scenes I haven't drawn yet... one of them featured Brian (AKA "Lightspeed Lad") looking over some old photographs of he and his girlfrend... hahaha. What teen actually carries around photographs? So I had to write into the script that he has his pictures on his iPod. There is also a scene where he makes a call on a payphone. What's a payphone??? Willem the robot is rockin' a hairstyle from like 1994... and I have no idea how to dress these kids. I really need to pick up a copy of "Seventeen" or something.

Anyways; I am way too tired to look over this stuff I just typed. I apologize for any typos there may be... on with the comics:

I actually have a few more pages finished, but the files aren't on my laptop. Check my Facebook for notes on the individual pages!

Why the freezer?

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:42:39 GMT

Latanya was privileged enough to witness one of the most bizarre conversations about food (or really any subject) that Al and I have ever had:

Me: "Where'd you get that burrito?"
Al: "I found it."
Me: "Did you fish my chips out of the trash or are they still in there?"
Al: "I put them in the freezer."

Not goin' anywhere for a while?

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:31:21 GMT

Have a vegan Snickers bar. They're called "Jokerz" and they're made by GoMax (I think they are the creators of the Crispy Cat bars).

http://www.gomaxgofoods.com/

I discovered them a few weeks ago at the Living Earth store when trolling for snacks for the movies. In addition to the Jokerz bar there is a "Buccaneer" bar which is like 3 Muskateers, "Mahalo" like an Almond Joy and "Twilight" which is like a Milky Way bar. And they're AWESOME.

And I'm definately not goin' anywhere for a while. The housing market is worse than I imagined it would be. I looked around at the local property for sale and you can get an imacculate 3-4 bedroom house in Worcester for like $150,000 right now, which is less than we paid for this two bedroom. If we tried to sell it now, we'd actually owe money to the bank rather than making a profit. Looks like I'm stuck in Worcester indefinatley.

In other news, we went to The Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary's "Thanksliving" event last weekend. They held it a month earlier this year because they thought there'd be warmer weather, but it was still cold as shit, haha. Dan Piraro was funny as usual. I hope he never stops hosting the event... but the event itself is rather small, I wonder if they'll ever make it larger. I didn't win any items in the raffle just like every other year, haha.

My chiropractor wanted me to try an anit-inflamatory diet plan to try to ease some of my back pain so I decided to start that after Thanksliving so I could eat all the food stuffs. I started the diet on Monday... so far it's been okay. I'm not like clawing up the walls with bread withdrawls or anything... it's just weird because I have to super think about the food I am preparing... and forget about take out... I wouldn't know where to look!

On top of my vegan-ness I can't have: Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes, Potatoes, Corn, Sugar, Rice, Wheat or Paprika. I'm supposed to add yogurt to my diet, but all the vegan yogurts have rice or corn starch.. so I have been taking oral probiotics. I also have to eat half a pineapple or papaya every day (I'm sticking with the pineapple as I have discovered Papaya is totally gross, haha). I'm leaning heavily on soy products as they are a pretty safe bet. Cooking a lot with Braggs and Wheat Free Tamari to avoid the wheat in soy sauce. The hardest thing to find was vegetable broth powder/boullion that didn't contain Peppers or Paprika. I'm also drinking a lot of herbal tea and eating goji berries. (Teavana has the fanciest teas EVER but so expensive!) I don't know how long I need to do the plan, some of the things I've read said it could take up to 3 months to notice any effects. I haven't noticed any decrese in pain yet.

Yesterday I went to Mohegan Sun with my mom and sister to celebrate our October birthdays. I didn't become a millionaire, haha. Mom won $30. She's going to retire in style now!

Coming up this weekend is the Boston Vegetarian Food Festival. It's running for two days this year instead of one so Latanya and I rented a room up in Boston so we can go both days. The first day will be Halloween so we are going to dress up. I probably will be off my diet on those days due to eating out and pilfering tons of free samples... we'll see.

"Billy Joel" rocks my world and soothes my soul...

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:14:38 GMT

That's printed on the back window of one of my neighbor's vans. It's quite possibly one of the gayest things I've ever seen, haha. I really have to wonder about the person who had that professionally made for their mini van. Also, why is "Billy Joel" in quotes?

Anyways, Tortilla Sam's is a tex-mex style burrito joint in downtown Worcester. What makes it special for vegans is that they offer tofu burritos, buffallo tofu "wings" and un-chicken fajitas... or so I'm told. I think I may have ordered the un-chicken fajitas five times before they actually had the "un-chicken" in stock to make them. Turns out it was just some sort of seitan, nothing really to write home about. I have stuck with the tofu burritos since. Now, I don't know if Sam is struggling with the recession like most other businesses... lately I have been beginning to suspect they may be going under. The last few times we tried to order from them they had no tofu. Another time they put a different type of tofu in the burritos (they used the "wing" tofu instead of the marinated tofu) which was weird. Al just ordered from them tonight and they are all out of "wing" tofu but had marinated tofu for burritos. They were out of guacamole. Haha. What mexican place runs out of guac? I don't know why I'm telling y'all this; it's just weird. There a few "Moe's Southwest Grilles" around and they make tofu burritos (good, but not as good as the burritos from Sams) but they don't have fries. Sam's has the cleanest fries in town... you know what I mean? There's no, like, weird batter residue on them... they don't taste like everything else that's been in the fryer. Just good...clean...fries.

I saw "Zombie Land" today. I already knew I was going to like it since zombie movies are some of my favorites (the only ones I haven't liked so far have been from the "28 whatevers Later" series). The "Adventure Land" dude really is like the poor man's Michael Cera... it's kind of weird. Why do they act so much alike? Are they related? Michael Cera is definately better looking... if either of them are to be considered good looking (I'm not really attracted to either) but the one in Zombie Land's face is all wrong. At least it had my hot girlfriend in it... good ol' whatserface. Mmmmm...

If you couldn't tell already I'm having a better day than in my last post... although the shit storm continued for a little while after that. Raikou the wonder cat decided it would be a fabulous idea to pee a gallon of urine in the empty laundry basket in the basement (at least it wasn't a full laundry basket) and I didn't think much of it... his wires are a bit crossed (he's "special") so every once in a while he leaves his logs in the basket (when he's not leaving them on the floor). This was the first pee incident, though. In the evening... right as I was turning out the light to go to bed, I heard him scratching. I turned the light back on to see he had just peed on the carpet in the bedroom. I chased him downstairs to the "time out" zone (aka the downstairs bathroom) when I realized he had pissed all over the floor under the dining room table.

I stayed up most of the night scrubbing. I know that cat piss is a pain to get out, but nothing I've used has worked a hundred percent. As I was scrubbing I noticed the gerbils making a lot of noise in their tank. When I went to investigate I found two of the gerbils at war. One of them had a bit in half eyelid, the other had wounds all over her rump. Once gerbils start fighting like this (it's called "de-clan-ing"; it doesn't always happen but it happens) you have to seperate the gerbils forever or they will kill one another. So now the gerbil with the bit up rump (now named "Fanny") resides in a brand new tank with a high rise. Short Tail is her roomate... I don't think Short Tail's very thrilled about it but I hope they will get along.

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of time researching things to do in order to ready the house for selling. Most of the stuff has already been done: new roof, new windows, new doors, landscaped, new blinds. Stuff I plan to do includes: having the walls patched/painted, new carpet installed, re-doing some stuff in the bathroom, etc. Unfortunately, when I looked through listings for Worcester homes for sale for the price Al paid for this house 5 years ago, you can get a much bigger/fancier house today. I knew the market was bad, but I didn't realize it was that bad. Still, I need to talk to Al's old real estate agent and see if she has any advice since we wouldn't be planning to put the house on the market until spring and the housing market might be going back up by then.

We just watched Michal Moore's "Sicko" documentary on universal health care... now I'm trying to convince Al we should move to England.

Hold out these hands, recieve the sun...

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:09:29 GMT

I am about ready to kill myself because I spent the last week or so doing page after page of my comic. I am officially burned out on it so I have to take a break from it indefinately. Anyways, the first eighteen pages of my comic were in this entry here: http://jaymzeecat.livejournal.com/47504.html There's also some supplemental information here: http://jaymzeecat.livejournal.com/47821.html in case you missed it.

Jeremy looks ridiculously cute in the second panel on this page.

"Sweetish Fish" hahaha, I am funny.

There is a typo on this page. I have noticed it a bunch of times but have been too lazy to fix it.

I forgot I drew this page and was surprised when I found it on my computer, haha.

Now I want pancakes.

Yes, I am aware that the picnic table pictures are all like the gayest pictures ever... but they were inspired by a picture of me and my sister that actually exists. I am going to try to get a copy of it from my grandparents so I can upload and share it. Another note about this particular page: when I drew the panel of the camera lens, I neglected to realize that Jan and Jeremy would be reveresed in the lens reflection. I didn't realize the mistake I'd made until I was already coloring the page in Photoshop... what a pain in the ass to fix it, haha.

This page was not in the original script. It's kind of like a reverse deleted scene, haha.

I drew this page a long time ago. I recently changed Jan's face in the second panel and Jeremy's face in the third panel... for some reason they just didn't look right and it has always bothered me, haha.

These flashback scenes were drawn a long time ago too.

This page was extremely difficult to do because, like I said, I'm pretty burned out on this comic right now. This was the last page I needed to complete before taking a break and I sat down in front of it and stared at it for a while. I just didn't want to work on it. I sat in front of it yesterday about thre or four times before I decided to turn off the computer because it was coming out so bad... I forced myself through it today so I could get all these pages up. BREAK TIME!

The Goverment Totally Sucks you muthafucker, The Government Totally Sucks...

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 16:32:38 GMT

Today is the first day this year that's felt like fall... I know we're definately not there yet being the beginning of August and everything. Still, it's cool outside and there's a breeze and it feels like the beginning of October. That's my month and it's coming up soon.

I've been pretty bummed out this week. Tired, depressed... irritable and angry.... and stressed. I recieved my rejection letter from Disability on Monday. It wouldn't have been so upsetting since I was expecting that to happen... everyone I have spoken to about Disability said that everyone gets turned down the first time... however the letter stated the reason was that "although (I) may experience some discomfort (I'm) still able to move (my) body, therefor (I) am able to work." This just really got stuck in my craw... they completely belittled my pain as if it's perfectly fine for me to be suffering in agonozing back pain working a job.

To make matters worse, I have been seeing the new Chiropractor for about two or three weeks now... for the first week I felt like I might have been feeling better (but it was a bit too soon to tell since I was still in pain) but last week the pain came back just as bad as it's been and I am becoming afraid that this treatment is not going to work. Al's coworker who's wife is disabled said it may help to get a letter from my Primary Care Physician so I am going to do that this week and file an appeal. It's just so stressful to be treated this way when I have paid taxes for Social Security and I am genuienly in pain.

I talked to my Aunt who has been disabled since 1996... she said that she filed and was approved right away. Sucks to be me, I guess.

Yesterday we went out with Al's dad to Shelburne Falls to see the Glacial Potholes and the Bridge of Flowers... on the way home he wanted to go canoeing. I haven't been in a canoe since I was a kid, and the trip would have been totally awesome except that sitting in the canoe was killing my back.. it made it pretty much impossible to concentrate on anything else. I didn't say anything because I felt like I would be ruining everyone else's good time... plus Lance paid to rent the canoe for two hours... but he said later that he could tell that I was uncomfortable. I had to lie in the back of the car for a while to try to get some relief.

I am sunburned today, but that's okay. Delicious Vitamin D, right? Anyways, I'm done bitching for now. Talk to you guys soon.

You rocked my world, you know you did and everything I own I give...

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:24:38 GMT

For lack of anything better to do/watch I am watching Entertainment Tonight go on and on about Michael Jackson. It's strange to think about his being gone. I always figured Michael Jackson would be someone I'd still be reading/hearing about when I was 50 years old... I didn't expect him to just up and die all of a sudden. I love his music, he will be missed.

In other news, Al had a week long vacation last week. When it began we talked about all these chores we were going to get done... painting the bathroom, seeding the yard with grass... by the end of his vacation we hadn't done shit. Part of the reason being that I threw my back out on Thursday. The worst part about it is that I wasn't really even doing anything that was worthy of throwing my back out. I was on the deck tipping my plant containers because the bottoms were so full of rain... I tipped one and something in my back felt like it ripped... the pot wasn't even heavy.

So I laid around for like two days... not really able to do much. Today I am not a hundred percent better but I'm getting there. I can't bend very well yet, so there wasn't much cleaning I could do around the house so I took some time to work on my art. I was thinking the other day about how I used to dream about having a published comic book. I loved drawing covers for them... mostly because I prefer large drawings to small ones and also because I'm not very good with backgrounds. So now that many self published comics are making their way to the web, rather than print... I feel like you don't really get to make many "covers". But I think I am going to anyway... maybe every twenty two pages like a comic in print.

I drew a sketch for this the other day when I was recliner-ridden. The whole reason I got the idea to draw this cover was that I wanted to do something in color... maybe for reference for the people reading the comic.

I originally drew the outlines in color in Illustrator and moved it over to Photoshop to color in the rest... but once everything was in color the outlines just didn't stand out enough so I went back into Illustrator and converted the lines to black. I experimented with the smudge tool to blend some of the colors. I know the background's pretty lame, but it's better than nothing, right?

I may be poor, I may be black, and may even be ugly... but Dear God I'm here!

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:43:36 GMT

This sure has been a weekend! Latanya came by on Sunday as well as Meghan Dunne for the third not so annual Degrassi slumber party. We only made it about halfway through Degrassi High when Meg decided it was time to head out. Maybe she doesn't know what "slumber party" means, haha. Then we got into season one of Degrassi: The Next Generation. It took a while to sell this one to Latanya. She'd seen several episodes at Melissa's house last weekend and she wasn't feeling too enthusiastic about it. But once we got through the first few episodes, I think it has started to grow on her.

After season one was done we decided we needed more Degrassi so we put season two on the Netflix Instant Queue and started watching it via the XBox. Latanya found herself easily distracted by the "Spinner Can't Stop Getting Boners" episode. In the evening we went to the movies to see my boyfriend Ryan Reynolds in "The Proposal" which turned out to be much better than "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"... but it was a very weird movie... at least we got to see Bettie White dancing around in the forest with a sweet indian smock.

When we came home, Al was extremely drunk. We were only gone for two hours and he had drunk and entire bottle of Bacardi while playing the "Ghostbusters" game. He stumbled up the stairs and I was just going to leave him there but I heard him fall down... so over the next hour or so I had the pleasure of moving him around and picking up his vomit piles... Al does not usually drink this much. I can only think of one or two times he had been "wasted" like that... but he has been pretty much nothing but angry and depressed for a long time now and I'm not really sure what to do about it. Over the next couple of days I am planning to sit and have a long talk with him about counselling and other steps that we can take to ensure his happiness. I know that a major factor in his depression is that he doesn't like his job... perhaps he needs to go to school and find something he would really like to do more? I don't know. :/

Last night Latanya and I went up to Boston and saw "The Color Purple: The Musical" at the Wang theater. It was very cute, I am going to have to look in to getting the soundtrack so I can shake my ass to "Shug Avery Comin' to Town". The cast was very talented... the songs and performances were moving and sometimes funny. The only bad thing about the night was getting creepy hand molested by some dude on the Subway.

Too tired and hungry right now to come up with a clever title...

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 17:44:07 GMT

I'm spacing out right now.... my eyes are doing that thing that they do when you're looking at a "Magic Eye" picture. I don't feel competently articulate lately (don't let that last sentence fool you). I think a lot of it has to do with not talking to many people in person and having been out of school for so long. I feel like I sit down to write something and everything comes out sounding like I have a learning disability... I have all this stuff in my head and can't seem to get it out in words that make sense. I guess it's fortunate for me that I express myself visually. I think my comics look good put together (dialog, line work combined) but man... you do not want to see the train wreck of a script that I work from. "He go over dere now". Draw, draw, draw.

Anyways, Al and I have been looking for a hosting company to start putting my comic up on but haven't made any decisions. I am thinking that I don't want to put it on a webcomic specific hosting site... rather have my own domain name like "Jaymzeecat.com" or something where I can put all of my comics eventually... instead of something like "comicgenesis.com/4359/splitscreencomic.org/thisnameistoolong.com". I don't think I'm going to throw all the comic pages up there at once like I did here... maybe biweekly in case I get some sort of following.... they have to waaaiiiiiittt fooor iiitttt... I do want to have some fun facts underneath each page which I was too lazy to type out when I posted the pages up on my LJ the other day, so I'm going to post them now... sorry, you may have to jump from this entry to the last one to see what pages each fun fact corresponds with.

Page 1:
I don't normally work in consecutive order but page 1 actually was the first page I did. When you look at it you can see the tension in my line work because I didn't know what I was doing yet. When compared to the later pages, this art seems much more.... fancy or anal? Yeah, the quality is nice but it would take me forty forevers to finish a page if I put that much detail into everything. You can barely see it, but there's tiny lace trim on Jan's bra and everything. The page itself is also smaller because I didn't know how how to scan my drawing in at the actual size.

Page 2:
I've never really been satisfied with this page. It was probably the tenth page I'd drawn by that point and I'd really gotten into my groove. But it doesn't really mesh well with the first page; being that there's sooo much detail on the first page compared to this one.

Page 3:
This may have been the second page I drew... probably because I was anxious to get to Jeremy because I like him so much. He's fun to draw being that he's just this goofy very anti hero. This was one of the pages drawn entirely in Photoshop when I was trying to decide which I liked better. Eventually I decided doing linework in Illustrator and Color in Photoshop worked best since Illustrator has better pen functions (and also the ability to straighten the shake out of my lines). Also, I can't get my selection tools to work in Photoshop anyways, so I'm pretty limited in what I can do when it comes to cloning, shapes, and moving stuff around.

Page 4:
It's easier for me to draw from what I know, so Jeremy actually lives in my mom's house (granted Mom's house is never this tidy and there's a hundred cats living there). Jan's apartment was drawn from a picture I found on the web (well, that's just some rental property or hotel she has for banging dudes, her real home is much nicer). My mom does have a view of the water like in the last panel, however there are houses by the shore that I took out.

Page 5:
When all else fails... cookies for breakfast! That's definitely something I would do. My mom got so mad at me for taking pictures of the inside of her fridge. She was actually running around after me while I took pictures all over her house yelling at me convinced that I was going to put pics of her messy house all over the internets.... because that would make such interesting blog fodder. My mom's messy house and cats... so many cats. These pages are all drawn in pencil before being scanned into the computer for completion (it's just easier for me to work from an actual drawing rather than freehand on my tablet). So, they're kind of like a rough draft. The panel where Jeremy is standing on the scale, I drew him to tall (you couldn't see the scale and would probably be confused... like "is he sighing at the floor tiles?"). So I cut him out, taped him further up in the panel, drew him in Illustrator and changed his size. The magic of technology. This page, as you can see is horizontal. I tend to visualize the subject matter in my head before it goes on paper and whatever seems the best layout is what I go with. Most of the pages have a six panel layout but there are a few that have less.

Page 6:
This page was drawn waaay late in the game. I don't like drawing cars and I don't like drawing buildings... a lethal combination for me! The buildings I drew are pretty much just basic shapes... much like a smiley face; it doesn't look like a real face but you get the idea. This is the introduction of Jan's mentor and best pal; Sergio. I pictured Sergio to be a younger, little funnier version of Tim Gunn. He was named after a friend of Latanya's who works at the wax museum in NYC.

Page:7
Damn these food trays! What a pain in the ass to draw over and over. And check out that creature passing by in panel two.

Page 8:
I don't know who's more of a bitch... me or Jan. I guess it's me since in essence I am Jan, haha. Jeremy really hasn't done anything to deserve the bullshit I put him through.

Page:9
I was pretty pleased with this page... it was the first one I did with only three panels. It has no dialog but the feelings of the characters is clearly written on their faces. Especially that kid in the last panel... subtle. The chick in the second panel with the afro puffs is amazing.

Page:10
I drew this page early on. My line work was different and the font I used was a basic font from Illustrator before I downloaded my Blambot font. But I liked the page and I am way too lazy to redraw it. In panel one and two we see that douche from page 9 again.

Page:11
This page was a lot of fun to draw. Having had an older sister growing up, I could depict that relationship here with Jan and her younger sister Jackie. I was just as obnoxious as Jackie (and there's a little shout out to myself with the owl on her pj's). I also love how Jeremy is really just forcing himself on Jan; as reluctant as she is.... and it's made that much worse by her parents' overjoyed reaction to her having company.

Page:12
I didn't like this page at all when I did the original pencil work. I felt like it was too simple. There was no dialog originally, but once I got it onto the computer and started laying down the line work, I heard the character's speaking in my head based on their expressions in the panels. Also, you can see that Jeremy is really growing on Jan not only by her change in attitude but her appearance and clothing changing. I was quite pleased with it as a whole when it was finished.

Page:13
This is one of the most recent pages I've finished. I have mixed emotions about it. Like Jan has a shit ton of money... but her family still lives in this tiny ass house... are we to believe she's not one to share the wealth? But then I came to the conclusion that her mother; being a bit of a free spirited hippie probably isn't into an extravagant lifestyle. No doubt she doesn't work... neither does Jackie. And having been taking care of Nancy for so long, she probably has other things on her mind rather than moving.

Page:14
This is one of the first pages I drew, but it sat unfinished for a long time (mostly because I didn't want to draw the grocery store fixtures and produce). The second panel was one of the first sketches I drew for this comic. I tried (unsuccessfully) to duplicate it and ended up cutting out the original sketch and fitting it onto the page.

Page:15
I finished this page recently. I had a good time drawing it although there's not a lot going on in it. Some of the dialogue was rewritten as I typed up the word balloons. You wont see Jan smoking a ton... it's only something she does when she's really stressed.

Page:16
Drawing this page was more of a pain in the ass than it seems like it would be. I had a hard time getting the proportions of both character's heads right in the first panel (I still don't think I did). This page had more panels originally so it was easier to understand what was going on... but I think you get the gist... Jeremy is being chased, he trips, Jan falls on him. Also, when I scripted this page they were running around the tree and Jeremy tripped on one of the roots and Jan fell on him because she didn't see him. The characters were thought to be a little younger when this happened, but I decided later to make them slightly older so they were a bit too big to be running around the tree.

Page:17
This is kind of the start of Jeremy's flirty-tease personality... and Jan's ongoing frustration with him.

Page:18
It's not entirely clear (yet) whether Jeremy had no special feelings for Jan or if he was just being apprehensive for some reason. From this page and the next few, we really only get Jan's perspective on what happened. We kind of get the impression on this page that Jeremy's an oblivious douche, haha.

A Bunch of Artwork and Other Ramblings...

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:20:53 GMT

I'm watching the movie "Alive" right now... you know the 1993 movie about a Rugby team that gets trapped in the Andes when their plane crashes? Then they get all cannaballistic on people's dead asses? PUN! I watched a documentary about the real life guys... so far the movie's pretty acurate aside from the actors being so very American and the actual guys being so very Uruguayan. They used the real names... it's just funny to think of Ethan Hawke as a "Nando". I wonder if I would last a long time in the Andes because I'm so fats mcgats.

Anyways, I finished my picture of Link:

I chose to draw Link in his blue Zora Tunic rather than his typical green one because he looks so stylish in it. His red one is pretty hot too. But the blue tunic offsets the red trim on the Golden Gauntlets he's got on.

And here's a few of the comic pages that I've actually finished... this isn't all of them but these are the consecutive pages that are finished.

You Make the Music Go Back You Hear Satan Speakin'...

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:45:06 GMT

Cross stopped by on Sunday which was a pleasant surprise. He didn't get to stay long, it would have been cool to go out for a bite or something but he had to put on his full safari gear and mow his parents' lawn.

I have been busy wandering around a lot looking for sodas to add to my new collection. At least it's been a hobby that's keeping me busy. I have been walking from store to store, usually leaving empty handed... it seems Worcester is not the best place for locating limited edition beverages.

This is my collection in all it's tiny glory. I'd like to get my hands on some vintage stuff at some point, but for right now sticking to the new stuff that's a bit easier to find. On the left is Jones Soda Berry Lemonade. The only reason I bought this stuff is because I thought it would taste like my old favorite Koolaid: Berry Blue.

And I'm not talking about this:

because that is BULLSHIT. I'm talking about original Berry Blue which was blue lemonade that tasted better than yellow lemonade:
It was discontinued at some point and replaced with the second berry blue which was a dark blue color and not lemonade flavored at all. It was later re-released under the name "Ice Blue".

Anyways, the Jones soda fooled me. It sort of tasted like the second berry blue Kool Aid... definelty not as good. Anyways, the second can is Coca Cola's Summer 2009 Can. It has sunglasses on it. I bought it because I found one can for sale in a convenience store nearby and since I don't drink cola, I wouldn't want a whole case. Next in line is Mountain Dew and Pepsi Throwback. These are only on sale until the 18th. They're real sugar versions of their corn syrup counterparts. After that is two flavors of World of Warcraft edition Mountain Dew Game Fuel. These JUST came out... the last version of Game Fuel was Halo themed and they also released a collector's edition aluminum bottle which I hope they do this year as well. Then there's Mountain Dew Voltage. These are easy to find, I've seen them in every store I've looked... but there's no telling if they'll actually stick around... or go the way of Pepsi Blue? As far as blue shit goes, Voltage tasted MUCH better to me than the Jones soda. Lastly, Mountain Dew Throwback in a can. It took FOREVER to find this! In my opinion, cans are way cooler than plastic bottles any day. And I could find Pepsi TB occasionally in stores, but had no use for them since I still don't drink cola. I must have gone to about twenty stores before I found the mountain dew, haha.

I'm still looking for stuff. If anyone happens to find any of this stuff, send it my way!!

This stuff is near impossible to find. Released only in New York City and Chicago right now, Sprite Green is half sweetened with Stevia and comes in a super cool aluminum bottle.

Game Fuel in a can or aluminum bottle (if they make them now).

Also, get to the movies and see "the Hangover". It's seriously the funniest movie I have seen all year.

Zelda is all I do now. That and Terminator and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Fri, 29 May 2009 03:59:17 GMT

Can't sleep. Figured this was as good a time as any to update the ol' LJ. Squee has an appointment tomorrow morning at a new vet, we'll see how that pans out!

Haven't been up to much the past week. I spent the last three days pretty much playing non stop Legend of Zelda. I beat quest one, beat quest two... beat quest one again. I have no life. That game was so super hard when I was a kid.... why is it so easy to beat now? Then I started playing Ocarina of Time which is my favorite video game EVAR!! I got about two hours of gameplay into that only to discover the Wii apparently does not save your progress on the 64 games the way it does on the NES ones. Now I have to start all over. Good thing it's my favorite video game EVAR!!

I went to the movies some time back and saw "Terminator: Salvation". I thought it was alright, but I didn't cream my jeans for it. There were some things about it that bothered me.

1. Christian Bale. I realize that the role of John Connor was not played by the same actor in Terminator 2 and 3... but I feel like Edward Furlong and Nick Stahl are equally... unique looking where I could believe the young John Connor from T2 could grow up to look like the older John Connor from T3. It took me right out of the movie trying to imagine that this was the same character from the previous two movies. I just can't picture Nick Stahl turning into Christian Bale when he got to be that age.... not to mention Nick Stahl is that age now and probably doesn't have a lot on his plate right now. If they chose Chrisitian Bale for the role because he's a big name... then why not cast Nick Stahl as John Connor and Christian Bale as cyborg Marcus who had much more screen time than John Connor in this film? (That's not to say that I didn't enjoy Sam Worthington's performance). I thought they did a brilliant job casting Anton Yelchin as young Kyle Reese because I could believe he would grow up to look like Michael Biehn when he got older.

2. John Connor's complete distrust of Marcus. This made absolutely no sense at all as John Connor had not one but two friendly robots in his life... one of which he considered to be a father to him. Also, I thought it would have been interesting to see John Connor or his ol' lady reprogramming the Arnold Robot and sending it back in time to make the last two movies... but they did not do that.

3. The silliness! In the middle of the movie all of a sudden with the jokes! When John Connor said to let his men know "I'll Be Back" and proceeded to play Guns N' Roses' "You Could Be Mine" in the dessert.... ug.

Al was very upset at the ending of the movie. I was just wondering why no one could make a metal heart for Marcus, haha.

Latanya came by over the weekend and we finally saw "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" which was AWFUL! Now, now I wasn't expecting a cinematic masterpiece, but me and my vagina can get into some romantic comedies and take them at face value, you know? I know what I'm getting into when I go to one of these movies but this was sooooo bad!!!! The only note worthy thing from it was that the same girl that was used to play a teenaged Jennifer Garner in "13 Going on 30" was used to play her teenage self in this movie. Something has gone wrong with Jen Garner's face also. She has some crow-magnum jaw going on in this movie. It must be too much Afleck.

"How's Your Baby Cat?" and "What About Wolverine?"

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:32:54 GMT

Raikou was discharged from Critical Care last night. His homecoming wasn't a happy one because he was angry and upset about being at the vet for two days and also still sick. He growled and cried around the house. He growled and cried when I picked him up. I tried playing with him and brushing him but all he wanted was to be alone. I tried putting him under the covers, which he usually likes but he just started crying. We left him in the bedroom to stay in the quiet. He vomitted on the bed sheets. Some time later we had to pull him out from under the bed to force meds and laxative on him, which he was very unhappy about. He came downstairs shortly before bedtime and got into his cat bed in the bathroom. He slept with his head tucked under his body. I went in to check on him before I went up to bed and I left some food and water nearby. He smelled the food like he was interested but just lip smacked at it instead of eating it. So I got some kibble and moistened it and offered him that. He seemed even more interested in this food, but became noticeably frustrated, turned around and put his head back under his body.

I went to bed reluctantly.... I realized that he might not be alive in the morning. He was so sick. I couldn't sleep, all I could do was lay there and cry. Some time during the night Raikou came upstairs. He started crying loudly and vomiting all over the floor. I got up to check on him, but didn't really know what I could do for him. He had not really eaten anything since Sunday and all he was vomiting was a foul smelling liquid. I got back in bed and about an hour later Raikou started crying and vomiting again. When I went to check on him again, there were two dark puddles of very smelly vomit in the hallway. One of them had an object in it. I knew what it was immediately... it was an eyeball from

When I bought that toy (some time ago) the first thing Raikou did was pull an eyeball off of it. I threw the eye away but some time later he must have pulled off the second eye and swallowed it. It was obvious this was what was causing all the trouble because Raikou's demeaner changed immediately after barfing it up. The thing's about the same size as a marble and it's been lodged some where inside him for a week. My cat almost died from this toy. If anyone has it THROW IT AWAY.

I wrote a complaint to Del Monte (they own Meow Mix) but haven't heard anything back. They need to recall these toys.

Raikou has improved leaps and bounds. He ate a little moistened food this morning then he went nuts over some boiled chicken my sister brought over for him. He has been active, happy, playing and grooming himself again (thank God because he smelled like old cheese). We called and left a message for the vet about his improvement. I am so happy that he is getting better now. I thought for sure we were going to lose him.

In other news, Al and I went to see "Wolverine: Origins" today. Some of it was a little silly but overall I liked it. Al said there was "too much back story and not enough action" to which I replied "it's called Wolverine Origins." It did not have enough of my boyfriend (Ryan Reynolds) in it, so I was a little disappointed about that but I liked it better than the X Men movies.

My vagina wants me to see "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" next even though I think Mathew Mcconaughaaa-aaay is totally gross. That is all for now.

"Big shit is scary" and "I think my baby cat has the Swine Flu"...

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:37:40 GMT

I have been avoiding the movie theaters even though there's been movies I've wanted to see lately out of nothing more than laziness. But I saw three movies in the past week; "Observe and Report", "17 Again", and "The Haunting in Connecticut". I saw a couple of upcoming previews that looked good... the best being Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds". The Terminator movie looks good too, but I was disppointed to find out that they completely discounted the third movie like it didn't happen. (When I set out to write "Home Alone 5" I did not discount Home Alone 4 even though it is the worst movie ever made).

But, big shit is scary! And there's a big ass scary robot in that Terminator movie, that's enough for me. I don't know why I am creeped out by big shit... I don't even trust the Wind Turbine near my house... always plotting to sprout legs and kill me with it's laser eyes. The Tripods in the "War of the Worlds" remake? SCARY! Dr. Manhattan? FUCKING SCARY!!! Big shit is scary. I don't care what anyone says! Even the "Transformers" are a little on the freaky side. Big ass robots. I wish I had been in charge of marketing for the new Transformers movie. The preview would have just been a black screen... then the word "ROBOTS!" would come up... then "LeBOUF!" and then a date.

"Observe and Report" wasn't a very good movie. It was weird... not in a good way. A few funny moments. Kinda boring. It had one of th most disgusting sex scenes ever, haha.

"17 Again".... before you judge me let me just say this movie was not my idea... although I probably would have rented it for it's "13 Going on 30" like quality... but Latanya has recently been creamig her jeans for Zac Efron and needed her fix. This movie also had a few funny moments but overall nothing to write home about. It was a little unbeliveable to think that Zac Efron would turn into Chandler when he got older but whatevs. Chandler used to be cute for a while but now he's all old and pointy and kind of bird like.

"The Haunting in Connecticut" was a bit laughable like most horror movies. Latanya's movie commentary mostly consisted of shaking her head and going "*sigh* White People" and 'Uh-uh... no". The family's tolerance of scary ass ghosts in their RENTAL property was pretty unbelievable. I think their ass would be out of there.

In non movie relatd news, my baby cat is sick. :( He started lip smacking on Thursday or Friday, then sleeping a lot and his fur looked "fluffed up". He vomitted on Saturday, but wasn't necessarily unusual. I called the vet on Monday and they told us to bring him in. He was a horror at the vet like usual, screaming, hissing, generally acting like a vicious beast. They did a blood panel and administered some fluids and sent him home. He vomitted two or three times that night, the next day he slept a lot and hid under the bed for a while. Then he started vomitting all over the house. I was in hysterics because I had a 1 year old cat die on me suddenly like that several years ago. I called the vet again and brought him back in. His blood panels came back normal aside from him being dehydrated. He was admitted into the cat hospital that night. We don't really know anything yet. His xrays have only showed constipation so far. They gave him a cat enema and a laxative and some pepcid for his nausea nuggets. As of last night, he still was not eating much, he might be able to come home tonight. I miss my baby cat. The other cats have been enjoying their Raikou Free Vacation.

This that and the other...

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:13:06 GMT

"Bones" is one of the worst shows I have ever seen. I wonder why it is still on. Al is channel surfing and he keeps landing on it. I am in the process of watching Squee because she has been pooping all over herself for about a week... she has a vet appt. tomorrow and they need a stool sample so I have to watch and wait for the poopins to happen.

I've been trying to keep busy all week, but being busy means being lax about dieting unfortunately but I wont get into that here; planning to update the fatvegans community soon. I took a trip down to Connecticut on Thursday to my Eye Doctor/Aunt's office (it is also my Mom's place of employment). I decided to try out some new contact lenses because they finally make them for Astigmatism. The left one was wonky all day and I discovered that the outside world is ridiculously bright so I had to buy a pair of sunglasses. Unfortunatley, the left lens stayed wonky over the next three days so I stopped wearing the contacts. I am going to have to talk to Hope about it and see if I can get another set of lenses that fit my left eye better.

I got to ride the swings at the park that day which was super fun, but I couldn't ride for long because I am so fat and old! I had a nice lunch with my Aunt Beth, Lanchey Boy's wife Renee, my sister, and cousin Tessa.

Didn't do much this weekend. Al had an extra day off for the Masshole Patriot's Day bullshit holiday. Had to go grocery shopping today... also I picked up a bunch of fleece to make liners for the chinchillas cage for a more environmental approach to clean chins over the Carefresh. I don't know why more people don't use reusables for their pets.

Several Days later... I am the worst at posting. Been feeling pretty depressed today. I went to the clinic yesterday and signed a release form for my medical records because I am going to apply for disability benefits. I have been stressing about it all day (convinced I am going to be denied) and feeling like a failure at life because I am unable to return to work. If I am not able to get approved I am at a loss of what to do. Al and I don't have any extra money, we ran out our savings and have been living paycheck to paycheck. I thought I would be back at work by now and my back would be better but neither of those things has happenned. My back hurt so much yesterday, I couldn't clean my house or cook dinner. The only relief I get when my back gets bad is to lie down which is really no good for someone who needs to lose eighty pounds.

I realize that people abuse the system when it comes to disability but believe it or not I actually like the work I used to do and I'd much rather be doing that than collecting social security and being in pain all the time. I wish I had a diagnosis or better yet a cure.

Hairstyles and fake celebrity boyfriends...

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:29:09 GMT

My life is so boring. I never have anything to report.... but here I am anyway typing away because I am really bored. Dieting is going well, down seven pounds so far. I had one really bad day but other than that it's smooth sailing. One of the things that's keeping me motivated is the fact that I want to get a hip new hair cut and I think I need to be thinner to pull it off. I want my hair to be primarily black with red streaks and I don't want to end up looking like one of those fat goth girls that's trying too hard. I have been having a hard time finding a picture of a haircut that is making me cream my jeans. I found a few so far that I am interested in and I need some opinions:

I was origially going to have my hair cut fairly short and either sell my hair or donate it. I wanted to have some red lowlights put in. For those of you not familiar with lowlights here is a pic of Xtina when she had them:

Now, my hair would be black on top not blonde, but you get the idea.
But the more pics I looked at, the more I became intrigued by red streaks like this:

I wish there was more to this picture to see what the rest of the style looked like.

I like this girl's hair but I don't know how I feel about having bangs. Also, I'd have a bit less red maybe keep the sides long but shorten it in the back. Keep in mind that I wear glasses.

This is probably how my hair would look naturally since it's got curls. Plus: Boobies.

On a completely different note, I have fallen in love with Jason Somethingorother on SNL. I am going to leave Al and stalk him in New York and break up his marriage. I am not sure why I like him so much.. he is sooo very vanilla (perhaps more vanilla than Al?). Here he is: (the one in the hat, the nerd in the front is Latanya's pic in the SNL universe, the second guy is Bill Hader who I saw in New York. No one talked to him, haha.)

Jason captured my heart as "Floyd" on 30 Rock, but I have become obsessed with him after watching more SNL. He's become my new sketch comedy crush replacing the nowhere to be seen since MadTV got cancelled Ike Barinholtz:

Sorry, Ike. You've been dumped. I'm going to marry Jason What'shisface and adopt the adorable fat guy on SNL:

So adorable...

I will have more of my comic up shortly. I ran into problems with my scanner last night, apparently he had a fight with my computer and now they're not talking. Will have Al fix soon (I hope). Also, half of my toenail died and fell off... why?

Vampires looooove baseball!

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:37:03 GMT

Al and I watched Twilight out of some sort of morbid curiousity/laziness last night. I mean... the previews for the movie made it look horrible, but sooo many people loved the books so... there's gotta be something there, right? Oh my God... it was so bad, haha. Things in the movie that didn't make sense:

1. The main girl was white as a ghost, but lived in Pheonix... did she never go outside?
2. "The Cullens" are supposedly adopted by this doctor and they all live in his house and apparently fuck each other... which is weird but does not seem to raise any suspicions with the other kids at school. They all, including the doctor-dad-man LOOK LIKE VAMPIRES!! And NOBODY thinks that's strange!

This is explained as that they all are "from Alaska"... well... I hear for thirty days out of the year Alaska has vampires.

3. Edward seems more like a creepy foreign exchange student than Captain McDreamy, but this girl wants his balls anyway. They decide to date and he brings her home to meet his vapire family who are like "Whaaaat??? A human in our house??? MUST FEED!!!" Which really makes no sense because they're around people ALL DAY (including this bitch) at school/hospital. Durp!

4. Vampires LOVE baseball! So much so they dress to the nines to play a casual game!

The vampire in the front.... I am pretty sure he is an owl.

Then some other vampires show up and they're not "Vegetarians" (this is what Edward calls Vampires who eat only animals... don't get me started). And they are like "Want to play the baseball!!! Love Baseball!!!" BUt then realize there is a human there and "MUST FEED!!!" What??? They are around humans ALL THE TIME!!! Dis bitch must taste like vampire beer or something.

If you're wondering if any of this will prevent me from reading the series or watching the movies that follow, you are wrong. I will watch them anyways because I have some sort of shitty movie watching disease.

In UPT news, I did not get my Tens Unit. Don't get me started on that either.

Right now Al is watching "Alien vs. Predator 2"... yes, they made a '2'.

I'm down on my knees, beggin' you please to gimmee some more o'dat stuff...

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:28:40 GMT

It's beginning to feel a lot like (insert two syllable word), everywhere I go....

I have been thinking about Christmas for the past two days and I don't know why. It's weird that we're about to enter the fourth month of the "new" year already. I don't even know why I get excited about Christmas, haha. I have't had a present waiting for me under my fake tree for like four years now.

I am very tired right now. I have been tired for a while and I don't know why. I do know my cousin Paul was spreading the mono around like the plague, but if I did have that, I have no other symptoms of it. Al is wandering around the house right now with an energy audit dude trying to figure out what we can do to bring down our energy consumption. The irony of the situation is that they have turned on and left on every light in the house along the way.

Today is my last day of useless Physical Therapy (I thought it was yesterday but was turned away). I have a feeling I am just going to get mad about it. The whole reason I was sent back to UPT (useless Physical Therapy) was to get approved for this "Tens" electronic pain treatment and instead they've made me go through the "do more stretching" bullshit that I already did a year ago and had no signs of imrovement. Sigh. Then I get one guy only to get passed to some chick and nobody talks to each other, she was surprised I was trying to get a Tens unit. I hate that place. Today I am supposed to go talk to that first guy again, oh boy.

I have not been working on a lot of art this week, but I will have some new stuff done soon. (I was working on some sewing stuff) I finally found the holder for my tablet pen... it was in the Pizza Pizzazz machine. What?? The one place I didn't look! I am just glad I found it. I was starting to consider trying to order one... the buttons keep going off every time I lay it down and they drive me crazy.

My back hurts.

Get me out into the night time, four walls wont hold me tonight....

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 14:07:22 GMT

My work station is a mess. I just had to untangle the cord of my electric blanket... it was wrapped all around the bottom of my chair wheels from rolling around all over it for the past week (and of course being too lazy to do anything about it). There's a dirty coffee mug on my desk (that's not from this morning), a little plate full of brownie crumbs, a shit ton of cords (phone headset and an aux cable from the car... what?) my book of facial expressions... some Netflix movies, an empty yogurt cup. And there's a bunch of books and crap on the floor around me. So disorganized.

I have been really tired all week. I think I have the mono. I kept nodding off the other day (I'm not the type to take naps) and I slept until like nine thirty in the morning. I have been working on my comic a lot, but still don't have many pages -in a row- done. I have about twelve or thirteen of them actually finished but only the first three are done in order now.

So, I decided to draw a picture of Jan in color for the funsies. I like it, although I feel like her upper half came out a little too big for her bottom but whatevs. It needs a background but I am not quite sure what to put there. She does not actually possess the power of flight.

Below is Page One complete with text. Woo!

As you can see, page two is a bit different... the size is a bit larger, the text a different size and the art is more simplified (It took me forever and a half to do the line work on page one). This is how the art will look on most of the pages I do from now on.

If you're curious, the font is "Digital Strip 2" (I think, haha) from Blambot.com.

The two places this comic takes place are New York City and Moosup, CT (my hometown!), I don't know if it's necessary to put that at the top of the page when the scene changes here.... are you confused?

Me and Latanya on Watchmen...

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 03:46:35 GMT

Me: "It was pretty owl-centric. The Night Owl dude had an owl in his kitchen and the other guy had an owl in his kitchen... and he had an owl spaceship."
Latanya: "It wasn't a spaceship. It was his flyin' around mobile."
Me: (cackling) "I love how you're like 'how dare you call it a space ship when it was clearly a 'flyin' around mobile'!"
Latanya: "It WAS! He didn't go to SPACE!!"

You're the one that stinked it up, stupid!

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:03:12 GMT

There are times when something so retarded comes out of my mouth that it makes me realize that I spend way too much time in my house with my pets. Raikou got on one of my drawings and his paws were wet. It's no big deal, that drawing is only a sketch to be scanned into the computer later anyway but he just came over here (hours later) and smelled the paw prints he left on it for like five minutes all the while making faces. "You're the one that stinked it up, stupid!" are the actual words that just came out of my mouth.

A while back when I finished writing the script for my current comic, I drew up maybe ten pages from it in no particular order. I have been working on them on the computer pretty much non stop and now I am out of my pre drawn pages. So... I'm at a bit of a stand still. I want to do some rewrites to the script. but I have to admit that I hate writing. Not looking forward to that.

The working title for my comic is "Split Screen" but I don't know if that's the title I'm going to stick with. I named it after the John Mayer song: "Split Screen Sadness" that really summed up the way my main characters feel about each other. (I listened to a lot of John Mayer when I was writing it, haha)

I don’t know where you went when you left me but
Says here in the water you must be gone by now
I can tell somehow
One hand on the trigger of a telephone
Wonderin' when the call comes
Where you say it’s alright
You got your heart right

Maybe I’ll sleep inside my coat and
Wait on your porch ‘till you come back home
Oh, right
I can’t find a flight

We share the sadness
Split screen sadness

Two wrongs make it all alright tonight

"All you need is love" is a lie 'cause
We had a love but we still said goodbye
Now we’re tired, battered fighters

And it stings when it nobody’s fault cause there's
Nothing to blame At the drop of your name
It’s only the air you took and the breath you left

So maybe I’ll sleep inside my coat and
Wait on your porch 'til you come back home
Oh, right
I can’t find a flight
So I’ll check the weather wherever you are
Cause I wanna know if you can see the stars tonight
It might be my only right

I called
because
I just
Need to feel you on the line
Don’t hang up this time
And I know it was me who called it over but
I still wish you'd fought me ‘til Your dying day
Don’t let me get away

Cause I can’t wait to figure out what’s wrong with me
So I can say 'this is the way that I used to be'
There’s no substitute for time
Or for the sadness
Split screen sadness

Music helps me a great deal with creativity. Right now I am watching a lot of Project Runway because one of my main characters (Jan) owns a fashion company and I know absolutely nothing about fashion. Latanya suggested this show as an easy way to learn some stuff. (Heidi Klum doesn't pronounce R's.... she talks like a baby and she makes me want to strangle her, haha). I feel like when a characters pops into my brain and everything about them starts to unfold; that's just how they are. Jan told me she was a fashion designer, there's no changing that.

I'm going to post some of the other pages I finished here at some point soon. in the mean time, for whoever's interested here is a summary of the comic.:

I'm not planning for this comic to be too terribly long, I want it to be the equivalent feel of watching a romantic (sometimes comedic) movie.

Being Vegetarian and having lesbian parents; Jan Lumeneski was often the subject of ridicule at school. She believed she was not destined to have friends and learned to harden herself to others which posed quite the challenge for Jeremy Tanner when he moved to town. By forcing his friendship upon her, the two became best friends. As they got older, Jan discovered she was falling in love with Jeremy; but realizing that the feeling was not mutual Jan cut Jeremy out of her life completely when she moved to New York to attend Design School. Jan then met fashion legend Sergio Geller, and was offered an internship within his company. He funded her company which became a nationwide line of fashions for teen girls. When Jan got the call that her mother's wife has succumbed to her long time battle with cancer, she was forced to return home for the first time in twelve years. Seeing Jeremy again; she learns that he had a wife and daughter, both of who died in an automobile accident. She now wonders if the two can be friends again. (And so on...)
Al is watching a weird ass anime. I could fall asleep.

Let's talk art, folks...

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:17:21 GMT

For the past few days I have actually been inspired to work on my -not on the- web(yet)comic. I had started one page probably like three months ago, but every time I looked at it I felt overwhelmed and didn't try to do anything with it. I finally finished it a few days ago. I did the line work in Illustrator and colored it in Photoshop. After I did the color work, I decided to try doing the line work and colors on the next page both in Photoshop.

Now, I seem to like the controls in Photoshop a lot better than in Illustrator but the one thing I really enjoy in Illustartor is that it automatically takes the 'shakes' out of my line work. Latanya asked her teacher about the difference between drawing in Illustrator vs. drawing in Photoshop. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) that because Illustrator is vector based and Photoshop is not, when you put a Photoshop drawing up on the web it will become pixellated and look bad whereas an Illustrator drawing will not.

So I put the pages I've done up on my Flickr account to see how they look and so far they all look about the same as they did in the original programs. I need to do some more research into this though, and also some research on the program controls, for instance I don't know how to make a shape (like a circle) in Photoshop without a fill. This is pretty much self explanatory on Illustrator. I may go back to doing my line work in Illustrator if I there is no function in Photoshop to take the shakes out of my lines or if I find out some other reason I should be.

So here are the three pages I have finished. Don't try to make any sense of them as they are not in any real order (the first one is page one, the second is page three and the third is page twenty, haha) and I have not yet learned how to make word balloons or fill in text, I plan to look at some tutorials online at some point... so there is no dialogue for you to read yet. So... in short the first page: Illustrator/Photoshop, the second and third: just Photoshop. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions!

I would meet you, would you meet me? On a park bench, on a skyscraper, on a mountain?

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:11:06 GMT

I went on an adventure to the Northampton area yesterday to see "He's Just not that into You" with missymo . I picked the Trader Joe's as a meetup point not realizing that everyone in Mass and their out of state friends would be there on Saturday. I was really bored in the morning so I headed out early to stop by the Whole Foods which was packed full of pretentious assholes and hippies. Not at the Whole Foods! What's this world coming to?? After we met up we went to an Asian restaurant called "Butterfly" which has a vegetarian menu as well as a regular Chinese and Japanese menu. Melissa was smart and ordered a cheap lunch special. I ordered a bunch of expensive shit, haha. But the food was good. They owe me one miso soup though, I declined the rice.

After that we had some time to kill so we walked around Target. I saw the almost girl of my dreams but she had a slight case of butter face. Then we went to the movies which was inside this weird hidden mall. Everyone and their grandma was in line for the movies. There were a bunch of teens with pink hair going to see the Pink Panther 2... really what is the appeal? When we got inside the theater there was pretty much nowhere to sit. We decided not to even bother looking and sat in the two alone handicapped seats. Once all the ladies (and the one guy I saw that was either the gay friend or the loyal boyfriend) were seated, it was like a big can of sardines (fish pun intended).

I think my favorite part of the movie was the Harry Potter trailer before hand. But seriously, some parts of the movie were cute, some of them were stupid. It was okay for a vagina party movie. The best of it all was listening to the audience laugh, "awwww", *gasp*, and "no!" in unison. Melissa and I were mostly silent through the movie. Then everyone menstruated all at once.

After that we drove over to downtown Northampton and walked along Main street and the side streets in search of a new belt for Al. I saw this pretty sweet owl hanging in a thrift store for fifteen bucks, but I didn't get it seeing as Al had forbid me from buying a five dollar book like a week ago saying "WE DON'T HAVE ANY MONIEEEEEESSS!!!!" As we were walking to the scariest Urban Outfitters ever, I got beaned right in the eye with a chunk of roof snow that left my eye out of comission for the rest of the evening. This Urban Outfitters... I think it used to be a library or a bank or something. It's very ominous on the outside and looks like you're about to go pray at the alter of low quality and high prices. It, like all other Urban Outfitters left me with a desire to burn it to the ground.

We went into the store "Faces" as a last resort where we saw a girl with a very unfortunate ass. She was slim/normal looking from the front, but had this ginormous lumpy ass in the back... it was strange. But they had belts for Al that were only $4.95!

Then we drove over to the Cafe Evolution. As we rounded the building we heard live music. "I hate live music." I said. Then we peered in the window and saw a Jazz band. "And I hate jazz music!" I said.

The guy taking orders was this tall possibly gay guy. I told him I wanted nachos. "What's your name?" He asked to write it on the order. "Melissa." I said. "That's not what your friends call you." He said. And then I had to go back and forth with his guessing what people call me and me wondering if I know him from somewhere.... turns out I don't. but then Melissa said she wants Nachos also... and her name is Melissa so I'm pretty sure the counter man thinks we were fucking with him.

After that I drove Melissa back to her mountain home a thousand miles into the clouds. Getting there was easy, driving down an icy mountain at night... not so much. I was only going like thirty but still sliding around expecting to slide into a guardrail with no cell phone service and getting raped and killed but Mountain Men while listening to the "Hairspray" soundtrack. I somehow made it home alive. An exciting adventure behind me!

A purple little little lady will be perfekt for dirty old and useless clown...

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:00:51 GMT

I'm not sure what Al's obsession is with these horrible movies on the Sci Fi Channel.

Squee is doing better today. Al bought her a can of tuna last night so she would have something softer to nosh on. I saw her eating some Kibble today so I think her mouth is bothering her less... Speaking of which I need to give her medicine. She is much easier to medicate than Raikou who is a right bitch. He will actually scream and scratch you until you force the medicine into his mouth, then he will run into the next room and spit it all over the floor.

I am supposed to be drawing a picture every day but I have neglected to do it for two days now. I don't know what to do to make myself want to do things.

Al came home early this morning from work because he wasn't feeling well and the heat wasn't working at work. He scared me because I had just gotten out of the shower and I wasn't expecting him. Good thing Cletus wasn't over! So we went grocery and pet food shopping. Always an exciting time.