a writer who draws

meanwhile, at the hall of the super best friends

Most Risible Exchange So Far In Tonight's Law and Order: SVU
sparkymark
"You had sex with your pants on?"
"Is that a crime?"
"Not in this country. Neither is taking photos of womens' butts. But cock fighting is".

Tickling the Wisdom Teat
deathboy
Grab hold of something sturdy, you marvellous people. “Oh, no, it isn’t… is it?”

Oh yes, it bloody well is. FEAST NOW UPON YOUR HORRORSCOPES!

---

Aries: Those of Ariesian nature are always drawn to walk the path less chosen. To frequent the spaces spurned by others. To loiter in the backwaters and alleyways of the soul, quietly observing, considering their schemes. Waiting. Watching. Hanging around really rather a bit too long, if we’re honest. Taking photographs. Wanking, half the time. Aries are the perverts of the zodiac, this is what we’re saying.

Taurus: You will be approached on the street by a young cockney urchin, attempting to sell you broccoli. The broccoli doesn’t seem anything special at first glance, but you are taken by the urchin’s pleading demeanour and obvious rickets, so you purchase a punnet. Upon cooking it, HEAVENS BE PRAISED! This is the ENCHANTED BROCCOLI of BETHNAL GREEN! It is talked about in pubs from Hackney lo, unto Daltson! As you bear it aloft to examine its delicate fronds in the sunlight, you brace yourself for its majesty and open your expectant eyes… It does nothing.

Gemini: You’ve been having the dream again. The one where you go on Dragon’s Den and are trying to sell them something, then you realise that you’re entirely naked. Worse yet, you’re starting to find Deborah Meaden’s prurient gaze arousing and it’s really interrupting your presentation. Three of the Dragons immediately reject your proposal for a kind of solar-powered almond, but despite this, Duncan Bannatyne says he’s in, for a 50% cut of your company, on the provision that you give him a ruddy good seeing to with a fist full of almonds.

Cancer: The moons of Jupiter are in ascendency this month, reaching their zenith on… wait… that’s no MOON! That’s the DEATHSTAR! You meet a tall, dark Ewok. If you do go to bed with anybody, check they’re not your sister. Your power animal is: Salacious B Crumb.

Leo: Beware gypsies on jet-skis. At first it’s all whooshing, splashing and lucky heather, then later, it’s capsizing and curses and doing a magical wee in your begonias after midnight. Keep ‘em peeled.

Virgo: Your village is a sleepy place, with little to talk of, most days. Until TODAY! Now, I know, after an intro like that, you’re just sat there gagging to know what’s going to happen! I know, right?! But no. The stars ain’t tellin’. Nuh-uh. OK, look, between you and me, I think the stars are being dicks, so all I’m going to say is that the big thing rhymes with… um… no, I mean, it begins with ‘bo’. No, that’s not going to work. Look, just keep an eye out for ‘Bovril’. The secret is Bovril. You didn’t hear that from me. And if you don’t like being smeared with Bovril and humped by an ape, stay home. I’ve said too much.

Libra: Self-indulgently, you join the recent crazy for onesies. After zipping yourself up in the soft, warm snugness and reflecting on how looking like a tool is a small price to play for such luxury, you realise… nobody can see you! Can it be? Yes! You were sold the famous Chameleon Onesie of Zanthar! Imbued with a magical ability to mimic the colours in its surroundings, it is said this garment was made by an ancient assassin and used to depose kings in precise, surgical hits. You mostly wear it while drinking lager and watching Sex in the City.

Scorpio: This week will see you accidentally wandering into London’s first Nude Gregg’s. The shop is largely as you’d imagine - staffed by a mixture of rotund, jovial folks with less than a full deck of GCSEs and horrifyingly gorgeous Polish supermodels working to send money home. The only difference here is that to get served, you have to be entirely nude. All in all, the experience is not unpleasant, but you feel they could consider handing out bibs for the gents - getting crumbs in your chest-hair is no laughing matter.

Sagittarius: A hum-drum sequence of days has left you listless and dulled by life’s tedium. You must re-invigorate yourself! The stars present you with four options: 1) Learn the sitar. 2) Electronic nipple-torture. 3) Move to Kent. 4) Wolf buggery. There are no further options. CHOOSE NOW.

Capricorn: It is a well known fact that when you give love and respect to a Capricorn, they return it in kind. What is less well known is that if you give turnips and Chinese burns to a Capricorn, they wait until you’re out of town for the weekend, then brutally pleasure your grandma.

Aquarius: It’s likely that imminently, you’ll be looking for the services of a priest, owing to the somewhat truculent demons recently discovered in your underwear. This is what you get for cracking one off while consulting the ouija board. While sexting with the deceased may seem like a no-risk way to get some undead kinky jollies, you’re going to be forced to handle the consequences, now that your balls are haunted.

Pisces: Lately, it has been exceedingly tempting to take up the offer of the pixie king and fly away in his magic carriage to the land of Cheam to dine upon marzipan, drink surprising wines and watch the goblins play in the forest. He sends his minions to your bedside at night to sing gentle songs of promise and seduction, leaving you to awaken with the name ‘Cheam’ on your lips each day. Perhaps, one day, you will finally accept this offer, never to be seen again. Mmmm. Cheam.

---

Elucidated, titillated and spiritually sated? Fine and good!
Then get out there, my beauties! Time to grab life by the suspenders and give them a twang!

dublin comics & illustration evenings
jabberworks
It's an exciting time for comics! Laydeez Do Comics, which started out as two women in London thinking it would be nice to gather a few other people and talk about comics, has grown now to meetings in eight cities! You can go along to events in London, Leeds, Glasgow, Bristol, Brighton, Chicago, San Francisco... and now Dublin!! Here's the team taking part in the very first meeting: organiser Lynda Rucker, comics artist speaker Maeve Clancy and organiser Maura McHugh. We had pre-drinks at the Central Hotel, which is where I stayed for Irish 24-Hour Comics Day several years ago.



In London, we always have one designated person to make sketches from the evening, and in Dubin this time, it was Róisín Curé . You can see more of her drawings from the evening here! The idea of Laydeez is to focus on comics made by women, but also have a female-friendly space to talk about comics made by both men and women. So men are very welcome, too! Speaker Alan Nolan did a great job of being an honourary lady that evening.



You can see that I spouted lots of deep and meaningful feminist diatribe, ha ha. I only realised it when Maura pointed it out, but I was the first speaker at the inaugural London Laydeez Do Comics meeting, so I've helped open two branches of it. I'm rather proud of this! :)



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Handmade Festival - Friday
girlycomic
Been a bit down recently due to health and DIY woes, so decided that this weekend would be all about enjoying Leicester's first Handmade Festival.

Last night we went to see comedians James Acaster and Rob Deering at Firebug.

James Acaster being the first act on in a new festival was greeted with a room that reminded me of a lecture theatre of reluctant students - a spattering of audience across the seats and a gaggle of people at the back avoiding eye contact.

He did a good job of trying to get some interaction and energy going - especially once he'd jumped off the stage and did most of the gig looming over the seat in front of me. Due to the low turnout Jay and I ended-up being at the front despite sitting on the third row. Questioning by Acaster meant I ended-up talking about being a librarian. Then Jay and I admitted to meeting through Doctor Who internet fandom and making fan videos!

He didn't pursue the DW angle much as he admitted that he didn't know much abut DW - he did find out I'd gone from being the girlfriend of the Doctor to the girlfriend of a cyberman, which he pointed out seemed to be very much the wrong way around and which got a good reaction from the audience. As he did a lot of talking to the audience, so I suspect we didn't get to hear much of his prepared material other than that on mariachi bands and Three Men & a Baby. I'd certainly be interested to see him in a gig setting more suited to his laid back style.

Rob Deering was lots of fun with his musical comedy, looping, amazing range of facial expressions and high energy - due to a large strand of the festival being music he got a pretty good reaction from the audience.

Then we wandered around to the People's Photographic Gallery (the ex-Central Lending Library) and it was really nice to see this interesting old building being used as a venue. You can see some great photos from that venue and the Friday on Scott Choucino's blog.

As I can't stand at gigs I was pleased to find some seats in an alcove, which meant I could enjoy immersing myself in the music without being overwhelmed by the volume or lights. Here we saw a great set from post-rock instrumental band Maybeshewill, who we've not seen before. Their tracks which sampled spoken word reminded me of a more hardcore version of Public Service Broadcasting. We'll certainly be seeking out more of their music.



Off to see lots more bands later - it will be a mellow start with Weikie at Bishop Street Methodist Church.

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  • Fri, 20:58: RT @Nunferno: Langdon gasped. If he'd deciphered the symbols correctly, Jesus had married Joan of Arc at Stonehenge! If not, it was a recip…
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Flickr-ing
iamangelachase
According to my Flickr records, I've had my account there for over seven years. I didn't realize it had been that long, since that stat isn't very obvious on the pages I go to there. Or, at least, it wasn't, but Flickr has just upgraded itself, and in sort of a LiveJournal-y way, meaning by doing something it probably shouldn't have.

I'm not that familiar with some of the more popular sites, like Facebook and Instagram, but I imagine some of Flickr's changes were inspired by them. Gone is the simple, streamlined page I've been used to for years, the one where you see roughly 20 pictures at a time, along with their captions (very important for some of my pictures), plus a row of sets along the side. Now, it's like you're looking at the results from a Google image search. It's just pictures, no captions, no way to tell if the picture I'm looking at is locked down or public--important to me, since I do lock down pictures of my family members, for instance.

I'd also gotten an email the other day to let me know that everyone now gets a terabyte of storage! Hooray! But this comes at a price, namely that they're now ad-supported. But if you don't want to see ads you can pay to not see them. This is different from before, where you paid for actual services, like getting more storage space (which now is an obsolete feature) and some other things that I found useful and did, in fact, pay for. Supposedly I can continue paying at whatever rate I was paying previously, and at least that way I won't see ads, but otherwise it's not like I'll be gaining actual features like before. Oh, I think the main reason I went pro (what they called paid accounts) was because with the standard free account, only your most recent 200 pictures were available for viewing or something. I take more than that just at camp. I'd like to be able to see all my pictures, thanks.

The one thing I like about the new Flickr is that I can set my own banner picture, which I've done, but that's pretty much it. They're already bugging me to change my profile picture, complaining it's too small. Well, guess what; it's the size you initially set it at, and it's based off a picture that, lo and behold, is on your server, so why you can't just access it again and resize it yourself is beyond me. (Okay, it's not, but it still pisses me off a bit since, well, it's not my fault you couldn't have sized it bigger to begin with, and now you're mad at me for something I personally didn't change?)

I'm certainly not the only person complaining; I went to the site's Help section because, for one, a number of the buttons aren't labeled and I have no idea what the heck they do, and clicking on them frankly did nothing but stall the page from loading. I fear that maybe they've gone to infinite scroll, which is about my least favorite thing, and considering I have over 7,000 pictures seems like an incredibly stupid thing to have on a page like mine. At least the sets all load on one page now, and the icons are bigger; okay, I do sort of like that. But there wasn't anything wrong with the way the page initially was set up, and I imagine they could easily have allowed the pictures to become bigger without completely changing the page; all they'd have had to do was lose some white space, really.

I have a number of feelings on the subject, but it's close to my bedtime and I fear I'll just start to ramble if I say any more. So, long story short, I give the Flickr redo two thumbs down. There's not enough good to outweigh the bad.
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The Poet to her young comrades 3
rozk
These are the worst of times that I have known.
I'd like to say they'll pass, yet fear to lie.
It's probable that some of you will die
before all this is done. Will die alone

in exile or in prison, slowly starve
die from diseases we know how to cure
be left to die from them because too poor.
Worse yet, know while you live your every breath

is stolen from those poorer. Make them count
each angry moment, live write fuck and dance.
You cannot choose your time. So take each chance
to live. Remember me. Give good account

of who I was. And make the bastards pay
who kill our world, our lives, our brief lost day.