Too much

..ice cream. Man, I've eaten too much today. I've sat here all day, trying to draw and wait for the phone to ring. With a job offer.

Well, I want to once again ask all, what, 3 of you to travel that short internet distance to www.spentshellpress.com and encourage John and myself. We need some encouraging. I need to get some GD drawings done for him to decorate the place and some pages finalized instead of jumping from one to another to another in a pathetic attempt to just do easy parts and think the rest of it over for the millionth time. He doesn't need to be encouraged so much as he needs to be congratulated for his real-life bad guy ass-kicking and clever web logging. He's already done with his part of Detroit's Finest. Oh, yeah. Except getting it published. man.

Hey, thanks, ya'll for the nice words an' wishes. I hope to make it to forty-one now. (I set small goals.)

Since I'm too full to reach the scanner, I'm going to rehash a little favorite of mine. I did this for John, kept it in my Cafepress image basket so I could access it online, but they kicked it off, for now obvious reasons. Geez. Not like I was gonna make a t-shirt of it or anything.



Heehee. I just loved Maude. So, this reminds me, if you guys want anything (non-copyrighted, of course) on a t-shirt or whatever else is on that pathetic cafepress thing, tell me. I'll draw it and upload it, making it quite available for you to PURCHASE FROM ME. You know, so I can pay my bills and feed my furry kids! I'm working on Detroit's Finest swag, oop! Out of the bag, John. And I need to finish 2 commissions for my long-suffering fanboys and then I'll be officially not drawing anything but Detroit's Finest. Yep. Windy City's on hold again. Hey, 3 new pages are more than I've done in 3 years...
Think it over, Dear Readers. Your favorite character on a potholder or coffee mug. The possibilities are terrifying!

What now?

Well, there was a surprise party for me Saturday night. I turned 40, if that wasn't already apparent from the last post. My sister, enlisting my mysteriously resourceful friend, Roxanne, gathered a pretty impressive assortment of people together. All dressed in black, we packed into my favorite Indian restaurant and marvelled in turns at the weird, spicy foods and our impending old age.

I received a lovely ensemble of pirate-themed accessories to wear for the duration and a Hawaiian lei, as "every girl should get layed on her 40th birthday." Oh, dear. If I'd only known. After the inspiring kazoo strains of Happy Birthday To You, it was time to blow out the big, black "40" candle on my cake.

My sister, Lisa, baked a "Mima Cake"-the chocolate frosted yellow cake homage to the struggles of our mother and grandmother to master this most difficult of all cake recipes. No matter the frosting consistency, the cake is always delicious. mmmm. While our sikh host and hostess swirled around us with bright orange chicken, aloo gobi, sad lamb, murky green silt-like soups and more hot chutneys than you can shake a stick at, I opened a lot of cutie-pie cat-themed birthday cards and a lot of very expensive, thoughtful gifts. Sincere thanks, everyone! Not bad, considering I'd forgotten or was too poor to observe most of their birthdays this past year.

Afterwards, a few of us retired for adult beverages and then I was dropped off at my humble home to contemplate the end of this phase of life and the beginning of the next. I haven't gotten much of anything accomplished in life so far. Regardless, I'm now an adult. You can put it off only so long.

So...what now?

Logan's Run

It's that time. My light is flashing. OK. My light was flashing ten years ago, but I like to think that 40 is the new 30.

Anyway, I reserve the right to change that to 50 in ten years.

I wish I had some wise words to type down today, but I just don't have the time to think of them. I wish I was employed, but I'm still not. I wish I had a bunch of money, but I don't. I wish I looked like a twenty-year-old, but it's too late for that. I wish we could get out of Iraq, but we can't. I wish we had a competent leader, but we don't. I wish I had homes for all these cats, but I don't.

Oh, well. Time to look on the bright side: I know some awesome people and I'm lucky enough to still be alive and as my Dad would have said, "able to sit up and take nourishment." I miss my mom, my dad, my grandparents and all the people I used to know that I don't anymore, but I am glad to have my sister, and the family and friends I do still have. Thanks to all of you for still being there. I hope some day to make it worth your while!

Pico Update

Warning: Male readers will want to steel themselves for the following description.

My beleagured cat, Pico, has a severe urinary tract infection. This involves the formation of bacterial crystalline structures inside his urethra. Yes, his urethra. This is a very dangerous condition as it blocks off his ability to urinate. This of course leads to toxification of his bloodstream and rather rapid, painful death.

In order to save his life, the vet had to unblock the pathway by "massaging" the crystals from his, er, lower urethra. Pico has a very large belly, but the rest of him is still cat-sized. This process is so painful that Pico had to get the cat laughing gas to endure it. Imagine the procedure for the vet.

The vet advised keeping him overnight after his ordeal, and then one more night just to be sure the crystals have not reformed. I have been told that he is resting much more comfortably than before and I will hope to get him home tomorrow.


Still loving these posts, John?

In other news, I have a follow-up interview tomorrow for a job. This brings me to a sudden realization. This website address is on my resume as I used to have actual artwork samples on the old site. Hmmm. Potential employers may accidentally wander on to this...thing. Not great. I need to get cracking on a real art site ASAP. In the meantime:
I'm a loyal, hard-working girl with no vices and a love for humanity.

CATS!

Man, I got some cats. Would anyone like a lovely cat? Tonight, I can't sleep for worrying about one in particular. Pico is my oldest and seems to be having a lot of trouble today. I'll have to carry him off to the doc tomorrow, or I should say, this morning. I hope he makes it that long.
Well, I don't know what else to do but post an old, weird drawing.

This is Bandit's teacher,"Stick," from Windy City. I shouldn't call him that, but I have for so many years, it's hard to remember not to.

Job Hunt

Okay. I'm getting to wonder about my chances of finding gainful employment. I've put in about 20 applications in the past 3 weeks, not to mention the countless inquiries, visits, revisits of the past year. Nothing. Not one call back. At first, I was being upfront with my salary requirements. I'd tell them just what I needed to consider the job. The unemployment office actually called me in to a class of others who had done the same. Why? We were all "red flagged" for looking for difficult to find work and asking for too much money. They warned us to stop looking for positions in our old fields. Turns out this class was for people who had "weird" qualifications, like "artist." Or "electrical engineer." Or anything that wasn't "office/clerical". You see, in Jeb Bush Florida, the unemployment service is not comfortable assisting people who insist on being educated in such esoterica. We needed to just settle down and accept that we were beggars in this new world and we had to buck up and take less money no matter how much our fancy education cost or how hard we had worked to get it. Can't type? Of course you can! Sit down out here and learn on our new state-of-the-art typing programs. What, you don't want to be a data entry girl? Why not? Low pay? Well, little lady, you're hardly in a position to demand better than $6.50 an hour!

It seemed to me that this department of unemployment was much more intent on producing good-looking numbers for the governor. If you plug all these misfits into good old secretary jobs with starting pay that would make a teenager take a pass, then your unemployment numbers would go down. Can't get them into those jobs? Well, all you have to do is wait 7 months. If you haven't managed to convince them they can live on minimum wage by then, no problem. You cut off their unemployment benefits. Now, they're officially off of the record. They don't exist as unemployed anymore! The numbers look better and better!

Well, my 7 months was up last October. I've been looking into just about every kind of job imaginable. I even stopped asking for a living wage on my apps. Now I put a dainty "negotiable" in the little wage blank. Hasn't mattered. The only job I've managed to land was as a pizza maker/deliverer for a small pizzaria. $6.40 an hour plus tips which averaged 10 bucks a day. 10-12 hour days, seven days a week. Plus I got a t shirt to wear and a great hat. Yeah, I only lasted a month, but for that brief, shining moment, I was exactly the kind of worker bee that Jeb had intended.

St. Patrick, thanks a lot!

I've been asked to actually employ this strange venue, as in "write something." Well, I'd like to give a Shout Out to St. Patrick while we're still in St. Patrick's day. I have had a St. Patrick experience. This morning, I saw a large black blur race by my studio window. I opened the door, stepped outside and saw my black cat, Pancho, crouching by the door. This is weird, as he's a wild cat and would normally keep his distance from me as I am a "ssstink human." I immediately noticed an unpleasant smell, not the usual cat stink, but something I hadn't smelled in years. Snake. Very slowly I turned my head and beheld a huge black snake coiled up directly under my mailbox and mere inches from my feet. Hm.

Pancho was determined to attack him, and was probably the reason the snake was there. He'd chased him there from the wilderness of my overgrown yard. Of course, the snake struck and barely missed both of us. I lift-kicked poor, dumb Pancho away and took a good look. It's been a while, but I'm reasonably sure my serpenty visitor was a Rat Snake, and a pretty big one. Since I wasn't completely sure, and the mailman was due to arrive soon, I sent him on his way, with a twig and some helpful words, ("Go on, snake.") back to the overgrown bushes and ferns. Off he slithered. Pancho was pretty mad, but I can't afford vet bills at all now.

So, thanks, St. Patrick. Thanks for kicking all the snakes out of Ireland and forcing one of the refugees to find a home in my yard.

OK. That being said, please visit Truth Out on my links bar. If you're like me, this stuff will make you burn up, shake your fist and plot. If you're not like me, you won't believe it and will think it all a silly fable. Man, I wish that were true.

Redirected? Oh, I hope so!

I may finally have gotten this "site" officially "pointed at" by all the important parties. Please take a moment to leave comments below any post. If you immediately just scroll down the page a bit when visiting, you will not only see the comment area, but will also avoid the pesky adbar at the top of this page.

Oh, yess... Happy Nearly Birthday to FRANK OTTO WHO IS TURNING FORTY TOMORROW!

Above pics added entirely because of being too lazy to figure out photobucket at 6 am.

Tessstt..test..ahem. Is this on?

The comics pages are quite a mess. I hope to figure out how to fix this problem later. For now, relax and feel the confusion.
Oh, and how about a drawring?

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