It's the little things that get you.

All was right with the world. There I was, sitting on the toilet, enjoying a passage from Terry Pratchett’s latest novel, MAKING MONEY, not at all worried about the shady publisher who’s managed to miss his deadline for paying what he owes me YET AGAIN, or the bills that are going unpaid because of it, or how much the American cheque is actually going to be worth if/when I actually get it as opposed to how much it would’ve got me if it arrived when it was supposed to…None of that is bothering me (then. Writing this has managed to piss me off all over again.)

I’m as serene as I am ever likely to get until/unless I (or Tiina) somehow become fabulously wealthy, I’m calm, I’m at peace…

I’m being watched.

Crouched behind the bathroom garbage bin is a teensy little brown mouse--well, more grey, but you get the point. It’s staring at me with its quivering nose (I know how that sounds, but I swear, it was staring at me WITH ITS NOSE) and it’s one of the top ten cutest things I’ve ever seen.

And it’s creeping me the hell out.

Something about the proximity of this probably mostly harmless disease-carrying vermin really unnerves me. This is worse than the kid I saw smoking crack on the street corner just beyond the wall of trees that protects our front yard. This is worse than the discovery that someone had actually set up a makeshift home in a nook of one of our protective wall trees, complete with a dumbwaiter-y plant bucket on a chain. This is even worse than the guy who tried to talk his way into the house before running away when the police pulled up behind his friends’ car.

This is a cute, inhuman little monster watching me, uh, read.

I want it dead. No, for my own peace of mind, I NEED to know its life has met a premature but definite conclusion. I need it.

Throwing Jewel into the bathroom for a half an hour did not yield the desired results. She’s a cat, and she kills according to her own schedule.

So now, at the back of my mind, there’s this oppressive, inescapable awareness. There is a THING is scurrying around my home, sleeping in my clothes, eating my food, and using my pots and pans as a toilet (probably).

Ewwww…

Foley

Congratulations to Andrew Drilon

This past weekend, the Chemistry Set's Andrew Drilon, creator of Kare-Kare Komics, won what was effectively the top prize in the Second Annual Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards. He also got to kiss Neil Gaiman, which seems to be rapidly becoming the Thing To Do When Onstage with Neil Gaiman at An Awards Ceremony...

Drilon's the most prolific, certainly the most idiosyncratic creator distributing work via the Chemistry Set (which is saying something. With stories like THE SURREAL ADVENTURES OF EDGAR ALLAN POO and THREADS OF RED JACK being serialized on it, the Set's not exactly lacking in idiosyncratic creators...). Well worth checking out.

Foley

Take My Wife. Please.

TIINA: So, do you want to shovel the sidewalks, or should I do it?

ANDREW: You can do it.

Subtext-laden pause. Then:

T: Let me rephrase that: When are you going to shovel the sidewalks?

Foley

A QUESTION OF DEGREE

Doug petulantly refused to accept what was obvious to the rest of us. “It wasn’t that bad,” he said yet again. Jay, still hunched over, looked up at him, scowling. “I threw up.” “You didn’t really,” said Doug. “Dude!” said Jay, gesturing at the small puddle of vomit seeping into the dirt at his feet. “It wasn’t that bad,” Doug insisted. “It MADE ME THROW UP,” said Jay. Eventually, Doug admitted the fart had been pretty bad. Foley

Newsarama asked a bunch of professional comic creators (and me!) for comic-related Christmas gift ideas.

***

MAILBAG

From an artist collaborator's e-mail today:

"Comments for page 6:

-fuck guns

-fuck vans

-fuck perspective"

Coincidentally, these are three of the many things that convinced me I'd be much better off writing comics than attempting to draw them.

***

MOOD SWINGS

A strange thing's been happening to me, lately--I've been getting really worked up over interactions with some folks online. Maybe I'm getting older, maybe I'm starting to feel like there's nothing to lose, but on a couple occasions in the last couple weeks I've come dangerously close to cutting loose on a couple of people who managed to get under my skin on messageboards and/or blogs.

I don't think I actually did cut loose, and I don't believe my comments (the ones I posted publicly, anyway) came anywhere near the level of asinine behaviour characteristic of those I was commenting on.

Still...getting angry with people online does not speak well to my mental state, I fear. I've cut back substantially on my participation with one messageboard, and, if I can't calm myself down, am probably going to have to stop going to another site (which turns out to be the online equivalent of crack, at least for one with my peculiar tastes).

***

THE HOLIDAY MEN...

Soon. Soon.

Foley

Lines I Will Never Open A Story With #29

"In the beginning, there was The Word" or any variations of same.

An exception might, might be made if it turns out The Word is "flatulence."

I hope any Americans who happen to read this have a happy Thanksgiving, and everyone else who reads it has a decent Thursday.

Good night.

Foley

BONE BAG

I used to be a professional painter. Nine years ago, when that stopped being an option, I don’t think there was a neighbourhood in Calgary that didn’t have a building I’d painted part of in it.

Painting is largely responsible for my perspective on what constitutes hard work. Standing on top of a fully extended thirty-two foot ladder in the blazing sun for 10 hours a day is hard work. Writing is not hard work. And thinking about what I’m going to write--which is a lot of my personal work process--doesn’t qualify as work at all in my book.

Which is one of the major reasons I like my “job.”

This attitude’s gotten me in some hot water with other writers, from time to time. They claim writing is hard work, and argue that they never stop working, because they never stop thinking about writing.

And there’s something to that. No matter what happens, some part of my mind is always picking events apart, recording (consciously or otherwise) speech patterns and pieces of dialogue…it’s all grist for the mill. But still. In my book, anything you can do while walking the dog doesn’t count as work. And anything you can do without breaking a sweat doesn’t count as hard.

There’s a big difference between a goal you can think your way to achieving and one that can only be reached by the application of physical effort, but off the top of my head, the English language doesn’t offer much in the way of distinguishing between the different kinds of effort…

Anyway.

I actually used to like the physical act of painting, at least certain parts of it. Rolling walls and spraying fences can have an almost meditative quality. Once you find the right rhythm, your mind can wander where it wants; hand and eye take care of the rest. There’s a certain satisfaction that comes from cutting a straight line freehand across an uneven drywall job with a good brush (I still like Purdys. They’re pricy, but they’ll take care of you.)

Which is why it’s slightly depressing that, even when I’m working at my own pace (as I was on the room that now serves as my office when I decided to paint it bright yellow), painting’s always work for me, these days. And when I’m working to the best of my current ability, as I was at Happy Harbor Volume 3 for a few scant hours last week, it’s hard work.

Part of me can’t help but think it shouldn’t be, a big part. Three hours rolling some walls should not leave me semi-paralyzed the next day, no matter how crappy the pole I was using was (it may be a poor workman who blames his tools, but it’s also a poor workman who doesn’t use the right tool for the job.) For that matter, three hours rolling walls shouldn’t leave me dizzy, lightheaded and wanting to throw up. But it did. Did it ever.

That same part of me also thinks my knees shouldn’t be flaring with pain when I hit the stairs from the office to the kitchen the day after I lugged some boxes of new stock for the store up the back stairs of HHV1. Or that my back should give me any kind of grief whatsoever after a few hours sitting behind a cash register Thursday evenings.

My body doesn’t seem to care what that part of me thinks.

I always told myself I’d age gracefully. Hell, I look forward to being a crotchety old man. I’ve had my Dirty Old Guy laugh ready to go since my second year of college (it’s based loosely on the laugh of one of my old painting teachers).

But I’ve got to say, if this is what aging is going to be like…well, it kinda sucks.

Maybe I’m not getting old. Maybe I’ve just got a cold. Or the yo-yoing weather’s messing with my equilibrium as much as it is my sinuses.

Yeah. I like that better. Let’s go with that.

Foley