Comic Relief

Finally, finally, FINALLY...

Things start working out right. Deadlines have been met. Appreciation has been expressed. Ex Boss at art school now formally handed over to New Boss, who has promised me everything I have asked for. Next week I start printing like crazy to get one last lingering artist's project finished and then I start a new, interesting, not-much-quieter-but-more-spiritually-fulfilling work regime. With my own office! Hooray! And hopefully I will get to blog interesting things about letterpress and book arts (the way I planned to when I started this blog) because I will be doing them on a regular basis. Double hooray!

Poo bum to the fact that my camera doesn't work. I'll have to start photoshopping some drawings to make some visuals until I can resolve the camera problem by either [1] waking up one morning to find it working or [2] saving some newly-earned money and buying a new one. Being a realist, I am about to start looking at Choice reviews of digicams and dusting off the piggybank.

Have I ever mentioned that when I was young and lithe I collected comics? Not the kind that are chockablock with muscles and magical powers, but the type that had names like Dirty Plotte (Julie Doucet), Naughty Bits (Roberta Gregory -- loved her 'Bitchy Bitch' and 'Butchy Butch' characters), Slutburger (Mary Fleener) and Self-loathing Comics (Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Robert Crumb's partner). Most of these and others I found were published by the excellent Fantagraphics Books. I also collected local output, like Fruity Murmurs (collated by Mandy Ord and Kirrily Schell), Bump and Snore (Bruce Taylor, Mandy Ord & others), Wilnot (Mandy Ord) and Ink (Matt Taylor and friends). I didn't collect consistently, only when I had a bit of expendable cash and when there was time to browse the local comic shops and markets. I'm dating myself, I suspect, by the comics I'm naming.

Needless to say, I haven't had a lot of comic action in the last ten years, apart for finding a graphic novel here & there or falling upon little treasures at market stalls occasionally. But Bumblebee is now the right age to appreciate comics, and there's no better way to get a boy actively reading... so I have an excuse to go back to haunting the local comic shop Impact Comics.

I got him hooked last year by buying some old Superman and Casper comics at some secondhand bookshop. Once he got the idea of how comics work, I took him up the exotically shabby steps to Impact and let him snuffle around. He quite quickly discovered Star Wars comics, and I can now let him read happily in a corner while I do some of my own snuffling. Not as much expendable income these days, but enough to buy local comics and see who is on the scene.

Ben Hutchings is still around, which is great to see. I highly recommend checking out his entry in the 2005 24-Hour Comic Challenge. Today I bought #2 of his joint comic (with Glenn Smith) Glenjamin. I would have bought the more recent #3, but the shop was all out. I also bought David Blumenstein's Herman the Legal Labrador (with some artwork also by Glenn Smith). I haven't read it yet, but it looks fun, with a by-line that reads ' Cute Doggie. Faithful Pet. World-class defence Lawyer.'

I also found a ripper of a little anthology called Pirates, which is Australian, multi-talented and ... about Pirates! The dudes who sold it to me paused and checked that I wasn't buying it for Bumblebee. I assured them that the white texta'd sticker they'd put on the front saying 'probably not for little kids' had been effective and yes, I was only buying it for myself. Not that we mind, they said, just don't bring it back complaining about the content. I won't! The content is great, in parts. But that's the way of comic anthologies. Some strong bits, some weak, but all worth supporting. Older names keep reappearing -- last year I found a recent comic by Mandy Ord called Dirty Little Creep. I love her stuff. I think she's in Melbourne now. I have one of her original drawings in a frame somewhere in the house. Browsing just then, I found a website, but I don't think it's recent. What is there is really good, but!

I treated myself to an archive box and some dividers today to make my small but loved collection look special. It's going to take me a day or so to sort them out and add the new ones whilst re-reading the old (they've been in a cardboard box under a tall pile of cardboard boxes), but I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate a change of [s]pace...

And Bumblebee? His horizons have broadened immeasurably in the past two weeks. He wakes up in the morning and reaches for his pile of comics. We've been mainly buying old back issues of things, but this morning we discovered a new Star Wars comic series called Knights of the Old Republic, hot off the press. It's based nearly 4,000 years before the birth of Luke Skywalker, and we bought the first issue. He's now got a standing order for it, and I'm looking forward to him eagerly awaiting his copy every month.

The grand lads at Impact also let him hold (and swing about) the nearest thing to a real lightsabre he's ever seen -- $230 worth of simulated lightsabre which, when switched on, glows eerily and hums like the real thing, varying the hum realistically when you swing it, using motion sensors. It blew his mind. I think that's all he's going to talk about when he gets back to school, despite everything else he's done these holidays (including an hilarious conversation with Harry et al from For Battle! about sword-fighting that kept him starry-eyed for days)! And why not? You're only a Star-Wars-obsessed boy once.


TAGS: comics, Star Wars, letterpress

Drowning and waving...

Trapped.

Under.

weighty.

Deadline.

Body grafting to computer.

Mind trying to escape.

Save yourselves!

(If you haven't read it already, go peruse something worth reading.)

Poor Mr Padge...

hot_padge, originally uploaded by Ampersand Duck.

... attacked by weird alien books! Where's Dr Who when you need him?


(The bad thing about this photo is that it means my camera is dying again, and I fear I can't send it back to the makers again. Worked the first couple of times, but it's been over a year since the last attack. Poo.)

TAGS: cats

Idiom on a hot summer's arvo

I enjoy working on the endmatter of scholarly editions. It's sometimes great reading, albeit a tad dry. This excerpt made me LOL -- it's about the pitfalls of late 19th-century Canadian typesetters translating an Australian book:

So sensitive were the typesetters to the possibility of unfortunate double meaning that the innocent phrase 'Keep up your pecker, old man' required that 'courage' be substituted for 'pecker'; and the description of hard-ridden horses as 'knocked up' was clearly seen as potentially ambiguous in an objectionable way and had to be reduced to 'used up'. The account of a mare as being 'like some women when they get their monkey up' perhaps had the Montreal typesetters scratching their heads as to the meaning of this inoffensive colloquialism (it means, to become angry). They deleted it, preferring to err on the safe side. The idiom 'That cock wouldn't fight' survived in the weekly but was translated by the experienced compositors of the daily as 'That wouldn't go': it meant much the same thing, but it was minus the cock.

Heh. I can see the editor's wry grin as he wrote that last line.


TAGS: scholarly editions, typesetter, idiom

Hooray for them!

Bouquets to Laura at Sorrow of Sill's Bend and Larvatus Prodeo for winning awards in the 2006 Australian Blogging Awards! Hooray! Another bouquet (slightly smaller but still smelling sweet) to Zoe the crazybrave for almost pipping the young gun for Best ACT blog. Pretty good for not having run an intensive campaign :)

Creative Genius #2

For some strange reason Libra has decided that tampons and pads have to be entertaining. This is an interesting development in the history of attitudes towards menstruation. We're progressing along the line (so nicely and simply explained in a web essay about menstruation by Nicki Sullings [Postscript: I was asked to remove the link because spammers were hitting her site, but if you search with those terms, you'll find it]) from a complete taboo on the subject to being able to say 'Yars, I decided to hang the Libra decorations this year' when showing your family and friends the white/red/blue/glittery Christmas tree.

I noticed today in the toilet (no, not pregnant yet!) that we're being encouraged to walk out of the loo and say, 'hey guys, did you know...!'

Yes, Libra have started printing bits of trivia on the strip of waxy paper that you peel off the pads to stick them onto your undies. They've creatively called these little snippets 'Odd Spots', presumably to help you laugh about the current state of your knickers. Apparently you're supposed to come out of the loo waving the bits of paper like a Fantail wrapper and amusing your friends with such interesting things as:

ODD SPOT #101
If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to supress [sic] a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.
[JESUS! I'm bleeding between my legs and you're trying to amuse me with blood trivia??!!]

ODD SPOT #38
On average, 13 people die every year from vending machines falling on them.
[I shit you not.]

ODD SPOT #76
The largest number of children born to one woman is 69 in Russia.
[Ok. I'm menstruating. I'm either glad I'm not pregnant or sad I'm not pregnant. Thanks for tapping into those emotions.]

ODD SPOT #73
The bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admssible in an American court. [Blood again!]

ODD SPOT #156
An elephant can throw a baseball faster than a human. [Yes, I do feel like throwing something. This bit of paper into the bin. A rock at someone wanting me to leave the house for a nice bushwalk.]

Now, it's those last two that convinces me that Libra are not competing with Fantails for friends. They're competing with beer bottle tops and labels. Swap a bit o'trivia in the pub with your mates. Or are we supposed to yell them out to each other between toilet cubicles, maybe to make friends with the women in the next cubicle before you ask her for some toilet paper?

ODD SPOT #12
One human brain generates more electrical impulses in a day than all of the world's telephones put together.

Well, that's obviously a brain with more power than the mob who thought of this idea.


TAGS: blood, periods, trivia, advertising, dickheads

M. i. c. k. e. y..... M. o. u. s. e!

My cats just can't stop catching mice at the moment. They've caught two today! I found a gorgeous little mouse skull in the front garden this evening, which means they killed while we were on holiday.

They have a system. Mr Pooter is the Mouse Catcher. Mr Padge is the Mouse Keeper. Pooter can catch them very easily, but when he plays with them, he loses them. Mr Padge finds them again and keeps hold of them no matter what -- then eats them.

The first mouse today was caught and then accidentally let loose in the house. I couldn't work out what was making Pooter so frantic. He was rushing around the house, miaowing and squeaking. Then BB got home from work and nearly trod on the mouse in our room. He carried it outside and let it go, but Padge tracked it down. Then Pooter stole it back. Then I got the camera out.


making the most of the paint equipment left around the yard, Pooter discovers the fun in letting the mouse runs through and around the ladder...


...but then loses it by taking it into the bushes nearby. You could almost hear Padge's exasperated sigh...


Padge then sppots the mouse and decides that he has spent enough time letting his brother faff around. His turn!


Much better, thinks Padge. My mousie. Nice mousie, wee mousie. Time to move away from the equipment and into a bit of clear space...


Nice mousie, wee mousie, timorous little beastie...


You make a nice football, wee mousie...

This is the point at which, each growling happily, the two cats started batting the mouse between them. And so this is the point at which I left them to it, feeling sorry for the mouse, but glad it wasn't scuttling around my wardrobe anymore. They ate that one, and caught another (which they also brought inside, only to be ignobly dumped outside again) and as I type they are still outside playing with it.

So welcome to Mishca, newest member of the North Canberra Mouseketeers! You have a lot of catching up to do!