I wonder if the old place is still standing.

So.
Getting the website back on track.
Culling as much of my random shit as I can into the LJ artdump.
Brainstorming new comics.
Saving up for a new computer.

Hopefully I will get SOMEthing going before the world ends in December.

snow.
hallelujah.

I can honestly say that today was the worst day I've had all year.
That's also the closest thing to a joke I feel I can crack right now.
Somebody just fucking kill me and get it over with.

One week into the new year, yeah?
I do hope that everyone is having a good 2012 thus far.
Hard to believe it's been a dozen years since the hipsters and know-it-alls were droning on and on about whether the New Millenium™ started in 2000 or 2001, "because there was no 'Year Zero'", or whatever.
A. DOZEN. YEARS.

Time does indeed fly.

Well, as usual, I am adhering to my old New Year's Resolution from O so many years ago, not to make another useless New Year's Resolution.

I am happy with my girlfriend, tolerant of my job and indifferent about the state of the world.
That apathy keeps me as close to sane as I get.

I still make my comics when I can
Like so:


I still can't seem to get a simple, slice-of-life style comic to coalesce in my mind's eye, but, whatever. I do what I can.

I am becoming more and more crotchety, despite my best effort, and coffee is still a huge comfort to me.

What I guess I am trying to say to those who still pay attention to LiveJournal is that, for the most part, I am okay, and I hope you all are, too.

(Belated) Happy New Year, and keep rockin'.

( While I object to the nomenclature of the Occupy Insert Location Here Generation, I agree with the sentiments. )

Don't get me wrong.
I shamelessly admit to being a crotchety old misanthrope who has been places, seen things and gotten to know a lot of people all across the societal spectrum.
there ARE a lot of entitled losers out there in this new "Generation O", and not everything is the fault of previous generations, but, this article has many a valid point that I can wholeheartedly agree with.

As I sit here in The Black Drop, having what will probably be my only non-alcoholic drink of the day (Medium Fat Elvis, thank you very much), I think back to my arrival in this bizarre little hamlet roughly 3,650 days ago.
It was grey and rainy that day. It's grey and rainy now.
I left a situation of stagnation, uncertain future and general ennui.
Not much has changed.

This is the longest I have lived anywhere... EVER.
I keep wondering why I don't feel at home here, but, recently, it dawned on me: I don't have a home. I haven't had one since I was young.
But, for the vast majority of my life I have been moving around from place to place due to various circumstances, mostly survival.
I moved I adapted to new surroundings and new situations. Sometimes having to become a whole new person just to fit in.
Now, I'm not moving anymore. Not moving forward, not moving at all.

I am used to having to change when I change my surroundings, but I never got used to having my surroundings change AROUND me, while I stayed the same. That's what's been happening for the last decade.
I was OK here for the most part, my first 2 years in this town.
Then, things started to change. places I got used to closed or changed owners. Friends moved on, and/or moved away.
There were clashes, hurt feelings and deaths.
I lost touch with almost all of my out-of-state friends, and times either change with the speed of a glacier or an eyeblink. There's no 'happy medium'.

All that, and my roles in life, established in my past no longer apply.
10 years gone by and I am lost.
Even though this city is pretty 'nice', and there's no one outright abusing me in one form or another..
even though I am an adult and finally freed from the yoke of people ordering my around and holding things over my head to 'keep my in line'
even though my real heartbreaks come fewer and farther between than before....
This, still, has to be tabulated as one of the worst decades of my life.

I have become an angry, fearful old man, alone in the world. Afraid of the future, sad about the past and hating the present.
I don't know how to deal with this effectively, other than to smile my rotting smile and keep pretending that everything is alright.

I don't know if I'll be here in another 10 years.
I don't know if I'll be alive in another 10 years.
Either way, my opinion is, as always, "I hope not."

I keep saying that I need to leave here. I have been saying that for the last 8 years or so.
I don't know where I want to go. I don't know where I CAN go with no money, no direction, no dreams, no ambition other than equal parts "keep breathing" and "stop breathing".
It really doesn't matter WHERE I'd go if I COULD go, as there will never really be a "home" for me, ever again.
I just know I need to GO. To get back on the road, and temporarily become someone, someTHING else a few more times before I die.
That was the only time I really had my head on straight. Barely surviving was the only time I was truly living, but, I fear (among other things) that I have lost even that. I have been domesticated.
My thought processes are so wrong that I freak out in big cities now.
I used to wander in and around NYC just because I was bored, Now, I freak out in SEATTLE.
I laugh everytime someone around here goes off about their oh-so-precious zombie apocalypse. EVERY DAY for me is the zombie apocalypse. I am surrounded by scary, shambling corpses invading my space and befouling my air.
My girlfriend doesn't seem to understand why I walk so fast.
Half of it is that last vestige of growing up in New York, where you walk fast or get walked ON. The other half is that people repulse me. Crowds of them everywhere, and I just don't want to be touched. This is who I am now.
The guy who's both deathly afraid of the whole damned world and perpetually angry at it. Wanting to destroy it all, just so I can have some room to breathe.

I sit back and wonder when I became this person that I don't like. A person that I do not, and despite my best efforts, CAN NOT love.
I was bad in Utah, but that was more Utah's fault than my own.
I wasn't bad in JC. Hell, I thrived there.
True, I may have lost a few marbles when I became homeless those 2 times, but, considering the fates of some people who are forced to live outdoors with no support system, I think I got off pretty easy. But, maybe I didn't. Maybe that's when the seeds of all my fears really began to take root, and only started to truly grow in this last decade.
Sure, it's been a long time coming, but perhaps it finally cemented itself when I moved here.
Now, i'm stuck like this.

I've seen therapists, but they never really help. They just tell you a lot of things you want to hear and one or two things you don't, in effort to trick you into believing that you're "curing" yourself over time, all the while paying THEM way too much for essentially doing nothing.
Or worse, their first action is to put you on some medication that makes you a zombie addict but doesn't really do much to make your actual problems go away.
After the Prozac incident back in JobCorps, I decided that I would never become a pillzombie.
I'm starting to reconsider that position.
I'm starting to wish I had killed myself when I had the strength. I was depressed. They put me on Prozac, then i became suicidal.
I got past that. My friends from back then all acted like I was some sort of hero for not "giving in", but, if i knew then what I know now,...

All that is in the past, however.
The present is all I have. It's all any of us have. I can sit here and drone on and on about how unhappy and unfulfilled I am, but,
A) No one really gives a shit, not even ME
and
B) That's not going to change anything.

My main goal for now is to practice bleeding the imperfections out of my drawing. It's all I have left, and one of the few positive constants in my entire life. I figure I can devote the rest of this year to that.
Eat, sleep, shit, work and draw. That's all I will do or have time for once my girlfrined moves to Ballard (wherever the fuck THAT is.)
I will have my customary New Years Eve celebration, as, for some odd reason, I do actually get really positive and upbeat around NYE. I guess it's the hope and prospects for change in the new year. Then, around January 20th or so, the depression returns as I realize that nothing is going to actually change. But, I will be saving what little money I can and I think I will start taking day trips to conventions, or something, just to try and get used to people again, and maybe next year, when the weather gets warmer in parts of the country that actually have more than 2 fucking seasons, I may just pull a Forrest Gump.
Maybe when I reach the waters on the other side of the country, I can go a little further.

Until that happens, "going underground" may be the best thing for me right now.

It's been a whole year since he passed on.
No, fuck that. Since he was Taken. Capital T.
It doesn't seem to have been that long, sometimes. Other times, I can barely remember his face. It seems like it's been 10 years. But, that's only how long I've known him.
I didn't have to pretend that I am something I'm not when I was around him.
I was a geek. An angry, fearful misanthrope. A complete bastard. I giant, hate-filled asshole trying to make my way in a town full of people who would just as soon spit on me and call me a nigger behind my back and smile in my fucking face the next day like nothing happened, who would just accept it, because I didn't want to lose "friends".
Jesse knew all this about me, and liked me anyway. He treated me like a brother. He invited me into his home, and he was there for me when I needed him, and he never turned his back on me, or treated me like it was a burden or a hassle to be my friend.

His zest for life was what I selfishly envied. He seemed genuinely happy. That deep-down, take live one day at a time, I'm not just smiling because society says I have to, REAL happiness that I haven't felt since I was 8 years old. He wasn't filled with fear the way I am. I believe that's the ruin of Man. (and ME.) It isn't hate. It's FEAR.
Jesse didn't have that. Not that I saw.

I am still mad at the World. Still mad at God, the Universe, everything.
I would still trade places with him in a heartbeat, and yes, it would still be for my own selfish reasons. Not just to give him back to the world, but, to check myself out of it.
But, like I said: Fear.
That's why I'm still here. That's why I'm still pretending everything's OK.

I look around me and everything I see is meaningless.
I amass stuff because it makes me feel less empty. I own comics and a computer, and some DVDs, so I'm human, right? normal?
I know people, so I have friends, right?
I have a girlfriend, so I'm 'loved', right?
I have a job, so I'm "lucky", especially in this economy, right?
I draw and collect comics, so I have a hobby. That's fulfilling, right?

I'm empty inside. No, that's not quite right. I am filled with all the things that America-Society-PopCulture-Psychology-"They" say is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Pain. Anger. Nightmares. Bad History that I just can't seem to shake or forget or get past, no matter how hard I try.
Self Loathing and loathing for all of YOU.
I WISH I was empty inside, so that maybe all this shit would STOP.
I wish I could feel NOTHING.
But, more than that, I wish I still had my best friend around to help temper all this negative shit festering inside me. Someone to share my love of comics, and tell dirty jokes to, and hang out in his father's back yard, throwing sharp things into wood and play video games all night with and just have someone in this world who never betrayed me or made me feel small, or took advantage of me.

But, well, all good things must come to an end, and the Universe can't abide good people.
The Universe can't abide.
He's dead. His little girl has to grow up without a father, or, worse yet, somewhere down the road, when his widow moves on as she deserves to, there may be a substitute, but, he won't be the same, or as good, no matter how good a man he may be. Society places an awful lotta creedence on biological connections and personal identity based on said biology. Ask any adopted child. Ask any biracial child.
He's gone from the lives of those who loved him and needed him, meanwhile, miserable assholes like me still wander the Earth, against our wills, all the worse for it.
The next motherfucker who says something to me about Karma, The Universal Balance, or God's 'Love' is going to get punched in the fucking face.

For the first time in my almost 10 years in B'ham, I went to Dr. Sketchy's.
It was lots of fun. I drank, but didn't get drunk (as you can tell from my legible and comprehensible typing), and, I even won a free drink and a $50 gift certificate to the Temple Bar! The hot models asked for the winning picture and had me sign it.
My ego thoroughly stroked, I have had delicious 3 meat pizza, a nice hot shower and am now off to bed for canoodling with the Beloved Jee-Eff.
Oh, and my birthday is in 38 minutes or so.
G'night all!

But...


My website is up and running.

Whenever I get really down on myself for letting my rage, bitterness and misanthropy cloud, well, my very existence, I turn to the internet.
As much as I hate myself or at least, am disappointed in myself for expressing my own feelings, as all and sundry seem to feel I am not entitled to do, even though I am no one's child, and am only responsible for myself in life...
I take some twisted comfort in knowing that no matter how much hatred and bile I feel for the majority of humanity, or, how much bitter, antisocial pleasure I may take in the misfortunes that fall those who have wronged me, there are hundreds of thousands or more complete and utter fucking amoral, loathing-filled morons across the internet just waiting to chime in with their evil 2 cents on any and every subject under the sun, that are so very LOW, and rotten to the core, that just reading their racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic asinine opinions makes me feel like a fucking SAINT.
A saint that needs a SHOWER immediately after reading, but a saint, nonetheless.
The world truly is filled to the fucking brim with monsters.

So, apparently, I am just allergic to SUMMER, now.
My latest physical mutation seems to be that I am breaking out in microbumps all up and down my arms.
Last week, on 4th of July, I (conject that) I got in the way of flying pet dander.
Mind you, I am not allergic to dogs and cats. I live with quite a few of them at the moment, and it hasn't bothered me for the 2.5 months that I have been there, but, last week, at a 4th Party, my friend's dog was shedding like mad.
Next thing I know, I have hives (big ones) all up and down my arms.
It took a couple of days, but they eventually shrunk down to an unnoticeable size, then, mostly disappeared. But, NOW, for some reason, I seem to be breaking out in a weird, bumpy rash (that doesn't even ITCH, which is what really scares me) in the same place.
It's just on my arms. (Thank goodness).
But then, there always seems to be some bizarre, unexplained physical malady that affects me when the seasons change.
And, considering "Pacific Northwest Summer" (That is, the bipolar change of bright/sunny/warm to grey/cloudy/bloody cold that seems to happen at least twice a day, even though it's fucking JULY), seasonal changes are frequent and daily, it seems.

Well, hopefully, once I embark on my little personal mission I must attend to, starting on Wednesday, I can at LEAST be distracted from this madness for a week.

From my very own website.
I hope everyone had a good Pride Day!



...hope this doesn't eat too much bandwidth.

Getting a website started.
I will post the addy when there's more content.
Doesn't look TOO sucky, seeing as how I am doing it all from scratch with the simplest HTML I can wrap my feeble computer illiterate brain around.
It helps to have a theme, I guess.

Coffee. Coloring and drawing. Playing with babies. Warm, but not glaringly bright.
I won a game of chess against the ccmputer without having to "control the situation' (cheat).
Got complimented on my outfit by 2 pretty ladies.
Today is gonna be a good day.