Spike's Cartoons and Whinging

Atrocity Tourism: The A List.

Attention, shrewish gossips: You've found The Promised Land. Go easy on 'er, though; Geocities sites don't tolerate too much traffic.

Culled from alt.gossip.celebrities and gossiplist.com, "The A List" is a huge, alphabetical listing of hundreds of rumors, some I'm perfectly willing to believe ("Beatty, Warren. Slut supreme; the only woman he hasn't slept with is me."), some that seem more than a little out there ("Cosby, Bill. Rumored to touch children's private parts off the set of his shows."), and some that just make flowers bloom, birds sing, and set the world to rights again ("Chow Yun Fat. The Coolest Man Alive. Penn & Teller. Both friendly, very cool.").

One of the funniest things about this site is that, although the tips are anonymous, you can tell exactly who's writing the author with gossip. An unusual number of subjects are decried as "bad tippers" or "rude to their staff." Others are credited as "unpleasent to the people who drive them." Still more are mocked as "under-endowed." Hollywood starfuckers, chauffers, food service lackeys and bellboys, rise and hold your heads high. Your revenge is at hand.

We Like Melly. Melly is Appalling.

Y'ever meet somebody for the first time after knowing 'em for a while online, and they're pretty much exactly as cool as you always thought they would be, in exactly the same way you always thought they would be? Yeah. That's Melly.

Melly's visiting from Texas, and Melly gave us glasses. MONSTER GLASSES. These are one-of-a-kind, she etched 'em herself. She was passing 'em out like breath mints tonight, and I am so thoroughly impressed by this.

I dunno why she wasn't already on my friends list, but she's there now. Check her out, spread the love.

So, Uh, Yeah. Hi.

Hey, folks. This is Matt, here. Spike's live-in all-purpose creature and husband. On a whim, we have decided that I'll update here sometimes, too. I'll try not to fuck the place up.

Anyway, since I've got nothing else to say right now, here is a picture of a building being demolished.

They're going to build some more goddamned luxury condos there. Of course. But until they've got the old building cleared away, they're providing a great show for me to ogle every weekday as I walk to work. The shattering of the concrete, the clouds of dust, the devastating machinery, the gradual conversion of the building into wartime ruins and sorted stacks of rubble and rebar... It's seriously riveting.

And it's not just me, either. Everyone who walks by the site does so with their head turned to the side, watching intently. Everybody in the surrounding office buildings lucky enough to have a window facing the carnage watches throughout the day, weirdly envious of the guy who gets to drive this shuddering metal behemoth. I wonder if he's aware of the strange pseudo-celebrity status he holds while working on a job like this.

Not that I've ever really noticed his tiny, human face when there's all this AWESOME DESTRUCTION to look at.

Music Appreciation: Scala - I Touch Myself.

Man, it's been a while since I've had an mp3 for you guys. Let's fix that. Here's a women's choir covering The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself."

Scala - I Touch Myself

No lyrics this time. If y'don't already know the words, you probably won't be downloading this anyway.

A little out of step with most of my mp3s, I guess. But it'll have to do until I can dig up that string orchestra's version of "The Immigrant Song." Enjoy.

Resins. Such Resins.

Continuing my tireless crusade to make this blog even more thoroughly uninteresting than previously thought possible: Allow me to present you with wax. And resins.

Beeswax, pine resin, frankincense tears.

Like the oils from the previous rat-mummy post, I ordered the frankincense and pine resin from online. (Plenty of art stores peddle beeswax.) I still need some myrrh pieces, but they were backordered at Camden-Grey.

This crud will be melted into a slurry and used to make Beavis' bandages stick together.

I'm going to have a lot of frankincense left over when I'm done here, so I've decided to use the leftovers as incense. But the incense burners at the stinky hippie shops are so Godawful lame, Sculpey dragons and wizards and skeletons and crap that looks like it belings on a metal album dust jacket. So I'll be getting some clay and making my own.

I'm torn between shaping it like a overturned bus full of disabled children or like a burning rowhouse. Also considering a whale-oil rendering plant surrounded by itty-bitty shards of bone and a crematorium. We'll have to see.

Atrocity Tourism: P-P-P-POWERBOOK!

Man tries to sell Apple G4 Powerbook on eBay.

Man recieves brutally obvious email from scammer, attempting to weasel him out of the Powerbook via a fake escrow site.

Man, instead of ignoring scammer, decides to play a little game.

Scammer pays three-hundred and forty GBP in fees and duties to receive... well, see for yourself.

Download the PDF narration of the deed and brew yourself some tea. It's gonna be a while, but I promise, it's worth every minute.

"WE DON'T SERVE DROIDS HERE."

Remember before, when I said I would nullify the threat of any future blog spam for good by upgrading to Moveable Type 3.0 when it was finally released? Well, it's final. It's released. And it's gone pay. I don't begrudge the programmers monetary reward for their hours of work, I never would. But I need more than the single author provided with the free personal version, and I can't afford even the cheapest pay package. So it's time for plan B.

The comment section now has a CAPTCHA. A CAPTCHA's a program that can generate and grade tests that most humans can pass, and most computer programs can't. You've probably seen CAPTCHAs before. Mine was programmed and released as an MT plug-in by James Seng, and it should kill any spambots that MT-Blacklist might not catch.

Feel free to stress-test the thing for an opportunity to see my shrewish, irritable error message. And don't worry, the CAPTCHA itself's not difficult. Uh, unless you're, uhm, blind. Or using a text-only browser. Sorry.

It's a little absurd I have to install so many lines of defense to keep jarheads from defacing my blog, but eh. You deal with what you deal with.

EDIT: CAPTCHA misbehaves. CAPTCHA gets removed. I'll noodle it out and fix the reported problems later tonight. Thanks for the heads-up, Rich...

DOUBLE EDIT: Well isn't this just the cock and balls of it.

Seng's CAPTCHA and Allen's MT-Blacklist are apparently well-known for refusing to play nice together. That's my problem. Blacklist's intrusive with the exact files that the CAPTCHA needs, and as a result, Seng's program ends up either letting all comments through, or allowing none at all. I'll keep banging away at this, but if the PERL gods haven't figured it out yet, things look pretty grim.

There's some talk of editing Comment.pm, but no one's been good enough to go into detail.

TRIPLE EDIT: HOTCHA! FINALLY WORKING. Not that I had much to do with it, since it was Matt who discovered the broken link in the foundation file. I R dumbtarded. Always remember to double-check your code, kids.

The Unspeakable Horror of Exotic Oils.

With Beavis curing under a few pounds of natron, it's probably time to start getting together everything I'll need for the final steps of the mummification. That includes a few essential oils.

Left to right: A gallon bucket of palm oil, camphor oil, cedar oil, cassia oil, myrrh oil, frankincense oil.

If anyone has any tips about the practical uses of palm oil, let me know. I'll probably have three quarters of a gallon on my hands when this is over with.

I was expecting a battle, but the oils were actually pretty easy to find, thanks to the amount of faith put into aromatherapy these days. They're generally sold by the dram. One dram is 1/8th of an ounce, or 120 drops. I got me lotsa drams.

You can find essential oils for as much as $175.00 a bottle in specialty stores for people with more patchouli than brains, or as little as $1.79 on eBay. Pays to comparison shop. I went with Camden-Grey Essential Oils, a little home business I Googled up online. No complaints, except for that whole we-only-sell-palm-oil-by-the-gallon thing.

This stuff will be used to anoint Beavis's skin, fur, body cavity, and bandages, although a surprisng number of hippie quacks think I should be huffing it like kerosene and model glue for its nebulous, staggeringly unlikely health benefits. I'll admit that the stuff's antiseptic, fungicidal and insecticidal; mummies got the dunk for a reason. But I'll wait for the FDA to rule before I consider frankincense a "uterine tonic."

From the people that brought you colloidal silver and homeopathic dilution: VAGINAL OIL SNUFFLING.

"How can I tell if my uterus can smell it from here, Guru Sunflower? Maybe I need a speculum... do they come in hemp?"

Nifty Review of Sparkneedle at Comixpedia!

Thanks for letting me know, Joey. There's no telling how long it woulda taken me to catch on without the heads-up.

Hooray for everything!

Anyway, Sparkneedle garnered a pretty positive review from Smuga, who I agree with on a lot of points. There are a couple of things we don't see eye-to-eye on as far as the story goes, but when it comes to Sparkneedle, I've never liked dissuading people of their own interpretations. The things's not exactly the comic equivalent of a Rorschach test, but it's probably the closest to that I'll ever get.

Anyway, read up. Fun for the whole family, except for maybe grandma, who might take exception to all those celestial genitals. Dirty wrong bad.

Sorry for my neglect of the site, lately. Busy times. More crap tomorrow.

All Right, You Vultures.

Days ago, I promised you all I'd mummfiy my recently deceased rat, Beavis, to the best of my ability. I also promised you that I'd take pictures while I did it. Ever since then, you've clamored for the photos. POSITIVELY CLAMORED.

Clamor no longer, cuz we're in business. The photographs are up. And they're here. Go nuts.

Remember, THESE ARE PICTURES OF RAT GUTS. THEY'RE DOUBLE LIFE-SIZED AND FULL COLOR. I'M NOT KIDDING. You know yourselves better than I do, so I'm going to expect you to use your own judgement as to whether or not you're ready to watch me carve up a dead rat like a rack of lamb.

Since Beavis has got more than a few weeks to go before he's ready, this is the last of the gore until June. Make it last, cuz from here on out, it's all about lapis lazuli, ushabtis, and other criminally boring crap you've got no real interest in.

Matt, my husband, deserves a lot of credit for helping me out on this one. He even let me chuck a rock at him after he made the initial cut, in accordance with tradition. He caught it, though. Which kind of buggered the ambiance.

But I dig him anyway. <3

I Seem to Have a Pervert.

There is a old, pale, extremely naked man across the street on the eighth floor of the local hotel. His curtains are wide open, and he's sprawled across his rented bed like some sort of horrifying, wrinkled odalisque.

He gets up occasionally and repositions himself to give my apartment building a better view. I'm eighty-three percent sure he's doing it on purpose.

Now accepting suggestions for amusing things to write on a sign and tape to the window.

EDIT: OH LOOK THE FILTHY OLD JACKAL SEEMS TO BE SLAPPING HIS MEAT AND TWO VEG ABOUT.

You want me to see you? Fine. I see you.

We all see you. (NWS)

Roc Party!

Calling all insufferably opinionated rock gods. Upload your favorite mp3s for everyone to listen to, WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT.

Head here and upload your music. (Remember, no spaces, apostrophes, or weird characters in the file name.) Then, plug "rtp://vlad.cs.utexas.edu:8000" into WinAmp and listen in to everyone else's favorites.

Now playing: the theme from the 70s Spiderman show. Previously: Some James Kochalka, Simpsons quotes, and the dicso remix of the Star Wars theme.

It's on .edu bandwidth, so no worries about stream quality. Get to it!

Ah, Springtime.

You know it's finally getting warm in Chicago when the homeless come into bloom down at the dogpark.

Sure, they don't winter well, and the bike cops have to chisel a few bumsicles off the park benches every January. But the colors!

Even More Housekeeping.

I've added Reinder Dijkhuis and Eric Millikin to my list of buddies over there on the left, because they're both cooler than I am and I suspect I might snatch a little reflected glory merely by being associated with them. Blargh.

Eric does Fetus X for Serializer, and publishes a blog John Ashcroft does not approve of at FetusX.com. He was also the editor of the Modern Tales yearbook, which Sparkneedle was featured in, and I've gotta say he did a beautiful job. Reinder does Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan for Modern Tales, and he had me giggling like a defective at a goofy Sparkneedle reference in a semi-recent strip. Plus, he's a nice guy, and his comic's a joy to follow. So on the list he goes. Read his blog, already.

And I'm sure you're all just positively clamoring for the photographs I took while mummifying my recently deceased rat, Beavis. I won't be putting them in a blog entry, unfortunately; A lot of people click through to me from their Livejournals, and they go directly to the full entry, not the front page. As a result, putting anything behind a cut as an extended entry in an attempt to spare delicate dispositions would be pretty useless. I don't want anyone smacked full in the face with glorious, full-color shots of disembodied rat organs an' crap unless they specifically ask for it, so I'm putting together a seperate page. Whoopie.

I will say this, though: Weird as it was, I'm glad I did it. I think I understand now how ritual and closure go together in a situation like this. I've said goodbye to Beavis in a way a thousand times more thorough than most anyone says goodbye to anything when it dies. I'm not denying that most of you will probably regard mummifying a pet rat as pretty damn warped, but by the time I was done, it felt a lot more affectionate than grotesque.

Or maybe I've been watching too much Six Feet Under. Who knows.

Here We Go.

Beavis the rat, Companion of Neil the rat, Gnawer of My Goddamn Speaker Cables, Destroyer of The Couch, Despoiler of Chocolate, Chewer of Dreadlocks, and Grand High Excitable Urinator, went to Osiris this morning an hour before his veterinary appointment at around 8:25 AM. His cause of death was probably mycoplasmal infection, although only a vet would really know for sure. For what it's worth, he had all the symptoms.

When his little heart is weighed before the divine tribunal against the feather of the goddess Ma’at, I'm sure Anubis will will find him worthy of immortality and lead his sahu before the throne of Osiris, and he shall dwell forever with the gods and the stars.

But not before he's a proper mummy.

Today's shopping list:

frankincense oil
myrrh oil
palm oil
lotus oil
cedar oil
camphor oil
beeswax
palm wine or palm wine substitute
cassia
myrrh
frankincense
pine resin
beading wire
carnelian beads
turquoise beads
lapis lazuli beads
Wadjet-eye
ankh
scarabs
muslin
Egyptian linen

More later tonight. For the confused, catch up here.

UPDATE: Jesus, that was a mess. Educational, but damn am I exhausted. Pictures and horrible, lurid descriptions tomorrow.

It gave its life for ART. OMG DEEP.

Found a dead pigeon in front of my apartment building today.

I put it in a shoebox and brought it inside and I drew it a little.

I would have liked to do more, but it had things on it. Brown-green crawly things. Things that had already eaten its eyes. So I just took a bunch of reference pictures instead and tossed it.

I think Maria will probably have pigeon wings when I do the next chapter of Sparkneedle in August. Up until now, she's always had these indistinct sort of raptor's wings, but I like the idea of her wings being more common and less impressive better.

Did I forget to mention that? Yeah, Sparkneedle's going on hiatus. Just for a few months, though. You can read about it in the comic's afterword, this week's update.

When it comes back, it'll be one of three series I'll be updating simultaneously. When d'you spoze I'll finally burn out and have a stress-induced breakdown? Place your bets, folks.