So... in an effort to save some time I did this at work. I didn't have my normal mechanical pencil, I had a softer lead cheapo one... So I made some of the lines darker so they'd scan better and didn't bother to ink it. I think I like it. I may do more like this.
The next set of strips may be random update wise. I'm hoping to get back on schedule soon.
Oh and yes, this is another true story.
He really was pissing in my yard. :)

I sat down to draw every night this week.
I brought my laid out paper and materials to work every day.
I had ideas about things to draw and some of them were even good.
But with the paper in front of me, I couldn't settle my mind on any one topic.
I think this week, with everything going on in the universe, galaxy, solar system, world, country, state, county, town, office, home, psyche... etc I've developed too many minds.
I'm hoping at some point this weekend I can get in some much needed quiet mind time and get back to having just one mind for next week.
Sorry for the false start.
Have a good weekend.

Yes, I will talk about the box... It's just an odd musing related to good ol Shaver family legacies... It may or may not be amusing. But we'll see. :)

So the important stuff... Heroes last night. I have to say I could have skipped the preshow countdown. I was hoping it'd be more of a recap than what it was.
But based on the two episodes they aired last night... I'm interested enough to see where it goes. I will admit that my interest waned this last short season, and despite my appearant raving fanboy tendancies, I don't visit the site and read the comics or veiw the shorts or any of that expanded universe stuff. I just don't have the time.
So while I don't have any sort of predictions as to what will happen this season yet... I'm glad to see more villians, and I'm glad to see that they're at least aknowledging the inherent problems with time travel.
and... I find it interesting that no matter what the scenario, something happens to Peter in the future that makes him into that bitter "grown up" version of himself, and also gives him that scar on his face. we all thought it was the bomb in the first season, or something in that timeline, but then it didn't happen, so it would seem that he's destined to get that scar from somewhere regardless of what happens to the world.
I'm not sure how I feel about Claire being "the one", but it ties in with the save the cheerleader bit... And Nikki/Jessica/Whoever... that whole thing got me wondering if they were clones, part of some secret government/agency program to develop super humans... or if there's some other relationship there.
Oh yeah, and Linderman is back from the dead? Or is he? It seemed that when Tracy (nicky, jessica, whoever) was leaving the room she didn't acklowledge him at all... no polite nod or any sort of tell that she actually saw him. His power was that he could give life, and it's obvious he's playing a part still... but can other people see him?
I'd also say that the amount of "revealations" they dropped on us last night makes me hope that there's more in store for later on in the season. that is to say I hope the writers didn't blow their load on the season opener.

sorry...did I just nerd out for a minute there?

Anyway. I'll keep you all posted (whether you liked it or not) on my Heroes thoughts in my reconstituted Monday night Heroes blog.

Have a good night!

Copyright problem fixed temporarily... Thanks Jax for pointing that out.
Um... other than that the comic pretty much says it all for me right about now.
Have a good night everyone!
:)

Not much to tell about this... however if I'm allowed to be introspective for a sec... this is really about my personal philosophy of keeping a historical perspective on things. Both foward looking as well as back... or maybe I'm just making that shit up because I have nothing else to say... you be the judge as they say... somewhere.

:)

so new comic today and one more for monday (maybe, I inked it but I'm not sure I like it yet) hopefully I will continue to assualt your senses with poorly written scripts and mediocre artwork on a more regular basis again. :)
but for now it's off to make some brekky and mow the small hay field I call a front lawn.
Have a good Friday everyone!

I've started drawing again and I should have some new comics up by the end of the month. Thanks to everyone still reading this crap for your patients!
the IT department at my office decided that Myspace wasn't work relevant enough to keep off the firewall filter list. I don't blame them, it's sort of their job to do that sort of thing. But it's curtailed my 'spacing time. Add to that my dying cable modem and you have a recipe for me never being able to get here!

So the highlights of the summer for me were seeing quite a few old friends, showing my hometown to Lisa (sorry to my hometown peeps for not popping in, it was sort of a spur of the moment tour), loosing 30 pounds, taking Lilly on her first wooden rollercoaster and also her first "vomit" ride, planting potatos, marking off next years garden (vegetables and fruit, unless there's some way that I can grow a beef tree), getting a dog, walking at the dam with the kids and Lisa... you know all that normal fun summer stuff. :)

However there's something I keep hearing people yak about that's bugging me, so I figure I'll just pop my thoughts on it here today and see what you guys and girls think...

Not a day goes by that I don't hear or read something about domestic drilling for oil. I understand the thought process behind it, gas prices are still high and you would think that drilling some more oil from a national park is a great "quick" way to address this.

You would think that. But you'd be wrong.

Without getting too involved or sounding like an asshole, the problem is that it will take about ten years and billions in federal subsidies to large oil companies to get the oil from the ground to the pumps. The mid range estimates have it that it will drop the price of gas (in 2018 or so) by about 25 to 35 cents. And then in forty years after that the supply will have peaked. If we invested that same money and energy into breaking our oil addiction period in ten years we'd could be more than halfway to a infrastructure that is sustainable, renewable and more environmentally friendly.

Every time I hear some yahoo talk about how "we have all the oil we need" and its "the dirty hippies who are holding things up" I cringe.

I could go on about this for a while but I won't. I'm not exactly the picture of green living myself. But I'm trying.

My first comic, when I start posting again, will probably be about this... it's on my mind alot... that the the concept of cognitive dissonance... but that's a totally different topic... sort of.

I sat down tonight to draw.
I couldn't seem to make anything work.
I decided to write instead.
I couldn't get anything out that felt right.
I hate nights like these.
These nights nothing works.
I think everyone has nights like this.
It's nights like this when we think "I'm a hack, who the the fuck do I think I'm kidding?"
Sigh.

I've adopted a standing policy to ride it out, have a coffee, tea, beer, ice cream... whatever, and try again another night.
My question to all my creative friends this late summer's night is this:
"How do you deal with these nights?"

It seems that myspace started giving up on me and not sending me any emails to tell me when people post new blogs... so I've got a massive backlog of blog reading to do!
I've been working on content and whatnot for my new sites most of the summer so far. But I've been trying to squeeze in some drawing and creative stuff here and there.
Of course not all of it was related to the new sites... but some of it was.


this was a sketch I did tonight. I like the way it came out more or less. It may or may not end up on one of the new sites.

This one will most certianly show up...

I did some illustrations with brush and ink that I sort of like. I'm getting a feel for it.

These two I did just for the fun of it. I'm not a racing fan really at all, but I love the look of the old school race cars and gear... so I decided to draw some...



I've also added some new stuff to my store. feel free to check that out.

Anyway. I hope everyone else is having a good time this summer... and if I haven't commented on your blog don't worry, I'll get caught up soon enough. :)

The party went pretty good last night. about half the people I expected to show up actually did, and we drunk dailed a few of them (ok ok, one of them) about a hundred times or so up until around 10.
The highlights of the evening were numerous, and I'm sure they will live on in infamy... but I'll save them for another day.
At some point after I'd been drinking beer steadily all night I decided to finish off a bottle of wine, and start in on the rum... it didn't really affect me until after the last folks had gone home for the night.
I almost wish someone else was there to augment my hazy memories of the last hour before I hit the sack... I was hardly able to walk, but found it of utmost important that I bring in the kitchen table (it had been out on the lawn) so it was a drunken adventure worthy of witnesses. for the record, the table made it in but alot of food was left out... my priorities were somewhat skewed.
One of the highlights however was that I was able to convince interweb superstar and former coworker Curewitz to autograph a photo, check it out!



I'll be auctioning it off on ebay to the highest paying raving tween fangirl after he dies. :)

Anyway, hope everyone had a great weekend.

hi there... um... long time no blog.
I'm still alive!

so a few important things to note. My fourth was good, I spent it playing with the kids, tuning Lilly's new violin (which is a little big for her, but she'll grow into it) following Lilly in a parade (for her marching recorder band) while simultaneously pushing Max in a broken stroller and lugging a case of water in a backpack and then cleaning up dog poo from the living room floor (don't worry, they're hardwood so it cleaned up ok)

I also went to see my mom on sunday. It was nice. She's not around much (she drives a ginormous 18 wheeler all over the freaking country) so it was cool to see her. And I saw my dad for a little while. Which was also nice, we hung out for about 20 minutes and it wasn't bad at all. (I won't bother you with any more of that)
So I know you're all hoping to hear more about these new sites I'm working on. And well... they're not up yet, and the content and designs aren't ready either. but they're looking pretty good I swear!

I'm shooting for two by the end of the summer, maybe three if I can. the first one is obvious, I need a better place to host my comics and stuff. So there will be an official Empty-Theater Studios site. It will be more or less an archive site and I'm hoping to make some tutorials and post them there as well. We'll see. It's mainly so that I can start organizing my creative endeavors (and pimp  my merch) in one place.

The second one is the one I'm most excited about. I said I was reviving the lab, and while it's not got a name just yet it's going to be a coffee site. That is to say a site devoted to coffee. not that the intertubes doesn't have it's share of these already... I'm gearing it primarily to coffee newbs. So it will have alot of basic information and some stuff that other sites geared towards the connoisseur either omit or overlook.

But I'm also hoping to build out a larger history section... (the rest of this may get really nerdy so I won't feel bad if you leave now)

It's not surprising to most of you that I love learning about stuff... I usually call it that... but it's really research without a specific target.

With this project I wanted to look at it as a research project. I knew alot of information ten years ago, and most of it's still there, but I'd be a moron to think that I know everything. So I started doing some focused research (not all for content mind you but that's what I want to talk about here)

My biggest problem with researching things for writing is that I suck at distilling it down to digestable information. And lets face it... the history of coffee is amazing to me! So while I'm reading about smugglers, pirates, wars, affairs, thieves and dancing goats I naturally want to talk about all of it!

I wrote a brief history tonight, and outline really, hitting the high points of the journey from the Ethiopian highlands to South America. And I've resolved myself to the fact that I will need to take each historical figure as a separate topic and at my leisure write a good biographical article for each of them after the site has launched if I want to keep this project on track to launch by the end of the summer.

So there you have it. That's what I've been up to more or less.
Thanks for stopping by!