A Weekend of Birthday Observance

JANUARY
It's always in aftermath,
Moments of clarity never come before
No time for introspection,
Hear the cadence, we're marching to war
We're marching to war, we're marching for peace
No side will win, 'cause no side agrees
Be damned if we'll live in tolerance
It just makes it unbearable to live

I'm getting older
Am I the wiser, or more the fool?
When it gets colder,
I'm finding it harder and harder to move

It's hard to start over
We try to make years like those before
But there's no going home today
The waters have taken it, leaving it torn
Torn from the wars 'tween heavens and earth
Everything turns white, frozen, interred
Buried in white, and cloaked as a god
Of whom we think black, and devoid of blood

I'm getting older
Am I the wiser, or more the fool?
When it gets colder,
I'm finding it harder and harder to move

With a white a pure as the snow
We were blinded as holy fools
We'll now find our own "kingdom of god",
Where only the "wicked" will rule
It's always in aftermath
Moments of clarity never come before
No time for grave reflections
Hear the cadence, the dead come once more

That song is actually a year old, give or take a day. It's an absolute stream-of-consciousness anthem of things that are always in my head and at various times run on into eachother, becoming desegregated and hard to organize. It's a perfect birthday song for me.

Speaking of birthdays...
Everything panned out well over the weekend. I unfortunately shared the holiday with the Devils Lake ice fishing tournament, so we had to kind of think about which bar would NOT be overrun with fishermen. It actually wasn't too bad. There were strippers at Thirsty's, but I didn't want to crowd in with a bunch of fishermen ogling chicks that probably wouldn't have gone full frontal anyway, and if they did, I probably would have had to sit in the back listening to "oh yah, der's some good titties, dey are."
We went to the 11th Frame, which is almost literally a hole in the wall of the bowling alley--just my kind of place. We had a good time, they had a jukebox with Tom Waits (which Derek generously played a tune for me), and I had great time. Sorry Ben, if I'd have known you were in town, I'd have sent for you, and Amber, don't worry--you're not too far from bar-age now, and I have 2 more non-30 birthdays to go.
Sometimes my birthday falls on a perfect time of year. It's the deadest month, and everybody naturally needs a pick-me-up. Plus, many of us needed to get out and have a little fun. The last two months have seen loss, life-changing situations, and probably more stress (on top of an already typically-stressful Christmas season) than people should have to go through. My birthday comes right at the point of the year when everyone is sick of the cold, sick of the depressing boredom that pervades January. It's about that time that even I have to admit that people are thinking too much, and that's when I say "It's time to get stupid."
I thank everyone for getting stupid with me, those that didn't or couldn't come I'm sure wanted to get stupid, and don't worry, I like to stupid things up alot...wait a minute...

Anyway, I just got two books I've been waiting for: Another book in a series called Concrete, which I have been addicted to for 2 years now, and Frank Miller's 300, a book about the Spartans war against Thermopylae (thanks for the pronunciation, Kevin) that is soon to be coming out in theaters and looks fucking awesome.

School starts tonight. I'm excited about Illustrative Digital Imaging, and I hope if I have trouble with anything April might be of some use in that department. I'm stuck, due to my bad timing with registration, with Still Life Painting. I've decided, though to make the best of it and at least try to enjoy it. On the plus side, I get to work with acrylics. I like the way oil looks, but I have absolutely NO patience with it. Gouache was hard enough. But acrylic paint is cheaper, and to me has always been just a little easier to work with. Plus I can get it anywhere, as compared to gouache, which doesn't seem to exist in the state of North Dakota.

I have the next page of the comic already done (a week early!), but it still isn't going up until Friday. My hope is that I'll be able to set aside enough time right now to be able to get a page out on time, and still do homework. The story's getting exciting again, and I'm itching to keep this moving.

ANOUNCEMENT! ALL HANDS ON THE POOP DECK (heh heh heh)

Well, it is that time of year again. In the absolute deadest, most coldest month of the year, there is a shining beacon of hope that the world just isn't so bad. My birthday is coming up!
That's right, this year I'm turning a big-boy 2-7, and once again, it's time to celebrate with the usual libations and fertility rituals and whatnot.
Anyone interested is free to come celebrate. Karissa and I are going to Devils Lake--this way we have babysitters and Kevin and April also have babysitters for Aiden, plus my brother can make it out with us--Jas, you're buddies are obviously invited as well. The plan? I don't know, I just figured we'd hit a couple bars. The main thing is to just go out and have some fun with friends, let loose, something I think many of us really need right now.

New Ideas, New Page, New Classes!

My cold that I've been fighting with for over two weeks now is just about gone, as is Isabella's, but now Karissa is sick. So hopefully hers will go quicker.
I've been talking with Brandt Wolfe about collaborating on a little comic project, and both of us are pretty excited to get started. Unfortunately, our schedules will undoubtedly work against us, but for good reasons. My semester starts up in 2 weeks, and Brandt's gonna be a daddy in a month. You can send congrats to him either at his Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/holyflyingmonkeypoo), or just leave a comment here, I'm sure he'll read it either way.

New page if Golden Brown is out now, for those eagerly waiting by their computers now that the action is heating up a bit. I'm almost halfway through the inks on another page already, but I'm not putting it out until a week from today. I'm hoping to creat a little stockpile so that when my semester starts, I'll still be able to post them once a week for a little while.

On the subject of school, I registered late, and now I may have to take a Still Life Painting class. I HATE painting. Maybe as a leisure activity it would be fun, but for classes I just can't stand it. Fortunately, I have a really good advisor, and she's working to try to get me into Intermediate Figure drawing (which I was supposed to have but it filled too soon), which involves less painting. I am also going to be taking an Illustrative Digital Imaging class, so April, during Aiden's naps, I may be calling on you for help!

Another One Bites the Blog

Blogger has claimed another casualty, and this time, it's personal!
Actually, it's my brother, Jas. During an unintentional drinking bout a while back, I finally showed him my business card, without which he never would have remembered my blog (Hunter's have notoriously bad memories). It took him long enough, but he got around to reading my comics, and finally started his own blog, which is this:
www.lunacypoppa.blogspot.com .


I hear tell Aiden is doing better these days. We were going to stop over yesterday, but we got overwhelmed with cleaning up the aftermath of Isabella's room. The reason everything got so messy is because we just moved in her big-girl bed (yay!) and a whole friggin bed set came with it. Jas helped me move all of it from Mayville last week, and it took a couple days to organize it. Her room looks much different now than it did a week ago.
Isabella's naps are getting shorter by the month now, I'm afraid pretty soon they'll be gone and we'll have to put up with her all day instead of sectioning it off. But she does sleep well in her new bed at night. We opted to skip the toddler bed and go straight for the twin so we could have the whole bed set in there, and it's funny how tiny she is in it.


I've inked about half a page so far of Golden Brown, it should be out Friday morning. Considering I started the penciling two days ago, to be halfway done with the inks is pretty damned good for me. One might notice a lack of greys on my last one, expect more of it. I still love the markers, but I drew so many overly midtoned drawings last semester, I got kind of sick of seeing all the greys. Besides, I'm a black & white kinda guy, evrybody knows that. Plus it helps me work of shadows as well as shading, puts some grittiness back into the comic (especially the fight scenes) and cuts down on "production" time.
For the record, I did go back and reread my Sin City comics to help me keep up the style, but the comics looks and reads more like a Will Eisner comic. That's not a bad thing, but I hope to do more serious comics with that same grittiness to them. I've got a whole notebook of ideas just waiting to be released, and even Brandt contacted me recently with interests of writing for me. I brought it up to him last summer at the now-infamous street dance, and he hadn't given much thought to it, but now he seems to see something more in it. He mentioned liking the style of the Preacher series, which I haven't read, but I have read some of creator Garth Ennis' other stuff, and I like it. So we'll see.
But anyway, I have to get ready for work. Remember the comic on Friday!

Weird Weather

It's raining outside. It's the beginning of January, just two days ago the high was 7 degrees, and right now (6:45 am) it's 34 and raining cats and dogs. The weather this past year is just crazy. End times!! Apocalypse!!
Anyway, a new page of Golden Brown is coming out tomorrow, so take a look at what's going to happen to Golden Brown now that a big friggin' demon has shown up.

New Year, Same Old Shit

This has been my third year doing the night shift of New Year's Eve. I actually requested to do it. I know it's not a big deal to anyone else, but I'm the only one besides Becky who knows how to do it, and I don't want to have to teach it to anyone. Also, although it's normally pretty dead, this year New Year's Eve happened to fall on a Sunday, meaning no bar crowd, meaning everyone got their booze earlier and had to figure out a place other than bars to go drink--like a motel.


I came in at 10pm, just to double staff until my regular shift started. Around 11pm, someone had dropped a bottle in the pool area right beside th pool. No, they weren't supposed to have it there. Worse yet, it was a clear wine cooler bottle (as opposed to a typical darker beer bottle), so when we realized some of the shards had gotten into the pool, we had to shut it down (it was time anyway, but we couldn't open it up again in the morning because of this). Two young guys stepped on it getting out and cut their heels (they're fine). Also, two boys about 12 years old a piece kept talking to me and the evening guy. They wouldn't shut up, and they were weird. Not me weird, but annoying weird.


About 4:30am, I got a complaint about a fight going on in the next room. I didn't get to hear the why's, but a girl wanted a guy to leave, and he protested. He finally did leave, but then came back asking if I could come with him to the room to help get his credit card. I accompanied him, but I didn't do anything but watch him argue quietly with her (he wanted his credit card from the room, she wanted her cellphone from his car). So the guy goes back to his car, goes back upstairs without me this time, and comes back down, asking me to hlp him get into his room again (she had deadbolted it, and kept hanging up on his calls). It might help at this point to mention that the reason I was helping him so much was because the room was in his name and piad for by him. Basically he just wanted back into his own room. Eventually, while I was trying to get breakfast done, he asked if he could just get another room. I offered to talk to her or call the police if necessary, but he said she would just leave then, and he'd rather have her stay here.
After I got back to work tonight, I was told he had asked if he still had to check out by 11am since he didn't get in until 5:30 am. Sorry dude, we didn't cause you to leave your room have your girlfriend lock you out.

The night actually went about how I expected it to. Having to deal a little with drunks, stupid kids, and a little domestic to spice things up. I needed a little pick-me-up anyway.


I already read my graphic novels. I go through those like normal people go through books (it's hard for me to keep my focus and as a result I read lines or sentences over and over and it slows me down). One I got is called "A Contract With God" by Will Eisner. It's the first graphic novel ever officially published, and despite the slightly campy quality of his art, he does a hell of a job giving you some gritty stories.
The other one is Promethea by Alan Moore, J.H.Williams III, and Mick Gray. If you don't know who Alan Moore is yet, think of Rob Zombie, only living in England. Then think of the movies From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and V For Vendetta. I haven't seen V yet, but the other two, compared to the books, suck. The movie industry has a nasty habit of taking Moore's books and butchering the hell out of them. He knows it, too.
Anyway, I have Barne's & Noble gift cards, so you're going to be hearing more about my comics soon enough.
Happy New Year!