...i'm flipping through channels and i get to the block of five news channels in a row.  each one of them  is giving post election coverage.  in case you weren't paying attention, and to be honest i wasn't really myself, there where two governorships up for grabs this time.  new jersey and Virginia both HAD democrat governors and lost to republicans on Tuesday. 

so there where political strategists from the democrats and republicans on talking about what went wrong and what went right.  basically it broke down like this the democrats claimed they lost because they didn't have strong candidates and the republicans all remarked that they themselves might need stronger candidates in the mid term elections in order to shore up the base.  both parties felt that they will need stronger candidates in order to have success next November.

HOLY SHIT!  ARE YOU ALL SITTING DOWN?!  the morons have figured out for the first time, in the two decades that i;ve been paying attention to politics, that their candidates aren't any good.  holy fuckin shit...what a revelation!  you don't think your candidates are strong enough?  what would ever give you that idea?  the constant polling data that says were don't give a rats ass about your candidates or the fact that 50% of this country doesn't even bother to vote?   holy mother of...they finally figured out that they need better candidates.

how did these fucking morons ever get to power in the first place?  i hate to keep coming back to health care but the sheer notion that these assholes should be in charge of ANYTHING ELSE MAKES ME WANT TO SET MYSELF ON FIRE.  just yesterday...nov 4th 2009 both parties figured out that if they had better candidates they'd get more votes...GOOD LORD?!  THAT IS FUCKING TERRIFYING!

What are electrolights?  electrolights are what plants crave...why do they crave it?  because it has electrolights...

what the flying fuck is going on in there back room meetings FOR THE LOVE OF FUCK?!

i am i swearing enough to convene my shock/terror/rage/befuddlement? no? what the fuck are they fucking doing all day if they just now nov.4th 2009 figured out that better candidates get more votes?  SOMEONE ANSWER ME!!  these people are in charge of two wars? in charge of our schools?  in charge of the FCC? someone get me a syringe and some heroin because i can't deal with this straight anymore...WHAT THE FLYING HOLY FUCK IS GOING ON?!

"we're gonna need a better candidate"....??? that's all you got?  that's the level you're at?  how the fuck did you manage to work the door knob to get out of your house and into the newsroom?  no wonder we're still fighting in Afghanistan...they haven't figure out that if we fire more bullets we'll kill more bad guys. 

....GAAAHHHH!!!!!!!?????

SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS A BAD DREAM.  better candidates?  just now they figured this out?!

i'm working my way into a cold sweat just thinking about the fact that the two ruling parties are just now analyzing things at the level of a second grader.  maybe a first grader...and what age do you start picking kickball teams by who is better?  you know when in gym class the fat kid or the slow kid gets picked last...NOT IN OUR TWO POLITICAL PARTIES...THEY, UP UNTIL YESTERDAY, COULDN'T FIGURE OUT THAT IF YOU HAVE BETTER PLAYERS YOU'LL WIN MORE KICK BALL GAMES.

i...i gotta move outta this country. communism i could put up with but this shear stu...this isn't even stupididty...i don't know what to call it.  this like stupid have a love child with blind and it got hit on the head with a lead pipe.  

i'm fucking beside myself right now with disillusion, and that's saying alot for someone as cynical as me. i mean i don't expect much from either party but i at least thought they new that the better candidate wins. i..it just..who fuck...wh...i'd like to just turn into a preying mantis...cause i can't even process this and the stimulous/response lobe of my brain just wants to have really violent sex and then die.

So, a friend of mine is going through a divorce.  actually a couple of them are...and given the world we live in alot of you are.  as a divorce veteran i'm gonna give you my best advice, mixed in with advice i got that helped me.

1-you are going to be miserable, angry, full of regret and blame down to your bones for around 3-6 months. accept this as fact. 

2-you are going to be a total pain in the ass and have your head up your ass for 3-6 months accept this as fact. numerous times you will THINK you are over the hump and have it all straightened out.  this is a clear way of knowing you have your head up your ass.  only when you realize you don't actually know where it went wrong and never will and are tired of caring are you over the hump.

3-you friends are not going to help you.  accept this as fact.  unless they have gone through a divorce they do not know what you are going through and their reactions and aid will range from changing the subject, non-helpful blaming of the other party, or assuming that you are over it/ it's not as bad emotionally as it actually is.  this does not make them bad people (most of them)...they are simply not equipped to help you very much.

4-don't hang around with fellow losers and have a pity party.  if you know someone who's been divorced who now has their shit together GREAT spend time with that person vent, bitch, lament.  but do not surround yourself with fellow miserable screw ups and dry each others tears.  you need to move forward as quickly as possible. surround yourself with people who have their act together not degenerates who just want to get laid do drugs get drunk and feel sorry for themselves.  plenty of time for that AFTER you are over the hump.

5-you need progress.  you need little victories.  accomplish small goals.  work out.  complete projects...hell, clean out the garage, just accomplish things so that you have something to show for yourself at the end of each day.  this will do wonders for your bruised self esteem.

6-Make a schedule, keep to it.  you do not want to be looking forward to endless days with nothing to do, and no reason to get up in the morning.  you are emotionally a drift.  you need to combat this by having as much literal stability in your life as possible.  again...plenty of time to lay around and play playstation for 7 hours AFTER it's all over.

7-if there is a way to fix it DO IT, try it and do so immediately.  you do not want to spend the later part of the 3-6 months wondering "what if i tried blah blah blah once more."  fire all of your guns and be done with it.

8-DO NOT for one second think that any dating you do is going to lead to anything.  you are a wreck right now and your life and emotional state scream "i am a wreck"  anyone who would date you right now is either just using you, or is also a wreck (include wildly immature to the "wreck" definition), or is fooling themselves and going to lead you both into a shitstorm.  

9-i don't know what "9" is...i'm not fuckin plato. for all i know "9" might be a addendum to one of the previous "8" things i just listed

1o.don't have kids.  this doesn't really have anything to do with divorce it's just sound advice.  stop having kids. they're loud, they're obnoxious, they're dirty and they spread more germs than rats. if you do have kids and can't control them kill don't move into a duplex and drive the guy upstairs crazy with your choas noise and ridiculous lifestyle.

11.if they guy has to keep coming down stairs and screaming at you to keep it down don't look all surprised when he laughs at you when you tell him your kid broke his leg.

12. don't leave your kids home alone to go get drunk because when your gone the guy upstairs shuts off all there power from the breaker box and makes scary noises into the heater vents until they are crying.

13. don't complain when the guy runs the lawn mower right over all the toys your horrible kids left in the yard "brrzzzarrppp!!!! man...THAT felt good.

14 don't have kids and then let THEM decide when they go to bed because a 3 year old and an 8 year old will NEVER go to bed they'll just keep running around yeowling like the sub-humans that they are until the guy upstairs brings his 5hp air compressor into the house and runs it full boar a 4am for twenty minutes as payback.

15. don't be surprised when child protective services shows up with a bunch pictures of you little baboons running around in the alley unsupervised because i've finally had it and while i don't condone the state taking peoples kids  sleep deprivation does take it's toll on your ideology.

well there you go i hope that helped.

Now for the past couple of months we have been putting things up on Ebay for literally a song.  full pages going for under 100.00 one of a kind prototype statues going for under 100.oo. alot of you are looking and not buying.  which is no skin off my nose.  by the time i decide something needs to go up on ebay it's because i'm sick of looking at it and just want it gone. 

But here's the thing that drives me nuts. at oh....every single show for the past 8 years several people will come up and ask if i have a page from this issue or a page from that issue and pretty often they will specifically ask for the page of Voodoo Joe eating the mermaid...now 9 times out of ten this will be someone who never checks the ebay auction and never e-mails me asking what i have.  they just for some reason assume that they are the first person to decide they want that page or that i stock pile the stuff.  I'll admit i might be on the outside looking in here and alot of illustrators keep the stuff around and release it little by little.  but...not me.  Arsenic Lullaby is self funding and that includes paying me enough to stay in the low liviant life style i've become accustomed to.  I look at every book like an indian looked at a dead water buffalo- every last bone and piece of skin gets used for something.  artwork, film, preliminary sketches, all go out the door to the highest bidder or whoever shows up with cash first.

Here is my point...from now til Christmas time we'll be putting up whatever i have left lying around, and even though i'll have posts and mass e-mails and banners running across the main page...alot of it will get picked up by some shrewd bidder for less than it would if i had more patience and waited til spring...early bird gets the worm is what i'm saying here.  if you see something you like or think you like...you might as well bid on it because it sure as hell ain't going to be around three months from now when you see us put something up on u-tube and decide you want yourself a piece of Arsenic Lullaby the COMIC BOOK memorabilia.

the other thing that perplexes me is how stoked you all are about this cartoon.  i've been bending over backwards here to lower expectations.  let me reiterate...we don't know jack squat about animation...it has no home yet.  we are going to do this in house and pitch it to various cable networks and distributors, if they are not interested but we think it's good we'll sell it ourselfs the way we sell the comic-through the 1200 comic book stores that carry us, record stores head shops, straight to video distributors and at cons..  and i can sense already this is another wasted paragraph, and i understand that it's my fault you aren't listening to me about how this could be a big fat flop...because i tell you everything we do might be a big fat flop and it all up til now has turned out pretty good.  but just take it easy out there.  and if you're really that excited go on ebay and buy something because guess who's funding this cartoon.  yeah -me out of my own pocket...so every little bit helps knowwhatimean?

and no i don't have any celebrity voices.  why would i blow the budget on a celebrity that isn't going to listen to what i want when i have a pool of talented people that i know personally?  why would i reward hollywood with cash for sucking? the whole reason i'm doing this first pilot myself is because they all suck and can't beat my team.  "why join 'em if you can beat 'em" as cypris hill would say.

onto more confusion about the sketchbooks up on ebay.

uhm...you can't see much on the u-tube videos because i use a non -photo pencil when i sketch...every page has SOMETHING on it either dialogue or sketchs or scribbles...some pages are better than others, but just because you don't see black inked stuff on a page as it is being flipped through doesn't mean it's blank.

as far as value questions...i don't know what it's worth...that's why we put a low starting price on it.  it all depends on you.  If you put a gun to my own cheap head and i saw a similar sketchbook by David Bosewell (illustrator of Reid Flemming Worlds toughest Milkman) i'm be willing to drop up to 100.00.  i'd think that was fair.  but i'm a huge fan of his work so that might be too high...on the other hand i'm a cheapskate and don't spend more than 100.00 on anything that isn't a tool or a part for my el camino so 100.00 might be low.

hell if i know, look they are sketchbooks that i used daily to work out ideas, characters, and page layouts and they are up for grabs.  at this point i think there is only one bidder on them and i've had 2 dozen people ask me about them.  so i'm not answering any more questions...if you're that curious buy one and look for yourself.

www.ebay.com keyword arsenic lullaby 

and to give you a slightly better look at the skecthbooks here is a u-tube video of each

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpFKsiFG8p8

and here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrFe6s-e00

and here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6gA4P6vv3Q

(for someone specific and the rest of you too)

In the end being happy is pretty simple...i know how that sounds coming from me, what i mean to say is that it's not complicated. The most important thing in your life is the people you surround yourself with. That's all that really matters, whether or not you surround yourself with quality people and cast off the assholes.

once you determine someone is no good you need to send them packing. it is not your job to fix people, or be mother Teresa and take their abuse in hopes that they change on their own.  now...there are certain cases where someone has earned the right to a couple of bad days, or is going through a rough patch or you know in the end they are decent and so you cut them some slack...while telling them to stop being an asshole or they can go be fucked.  i'm not saying to turn your back on someone who has earned your friendship.  i'm talking about right from jumpstreet, is this person quality or not.

because 90% of the bullshit problems in life can all be avoided by spending as little time with assholes as possible.  now there is the percentage of assholes that you can't do much to avoid because you work with them, BUT all the rest you can just walk away from.  this includes family.  being blood does not mean your life has to be filled with someone else's drama/problems that they richly deserve and often seek out.  that's what assholes do ( include loser in the asshole category in this specific blog) they create their own problems, the let small problems become big problems with laziness, and magically their problems end up being your problems.

if you stay away from assholes you not only avoid all the problems that stem from their assholeness BUT that also means you, be simple process of elimination are surrounded by decent people who will help you with the remaining 10% of life's bullshit problems.  and i don't just mean that for each asshole you eliminate there is an open spot for a decent person- thing to remember good people avoid assholes...SO if you have assholes in your life, even if you are NOT an asshole, you will likely be avoided by good people because of the assholes you are constantly around. 

you want good people around you.

this applies to friends family AND dating.  you really have to judge people by their character.  you really need to ignore all the nervousness and not being cool or confident the first couple of times you go out with someone.  Really,  you are doing yourself an injustice by not giving the person a little time to get comfortable and stop being nervous and get a little balance so that his actual personality can come out.  everybody gets nervous and no body (for the most part) is really acting like themselves the first couple of interactions...hey even i get insecure once in awhile, it just never shows because i'm really comfortable in my own skin and so i don't care if look like i'm nervous...so then i don't look nervous even though i'm nervous because i don't care that i'm nervous.  it's a rare  ability to generate insane circular logic that i have. what you just need to focus on what is important-is he/she a good person, is he/she kind, is he/she treating me nicely. 


seriously...start with that! THEN once you have that , if you can look around and top it then great.  but the world is littered with good decent lonely people, and also ironically littered with people who are dating or married and getting treated like shit.  it sounds like i'm talking apple pie in the sky here but it's true. really just focus on being a good person and surrounding yourself with good people. 

now some of you will say "that's pretty good coming from you, you never date anyone ugly nor will you let anyone unattractive work at your shows." FIRST OFF...I've never said i wouldn't date someone ugly...i just haven't needed to. I've been able to find plenty of quality women who are also hot.  and look i'm a world class illustrator i need to have arm candy for the sake of my image...it's the cross i have to bear.  you understand that don't you?  why...if i where to be walking around at a convention with an ugly person, people would assume i didn't look hard enough to find a good looking person who was quality. see i am a world traveler, pretty and talented so i drink from a different pool, i hate to break it to you. The one perk of sacrificing for your dreams for a decade is that you are closer to the top of the dating food chain.  for whatever reason being an "artist" trumps pretty much anything else at least until the shine wears off the apple...so me with an ugly or even average person on my arm would be a sign of lack of ambition and laziness and decent people don't want to be around lazy people and so by not having a hot shallow woman with me i would be unable to attack decent people so that i no longer have to be surrounded by hot shallow people...you see the second i replace that shallow person who is hot with a decent person who is not hot i will lose the ability to fill my life with decent people...you follow me?  . look...just stop asking questions and listen. 

 

bottom line to life is this 1-don't be an asshole  2-don't be around assholes.  simple yes? 

looks...are superficial, don't judge people by that or by them seeming nervous or unconfident that is all just superficial things that are not even an issue after a little while. i wish i could say it in some other way that didn't sound contrite or like a fairy tale but i can't.  please just trust me that what is inside a person is what counts...now next time when i say you need to "take one for the team"..."YOU BETTER TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM"...got it?!  no whining no "but she's but shes's"...none of that, the hot one chose me...and that's all there is too it. now stop being so superficial and keep the ugly girl occupied.

The problem with being a ...reactionary type person with a public forum at your disposal is that from time to time you can get a little carried away.

 there is an art to apologizing where if you (her) do it correctly the person (me) you are apologizing to feels like a complete knob.  and while i wasn't too far off base on my criticism...i probably could have...oh...toned it down a bit. seeing as how this person is going through a traumatic time and is much like a drowning person simply clawing for something stable to keep herself afloat.  in my defense...if she was a he...all of my rhetoric would have been completely acceptable. 

 

anyhow the point is- learning to apologize is very important.  many many big problems can be headed off, minds can be changed and doors can be opened if you just admit you screwed up, and do it early.  I'm good at it and once you do it a few times it becomes easy...hell nowadays i can say "i,m sorry" even when i don't mean it in the least bit. so hey..."i'm sorry" about the mean blog yesterday. 

 

really though, it might have been a jag move...i gotta think it over.  i mean the blog must go on...that's what was on my mind and it made for an entertain few paragraphs even if i came across like a jerk.  which brings me to my constant delema.  if i put up a blog in a fever pitch of being pissed and later think it makes me look like as ass or was off base on some things, do i go back and take it down?  my policy is "no" because that's pretty disingenuous, people come here to read what i think and out of morbid curiosity as to what makes the guy who writes Arsenic Lullaby tick. so if i were to keep fine tuning everything just to make myself seem cool and mature...there wouldn't be much reason for anyone to read it.

truth be told as much as the whole incident with her annoyed me it also made me pretty sad.  We are cut from the same clothe her and i and i figured that by not hearing from her all this time that it meant her life was going just fine and didn't need me around...which would be just fine and i'd be happy for her, AND it would mean that there is hope for me too. so you mix that emotion with the irritation at the all the annoying things i already mentioned and you get what i wrote. i'll just leave it up maybe in two more days i'll think i wasn't harsh enough.  i will say this for sure...i was wrong to say i didn't care cause i do.  

i'll just move on and try to keep myself out of trouble by answering some questions about the E-Bay stuff. (keyword Arsenic Lullaby)

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the sketchbooks...and don't feel stupid here or think any question is a stupid question because, i don't think we explained it very well and even the video wasn't too clear. 

let me try again -  i draw / sketch with non-photo blue or red pencil lead.  this lead is designed to not show up when you photocopy or scan something in in black and white...so that is why you are having trouble seeing anything on the sketchbook pages.  the best way i can describe what is in them is like so- there is random scribbled dialogue, random scribbled figures, layouts and preliminary thumbnails for certin pages...some pages where i was modifying what characters should look like and some pages where is was just screwing around.  uhm...i dunno.  looking at it like if they where similarly filled with things from someone i'm a fan of who is on a similar level with Arsenic Lullaby like a David Bosewell (although...have i passed him up?  at this point?  i think probably by default i have) i would defiantly do what i could to win one.  

I honesly don't remember what's in all of them but the most recent one is mostly full of stuff from the final issue. 

as for the other stuff. the ornaments are hand PAINTED this year.  i might make more i might not.  the hoodies turned out very good, i even wear one. the shirts you've see before and i think that's it.  the back issues that you see for sale have nothing to do with us. 

Even though i am mean...i'm not as mean as i could be 

Here's my problem...this blog is/has always been about whatever is occupying my mind at any given day.  the thing occupying my mind today,like a pebble in my shoe ,i don't think i can talk about because it's personal

"that never stopped you before, we've had to sit through all sorts of uncomfortable personal crap from you"

yeah i know but it's not that it's so personal i'm afraid to vent about it to you all...but it's a long story that i don't know i could make interesting.

I'll try to give you the tail end, bits and peices for the sake of getting it off my chest.

so some broad i haven't heard from in two years contacts me out of the blue and tells me her marriage is falling apart.  now...right off the bat, that's not exactly fair to me is it?  ONE, i don't really care.  i mean...i care in the sense that i don't like to see that happen to people, but on a personal level...what's it to me?  haven't heard from you in two years and for a good reason.  you're a child in a woman's body.

second...obviously i'm supposed to comment on her impending divorce because that's really all she had to say in the e-mail.  now anyone who knows me knows that i am a straight shooter.  i tell you what i think not what you want to hear.  That trait has made alot of people very cross with me...but they all come back eventually because finding someone who will give you the tough answers tough answers is not easy...most people will just take the path of least resistance and say "no that dress doesn't make you look fat, no i don't think you're a alcoholic, no it's okay that you aborted your baby"  were as i'll say "you are an alcoholic whale, and drinking your fetus to death in the third trimester is not actually...in any medical sense of the word ...an "abortion" so yeah, you're probably going to pay for that in the next life".  most people won't tell you those things...so in the end being someone who is willing to be honest at the risk of hurting feelings will make people mad at you and not talk to you for awhile but eventually they grown up and realize the service you did for them. that you put put telling them something that could help them above the friendship itself...and usually they forget i was laughing while telling them.  "ha dud your are going to HELL for that shit! you larde ass baby killing alcohalic! bwah haaaa ha"

back to the lady i question...we'll just call her...uhm penny. so it's clear i am supposed to comment on penny's marriage crumbling because...that was the only thing she mentioned the the breif out of the blue e-mail.  now...in my defense the TRUTH would have went something like this "wow...let me pick myself up off the floor...because...i'm so shocked that you managed to screw this up...that i fell over.  of course your marriage is crumbling you're a self absorbed ego maniac spoiled brat who treats people like we are all just character actors in the movie that is your life (this is a tendency many women have...stop me if i'm wrong) whoaw! holy shit your ruined your marriage? YOU!? how will the world go on spinning?!!".  but i didn't say that...it would have been...unhelpful.  i said something about -it's never over til it's over, these things get reconciled all the time, i not so subtly suggested she should be working on rectifying her marriage instead of e-mailing me...and some other stuff i forget what.  you get the idea. all things i felt where true and helpful as someone who has been through what she is going through.  AND knowing a little bit about her i subtly suggested that she might have a tendency to want to let this end because she's more comfortable with chaos than with stability.

it went back and for for a couple of e-mails until she realized she wasn't going to hear me go "it'll all be fine, life goes on, everything happens for a reason, just let it end and there will be a big brand new horizon for you"  none of which is true.  and then she let loose on me with five rambling e-mails (one after the other without waiting for a response in between...yikes!) about how she's gonna be just fine, she's grown alot in the last year and i'm a dick.  capped off by "i don't want to talk about my marriage ending"

...now if you are scracthing your head and thinking "then why did you bring it up" or screaming "niether did i!"  then you and i are on the same page.

let me point something out here.  there is a HUGE difference between "realization" and "growth". many of us get these two confused.  they are different things. see you can "realize" that you have a character defect...but that is not growth...CHANGING the defect is growth.  like...i realize that i have a tendency to push people away and be to hard on people.  but until i change  that is not "growing as a person" it is mearly a "realization" of something you need to work on.

So in five e-mails this woman has proved she is every bit the spoiled brat she ever was.  actually from the first e-mail on.  to contact someone out of the blue...who by the way you haven't spoken to because you had a hissy fit cause you couldn't handle the truth two years ago...and dump some problem on him shows a bit of narcissism i think.  and by the way...it also shows that everyone else in your life is tired of hearing your shit...actually that might not be true.  when you get a divorce most of the people around you steer away from that subject as best they can...it's awkward and they are afraid to say something that might come back to haunt them or get taken the wrong way.  which is why jerks like me are so valuable in tough situations like this and why i have so many close friends despite being a pain in the ass.

now...here is MY character defect on display...this blog. see, i wrote back (this is all happening on myspace) saying basically "i'm not the one who brought it up, haven't heard from you in two years and that wasn't long enough". actually a case could be made that my first character defect was on display when i engaged this numbskull instead of just placating her and moving on. but my SECOND is when i didn't get a response and checked my sent mail.  in myspace it tells you  if the person read it.  she didn't...THAT burns my ass.  now i didn't give a rats ass about her or the situation UNTIL...she ignored my last e-mail.   like, something knaws at me that she just has to hear that i don't give a shit and don't want to hear from her.  and i truely don't  and yet i simply must know that she knows that.

what's up with that?  i'm really tempted to re-send it under the heading "i'm sorry" just to trick her into opening it. that's fucked up right?

anyway onto to business...go to e-bay we have hoodies, t-shirts, ornaments, three of my old sketchbooks and ...i forget what else.  now the sketchbooks are pretty good items you can see them being flipped through here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpFKsiFG8p8

and here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mrFe6s-e00

and here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6gA4P6vv3Q

the clothes are all "buy it now". we have one of each size listed...so like as soon as one "medium" sells another "medium goes up for auction.  i don't remember how much of this stuff i sent to be listed so get them while they are hot.