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i made a paper doll of Michaelangelo's David for my Gay/Lesbian Issues in Art History class:
click here to download, cut out, and decorate your very own gay David!

we voted today:


max and i outside our local polling place. we came today to beat the election day crowds


only to be stuck in the PRE-election day crowds. this is what we saw of the line when we first got inside. it wraps around another couple corners after that. from getting on line to leaving the building, we were in there for one solid hour.


offices in sarasota are a scary place.


you can kinda tell from the first photo that i've been working out lately. just something to keep me awake late at night while i'm doing homework. i'll stop what i'm doing and just kick out ten push ups and ten sit ups and get back to work.
sadly, you can't see my tshirt too well in the photo. it reads:
i dig feel emotionally in touch with chicks that are hot vote

yesterday was a fun day, i guess. we went on a field trip to the mall. max got a haircut and bought a sweater and tshirt at the Gap and brian bought an RC racecar of the Delourian from Back to the Future II (i'm sure there's some difference from the one in the first movie that i just don't care about) and i bitched about and mocked the poser goth kids. honestly, there were at least seventy of them throughout the mall, all dressed in super-black, mostly ripped strategically in "cool, angsty" places, mostly with pictures of JTHM or Jack Skelington on their clothes somewhere, and alot of them with white crap smeared on their face to make them look even more pale. at one point i noticed about twelve of them congregated together in a circle just outside the Disney store, and all of them were bent over laughing with wide smiles.
seriously, that should be illegal.
if you're going to make such an OBVIOUS effort to appear falsely angst-riddled and such, then it should be against the law for you and your ilk to gather in social areas like A MALL in FLORIDA on a BEAUTIFUL SATURDAY AFTERNOON and LAUGH in GROUPS!!!
no, you must be agnsty, alone, and serious in a dark room somewhere to write your brooding poetry and such. you're not allowed to have a pack of friends with whom you laugh like school children outside the fucking disney store in a mall in florida, especially not on a beautiful sunny saturday afternoon, because being in a public place on such days means that you had to go outside into the horrible horrible light in order to get there to hang out with your friends.
either be a fucking goth poser, or be an average teenager. pick one, but being both is just plain self-destructive, and not the cool kind of self-destruction that both of those demographics tend to be prone to but the kind of self-destruction where you'll look back on it after a few years and realize that the things you ewre doing directly contradicted each other at the same time and that you really had no identity whatsoever, you were just trying to fit in and so was everyone else you were trying to fit it with. YOU ARE THE VERY PEOPLE THAT THE REAL GOTH KIDS ARE REBELLING AGAINST!!! at least the "goth kids" and the "average teenagers" are doing something, something they'll hopefully come to realize was lame and they've grown out of, but what these kids are doing is just null and void. they're completely doing nothing!!!
oh yeah, and i bought Kill Bill volume 1 and 2 on dvd.

i got a notice in my mailbox that says i owe over $2800 for my tuition payment this semester. they tell me this now because i can't register for classes next semester until i'm all paid up and registration starts in a few weeks.
this would have been nice to know a month or two ago though. i have no idea how i'm going to be able to pay $2800 next week and then pay for next semester a month later. part of me is sure everything will work out the way they always do and nothing will actually change, but part of me is also stressing out figuring out both how to do the assignments i'm working on now AND pack up all my stuff and ship it home before christmas in case i can't come back for the spring, and then i start worrying about paying off loans and having to work a few jobs while i'm still on hiatus from school and then coral goes to school and madness.
and all of these things are having continuous streams of conversation in my head all at the same time on top of each other and its just building and building and i start just having this high-pitched buzz in the top of my head and it hurts so much and i can't think straight and i need to sit down and hold my head in my hands for a few minutes before i can go back to shelving books at the library, but all the letters and numbers are blurring in my head and its just hurting more.

dammit all.

wow...that's just...wow.

retarded.

"It's like the line in that Lenny Kravitz song: 'It ain't over 'til it's over'" -WVIT Sportscaster talking about the Red Sox/Yankees game 7.

My god, do they breed them to be this stupid? Not only is she attributing that quote to the entirely wrong person, but the right person is Yogi Berra! A former Yankees player!!! Even I know that! And I hate baseball!!


-Morgan is sick of the dumbening

Need a reason to make a comic each week? Then check out Stripfight!
I am so there! This week's theme: Zombies!

-Mo

HOLY CRAP!!!

OWLY, THE PLUSH TOY

SPX looked amazing this year and i wished i could have gone. pretty much all the artists i adore or just like seeing and talking to were there. Mal and Hope shared a table with Vera, and the Dumbrella crew were there, including Rich Stevens who was super awesome when i talked to him at the MoCCA Art Fest in june, and there was also Scott Morse, who has done two of the most wonderful sketches i've ever witnessed, both in my own sketchbook, and Dave Roman, who always makes me laugh and think whenever i talk to him (and the Ron Weasley comic i got from him at MoCCA was so funny i almost didn't give it to my li'l sister like i'd intended), and Raina Telgemeier, who's just amazingly talented and super nice and whenever another convention season comes around i start hearing about her even more on the internet so i'm sure she's going to be the next big thing in a couple years, and, well, generally everyone awesome.

seeing stuff like that, even online, and being so envious of the people who get to go, it dawns on me that MoCCA's Art Fest really is the SPX of New York...so why isn't it just as big a deal as SPX? probably because its still only three and a half years old. i'm really proud to be part of something so amazingly great from so early on, but mostly i just love it. two years ago i did not imagine that Craig Thompson would remember my name and actually come out from behind his table while on a break to come talk to me and my friends, or that i would have a sketch from Bill Sienkiewicz or that i'd just sit around and talk for an hour with Angel Medina or Jim Salicrup or that i'd get to shake hands with Neil Gaiman or that i'd be handed original artwork by Michael Avon Oeming and Brian Michael Bendis.
no, if one of my friends told me two years ago that i'd have done all that and so much more by now, i'd have told them to stop doing drugs and go get a real job.

hell, i should probably say that to them anyway.

The Dears are in tour mode again, and as per usual, they love hitting New York while i'm in florida.

why can't all the band i like do SUMMER tours???
and why do i get the sneaking suspicion that almost all of these bands will have broken up by the time i graduate and i'll never get to see them live again???

anyway, for my friends up north, if you're interested in seeing the Dears:

October 14 - Sin-E - New York, NY (CMJ)
OCtober 15 - Delancey Lounge - New York, NY (CMJ - 5PM)
October 15 - D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival - New York, NY
October 16 - Five Spot - Philadelphia, PA
October 25 - Mercury Lounge - New York, NY (w/ Brian Jonestown Massacre)
October 26 - Mercury Lounge - New York, NY (w/ Brian Jonestown Massacre)
October 27 - Khyber Pass - Philadelphia, PA (w/ Brian Jonestown Massacre)
October 28 - The Middle East - Cambridge, MA (w/ Brian Jonestown Massacre)
October 29 - Maxwell's - Hoboken, NJ (w/ Brian Jonestown Massacre)

on that topic, their most recent album "No Cities Left" is finally getting its US release tommorrow (even though i've been listening to it for two years)

crappy american cover art

also out tommorrow is TV On The Radio's new Ep, "New Health Rock"


i'm pretty sure there were a few other things coming out tommorrow that i was interested in, but i can't remember right now.

Holy crap! It would seem that I know the person who a Warren Ellis character in Planetary #22 was, at least in large part, based on!

http://www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/pulse.cgi?http%3A//www.comicon.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi%3Fubb%3Dget_topic%26f%3D36%26t%3D002799

Yay for Merrydeth!

ROCK!!!


seriously, check out The Pen Sixteen Club, my most successful side project to date.

we change the songs pretty quickly, considering how long we've had the site.
right now, the songs are:
Peter Jensen, We Have Your Sam's Club Card (Brian on keyboard, Max on harmonica, me on percussion)
World Conquest (Brian on keyboard, Brent on vocals, me on whatever the hell else)
God is in his kingdom, and all is well (Brian tapping a case of brads, me on vocals and kazoo)

already we've had up and taken down:
Native Denial
Jaunty
The Plumber's Lament
we are sad that bowzer killed us all

and last night and this morning we seriously sat down and wrote a song that we hope to have up tonight. it started off the same way all the other ones do, with us improvising like idiots, except we liked it so much that we took the time to write real lyrics, which are no better than the ones we usually improvise except they're consistent.

i noticed the address change and i like the design better, though i miss the comment feature.
and i've been hearing awesome things about shaun of the dead for almost a year now. i need to see it very much.
as for lettering, i dunno, it really is something where you should try a bunch of things and see what's comfortable. i know most people do it digitally, usually in adobe illustrator. you can find some really great free comic styled fonts over at BlamBot
one thing i suggest which i've done recently for a project and i find looks really excellent is to just take a piece of paper and write out the alphabet and all the symbols in a manner that's consistent and comfortable with your handwriting, then scan that and place the letters individually, but that could (and will, i'm sure) take forever.
another thought is to write out each balloon on a seperate piece of paper the way you like it and then photocopy it smaller and cut it out and place it on the panel.

also, i just realized i didn't post this here, but here's a crappy webcomic i did during hurricane francis of an idea i had over the summer.
i call it Derrick and Dan Do Something Interesting
you'll need a fairly recent version of Java to make it work, and probably a pretty fast connection.

Also, everyone needs to go see "Shaun of the Dead"

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/shaun_of_the_dead/

Seriously, it friggn' rocks.

Hey D-rock, what do use for lettering? I've been having a heck of a time findinging something I feel comfortable with. So far I've tried several repidographs and C-6 and B-6 crow tips. I want to do it by hand but I also want it to be legible.

Also, my webcomic is now to be found at: http://dancingpaperclip.keenspace.com/

Word.

yesterday, max bought Katamari Damacy, a cute playstation2 game where, for some reason, all of the stars have disappeared, so the king of space sends his son the prince (you) to earth to gather junk which can be launched into space and exploded into replacement stars/constellations.

you start off with a sticky (i guess its got cosmic magnetism or something?) ball called a Katamari. when you're just beginning, you can only pick up small things, like nuts, candy and packs of gum (you can see he needed to build it up a little to even get the lipstick on there). if your Katamari is under 3 meters, i think, most people you run into will just make you bounce back and lose an object or two. A bigger ball and you can pick them up. Same goes for most cars with a 5 meter Katamari.


as you roll the ball around collecting more and more stuff, your Katamari gets bigger, and as it gets bigger (33 meters, 69 centimeters in this image), you'll start collecting larger objects (trees, buildings, and that looks like a hot air balloon at the bottom there)



yesterday, i bought Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which i declared upon seeing it opening night back in march to be my favorite movie ever. i still feel that way.

even my republican roommate hung his head in shame during most of the "debate," and went on to regale his friends for the rest of the night with tales of how awesome kerry appears when compared to bush as they "converse"

UH-OH!

and apparently, it is hard work, being the president. i did not know that until bush said that four-hundred times last night. i thought it was a really easy laid-back sort of job, which is why bush is on vacation so damn much.

i've been looking at cameras lately. my camera doesn't like working ever since my last trip through jfk and tampa international airports, so while i can't get my photo fix that way i've been looking and novelty-sorta plastic cameras online and three and garnered my attention:

the Holga 120

its a crappy little camera made entirely of plastic, even the lens. the frame is pathetic so light always seeps in unless you cover the seams with opaque tape. it also uses medium format film, but a whole bunch of websites show how to modify it for 35mm, referred to as "the new attitude"
why buy such a pathetic camera? look at these shots:



and 35mm comes out like this:




plus, i've found a few sites that sell an attachment to the back of the camera which lets it work as a polaroid camera, so you can enjoy the holga prints instantly:





more on the other two later, i've got stuff to do.