santa cleopatra! look what came today! it's the very first brandspankingnew issue of BARRELHOUSE.



pretty hottt, huh? and check out the intro into the piece i have in it, a comic that i drew of a story written by mr. darby larson:



that's right, i tricked them into thinking i'm "fabulously talented." slick, n'est-ce pas? :D plus look how nice the printing looks inside:



and did i mention there's even some brief nudity? rock, rock on.



buy your own issue here!

PHEW. that was a scary coupla hours.

anyone who tried to visit my site - really, any of my sites - yesterday prolly got a nasty surprise. my domain registrar place had told me that my domain name was set to "auto renew domain name." what does that mean, i asked? it means, when your domain is about to expire, they automatically renew it. only when the time came around for the domain to expire, it just expired. and then took 24 hours to come back to me. so i'm wondering if they're using different definitions for the words "auto-renew domain name". because it obviously didn't mean what i thought it meant.

i felt completely lost and adrift without my internet presence yesterday, which is probably evidence of just how sad my life has become. i missed you, website. i missed you, blog. i missed you, ability to post images of the projects i've been working on lately.

like this one! look at this most recent page i did the other night for a story i'm working on called vea. :)

in one of my more interesting fever-dreams last week, i spent an entire night waking up every hour or so, stressed out, because i was sure i was in charge of designing the currency for a new nation that was being formed by the bedside table, the fan, the lamp, and a few of the pillows (but not all of them). they were seceding from... well, somewhere, i'm not sure; maybe the rest of the bedroom, and making their own country. they didn't have a name yet, and they couldn't decide which historical figure to feature on the money, which was making designing their currency kind of difficult. it wasn't easy with them all yelling at me at once, either.

reflecting on the challenges facing a fledgling democracy like my bedroom secessionists makes me think of my own blossoming nation, the most serene republic of jaromirovna. someone turned me on to this site a few weeks ago, and i highly recommend it, if you're even remotely politically minded. it's free, it only takes up a few seconds every day, and it's actually very wittily written. in a few short weeks i've managed to go from a 'scandinavian liberal paradise' to a 'new york times democracy' to an 'inoffensive centrist democracy' to what i am currently, 'democratic socialists'. and who knows what i'll end up after i outlaw gambling.

i should really do something about the 100% income tax rate on the wealthy, though. they're not going to like that.

NON-illness related things:

i've officially started doing a weekly strip here! it's called packingtown, which is a rilly obscure reference that i think i'll explain later in another packintown cartoon. :)

dave and i have been watching the dvds of carnivale. IT ROCKS MY FACE OFF. i wish we didn't have to wait another 8 years for the next season.

i think i'm going to start selling my books at this place in baltimore. i'll be for sale in chicago, toronto, and baltimore then!

also, watch this space in the next few weeks. :)

amoxicillin is a wondrous, wondrous drug. it is already eating away at my infection and i feel a million times better. i'm on my feet again, i can eat and talk and drink water and i'm actually sleeping thru the night. :)

i had enough energy to tidy up a little yesterday and the day before, and was astonished that i kept finding the little notes i wrote to dave during my convalescence. i wrote a lot of them. they're everywhere. :)

i do feel a little loopy and fuzzy though. a little tingly all over and kind of out of it. here are my guesses as to why:

1. this is a stronger amoxicillin than i'm used to.
2. my throat was swollen almost shut all week, and i was deprived of oxygen. now that airways are open again, i'm getting high on surplus oxygen.
3. i ate almost nothing for an entire week, i'm bound to be lightheaded while my body learns to renegotiate the whole nutrition thing.
4. the infection, unchecked for so long, has finally reached my brain and is tickling parts of it while it fights the amoxicillin.
5. aliens.

RESOLVED: i need to find an actual doctor; this going to ER's and urgent care centers when i get sick isn't working out.

well this has been just about the WORST WEEK EVER.

last saturday night, i got a little tickle in my throat. hm, i think, i should take some vitamin c and get some sleep. sunday morning, it was a full blown sore throat. monday morning it had spread to include an earache, and my lymph nodes swelled to the size of grapefruits. so i went to the doctor.

i don't have a proper doctor, because i don't get sick very often, and my craptastic health insurance doesn't cover "wellness visits" anyway, so i found the closest ER that's covered by blue cross. i checked in, gave them my info, they put me on a bed where i stayed for about an hour, when someone finally came by - not to check on me, to take my insurance information. i waited another hour, and a doctor came thru, asked me a few questions, checked out my throat, ears, nose, etc. then he left. then an hour later ANOTHER doctor came thru, and did the exact same things, only she took a throat culture.

"call back in a day or two to get the results," she said. "honestly, we usually have these done in about 12 hours, but if you call back wednesday morning, it should be ready by then." and they discharged me.

so i went home, and was miserable for another day. tuesday, i called them for the results. "oh, that's not ready yet," they said, "call back tomorrow."

wednesday, i called them for the results. "oh, that's not ready yet," they said, "call back tomorrow."

thursday, i called them for the results. "oh, that's not ready yet," they said, "call back in about an hour."

i should mention at this point that i haven't had anything to eat since sunday. i can barely drink anything at all. when i try to sleep, i manage to sleep for an hour or so and then wake up for an hour, or i drift in and out of fever dreams. i can barely talk; so much so that i'm writing dave notes in order to communicate. it takes all my energy to say "i'm calling for the results of my throat culture," and when i do, 9 times out of 10 they don't understand me.

so, i waited an hour and called again. "everyone here is really busy," the lady said, "can you call back in 20 minutes?" i waited 20 minutes. "now they're even busier than when you called before! can you call back in an hour or so?" so this went on, i called them 6 times on thursday and finally gave up and went to bed, but not before spending 45 minutes dry heaving over the toilet, becoz my body for some reason wanted to vomit up my completely empty digestive tract.

friday morning, i woke up coughing and spit up a little blood. a perfect reminder to call for my test results. "oh my," the lady said this time, "did no one prescribe you antibiotics before you left here on monday?" "NO," i said. "are you SURE?" she said. "i'm POSITIVE," i say. "well, i'm prescribing you some amoxicillin. it'll be ready at walgreens in about an hour."

so it WAS an infection. not only that, but i could have been on antibiotics DAYS AGO.

i still haven't had anything to eat; i think i've lost about 6 pounds. i'm trying to down some orange juice right now, but it's not working. i think i've forgotten what it feels like to be well. oh, and i used up all of my sick days at work in one fell swoop. here's hoping next week is better, huh?

the other night, when it started snowing, i said to dave, "i hope it snows four feet, and the whole city shuts down, and everyone has to stay in their houses and watch the teevee and drink hot cider."

"this is chicago," he said, "even if it snowed 40 feet you'd still have to go to work." and so here i am, at work.

chicago should have at least one mandatory civic snow day for everyone. like the first big snow, mayor daley could get on the emergency broadcast system and say, "it snowed too much today for anything to happen. go sledding, city of chicago, richard m. daley, mayor." and the city of chicago would have to go sledding and build snowmen and throw snowballs at each other until our sides hurt from all the laughing, and the streetlights would come on, and chicago would all go trudging back to the house, worn out and happy, where mayor daley would have gingerbread cookies and hot cocoa waiting for us, and he'd hang our wet socks and scarves up by the fire and we'd fall asleep under woolen blankets as he told us a bedtime story, probably something sweet about budget gaps and property taxes.

*sigh* :)

grrrrmmmmph.

i do not have sufficient resources yet to get my comics printed at an actual printer, but kinko's is starting to annoy me. i got some minis back last night, and kinko's tried to overcharge me by about $100. i'm glad i caught the mistake before i left, but still, damn.

the good news is that i spent all night assembling them, and i now have reprints of the ouija comics, as well as the first printing of the latest installment:



lookit allofem together too! rad! :D

one of the best things about staying home sick in chicago is that during the workday, channel 23 used to show a bunch of old teevee, like the untouchables, and perry mason, and the lone ranger. during the not-weekday, not-workhour times, they were sort of local access, renting airtime to any language group that wanted it, so it'd be bosnian tv for an hour, russian for an hour, chinese for a few hours, and indian tv during the weekend mornings, etc.

on the morning of jan 1, 2005, channel 23 here in chicago suddenly moved all the international programs to a different channel, went full-time with the old timey programs, and instantly became THE BEST CHANNEL EVER ANYWHERE. they now show all sorts of completely awesome shows. in addition to the untouchables etc, now they show the monkees, the alfred hitchcock hour, the old twilight zone, starsky and hutch, gunsmoke, cagney and lacey, bob newhart, carol burnett, and the a-team. THE A-TEAM, people. and weekend mornings?? ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE, followed by TENNESSEE TUXEDO, followed by UNDERDOG.

BEST. CHANNEL. EVER. i don't even want cable anymore.