Guess which green-eyed mook was behind that one. Y’know, I have good friends, letting me publicly embarrass them for the sake of humor. Then again, there’s a reason that I rarely mention anyone by anything other than their first initials. I’m not that much of an arse.
So…I was lazy today and reused comic art. There’s a reason for that beyond me just being a bum, but I’ll explain at a later date. In the meantime, though…I did come up with something else. Don’t ask me what possessed me to do this, but the last line of the comic just screamed “tasteless, tacky t-shirt design”. So cover the children’s eyes and don’t click the cut link if you’re at work (and if anyone’s direct-linking to this without the cut, be nice and warn people of what you’re linking them to), because this is definitely NSFW and about as child-friendly as an electrical socket.
I know I normally only post updates to No Style on Mondays, but I couldn’t resist sharing this. Imagine my surprise to check my e-mail yesterday to find this:
I probably shouldn’t have read that while on the phone, because I ended up cackling in a friend’s ear. It’s…um…disturbingly accurate, right down to the “please kill me now”-style whining throughout that little…er…tour. Thanks, Lala. That really made my day.
On a more serious note, a new study has shown that while rates of new infections of HIV have dropped in the gay community overall, they’ve risen startlingly and alarmingly in young gay men. The demographic is limited to New Yorkers, but is likely frighteningly indicative of a national trend. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we need more HIV/AIDS education - not just for gay youth, but for youth overall. Teenagers are going to have stupid, reckless sex; it’s what they do. It’s why abstinence-only sex education doesn’t work; it doesn’t stop them from having sex, it just keeps them from knowing the dangers when they do decide to throw caution to the wind and just screw it. Or just screw each other.
Although we do need more sex education particularly and openly targeted towards gay teens, primarily to make them feel that it’s safe to ask questions about the particular dangers that are more prevalent in homosexual sex than in heterosexual sex. I know that when I took sex ed in high school, after the section on STDs I really didn’t have the courage to walk up to my Biology II teacher and say, “Hi, I’m gay, and I’d like to learn more about HIV/AIDS prevention than the two-minute discussion you just glossed over. Can you point me to some resources so I can educate and protect myself?” Most of what I know about HIV/AIDS I learned from four years volunteering with NOLAN, a New Orleans-area HIV/AIDS education and assistance foundation. Not all boys that age have access to such a resource, and can’t always openly approach someone for assistance for fear of being outed to parents or other disapproving authority figures.
I just don’t think, despite aggressive campaigning, that gay youth are aware of how dangerous HIV is - and it’s too easy to keep the “oh, it won’t happen to me if I’m careless just once” mentality. “Just once” turns into “just twice”, then three or four times, then every time…and yet later they’re surprised when the blood test comes back HIV+. I would blame the recklessness on the annoyingly stereotypical yet frustratingly prevalent culture of feckless youth among the gay subculture, but in truth that’s starting to die out and gays are slowly beginning to abandon the Peter Pan mentality to behave in a more mature, responsible fashion. I don’t know what to blame it on, and I don’t care. It doesn’t change the fact that further education is the most important first step in prevention.
Too many people view HIV as a disease that happens to other people, but that somehow won’t ever afflict them. It’s not. HIV touches everyone. Most people have had someone in their lives, whether friend, family, lover or spouse, that they lost to HIV. It happened to them. It can happen to you.
Do you really want to be just another name on a tombstone?
I know, I know, it’s not funny. It’s not meant to be, I guess. It’s faux-profound. Faux-profound because…it isn’t, really. I’d actually planned to do the second out of three comics detailing the rest of that scene with R and the mistletoe, but figured I might as well make some token acknowledgment that tomorrow is the start of a new year - especially with all the anticipation building towards 2008 as the year when the American people (supposedly) have a say in who will replace GW.
Since it’s New Year’s Eve, that means it’s time to make New Year’s resolutions - promises to ourselves that we know we won’t keep, but that we strive for anyway. My New Year’s resolutions are to:
Sell/publish my first novel.
Write a second novel - either the sequel to the first, or the completion of my NaNoWriMo project.
Some time between April and November, pack up and move out of this Texan hellhole and back to Chicago where I belong.
Advance my writing career in some way or another, even if it means just picking up another steady contract job on the side. Every bit of progress counts.
Take better care of myself and stop neglecting the gym so much, before I start to go soft. (Isn’t that everyone’s resolution?)
Work towards not just being content with my life, but being really, truly happy with it.
Try not to be such a crotchety, antisocial old bastard. Sometimes. For at least five minutes a week.
That’s it. I know some of it’s cheesy, some of it’s far-reaching and possibly impractical or unlikely - but it’s better to shoot for it and fall short with some progress made rather than to try nothing and remain in the same place, stagnant and rotting, forever. That’s why people make New Year’s resolutions: to give themselves goals to reach for, to enact needed changes.
Feel free to share your resolutions, or your plans for celebrating the new year and the inevitable midnight countdown. Whatever your plans, I hope you enjoy them. I know I’ll be enjoying mine.
Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s hoping that 2008 becomes a year of change for the better.
…yes, that’s pretty much the extent of my acknowledgment that it’s Christmas eve. Oh woe, etc., blah blah. Shut it.
Bonus points to anyone who can name the film that line came from.
The haircut is quickly becoming less and less of an option. The longer it gets, the more I start to look like a drag queen (…though that shirt probably isn’t helping…) or a sad little twee attempt to copy the purple-prose travesty that is Wraeththu. No bloody effin’ thank you.
I think everyone out there has that one friend who’s had a crush on you since time immemorial - or at least since you’ve known them - and who doesn’t give up hope no matter how many times you gently, carefully say no so as not to hurt their feelings so badly that it destroys a valuable friendship. One of those friends, for me, is R. R’s the big guy who’s embarrassed to admit that he cried during Waiting to Exhale; he’s a big teddy bear with a great sense of sardonic humor tempered by a sweet streak that’ll give you cavities, a gorgeous body, handsome face, and hair I could play with for hours. If he didn’t have a pot habit, I might consider dating him…but that’s a big, fat no in my book. I’ll look the other way when my friends do it as long as they don’t do it in my presence or bring it into my home (you’ll find yourself on the welcome mat staring at the closed front door so fast you won’t know what hit you), but I refuse to date anyone who routinely tokes up.
Not even if he offers to quit for me.
Especially when I don’t exactly trust that he’d stop that when he won’t even stop his at-times-amusing efforts to get a foot in the dating doorway. I still can’t believe he whipped out the mistletoe while we were curled up on the couch watching Vongo downloads on the laptop Saturday night. (By the way, if you ever get the chance to see The Quiet, take it. It’s not exactly profound cinema, but it will startle you with its depth and the direction it takes. I was expecting it to be awful, but was pleasantly surprised.)
I’ve even told him why we wouldn’t work out, beyond dating briefly; he’s too nice, and I’m too mean. I’ve been down that route, dating nice guys who have an outwardly thick skin but who secretly get their feelings hurt by the tiniest teasing comment, even if it’s said out of caustic affection by someone who isn’t comfortable openly expressing affection, feelings, etc. (what? I’m a guy; don’t give me that look just for being typical of the species). I’d break the poor boy just by being myself, and the worst part is that he’d keep forgiving me over and over again. Not only that, but he’d spoil me.
No, wait, wait - that’s a bad thing. Trust me.
See, when someone spoils me, I rise to the occasion. I can be a bit of a brat on a normal basis, but the more I’m spoiled, the more of a brat I become, until eventually I’d be able to score a 100% on the Diva Quiz with my eyes closed. Not good. Not good at all. It’s nice to be treated well, little thoughtful gestures and such, but taking it beyond a certain level will just bring out the diva in me and make me impossible to deal with.
I’m impossible enough already, thank you. As my friend Kate loves to point out: we are monsters, we are unrepentant, and we are glorious.
R, I know you’re reading this. I know you’ve heard all this before, too; it’s not news to you. I’ve told you why not a thousand times before, and I know you’re over there shaking your head and smiling, because you’re a persistent bastard. I’ve just about given up on getting you to quit; I guess it’s my turn to start smiling, shaking my head, and shoving a palm in your face every time you move in for a kiss. Guess I’m stuck with you. I could think of worse friends to be stuck with. Call me; we’ll go see Sweeney Todd next weekend.
And if you try to grope me in the theatre, I’ll break every last one of your knuckles, one at a time.
The rest of you: Merry Christmas, if you celebrate it. I’m out of here. There’s some brandy-laced egg nog calling my name.
Addendum: I don’t know why, but the Akismet spam filter recently started eating everything, and I can’t turn it off. Sorry if your comments don’t seem to show up on first try; I’m checking the filter periodically and fishing out the legit comments from the spam.
Ah, yes, the joys of a bored Saturday afternoon in my apartment. Some people might not get part of that unless they’ve seen Hot Fuzz. I love that film; it’s hilarious, plus the subtext between Nicholas and Danny just leaves me rolling (and I don’t normally even look for things like that).
For the record, the other half of that conversation was:
“…you are going to put more clothing on if we go out, right?”
“Nope.”
“Heathen savage.”
“Tkele’cho’g.”
What? She calls me a heathen savage, I call her a dirty word in Navajo/Di’ne. Fair’s fair, right?
I could argue that that whole thing is about being politically correct and “reclaiming” derogatory words by using them ourselves and taking some of the sting out of them, but honestly? My friends and I are just a**holes to each other. It’s how we show love. Trust me, I’d never seriously consider calling anyone any of those names, and neither would they. It’s just something we do to mess with each other. (…does that sufficiently cover my bum? Yes? Good.)
For those of you who missed it, yesterday was the first experimental Darkside Rainbow Live Webcast, complete with musical interludes to give me a second to catch my breath and stop panicking. The people who listened in thought it was good; I thought it was a train wreck. Eh; subjectivity. I almost died when my landline started ringing in the middle of it; I don’t even use the thing save for as an anchor for my DSL, and no one ever calls it.
Until last night.
There’s an MP3 stream of the broadcast posted, along with a partial log of the chat that took place afterwards. (Parachat started eating things from the top down and I didn’t notice until I logged out; damn. Missed some of the best death threats.) Maybe if (big if) I do this again, next time I can calm down enough to speak with some hint of inflection beyond that of a prepubescent boy stuck in “omgscaredkillmenow” mode. I swear to gods I don’t normally sound that flaming; that only happens when I’m nervous and talking way too fast. I’m just amazed that Windows Media Encoder held out for the full broadcast, as on half my trial runs it copped out with random errors at various points.
…then again, in my trial runs I never tripped over my words. While live, of course I fumbled over a thick, clumsy tongue at least four times. Eh. You win some, you lose some.
Anyway, I’m roasted, done, and sorely in need of some Nyquil. Be back tomorrow with the usual ranting.
[laugh] Seriously, though, Hikaru - don’t pay me any mind. You know I adore you just the way you are, political party and all; I just wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take the opportunity to poke you a bit. Besides, I doubt that looks even remotely like you. I think I gave you bad hair. [sheepish look] Sorry.
(For anyone who’s wondering why a reader’s showing up in the comic: he won the 1,000-comments contest. Half of the prize for that was a cameo in the comic.)
I think my hand was drunk while I was drawing this one. Not the rest of me; just my hand. (Though if you could have seen me while I was working on this last night, you might have thought I was drunk - playing Pink at top volume, bopping around in my seat and singing along. Loudly. And very off-key.) See, it’s sitting there sucking up the martini through one finger. I don’t know; maybe I should go back to drawing these on paper, even if it takes longer. Instead of getting better with the tablet, I appear to be getting worse…especially on Red. I don’t know what happened there.
And…gah. Giant wall of text. I have to start trimming these scripts down, although the amount of text isn’t quite such a sin in a single-panel comic. Those tend to rely more on text to expand upon the single illustration.
Anyway. Although it was meant as a joke, the “urban legend” attitude towards gay Republicans is pretty common. In fact, discussion of the seeming rarity of gay Republicans and the disparaging behavior towards them is what prompted a survey regarding sexual orientation and how it affects your choice of political party. Despite the widely-held belief that all that matters to gays and lesbians is a party’s stance towards gay rights, the survey showed that it was actually only a minimal factor in most’s choices. I know that my prior allegiance to the Democratic party had nothing to do with my sexuality.
Yes, that’s right. I, Mr. No Concrete Affiliation, where I’ll only loosely identify myself as an Independent…used to be a proud Democrat. Not because I thought Democrats were better for me and my personal well-being and ideals; I didn’t even think about it that way. I just believed what I was told, and grew up thinking what my parents taught me to think: anyone with dark skin in the deep South had to be a Democrat. It’s like that for many; they follow a political party because their families do. I listened to the party lines and repeated them without really knowing what they meant, or caring. There was a time when I wasn’t particularly politically-minded; I devoted my intellect more to programming and didn’t much care for the outside world. It’s a bit embarrassing to think about, honestly. The self-centered nature of youth, I suppose.
University taught me otherwise. University taught me about the world outside my small, sleepy town nestled in New Orleans’ shadow, taught me how to look at things as objectively as I could (as a naturally subjective being who can only know what his senses and subjective reasoning tell him), how to make decisions based on my own analysis rather than based on what I was told was right and best for me, or based on what everyone else “like me” was doing.
And when I stepped back and looked at both the Republican and Democratic parties, I realized…
…they’re both complete douchebags, and I don’t want much to do with either of them.
It’s amazing the things you learn when you open your eyes and think with your mind, rather than with the expectations of others.
So even if I don’t agree with the Republican party on much, I do have to say that I commend gay Republicans for, in most cases, choosing a political party based on their personal beliefs rather than just on what’s expected of them based on their sexuality alone.
…anyone else noticing that more and more of these comics end with me threatening people? I may want to do something about that sour temperament of mine.
Naaaaah.
So as the comic title says: despite my complete contentment with single life, the siege has already begun. My friends gave me about a month of space, a month of soft-talking and pitying “are you all right?” questions that I glibly ignored before they began the assault to find a new man for me. I foresee much stabbing in my imminent future. My friends and I have very different tastes in men. The kind of guys they’d hook me up with are usually men I’d run screaming from rather than give them my number.
…then again, I won’t even pretend that I’ve been doing that great a job of picking for myself, either. [headdesk] Yyyep. Me. Single. Good. And I swear to gods, if Red wakes me up again she’ll be experiencing that oft-mentioned shiv to the trachea.
(By the way, for a bit of comic trivia: while J, T, and a few others actually reflect real people in my life, Red is actually an avatar representing several of my friends. I have a disproportionate number of friends who all happen to be short, pale, busty lesbians with short red hair and either green or blue eyes. It’s completely by accident, and yet I somehow have my own harem. And they’ve all got attitude, and all love to turn it on me. The girl that I call Red in the comic has pretty much come to represent all of them.)
In more serious news: remember Senator Larry Craig getting caught soliciting for gay sex in a bathroom sting? (Republicans do love their bathrooms…) Well, despite his repeated assertions that he’s not gay, four gay men have come forward to confirm that he’s flirted with them in the past and to say that they’re sick of his denial. Even the guy who outed Ted Haggard has chimed in. At this point I actually feel bad for Craig; he’s trying to fight his way out of this, and things just keep sinking deeper and deeper. When something like this happens, with people suddenly conveniently coming forward, I tend to be skeptical and think it’s a ploy for publicity to defame the person accused. In this case, though, I’m torn; the four men really have nothing to gain by speaking out this way. If they were going to bribe Craig, they’d have been quieter about it. Who knows. Either way, I don’t see Craig getting out of this pile of dung any time soon.
I’m out of here. Tune in tomorrow for more rambling, or next week for a new comic (featuring Kujo Hikaru, winner of the comments contest).
If you haven’t read the comments to today’s comic, Kujo Hikaru won the 1,000-comments contest. Technically I was number 1,000; since I don’t count, Hikaru won with comment #1,001. He’ll be getting a 1GB USB flash drive and a cameo spot in one of the upcoming No Style comics. (He also needs to e-mail me to tell me where to send the flash drive and at least give me a vague idea of how he wants to be drawn.)
The next goal will be 1500 comments. I don’t know what the prize will be yet; we’ll see what kind of nifty little thing I can afford to buy. Maybe an MP3 player or something like that.
Tentative Date for the First DR Radio Live/Interactive Broadcast
Looking at the calendar, right now I’m tentatively scheduling the first live talk radio broadcast for Sunday, December 16th, from 5:00-6:00p CST. I’d wanted to do it on a weeknight, but on weeknights I’m generally not available until after 8:00p and I think that may be more inconvenient for most than an earlier Sunday.
That gives me a little over two weeks to get over my stage fright.
Fun.
I still have no idea what I’ll ramble about. I was half-tempted to do a comparison between gay romance novels/erotica written by men vs. those written by women, as honestly 9/10 women are just better at it, but I don’t know how 451 Press would feel about me reading that aloud on their site.
That, and I couldn’t do it and keep a straight face.
We’ll see what I come up with. Like I said, I’d welcome any ideas from you guys. If you’re going to suffer through listening to it, you might as well have a hand in shaping the instrument used to torture you.
The fact that this happens more often than you might think is one of the primary reasons why, at the ripe age of 27, I’m already a card-carrying member of the Cantankerous Old Men ClubTM.
No, I’m not really that mean - though you can bet this and far worse things often run through my head when I find myself in a situation like this for the millionth time. I have given a few people very politely-worded anatomy lessons regarding the fact that women, on average, have breasts - while I tend to be distinctly lacking in that area. They generally decline lesson two on more in-depth anatomical differences. I do so wonder why.
It’s mostly my face that gets me in trouble; I’m not particularly feminine otherwise. The part that amuses me, though, is that people often treat me as if I chose to be born with the face of a particularly angry and murderous three-year-old Korean girl. [eyeroll] Yes, people, while I was just a wee zygote I decided, “Hey, I think I’ll develop into a poofy-lipped big-eyed boy-thing of outwardly indeterminate gender. That’ll be fun!” Of course, I might not get mistaken for female so often if I’d let Carlos have his wicked way with me and cut my hair, but I found out the hard way a few years ago that short hair doesn’t do anything for me. Short hair makes me look like an extremely butch lesbian.
No, I’m not kidding. Sihaya and Indikaze may remember that episode. Four feet of hair gone in a matter of minutes, leaving me staring in horror and wondering what the hell I’d just done.
So I will deal with being naturally androgynous, and with the amusement and annoyance it causes, and think my snarky thoughts to myself, and move on. And speaking of moving on, now that I’ve bored you with this oh-so-fascinating ramble…I’m out until tomorrow.
…what? They can’t all be about being gay. My life doesn’t revolve around being gay, so my comic won’t always, either.
So…yeah. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but part of my highly-mixed ethnicity includes a significant portion of Native American blood. When I say I’m part Native, I don’t mean “I’m white as hell but think it makes me cool to say that I have a great-grandmother nine generations back who was a blue-eyed Cherokee princess”. I mean “You know, next summer I really should take a trip out to visit my uncle and cousins on the reservation.”
So on matters of principle, I don’t celebrate the current common American idea of Thanksgiving - but I also don’t take it as seriously as the comic makes it sound. Every war has a loser, and the victor is often those with the best weapons and superior numbers. I’m not happy that Native culture has been either murdered, assimilated, or erased and is in danger of melting away entirely, but being an a** about it to Americans who enjoy Thanksgiving won’t change the past. So I have my principles, but try to keep a sense of humor about them - hence mocking both myself and my friend a bit via comic. (My friend was wrong, though, when we had this conversation. I do celebrate Christmas, just not from a religious standpoint - more from the “spirit of giving” standpoint, which is why I call it Happy Shiny Buy Things for My Friends Day, as I love giving gifts. And the only reason I don’t celebrate Easter is because I often forget about it until the day after, which happens to be my favorite holiday of the year (especially since it occurs after almost every holiday): Cheap Candy Day.)
For something a little more GBLTQ-topical, Anji sent me a link yesterday regarding the ongoing and tiresome battle over an Okeechobee, FL high school’s gay-straight alliance - in which the school board called the alliance a “sex-based club”. That statement alone is a horrible demonstration of the ignorance in society that helps to perpetuate both prejudices and stereotypes. Understanding one’s sexuality and gathering with those who also seek to understand their sexuality and fight for their rights doesn’t mean that they’re also gathering to act on that sexuality. Being gay isn’t just about having sex, and gay issues aren’t just about sexual experimentation or gratification. At this point the actual sex involved is practically tangential; there are so many more issues of human rights involved that I can’t believe anyone would think a gay-straight alliance, intended to promote tolerance and acceptance, was nothing more than a “sex-based club”.
But that’s not all from the WTF Factory today, kids. Not by a long shot. Apparently, if you disagree with the GBLTQ rights that a particular employer offers its workers, the answer is to buy out as much stock as possible in that company in order to gain a majority interest and, via shareholder vote, force those dirty gay supporters to comply with your beliefs. No, I’m not joking. Reverend Ken Hutcherson is urging conservatives to do just that with Microsoft.
That goes beyond extremism and into insanity. One can assume that most of these people don’t even work for Microsoft, but they’re so bothered by the fact that M$ - who really can’t be redeemed in my eyes, but at least this is one point in their favor - dares to support GBLTQ workers’ right to equality that even though it doesn’t affect them, they want to strip that right away. Why? Because it constitutes “pushing the homosexual agenda”.
What. The. Hell. That’s not pushing a homosexual agenda; I’m about as sick of that phrase as I am of the phrase “sanctity of marriage”. There is no homosexual agenda. We don’t distribute manifestos regarding our secret plan to conquer the country and turn it into a giant disco version of Fire Island; we don’t try to convert or recruit; we don’t do anything other than ask that we, as minorities, are afforded the same rights as other minorities contesting against the majority. We ask to be treated like human beings, like citizens, with the same rights and protections as anyone else. We aren’t asking for superiority. We’re asking for equality.
That’s not an agenda. That’s long damned well overdue.
Hutcherson even thinks that the battle for civil rights for gays can’t be compared to the battle for civil rights for African-Americans…just because ex-gays exist, but ex-blacks don’t.
Just because a biological trait such as homosexuality isn’t physically apparent doesn’t mean that it’s any different from one that is, such as skin color. They share a common factor: they’re things we’re born into, not things we choose. Ex-gays haven’t really stopped being gay; they haven’t changed that biological trait. They’ve been conditioned to ignore it and act against it, and often are psychologically damaged as a result.
The comparison between the two struggles for civil rights is still quite apt. The prejudice against those who are different hasn’t changed; the tactics of discrimination have. Hutcherson wants to say they’re different because homosexuals were never forced to ride in the back of a bus; blacks were never sent to ex-black camps and mentally reconditioned to think they aren’t black, either. It doesn’t change the fact that both minority groups have been discriminated against, denied rights and privileges, abused, and ostracized in the past - and both still are now. Both are treated as less than human; there was a time when being black was viewed as a perversion, an abomination in the eyes of God, and black people were somehow less than human. Isn’t that how homosexuals are treated now? We’re told that we’re sick, we’re sinners, we’re filthy in the eyes of a God that loves and welcomes anyone but us, that views us as little more than rutting animals.
Hutcherson wants to use the race card to play up the struggle of African Americans for equality as somehow superior, morally above the struggle for GBLTQ equality. It’s not. They are the same, and equally deserving of consideration.
We’re all the same. If people could realize that, we wouldn’t even have these arguments.
Just so you know, never in your natural lifespans will you catch me making that face ever again.
So…if you remember the comic where the wenchzilla was mocking me over my horrible “T-Mobile Magenta” (now trademarked as a color, how ridiculous is that?) RAZR mobile phone…it’s now been happily replaced by a sleek, sexy little black Motorola W490 with a 2GB MicroSD card. I love it; it lets me set stored MP3s as my ringtones without having to specially send them to myself via browser or text message via mobile17.com like I had to on the RAZR. After converting to MP4 format, I can fit a good nine full-length movies on the thing (okay, teeny tiny full-length movies, but still) with about 500MB left over for a selection of MP3s. It does e-mail, IM, ‘net browsing, and all kinds of other nifty little things, leaving me wondering: why the hell would I need a $400 brick-shaped iPhone when I have my sleek little $100 flip phone that does pretty much everything the iPhone can with the exception of the touch screen (which my fingers are too large to use comfortably, anyway)? Especially when the iPhone locks you into overpriced AT&T plans that don’t even do half what my T-Mobile plan does, and yet cost twice as much.
…yes, I am proud of being cheap. I call it being frugal, prudent, and economical, because it makes me feel better about being…well…entirely cheap. The only thing I don’t like about the phone is that even the headset plugs in with the mini-USB jack, so I can’t use standard stereo earphones with it when listening to music or watching movies on the go. Instead I had to buy a special set of stereo headphones with the mini-USB connector, but that was only $3 more.
Okay, I’m done rhapsodizing about my happy new non-pink phone. Pink sunglasses are fine. A pink phone? That’s just pushing it too far along the “flamingly out there” spectrum. Yeah, yeah, I know, real men wear pink. I guess I’m a fake man who loves his little black phone. Oi. (…although the touchpad still lights up with a lavender backlight. Lavender. C’mon, Motorala, wasn’t the neon blue good enough?)
And no, that’s not what it looks like; I’m not suddenly developing hetero tendencies on you with Red back there. My friends are just very snuggly people; I’m very…not. They’re also very contrary people, and like to take advantage of moments of inattention to creep up on me and see how much they can get away with before I notice and the instant “NO TOUCHIE-TOUCHIE!” reaction kicks in.
Ahem. Anyway. If the art’s even more drunken on this one, I actually have an excuse this time. I don’t know what’s wrong with my tablet, but I think it’s been quietly ingesting copious quantities of crack when I’m not looking. I couldn’t get any decent pressure sensitivity or stroke recognition out of it at all last night, even after replacing the battery, recalibrating the pen sensitivity and settings, and rebooting everything just as a catch-all and a failsafe. This thing took so long that I might as well have done it on paper, but then I still would have had to fight the tablet and Photoshop on the color. Bah. I actually tried to get more of her full face in there, but I kind of had to go with what I could wrestle onto the screen. This way’s probably more accurate anyway, considering that at the time the wench was trying to bite my hair. Gah.
Yes, I have weird friends. Like I said last time: shiv. Trachea. ’nuff said.
That’s it outta me. I’m gone until tomorrow. Ciao.
Those of you who remember my old comic are probably quite familiar with that threat to stab someone with a pencil. Hell, I probably still have the icon of it lying around my hard drive somewhere; at one point it was practically my catch phrase. Thankfully I haven’t put anyone’s eye out. [clears his throat] …yet.
So yeah, NaNoWrimo and writing chapter two of my second novel kind of combined to take over my weekend. By the time I was supposed to settle down to draw the comic I had planned for this week I was sleepless, completely wasted on coffee, and practically cross-eyed from eyestrain.
Trust me, a screencap of the novel with some pretty text overlaid is far preferable to the drunken, noodly scribbling I would have subjected you to had I tried to draw in that state. (Edit: this morning I woke up and had a few spare minutes before work at my other job, so I upgraded this at least a tiny bit so it’s not just a screenshot with dialogue. Now, at least, it’s a “through Adri’s eyes” perspective.) Next week you’ll get more oddly-proportioned drawings, ubiquitous pink sunglasses, and poofy lips.
Although I can’t blame the weekend’s distractions wholly on NaNo. I’ve been trying to plan a 2008 relocation to Chicago for months now, for many reasons (not least among them being that Chicago does tend to be a bit more gay-friendly than Houston). Yesterday I sat down and after several hours of phone calls, research, and calculations, budgeted the whole thing - covering every expense down to a travel carrier for the cat and gas costs (as I’m probably going to rent a U-Haul trailer and just drive it, because I’m insane like that).
Let’s just say I’ll be working overtime for the next eight months, because apparently one catty fag and one faggy cat can blow more money on an 1100-mile cross-country trip than Paris Hilton at a Prada blowout sale.
So…yes. There you have the reasons for a quick and dirty comic. Hopefully it still amused you, at least a little.
…and no, the dragons in the story aren’t really gay - so Sihaya, stop plotting strange and disturbing Rez/Van fanfic. The Singe/Van idea was scary enough. [smirks]
That’s right, the obligatory Halloween comic (with a teensy bit of animation, gasp!). Let’s see…a cranky hermit of a writer who gets really twitchy about people touching his stuff, keeps his home just a little untidy without being slovenly, and spends the day pacing around in his boxers muttering to himself about bad writing and writing in general? Yeah, I’d say I’m shaping up to be another Mort Rainey. This is not a good comparison. I only hope I don’t end up putting a screwdriver through my cat; I rather like the little furbutt.
(If you don’t know who Mort Rainey is…go read a bloody book, kid. And no, I’m not really as batty as Mort. Look at me as the saner version. Well…if not saner, at least not dangerously violent. …ever notice that most writers tend to be just a tiny bit unhinged?)
If this one looks a little more like I was practicing mastery of the ancient Drunken Artist Style, that’s because I was drunk when I drew it.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding (I don’t drink nearly as much as I make it sound here - maybe one nightcap a month or so). Art’s just one of those things where some days you’ve got it, some days you don’t. Last night I didn’t really have it; might have had something to do with the fact that I’m wearing month-old disposable contact lenses, I don’t have another pair to switch them out with, my prescription’s expired, and every time I call my optometrist’s office to make an appointment, no one answers the bloody phone. Pain in the arse. So my eyesight’s not all it could be, right now.
Yeah, yeah, excuses, excuses. This one’s another fully tablet-drawn one; I’m starting to prefer doing it that way, as since I normally build my backgrounds in Photoshop anyway this just makes for easier layer compositing without having to edit out whitespace or painstakingly paint so much of it in. Cuts my work time down from eight hours to four or five. Hopefully, if I get my tablet PC (though I’m seriously considering a cheaper knockoff version of a Cintiq instead) next month, it’ll take even less time and look less scribbly.
Aren’t you just fascinated by these little details of the comic creation process? [eyeroll]
Anyway, I’ve got things to do, so I’m out of here. See you tomorrow with a rant, a snark, a snicker, and gods only know what else.
~Adri
P.S. Thanks to everyone who wished me well when I was under the weather over the weekend. I’m feeling a bit better now, even if I’m not wholly up to speed yet.
Forget the coffee; it’s time to break out the champagne. That’s right, I’m posting about something good for once. In fact, I’m a bit surprised this isn’t getting more coverage. Check it out:
ScienceDaily (Oct. 21, 2007) — With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralise the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents HIV from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population.
To date, it represents the most significant treatment for patients suffering from HIV.
Professor Jens Lundgren from the University of Copenhagen, together with other members of the research group EuroSIDA, have conducted a study, which demonstrates that the immune system of all HIV-infected patients can be restored and normalised. The only stipulation is that patients begin and continue to follow their course of treatment.
[...]Combination therapy prevents the virus from forming and mutating in human beings. When the virus is halted in its progress, the number of healthy CD4+T cells begins to rise and patients, who would otherwise die from HIV, can now survive. The immune system is rejuvenated and is apparently able to normalise itself, providing that the combination therapy is maintained. The moment the immune system begins to improve, the HIV-infected patient can no longer be said to be suffering from an HIV infection or disease, already declining in strength.
The only pessimistic comment I can think of here is a fear that the therapy won’t ever make it into general practice in the United States, for various reasons all tied to the rather messy political and economic state we’re in - and that similar reasons on a more dire scale will prevent the therapy from reaching third-world countries that need it even more desperately. Not everyone can afford to travel overseas for treatment that will save their lives. I have a few friends who are HIV+, and fighting it every day by living as healthily as they can…but still falling down that slope. Their healthy lifestyles just make it a slow, clawing descent rather than a rapid one. I’d love to see something like this give them a hand up. I just hope it won’t be too late - not just for my friends, but for the millions infected with HIV and suffering from AIDS worldwide.
I know it’s unrealistic to think that this combination therapy, most likely expensive, could be brought to those suffering in every corner of the earth. But a boy can dream anyway, can’t he?
And there’s always the fear that knowing a working treatment is available will cause gay men to be even more careless than we already are about unsafe sex, completely ignoring the possibility to contract other STDs…
No. I’m not going to go there today. I said this was a good-news day, and it’s going to stay that way instead of sinking underneath my eternal cynicism. I didn’t mean to bring things low after announcing such a wondrous breakthrough, so on a less serious front: taking a page from Lyndsey’s book (well, not literally), I’m holding a contest. It’s a silly contest, it’s an easy contest, and it’s a contest that’ll net you a Kingston 1GB DataTraveler USB drive, brand new, and a cameo spot as a character in No Style (what role you’ll fill…who knows; the winner and I can discuss that).
What are the rules of the contest?
Simple: be the 1,000th commenter. As I write this DR has a total of 729 comments, including pingbacks to old posts from newer posts or from offsite. Whoever posts the 1,000th comment wins. It’ll take a little while to get there, but I’ll periodically post updates to the overall comment count. Pingbacks do add to this comment count, but a pingback - even if it’s from your site - can’t win the contest. It has to be an actual comment from a person. If the 1,000th comment is a pingback or some other kind of automatically generated content, or if it’s a comment from me, then the prize will go to the 1001st comment.
Spamming BS just to raise the comment count will result in the comments being deleted from the overall count and me getting very, very irritated. Try not to do that.
So join in the discussion and you may get something out of it. Who knows, if this goes well I may make this an institution for various comment milemarkers. Good luck, and happy commenting!
Gasp! Two panels! …well, one panel reused and edited.
The weekend edition post about J.K. Rowling outing her own character reminded me of a conversation I had in a Starbuck’s a few years ago. I’ll bet everyone who’s ever been hit on by a male Potter fan has had some rendition of this conversation. The Starbuck’s was annexed onto a Barnes and Noble, as so many of them seem to be these days, and I’d just stopped in to buy a few books and then settled at the Starbuck’s to read one of them and have a latte. I didn’t even realize it was the release night of one of the books in the HP series, though it didn’t take long to figure it out with all the impatient Potterites swarming the store and the coffee shop.
And it didn’t take long for this guy to come zipping up to me to deliver what he probably thought was the most clever line ever. I don’t remember who he actually said; it wasn’t Dumbledore, I do remember that. I just subbed that in to be relevant to current issues. It might have been Snape or Remus or…bah, I don’t remember. But I do remember just how fast he hauled arse out of there. I probably could have been a bit nicer about telling him I wasn’t interested, but where’s the fun in that?
…this is why I’m going to be (newly) single for a long, loooong time. [snrk]
If the art looks a little odd, it’s because it’s wholly tablet-drawn in Photoshop with a stark black brush instead of a light pencil. I’m actually pretty pleased with it; except for the differences in the line heaviness, it’s not that far off from art done by hand on paper. I got lucky last night and managed a little decent hand-eye coordination with the tablet. Normally my tablet drawings look a bit more drunken than this, although the lines are still a bit more scribbly than my pencil lines.
I don’t remember what book I was reading back then (it might have been Stephen King’s Everything’s Eventual, but I’m not quite sure), but if you’re curious about the book actually depicted in the comic, it’s a story from my childhood that I recently rediscovered when I saw a movie version of it on Toon Disney. As a child I read Angela Sommer-Bodenburg’s The Little Vampire so many times that I wore out the cover on the library copy, and the local library fined me for it. Yesterday I went on Amazon and ordered a copy of it, so hopefully it’ll be here soon.
I remember being fascinated by the relationship between the young boy and the young vampire; back then I was too young to look for subtext (and there really wasn’t any there, it is a young adult book) and really didn’t know about homosexuality at all, but I think that book honestly may have been one of the things that first triggered a subconscious interest in other boys. I can’t believe I forgot about it, but it has been well over a decade. S’pose I bought a copy out of nostalgia; I can’t wait to read it again, even if I’m a bit old for it now and age will probably wear away much of the wonder and the gloss.
DarksideRainbow.net is 451 Press's look at the darker side of the
rainbow - where gay life takes a decided turn away from the happy, the
shiny, and the pink, complete with news, gossip, and a healthy dose of
caffeine-fueled cynicism from gay blogger Adrien-Luc Sanders. Check in
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So…I was lazy today and reused comic art. There’s a reason for that beyond me just being a bum, but I’ll explain at a later date. In the meantime, though…I did come up with something else. Don’t ask me what possessed me to do this, but the last line of the comic just screamed “tasteless, tacky t-shirt design”. So cover the children’s eyes and don’t click the cut link if you’re at work (and if anyone’s direct-linking to this without the cut, be nice and warn people of what you’re linking them to), because this is definitely NSFW and about as child-friendly as an electrical socket.
