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Fri, Dec 1 - Release! Yes, I have things to release, or at least release-related stuff to discuss. First and most immediately we seem to have this cartoon, a curious confection with connections to  Other News? Ah, yes. Regular readers may have known that for some time now I have been in the American employ of one PopCap Games, Inc. My job while there has varied in ways over the course of time but since pretty much my first day I've always been working on one particular game. That game is now out.  What did I do on this game? Well, the credit on the poster says "Story/Dialog," and it's not lying in order to get your support for an ideologically driven war of choice. Nope, that credit is telling the straight truth. I, along with the wonderbrainingly talented Tysen Henderson, wrote the dialogue. I also helped shape the story, invented the villain and peppered the proceedings with lore. In other words, I wrote jokes. Some of them are even funny. Hell, screw the modesty -- shitloads of those jokes are funny. And my funny jokes are only the beginning. It's been an odd and emotion-filled time since I moved here, with sadnesses at things and times and people distant from my life. But it's been worth it to get the chance to work on a project like Bookworm Adventures. I got to do cool stuff, work with cool people and, I am strongly convinced, ultimately help create a very cool thing. People were bustin' out mad talent all over that game, diggin' on liking it and wanting to make it awesome. I believe it is the goods. But take not my words only for this. Click on the picture above or here and you'll be taken to a page that will allow you to download the game and play it for free for an hour. Just a taste, but a tasty taste. I highly encourage it. Build the words. Sample the nonsense. Consume the fun. Give in to Bookworm Adventures. And then buy it. RSS what the hell? Many folks have tried to get me on the RSS bandwagon and I've stubbornly refused all the way down the line not because it made little sense but because I simply didn't get it. I still, and most especially in the wake of the BWA party, don't really get it but I'm gonna throw y'all links to web pages that seem to do the thing: here's one (http://interglacial.com/rss/bob_the_angry_flower.rss ) and here's the other (waitaminit, no there isn't). If you're the person or people running this thing and I've said "Yes, yes, do it!" and then totally forgotten about it and my linking is causing disasters, please let me know. For all you RSS feeders out there, this may be your BtAF solution. I wish I'd paid enough attention to be able to say for sure. Fri, Nov 24 - Glutted Well, perhaps not completely, not filled to torpulent bursting, but still, I ate well of Thankgivingy eats and am experiencing the after-surge of satisfied drowsiness. Quick! I must update web site before I succumb to the urge to sleep, sleep, sleeep... So, yes, cartoon.  And? Well, I suppose I did scratch out a note at work about Casino Royale, so I guess I'll put a link up on the reviews page. And I also saw The Fountain, and while I haven't really written a review I will say that I had the experience, about twenty minutes into the movie, of being nudged awake because I was snoring. Fri, Nov 17 - Toonin' Well, that was nice. Going to Keith Knight's presentation at the Richard Hugo House Theatre then accompanying him to his sister's Tea Gallery in West Seattle afterwards, I mean. It's left me a little worn out for this update but it can't be helped because it's in the fixed and immovable past. Anyway, strip, a little ditty about robots and sadness entitled 
Fri, Nov 10 - Clear! Well, so much for that week. It's time for the inevitable, the thing that was long foretold, the pulsing necessity of the  E'en Echoes I'd wanted to post photos of my Rorscach costume last week when I was nattering about it but I didn't have any to post. Now I do, so here they are. Wed, Nov 8 - Well now, Maybe there is a God. Certainly I was wrong on the worst of my of twelve-month old prediction that Republicans would display "surprising gains." As it got close to the wire I changed my imaginings such that to be honest I expected widespread chaos as systems broke all across the board. And yet, at first look, that is not happening. Results are reported and seem to cede at least some scrap of power to the non-Repubs. I was convinced that would not be allowed to happen, so I must feel a surge of good for America, less far gone than I feared. Lord I've changed. Were I not in America I would be screaming (and in fact did scream Lection Night while drinking) "How can this even be close??? We need a total repudiation of Bushism, not a nudge in the right direction!" But I've been so wrong about so many things, let me be wrong here too. Let the slow path be the one and let my hasty assumptions fall in face of something better and more merciful. This to you, God, if you exist, I pray. Tues, Nov 7 - Lection Well, folks are votin' in this here America today. I hope the Dems take control of at least one branch even though I can't think of a single thing they've done to deserve it. Where were they on the torture bill? How many of them voted to give el presidente the authority to wage war? What is their plan for America's renewal? What do they have besides "We're not the colossal retards running things now"? True, that's reason enough to vote for them, but I can only hope their political failures will be mirrored by their policy successes just as the reverse has held true for the Republicans. But before the voting commences en masse, I still gotta stand by my original prediction months back: "Surprising Republican gains." God, please, let me be wrong. Fri, Nov 3 - Oh, Hallowe'en Or, as we like to call it round these parts,  So, Hallowe'en. I went as Rorscach from Watchmen, a costume that had a few good things and a lot of bad things going for and against it. On the plus side, it was temptingly easy to make, so easy that I made it two weeks before the 31st. And, once it was all put together, it was unmistakeably Rorscach. If you knew who Rorschach was, of course, which is where we started to run into problems. Nobody, nobody, NOBODY knew what it was. Well, okay, maybe two people knew. Last year I went around with a silver "H" on my forehead and quite few people got it as a hologram from Red Dwarf; I was seriously surprised. In my mind Rorscach is equal in iconic characterness but I forgot that he's in a comic that's just a comic; that is, it's never been made into a movie or TV show or even a video game. So of course nobody's read it. Still, I work at a video game company fully stocked with nerds so I expected a few more recognitions than I got. Then there was the whole mask issue, which I knew from previous experience was going to be a problem. A full head mask means you have to take it off in order to eat or drink or smoke, so pretty much every second of any respectable Hallowe'en party. So you walk around with the mask off, never really fully in costume except for the occasional moments when you put it on to wander around. And that's not even counting the Rorscachness of the mask. Its whole purpose is to obliterate the face, put facelike features in unface places. So it's quite creepy, as many folks pointed out. I can see why Kovacs wears it; it's intimdating. Of course, putting out a subliminal eerie vibe isn't exactly the best way to have a good time at a party, but I mean come on, it's Hallowe'en, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE SCARY FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! I don't know who I'm trying to convince, here. Anyway, that was my Hallowe'en. Hope all you folks out there wore and enjoyed your costumes as much or more than I did! Posters! Back online. You know, I wasn't kidding last week when I asked folks not to buy posters but some of you went ahead and bought 'em anyway. Thankfully, UPS fiddles were worked out and I now have on hand some 950+ Apostrophe posters, enough to last me until the end of the decade. So order away! Go for it! Fri, Oct 27 -- parteeeeee It seems wrong, somehow, to be having Hallowe'en parties so far away from actual Hallowe'en, but it rudely decided to be on a Tuesday this year so what can we do? Nothing. Well, not nothing. If we wanted, we could reset the calendar so that the 31st was this weekend. Not that we're gonna do that. But we could. I urge all readers to dress up in some fashion this weekend. I made my costume two weeks ago knowing that I was breaking one of my hard-won cardinal rules of costume-making, so we'll see how that all turns out. Isn't this web site supposed to have cartoons on it? Oh right, here we go. I've babbled on this topic before but it seemed that Bob also wanted a crack at it...  Please Don't Buy Posters Not forever, no no. Just for this week. See, I've run out of Apostrophe posters. Not to worry, though; a bunch more are already on the way from a printer. Until I've actually got them on hand to distribute, however, I'd beg your indulge and ask you to refrain from ordering any. Next week I fully expect to fill space on the update by letting folks know that poster sales are back on, but until then hold off. If'n you would. Fri, Oct 20 -- Let's Get the Date Right This Time, Shall We? I've been on a run of getting the dates wrong on these updates only to be corrected later by eagle-eyed readers, so I'm going to try to make a real effort in the present and future to know what day it is and how many days that day is into whatever month it is. It's October now, right? Right. Awesome. Anyway, this week's cartoon is about  Fri, Oct 13 - Nightfalling So dark so quick. At 5:30 there'll still be that lazy-afternoony feel to the day and then an hour later, whuh-bam, deep dusk. Evenings are so big now! Anyway, this:  Anything else? Not really, except to say that my comic-reading ass has been taking suitcases of bootings from a French cartoonist, Joann Sfar.  The Rabbi's Cat and Klezmer and Vampire Loves, whew, such tasty storytelling, loose but detailed style, pretty girls... man, I love it. The book jackets all go on about how incredibly prolific this guy is so I think I got a lot of comics to buy. Or wait... maybe they have some at the library! That'd be awesome! Fri, Oct 6 - Trying to Come Up With a Hallowe'en Costume Nothin' too fancy this week I'm afraid, no drunken tales or crazy confusion, just a simple cartoon from a simple man:  What to do for Hallowe'en, what to do. I kinda wimpled out last year by going as Rimmer from Red Dwarf, basically just grey shirt and pants and a silver H on my forehead. Gotta do something better, and there's only a whole bunch of days left to decide! Tues, Oct 3 - Spellort... So I just got back from the Seattle Spelling Bee, held monthly at the Rebar, I guess, bar. At the last minute I dove in and entered the fray, and was subjected to a lesson in spelling worthlessness and personal failure I'll not soon forget, particularly since I'm writing it down and putting it on my web site. First round was trivial. "Misspell." Spelled it. Second round, "devolution." Surprised, spelled it. Then "desiccation," which I spelled "dessication." One error out of three down. Then third round. Heard a girl given "blancmange", wished that it'd been mine. Then I got up there and heard "amunite." What? Root? Amish? Sentence? Name? I panicked, and didn't even listen to the beemaster's response to my question as I plunged ahead with "ammenite" thinking what the hell, biblical name, e, sure, why not an e and a double m, only to find that it was, in fact, "ammonite." And it wasn't until I got home and checked that I found that I realized that it was ammonite, the extinct molluscs that I had actually heard of and if only I'd listened I might have gotten it. So dumb. So fearful and impatient. And then the last, a word the correct spelling of which I don't recall but which sounded like "nay-soont" that had something to do with the nose and came from France and I tried to spell it "nascunte" but that wasn't right, and so I was out. Blam. My first spelling bee in 28 years and I cracked under pressure. Weak. But there it was. Fri, Sep 29 - Update update I thought a bit about what I was gonna say in this update. Earlier this evening--but wait! Cartoon first!  dot dot dot... ...earlier this evening I was composing this update in my mind. It went along the lines of "I've just gotten back from a rock show, but folks who have e-mailed me recently concerned about my drinking should be pleased; I'm not wasted." Then I faced the choice: a fourth greyhound? I considered--and even discussed with folks at the rock show--the conundrum I now relate, and then made the choice: yes. A fourth. And so it was. I felt guilt about having given up on my earlier imaginary update text. Or no, perhaps not guilt, but rather a self-up-beating for passing on perfectly good update blather, already mind-written. If I drank more I was gonna have to rewrite what I had in mind, and that meant work. But duty and sociality and boredom called and drink I did. And yet. Am I wasted? Wasted? FULLY WASTED? I think not. It seems four isn't enough for the kind of unselfed sloppiness I now recognize as the signature of a true drunken. So I'm not drunk, but I don't really have super extra content this week, no sexy movie review or keeningly perceptive political musing (though let's face it, watching flailing current White House efforts to downplay obvious National Intelligence Estimate findings that the war in Iraq has--Stonishing!--increased anti-American sentiment and burgeoned terroristic efforts has been, if nothing else, entertaining) to offer. All I have this week is twisted grammar and more colons and semicolons than I like to use in a year. Enough? No. Not really. But I haven't seen Jackass 2 yet so it's all I got. Please forgive me. I'm still only human. ??? Really? I haven't delivered an extended rant on why I hate Norton Utilities and its foul, foul adjunct, Symantec Anti-Virus? I felt sure that I had yet it seems that I haven't. For another time, then. I'll simply say this: I'm a bit slow on returning e-mails these days on account of my e-mail being only the latest piece of computer functionality I have seen die screaming under the pitiless jackbooted heel of badly designed anti-virus software. So if you've e-mailed me and not received a response, that's part of why. FUCK YOU SYMANTEC! FUCK YOU TO HELLLLLL!!!!!!! Wait a minute... So it seems that the US Senate has approved, by a healthy margin, the contemptible compromise bill on torture, or as we like to call it, "interrogation techniques" or "the program." I recall only a few days ago as Herr Bush petulantly responded to reporters' questions by reiterating again and again that if the legal language wasn't clarified, the program would not continue. Somehow, nowhere along the line did any of the critics of El Presidente's plan (and wouldn't it have been nice if there'd been a Democrat in there?) ask hey, if the problem with the program is that its appliers are hesistant to proceed on the grounds that they might be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, then maybe the program *shouldn't* continue. But no. Nobody called Busho on his blaring, ignorant, inhuman bullshit. frisep22 - Actually My Birthday Y'know, folks, I apologize. I've been a tease this month, a terrible birthday tease. First I mentioned it was the month, then I didn't mention it at all, then I took time last week to say it wasn't then. Thankfully all this nonsense ends today, as today is actually my birthday. And see. I just can't stop playing. Cuz today isn't my actual birthday. No, that actual day was 36 years ago. This day, this today day, is just a, a, a commemoration, a facile remembrance. I do plan to do some things today, however. Let's see, what's up? 1. Go to work. 2. Work. 3. Return home. Not much of a plan, I admit, but I like to keep things loose. Perhaps something distracting will come up. Am I ever gonna get around to posting this week's cartoon or am I gonna keep spending endless paragraphs burbling about my birthday? Nope. I think I've purged the burble from my system. I'd like to thank all of you for being out there to help me through the process. I hope we can go forward now into a better tomorrow, a tomorrow that features this strip: 
Almost Forgot... I was just gonna get out quick with this update, but I remembered that I wanted to let Seattle-type folks know that limited copies of the first four Bob books are available at Zanadu Comics in Belltown on 3rd. Haven't worked out the Dog Killer comic-store distribution yet but at least the first four are there for now. Wee-yah! Fri, Sep 15 - Not My Birthday Some folks have wished me a happy birthday after I said, at the beginning of this month, that it was this month. I'm here to tell you that today is not my birthday. Today is simply the day I bring you this item of drawn "entertainment."  Keith Knight, Salon and Me Regular or irregular readers of this site have probably heard me mention the K Chroniclin' Keith Knight before, mostly in the context of being colleagues and comic-con allies. Well, for his 40th birthday last month Keith got pneumonia, and it put it out of action such that he asked if some of his cartooning friends could do some fill-in strips. The unestimable Nina Paley was one cartoonist asked, while I was another, and this week my K Chronicles appeared on Salon. A word of warning, you'll have to watch a ten-second ad (Click on the "Free, Read Salon Now" link) in order to read the strip. That's how Salon corrals the bling. Fri, Sep 8 -- Blah! Often when I do political strips I get e-mail from readers asking me to knock it off and get back to the old style goofy irrational comics. But really, does it make sense? Is it the right choice? What if the result of that impulse was a mindless cartoon like  ? How would you feel then? Scrotoss update So I made a real scrote for myself last weekend. Up until then I'd been relying on what one of my weekend-novel-writing friends called "the manky scrototype," the original four socks filled with sand and tied together with nylon rope that was constructed at North Country Fair. That scrote served me well, but the rope was starting to fray and get scratchy, and squeak unpleasantly on the wooden shaft, and it was time for something new. I made a couple of attempts to find leather but eventually settled on denim in the form of some stout $5 jeans. I bought two types of twine and then went to a store called "Stitches" (where I had previously failed to get leather) to see about getting a large-eyed needle. An embroidery needle! Of course! Except whoops. They don't have any. I get the largest needle I can, unwind the twine into separate threads, feed each thread separately through the eye of the needle, manage to pull it through, and start "sewing." Of course, I couldn't pull the thick twin through two layers of denim with my fingers, so I had to bite down on the needle and haul it through with my teeth for each. And. Every. Stitch. My stitching is atrocious, it goes back and forth between round-n-round and serpentine, it's got shitty knots in it and the interior socks (or "nads") are filled with dirt, not sand. That last bit isn't really about the stitching, but still. This scrote is not pretty. I would go so far as to say it is ugly. But it sure is a jump from the scrototype. Its soft "fap!" when you make a good catch, its elegant tumbling arc through the air, its sheer scrotality. Most satisfying. I suppose I should cross-post this to Scrotoss.org but I don't want to do that until I get some photos to go with it. Might be able to accomplish that this weekend if I can manage to get some pants on. We'll see. Fri, Sep 1 -- It's My Birthday! Well, no. Not for some weeks yet. But it's the month at least. I suppose I could edit the headline to read "It's My Birthmonth!" but that would be the action of someone mired in the past, not the go-go-go for-for-forward hero I aspire to be. So no corrections! Let us simply embrace the future, that future whose name is  Read? Might as well haul this puppy up to the daylight again. It's a book!  I wrote it! Drew it, too! Descending Saw a pretty decent movie the other day, The Descent. I know, it's been out a while, but I dug it. No full review, I'm afraid, but I will quote myself from an e-mail I wrote not long ago: "I just back from some bad fun, or ugly fun... That is, [I] saw a good horror movie, good in the sense that it made me cringe and feel horror. It was called The Descent, and it was nasty. Six women go on a caving expedition that goes bad in the this-cave-is-full-of-monsters kinda way. But it was genuinely scary up until the monsters showed up. Just the scenes of crawling through narrow uneven tunnels, getting stuck... brrrr. And the coolest thing was that these women all kept their cool and dealt. If it had been the same movie with six guys, guaranteed one of the guys would have lost it and become an instant burden on everybody else. But not in this film. There's some heated words after they first discover they're in deep shit, sure, but they're primarily on the ball, all of them. And when it comes time for them to fight, they acquit themselves. They're sure a hell of a lot calmer and more focussed than I would have been in their situation. Pretty rare to see characters like that in a horror movie." So yeah, if you like squirming, check it out. If nothing else I now have an answer to the rhetorical question I'm often posing, "When was the last time a good horror movie came out?" Now I can come right back at myself and go, "Dude, what the hell? The Descent, remember? You posted about it on your site!" And I'll say something like "Oof!" or "PWNED!!" or "Why the hell are you talking to yourself in the second person?" And then I'll take another long sip of my vodka float and dare myself to respond. Fri, Aug 25 -- Kaboom! Not that anything blew up recently, at least around here. I just wanted to say "Kaboom!" and give myself an excuse to post this picture:  Why did I need an excuse? Why did I care? I don't know; all I can say is that I had a very strong feeling. I think it was projected from the future. Anyway, I have a cartoon this week. Here! Take it! I made it for you!  What else? I mentioned last week that I was going to take the good word of Scrotoss to the Seattle Hempfest, and so I did. And? Well, it was okay, but I could have done better. My after-action report for anyone who's interested is locatable at www.scrotoss.org. Fri, Aug 18 - Smoke! So I guess this weekend is Hempfest here in the ol' Seattle. I"ve heard it described both as "totally cool, people are smoking joints, cops are walking around and it's al cool" and as "teenagers trying to score dimebags and zero THC anywhere and the place is heavry with cops." It'll be interesting to see which one or elements of both is the truth. Regardless, if there's anywhere that should be ripe for some Scrotossin', that should be it, so I'm-a gonna try to bring the good word to all those who can hear. Any Seattle Bob readers who attend and see a short man tossing a metaphorical scrotum in the air should come over and say hi. It seems as though there was a cartoon written and drawn not that long ago by me, a cartoon called  Book good! Of course there's this old thing...
Sad News, With a Positive Angle I've known this for a while, since just before Comic-Con, but I haven't gotten it up on the site yet. The Utimate Book Of Perfect Energy!!! is out of print. I discovered this when I asked Priority Printing to send some boxes down to San Deigo and a couple of days later they called back to tell me there were no more boxes of the UBOPE left. So that's it. I'm out of those books. The positive side is that it's good to sell out of books. That is, after all, what they're for. I must confess, though, that I feel a bit naked without easy copies of that book to deploy as proof of my genius. I mean, I have other books, but the Ultimate Book of Perfect Energy!!! was, well, the ulimate book of perfect energy. It's a tough one not to have any copies left of. What about bringing it back into print? That is certainly my deep desire. Of course I'm in the time and place of my life where it's least feasible to print and sell another couple thousand books myself, but what the hell. And folks seem awfully enthusiastic about this print-on-demand stuff, so that could work. Dunno. Dunno dunno dunno... Fri, Aug 11 -- Lightning! Oh dear, so sleepy. Must rest. Must sleep. But first, must update web site with new cartoon.  Fri, Aug 4 -- Dabnabbit! Is it already Friday? Baggnabbit, it is. So late already, after only a few hours of drinking to celebrate the release of Talismania, available now at PopCap.com. Am I melding too much my work life and the cartoon life of this page by overextenuating? Perhaps. Particularly since I did barely nothing on Talismania and yet ate and drank on its expense all this eve. Who knows? Perhaps I'll be fired. I hope not; I've been allowed to do some pretty cool things for some pretty cool games we've got coming quickish; can one stack semicolons as I've done? Anyway, none of this, dear reader, is your problem. I imagine that you're here for a cartoon. As it occurs, I have one for you. It's a bit of a sequel to The Cult of Skaro.  Damn. I wanted to talk about Clerks II and My Super Ex-Girlfriend but I'm watching my typing skills crumble so it'll have to wait a day or two. Generally on both, though, before I depart, they were enjoyable for entirely unrelated reasons. Fri, Jul 27 -- Whew! Let's begin with the strip. I kinda like it.  ONIONONIONONION!!! Yeah, Dog Killer got reviewed in the Onion AV Club. Last week it was; I only heard about it from Jill at Tachyon on Wednesday as I was arriving at the Comic-Con. Sweet! Admittedly, they did only give the book a B but a B from the Onion is like a negative G+ from anybody else. And while we're at it... Buy my Book! Dog Killer! Connnnnnnnn!!! Back from San Diego Comic-Con, of course. Man, it's always a trip. Lately I've been likening it to Neverland, this strange world of fantasy and delights that, when you're in it, seems like the only world there ever was. Wearing the hat, selling the books, sketching the sketches and autographs, gawking at the beautiful women and buying loads of crazy crap, it seems like it'll go on forever. Then come a point when you dread that going on forever, you want it to end, you're dying for it to be over, and then, about and hour and a half before it ends, you realize it actually *is* going to end and you get kinda wistful. And after a few days back it all seems unreal, as it assuredly was. Nonetheless, some things did occur. Joss Whedon stopped by my table and bought a book. Yes! I managed to slither through the security gaggle long enough to present Rosario Dawson with a UBOPE. All right! I sold all the books I brought by Saturday afternoon. Sweet! I purchased lots of interesting things. True! What kinds of interesting things? Well, let's see... Stuff I got, Things I read Star Wars: Deleted Magic My buddy Darren pointed out that the title of this DVD is actually a pretty good description of Star Wars as a whole. But despite its unintentionally ironic title, this is actually a must-see for anybody who's ever given a shit about Star Wars. No "Making of..." this, Deleted Magic is a scholarly deconstruction of the first film, splicing lost and documentary footage into the movie in an enlightening way. We see older versions of classic scenes that reveal how critical certain crucial editing choices were, we see the tails and front ends of long-familiar shots, we get haunting invocations of distant souls. It's like a backstage pass to the movie. Quite cool. Five-season set of Powerpuff Girls Man, I almost didn't get this and I wouldn't have even known how much I would have regretted it. I forgot how kickass are those girls, and this was the first time I'd gotten the chance to see some of those classic episodes that never ended up on any of the earlier DVDs. I'd always wanted to see the Rowdyruff Boys, the alternate team created by Mojo Jojo out of snips, snails and puppy-dog tails, and boy did they deliver. They kicked the *crap* out of those Girls! I haven't seen superhero fightin' like that since, well, ever. Complete Live-Action Superboy series Haven't really looked into this; bought it on a whim. I was just surprised they'd made so many episodes. There's something like 14 discs in the set. Unholy Mackerel, that's a lot of discs! Polar-Oid This is a snappily animated 3-minute student film I got from Meredith Gran over at www. punkybird.com. It's a simple story of a man, a woman, and a polar bear, nicely done. And through the buying of stuff at her table I came across Hate Song Bought three mini-comics of this one about a bunch of dudes living the 80s dozer rocker lifestyle in today's world and got hooked immediately. Luckily, it's a web comic, so there's tons more waiting for the reading. Astronauts from the Future I've always had a liking for European comics since being raised on Asterix and Tintin, so when Astronauts from the Future by Lewis Trondheim caught my eye at the NBM booth I picked it up. Two kids arguing about whether everybody in the world besides them is an alien or a robot. No-bullshit storytelling, twists and turns, stuff going on that's cool. I love people who know what they're doing. Ima hafta read more Trondheim. The Big Book of Bizmar This one's kind of a cheat since I'm a contributor and I haven't really gone through it all yet, but hey, it's an anthology from Young American Comics in which every story had to contain a bunny, an insect, a zombie, a monkey, an alien and a robot. That's gotta be good for some laughs, right? Is that it? For now. I've only made my way through about half of my Con pile and there's suddenly a bunch of movies out I wanna see. Monster House! My Super Ex-Girlfriend! Clerks II! Gonna be some entertaining times, I hope. If we can't have world peace, let's at least get some good movies. Thurs, Jul 27 - QuickyUpdate This isn't the big return-from-San Diego update for tomorrow; this is the quick one to let anybody who's interested that I'll be on CJSR radio this evening, 11 p.m. Pacific Time (midnight Mountain, 1 a.m. Central, 2 a.m. Eastern Standard). I think CJSR's got some jazzmatazz hooked up that lets you listen to it on the Intertubes. Wed, July 19 -- Leaving! All right, it's 1:30 in the morning and I gotta get up at 5 to grab the flight to San Diego, so we're gonna get this update done splickety-lit! First, the strip. Only about the most awesome thing ever.  San Diego Comic-Con I'm not gonna link 'em; you know how to Google if you want to find 'em. I will reiterate my earlier bit about where I am, and add to that the explicit mention that I'm at M16 in the Small Press Area, Ailse 1400 by the lounge area and hotdog spot. Come find me! And if you don't or can't make it, buy my new book, Dog Killer, from Amazon! Oh yeah, I just remembered! I heard from a fella at Tachyon's distributor and he said bookstores can get the books from Baker & Taylor as well as Ingram, or you can order them directly from IPG (Independent Publishers Group) at this linky right here. Rocks! Fri, July 14 -- Doomsday But not in a bad, sad way. Oh no not at all! Okay. First the strip.  Next there's Dog Killer You can buy it, you know! I plan to have a fair number down in ol' San Diego for the elder Comic-Con. I'm in the same spot I was last year, Keith Knight by my side, and we plan to have a good time. Do join us, if you can make it. I was actually slightly terrified about Comic-Con yesterday after having gotten a message from them saying that my California Seller's Permit that I need to set up my display had expired in June. What the hell? I checked it and my application and realized I'd gotten the date wrong. Apparently July is the 7th month of the year rather than the 6th. Suddenly I had no permit. I would have panicked but for one thing: I trusted the California State Board of Equalization. They issue the permits and in all my and others' dealings with them they've been reachable, friendly, helpful and human, the very model of what we hope civil service and government could be. And so they were again, taking my resubmitted application and faxing back another permit in less than an hour. Take *that*, private sector! A Scanner Darkly I don't quite have enough to say about this to merit a full review, so I'm just gonna yabber a bit. I love Linklater's approach to it, he nails the hazy, unreal weirdness of the book (which I only read last week). It was a strange experience reading it having seen trailers for the film; as characters and ideas appeared in my reading I could already tell how they fit with what I'd seen. It seemed they would fit very closely indeed. And so it was with one of the most loyal adaptations I've seen in a while, the bulk of the scenes from the book making it into the film with minimal monkeying. And the actors did superb jobs. And yet... there's still a gap between film and book, and it's there that much of the pleasure of the story lies, the strange internal conversations the main character has as he's seeing himself in his own surveillance. And that stuff doesn't quite get through in the movie, so I was slightly let down. But it's definitely a movie I'll buy and revisit. And besides, I'd already had my world shattered and rebuilt anew earlier that day by watching a BitTorrented copy of the Doctor Who Season 2 (or 28, depending on how you count) finale, Doomsday . Ah yes, Doomsday was awesome. Pure gravy cream for Doctor Who fans. I've only recently become aware of the term "fan service", and this I suppose is that, but such service. Cybermen and Daleks? Together? WHAT COULD HAPPEN? And amazingly, they didn't screw it up! I take back everything I ever said in public or in private about new-series-creator and often-sucky-episode-writer Russel T. Davies, cuz he gave me everything I could have wanted and more. The confrontations were great! Emotionless machine-creatures delivered monstrous verbal putdowns to each other! Stuff got exterminated! Daleks had names! Do you hear me? DALEKS HAD NAMES! Ahhh, jeez, I get smiley just thinking about it... Fri, July 7 -- Life in all its glory! Well, now, what do we have now that we're fullbore and bustily into July and the second half of 2006? We have a cartoon. It has a name.  Hmmm... what else? I was at a spelling bee earlier this evening, one hosted by a bar that served drinks, and I'm toying with darting off to a midnight screening of A Scanner Darkly just up the street from me, so I have not too much to report. Anything at all? Book! Well, there's always Dog Killer. I'm gonna have to sit down and make Dog Killer a proper entry on the much-maligned, long-neglected books page, but that gonna is not yet hafta, so for now I'll simply throw you cats the Amazon link once again and suggest that you buy, buy, buy, buy like you've never bought anything before and it's the only way they'll let you into Heaven. For Seattle readers, I swear I will do what it takes to get this book to appear in at least one fine bookselling concern. I'm thinking Zanadu, though work still remains to be done. Other than that, Amazon, baby, and maybe give a thought to asking your local comic store if they've ordered any from Last Gasp? It's entirely up to you, of course, as are all things. Fri, June 30 -- Long Slide Into Darker Days Sorry to bear such harsh news, but we're a week past the solstice. Days are getting shorter. On the plus side, the nights are getting longer. Time for nighttime people to flourish. So! Some stuff. First, a quick big clickable picture of my book
Let's see, what else, oh yes, a cartoon  For more Scrotoss information, please consult scrotoss.blogspot.com. Anything else? Well, I've got kind of a half-written review I'm not too sure about for Superman Returns. It's on the movie reviews page. The previous update is here. |