Last night I dreamt I was dating an ex-girlfriend of Bill Maher's. She was a vaguely Russian looking girl with black hair and round glasses. I took her to Disneyland, where I learned she was sort of brainless. For some reason, she kept referring to Italy as "Italia".

Disneyland had a food court in my dream, and looking at the menu of a Japanese restaurant I saw something called "David Cronenberg's The Frog". As much as I like Cronenberg, I couldn't see myself ordering that item in a million years.

I've been feeling pretty not so good after an accidental tequila binge a couple days ago and the resulting puke-athon. So how does one loose track of how many glasses of tequila one is drinking? This one did it by playing Jedi Academy. Or trying to get certain mods to work, anyway.

Here's kind of an interesting one I downloaded last night that the FireFly fans among you might appreciate. It's Serenity;


The galley. Not the strongest part--I missed the stencilled flowers on the walls. But the stove works. And yes, I was playing as Padme from Episode II. I'm sure all of you do weird things in private.


The corridor connecting the galley to the cockpit. I was disappointed the crew quarters were inaccessible, though I guess it would have been hard to make those slender wells. Still, it makes me think of the amazing Millennium Falcon mod I downloaded with detailed quarters and head, complete with Boba Fett toilet paper.


The cockpit. Not bad, but I feel like it ought to be darker.


The engine room looks slightly too small, but pretty good otherwise.


You can't fix what my lightsaber breaks, Kaylee!


The sickbay, or whatever it was called on FireFly. Seems like the lighting ought to be brighter. I was disappointed that Simon and River's quarters aren't accessible.


The cargo bay was definitely the best part. I only wish the shuttles were accessible . . .

Wolf Blitzer knows what your genitals look like.

Two dreams last night. It's weird how they seem to come in pairs;

The first one was actually very similar to a dream I'd had before. It was a like a modification. In the old dream, I wanted very badly to see someone who was in Paris. I knew it would be an expensive journey, but I figured I could afford one day. So I took a plane, stopping briefly in London before reaching Paris, which I found to be a labyrinthine warehouse of cardboard boxes. I looked a while, but didn't find the girl I was looking for, so I flew back to London and wandered a bit.

London in my dream was composed of very short buildings--at least they appeared to be short on the outside, but the ceilings inside could actually be pretty high over my head. London was filled with chain link fences and neatly trimmed, flat grassy patches. It sort of reminded me of the scene in V for Vendetta where Finch visits the Larkhill camp, although there weren't any naked, dismembered corpses. Finally, I went home.

That was the old dream. The new version was the same, except I got stuck in London after coming back from France. No one was able to tell me why, but the planes weren't leaving. I wasn't able to find any place to change my money, so I wandered the streets, waiting, and it got dark. I started noticing enormous black tentacles with pink auras sprouting up from the ground, destroying the city, but people mostly weren't noticing them.

In my second dream last night, I was playing a game with a bunch of people. We all had mediaeval weapons--I had a dagger--and we were chasing each other around a place that sometimes seemed like a featureless, white walled rat's maze, and other times there seemed to be couches and furniture, like a house. Whenever a player caught someone, it was understood that one of the two would have to die. No one seemed bothered by this--it was part of the game.

I tackled a girl in a strapless, white taffeta dress with a wide, sash-like, dark gold belt with a metal, hoop buckle. I had her pinned to a couch, and I told her I didn't want to kill her.

"Oh, you have to," she said, smiling as though it was the most trivial thing in the world. "Just get on with it."

I ran my dagger across her throat, but not hard enough to break skin. I just left a little red mark.

"I really don't want to kill you," I said.

She sighed impatiently. "You have to, it's the rules. Look, how about you give me a really bad wound and I just get fixed up later. Okay?"

"I guess that would be okay . . ."

"Okay . . . Just stab me in the stomach, then. They can fix that."

"Okay." In my dream, it seemed perfectly reasonable.

"But don't stain my dress." She tore it open at the stomach, lifting the belt, and I stuck the dagger in her soft belly. She started coughing thickly, dark blood rolled out of her, and of course she died.

I went to prison. I didn't really care if anyone thought I was trying to kill her or not. I'd killed her, and it didn't seem to matter to me whether or not I'd meant to.

When did my dreams get to be so melodramatic? Sheesh. Well, I will say that I never actually felt too badly about what was happening. Believe it or not, I'm actually in a very good mood to-day.

I can never resist watching the end credits of this show;



Without subtitles;

This morning I watched the first episode of Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei (Goodbye, Despair Teacher). How I loved it. Even if the rest of the series ends up sucking (which I doubt), I'll always have this first episode to love.

The show's about a high school teacher named Nozomu Itoshiki (whose name can be pronounced as the Japanese word for "despair" when written horizontally) and one of his students, Kafuka Fura (whose name is a reference to Franz Kafka). Itoshiki sees everything in the most negative possible light, while Fura sees everything in a positive light, albeit because she's not the brightest bulb. As the show opens, Fura rescues Itoshiki from a suicide attempt;





Fura goes on to explain that she knows this is what Itoshiki was doing because she'd witnessed her father trying to become taller many times; when his company went bankrupt, when debtors came to the door, etc. Itoshiki was trying to hang himself from a cherry blossom tree Fura named "Pink CEO," so she calls Itoshiki "Pink Supervisor" from then on.

Everything in the show's done with great style, too. From another teacher having a sexual experience from a q-tip in her ear, to when Itoshiki decides, instead of having the students write down their hopes (a standard practice in high school classes), he wants them to write down their despairs. A nice joke is that many of the despairs students list are the same as commonly listed hopes.

The series is directed by Akiyuki Shinbo, seen here in one of the episode's censored moments;

Two "what the fuck" items for you, folks;

Apparently, Winona Ryder gave birth to Zachary Quinto when she was six. Remember, Spock's mom is human.

And, yesterday, I actually had a look at Anne Rice's web site. It opens with an endorsement for Hillary Clinton sprung from the depths of her Christly sterilised mind. A signifying paragraph reads;

I want to add here that I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of the life of the unborn. Deeply respecting those who disagree with me, I feel that if we are to find a solution to the horror of abortion, it will be through the Democratic Party.

How many levels of "What?!" are there in this statement?

I'd better go find some breakfast now . . .

Finishing off a bottle of vodka last night, I finished colouring Kim, Kimberly, and the Snake. As I've said before, I find colouring easy, just very, very time consuming. So I was quite capable of colouring inebriated, but I had to wait until to-day before I had the wherewithal to put together the site.

Anyway. It is here. If you've already read the first half, you can pick up where you left off by clicking here.

It was a pain in the ass, so please read it. Because, remember;

Lots of colouring yesterday. I took a long lunch, though, deciding to eat oatmeal, which seems to always take between thirty minutes and an hour to eat. And it still leaves me hungry a couple hours later. I logged onto Second Life at 7pm and was giddy with hunger by 9pm, maybe causing me to throw snowballs a little harder than I should have, and shouting things I didn't mean at the disapproving Professor Nishi, who is an oddly solemn figure in a snowball fight.

Earlier in the evening, I rode a chicken on desert planet and watched a girl fight a tiger using a worm tooth. Such is Second Life.

Anyway, I oughta get at that colouring now . . .

FireFox has a nifty spell-check feature now, putting red lines under words you type, exactly like Microsoft Word. Normally, I type my messages and entries first in Notepad, copy them to Word for a spell-check, then paste to the internets. I still do this, since Word's dictionary is better than FireFox's, but when I'm in a hurry, or when I didn't have Word on this computer, the browser's spell-check's nice to have. But its deficiencies are pretty interesting sometimes. To-day I found out FireFox doesn't know "homophobe." It suggested I change it to "homophone."

Since I had to be out of the house to-day, I walked to Barnes & Noble. I actually bought a book--the first edition hardcover of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell was in the bargain section for seven dollars. I'd heard enough good things about the book I'd have felt foolish for passing it up, even though it could very well be years before I'm able to read it.

Usually when I buy a cheap book, I get this weird itch to buy another cheap book. Barnes & Noble has a cool assortment of classic works in hardback and I was tempted to get one of those. The strongest temptation was a big, twenty dollar book calling itself The Complete Illustrated Works of Oscar Wilde. It included illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. I knew, no matter how nice that sounds, that I just couldn't justify spending twenty dollars on a bunch of stories I've already read, some of them more than once. But, looking through the book, I was hoping I'd find something that would make me feel good about not having it. Unfortunately, I found that something. The collection omits the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray. I don't know how any self-respecting collection of Wilde's works can omit the greatest preface ever written.

Anyway. To colouring . . . It's weird how long this takes, huh?

Fiona Apple's so underrated;

I said, "Honey, I don't feel so good, don't feel justified. Come on put a little love into my void," -he said, "It's all in your head," and I said, "So's everything" - But he didn't get it - I thought he was a man but he was just a little boy.

I can has mazzive hedaek.

Yeah. It'll be a couple days 'til the comic's up.

Here's the most terrifying lolcat I've ever seen;


moar funny pictures

I think someone really didn't understand the concept of lolcats. They're supposed to make you feel safe.

The white tiger. It is hunting me, I tell you . . . "I can has puny human" it sez.

Last night was a good night to be a Fremen in Second Life. Afterwards, I coloured until 4am. I'm hoping to have this thing done to-morrow, but the fact that the maids are coming might throw a monkey wrench into plan. What with having been staying at my parents' house, the fact that I've been tired from the initial push, and the feelings about missing the deadline I'd originally set for myself, I've sort of been avoiding the thing. But if it's not done to-morrow, it'll definitely be done this week.

So, I'd better get back to colouring now . . .

Kristen Gore, daughter of Al Gore, is writing what The Huffington Post describes as a "sex-crazed comedy." There are a lot of things I like about Huffington Post, but they have some of the most bone-headed headlines.

I liked Kristen's writing on Futurama, and this movie, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel, features a plot where "Biel's character accidentally has a nail shot into her head, which elicits bizarre sexual urges." Sounds like a David Cronenberg meet cute. It has potential. But hardly that scandalous. I just love how, whenever a politician's involved, we all have to pretend like we live in the 50s.

Anyway, Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone.

I've been colouring. Part 2 of Kim, Kimberly, and the Snake ought to be done pretty soon. I've decided not to stress over it. Not that there's much to stress about after all the writing and drawing is done. I don't even have much in the way of palettes to come up with. It's basically paint by numbers now.

I've actually been catching up on Heroes, something I definitely wouldn't do if it weren't for the fact that episodes are viewable online. I'm up to the fourth episode of the season--gods, this show is cheesy. Sometimes it's So Bad It's Good, like Hiro in fuedal Japan, which is so, so clearly shot in Southern California. It's like the Errol Flynn Robin Hood without the ingenuity and beautiful camera work. And characters continue to do phenomenally stupid things, like Claire not telling her dad about her new boyfriend for no real reason at all, arousing his suspicions. Or super-powered Peter joining a gang of thieves--even getting one of their tattoos, because they have a small wooden box with his wallet in it, and he has amnesia (though he knows he has super-powers).

Still, some of the Sylar stuff I've been seeing lately has been enjoyable. I don't know if this guy's going to be an ideal Spock, but I do like him.

What's with all the Star Trek actors turning up on Heroes, anyway? Now there's a guy from Enterprise and Nichelle Nichols. It's like Gargoyles, another show unrelated to Star Trek and Paramount where Trek actors nonetheless started turning up in droves. Is there a secret Trek actor newsletter?

Dreamt last night I was at Parkway Plaza mall, an indoor mall close to here, and I was about to leave the JC Penney's and go into the mall thoroughfare. But the doors were closed, and I didn't see anyone around, despite the fact that it was the middle of the day. The doors weren't locked, though, so I went on in.

I noticed the food court was barricaded with chairs and overturned tables, and I soon realised that there was an extremely agitated white tiger on the loose. I saw it beating the crap out of a bench, battering it was its big paws, and I remember thinking something like, "Gee, thousands of years of conventional wisdom is right--that thing does look dangerous."

The tiger chased me into the bookstore (though it's not a bookstore anymore. Even in my dream, the place that'd been B.Dalton for decades had turned into the temporary calendar store I know it's lately become in real life). I somehow managed to secure the door before the tiger could get inside. I went out the back, finding myself outside the mall, and I walked to the food court from another direction. I re-entered the mall finding no evidence that the tables and chairs had been overturned, and the place was filled with the normal, complacently grazing consumers.

After walking around a little while, the tiger suddenly leapt out from between a couple passers-by and pounced on me.

The second dream I had last night (or maybe it was the first) was that I was among a bunch of tourists in Victorian dress aboard a lovingly replicated ancient Grecian sailing vessel. Although we appeared to be on the open sea, I knew there was an underwater track conveying the ship, and that we were on a late nineteenth century Disneyland ride for The Odyssey. At one point, the track took the ship underwater, but no-one seemed much to mind.

I suppose it's not surprising I'd have such strange dreams after the night's overindulgences. I'd started with two glasses of vodka while watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The latter show put me in the mood for Nacho Cheese Doritos, something I haven't felt the slightest inclination to eat in years, though I used to love eating them in high school and college. So I walked rather quickly to the Food 4 Less, bought a large bag, and came back here to eat half of it while drinking more vodka and watching Planet Terror. I slept like the dead, but I woke up with a stomach that was very disappointed in my conduct.

My mother's going out of town, so I'm supposed to stay with my sister for the weekend. I'll be going over there shortly. First, here are two exceptionally strange videos I found on YouTube last night; Paul Anka covering "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and Charlotte Church with Amy Winehouse covering "Beat It";

Shyness is nice.

Bleugh. I'm oddly restless. According to my regular, internal clock, and the number of hours I'd been awake, I ought to have gone to bed at 4am last night. Instead, I had this weird, ticklish wakefulness that lasted until 6am, and then I found myself unable to sleep past noon. Maybe it was all the sugar I had. Well, some might point out that the glasses of wine, the vodka, with the pot of coffee in the middle, might have had more to do with screwing up my brain.

I missed what sounds like a rather nice Halloween festival in Second Life's New Babbage because I was watching Suspiria with my sister and her boyfriend. That is a good movie for Halloween, since its odd, discordant sound effect soundtrack is pretty spooky just to be overheard by the trick-or-treaters.

Not much else did I do last night. One charming little item I forgot to mention about taking my grandmother to the ER a couple nights ago is that when we got in my car, it wouldn't start. I had to drive my grandmother's SUV, something I plan never to do again outside of an emergency situation. But my car's battery's just mysteriously dead (I guess it probably has to do with shutting myself away to work on a comic for weeks), so I'll be walking everywhere for a while. Not that I mind, really . . .

In the wee hours last night, I didn't do anything more extraordinary than Jedi Academy, where I participated in an underwater free for all involving five versions of Padme, three versions of Yuna (from Final Fantasy X and X2), three of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Jack Skellington;

Well, not working on that Halloween special (the first portion of which is online, remember), means I'm able to enjoy all sorts of luxuries, like watching television, taking a shower, eating oatmeal (it took too long), and drinking vodka. So there's that.

So I've kinda sorta done something for Halloween, for once. I suppose I'm happy enough for that. I'm actually more disappointed by another fruitless endeavour I engaged in yesterday. I really must make a point of avoiding vain exercises. Maybe I'll do a twenty four page comic over the course of two years, doing one page a month . . .

Anyway. I've got things to do now, so I leave you with a Halloweenish Morrissey video. My mouse has been jittery lately; it sort of feels like using a Ouija Board;

Ah, hell, I worked too hard on it.

Here's the first half of my Halloween special. Volume 1, if you will. I'll put up the second half next week.

It's always Halloween somewhere in the world.

Robert Goulet is dead.