http://www.formspring.me/zombiemeeks

made one of these because idk why. ask away i guess!!

Hello! Or perhaps I should say “goodbye?”

As is custom in our culture, I’d like to take a look back on the year as it draws to a close. It’s a little bit sad that we tend to reduce our productivity in the month of December just to acknowledge that the calendar is coming to an end, but those are the rules, I will abide.





365 days, not all of them nice.

I began this year with a soul-damaging breakup which in turn, came on the heels of a series of traumatic interactions. I’ll spare you the details but suffice to say, it was not a period in which one envied me. Since last year, my nervous system has been playing tricks on me and I began having odd sensations and occasional panic attacks. As a result, I try my best not to get too excited about anything to avoid becoming overstimulated which feels kind of like dying.

My friends Dan, Ceora and Iggy out in Bushwick kept me sane by inviting me over for movies like three times a week (or more!). My friends John Wyffels and Meghan Orfitelli hung out with me at comics time EVERY WEEK.

Off to a bad start, but things started to get better. I made some amazing new friends, sadly parted ways with a few old friends, but generally came out with the cards in my favor.

One of my new friends, L. Nichols, literally installed Wordpress/Comicpress for me. Then she did it again for my secondary site. That brings this discussion to a point that I think we can all relate to…

…COMICS:

So I launched this website this year. It still needs a little bit of work but all in all, I like it. I started the website with the original 120 Little Garden art pieces. Upon reaching the end of my archives, I worked out a little webcomic for the characters which I ended right before the autumn’s Small Press Expo (wasn’t working out) and later restarted in the format you see today. I hope that these starts and stops haven’t been too off-putting. I’m thinking on my feet and working as hard as I can!

I also made a few other comics this year, some of which you can see on the sister site, LetsGoAyo. That site is on a bit of a vacation at the time because I am devoting my energy toward Little Garden as well as a digital comics anthology. The anthology in question is being done by my friends the House of Twelve on the Comixology iphone platform. Those of you who have iphones should consider downloading Comixology and then downloading a few of the free sample comics to see how you like it. I hope you’ll consider buying our anthology when it becomes available in the new year!

Those, incidentally, are the same reasons that Little Garden is dropping from twice-weekly to once-per-week. I also have a day job and the workload has become overwhelming. I hope that you’ll understand that my aim is to bring you more comics, not fewer. If I allow myself to burn out, there will likely be either no comics, or comics of poorer quality.




OKAY, OKAY: THESE ARE THE FIVE COMICS THAT WERE GOOD IN 2009:

“Oh, Daphny” by Harvey James and Daphknee - Best comic of the year. I remember coming home late that day and seeing this linked by several people. I read it and it melted my face. Sad, traumatic and strangely funny as well. This was the best comic. It appears on the VICE magazine website and seems to only exist on the internet. It is really too bad that all of the webcomics award people seem to have overlooked this venue.

“Monsters” by Ken Dahl with help from Gabby Schulz because “Ken Dahl” isn’t real - This is the best book comic of the year. I never read the original minicomics so everything was all new to my eyes. Schulz’ cartooning is absolutely top-notch and his sense of humor and humanity invigorate every panel. For a guy who claims to hate people, he is certainly pays close attention to them. Schulz seems to love drawing to a degree that is rare in comics. Every little object is depicted in such detail and with such study that you’d think that the comic was about that thing as well. Every puff of smoke, textured hat, tiled floor, sneaker, beer bottle is drawn as though it were Schulz’ favorite thing ever. That, and the story is magnificent as well.

“King City” by Brandon Graham - My heart skipped a beat and my eyes lit up that day in the New York Comicon Tokyopop panel when it was announced that the company would be putting out American books and that BRANDON GRAHAM would be doing one. Years later, the first book came out, the second book was cancelled, bridges between the publisher and the indie comics scene seemed irrevocably burned. THEN, as if by magic, Graham announced that the entire King City story would be released as a joint venture by Tokyopop and Image Comics. This should be old news to the readers here, but the story still thrills me: King City, The Comic that Would Not Die! Even though the issues released to date reprint the original Volume 1, the project easily makes my “top whatever” list for the year. The bonus comic pages in issues 2 and 3 should tip the scales further if you’re not convinced. All of my friends know that I can (and will) talk all day long about Graham’s work, the inventiveness of his cartooning and the effervescent spirit of his comics. But I won’t. Just…buy the issues, people!

“The Mourning Star” by Kazimir Strzepek - It takes three years for Kaz to put out a new volume of this comic because it is one of the most alarmingly well-thought out, shockingly well crafted comic books that your money can buy. The Mourning Star stories tell of a post-apocalyptic world that is filled with the magic and cultures that we have come to expect from the greats of fantasy fiction. Kaz is one of the more inventive cartoonists of this day and age; there’s an interesting scene of a meeting in this book where he alters the flow of the story to better depict the scattered and segmented side discussions. There are plenty of moments like that in his work and dammit if it’s not one of the most entertaining reads out there today.

“Ivy” by Sarah Oleksyk - The fourth issue of this, the best damn minicomic out these days, came out in 2009, therefore, it’s on the list. Each chapter in the saga of Ivy Stenova is filled with more youthful indiscretions and teenage bad decisions than the last. This chapter actually ends on a positive note but I think it’s clear that this ship is still heading for that iceberg.

And that’s five already!

I was also greatly entertained by “Nedroid” by Anthony Clark, “Angel” by L. Nichols, “Elephantmen: Damaged Goods” and “Beast” by Marian Churchland (the former written by Richard Starkings), “Johnny Wander” by Ananth Panagariya and Yuko Ota, “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe” by Bryan Lee O’Malley, “L.A. Diary” by Gabrielle Bell, “A Mess of Everything” by my pal Miss Lasko-Gross, “Octopus Pie” by Meredith Gran, “Ace Dog Trainer” by Jamie Baldwin, “Jaephisch and the Dark Rainbow” by Jason Fischer, “Remake” by Lamar Abrams, “Sanctuary” by Nate Neal and “20th Century Boys” along with “Pluto” by Naoki Urasawa. UGH, too many comics! All “Top___” lists should be banned.




Other things that I did:

I felt like I had a fairly productive year, truth be told. I spent a lot of time in coffeehouses drawing comics. Most of all, Cafe Grumpy in Greenpoint and Verb Coffee in Williamsburg. I generally wake up extra early to draw at Grumpy before my day job starts and then if I have energy in the evening, I head to Verb to draw even more. The price of those coffees can add up but in the end, I created a little ritual and a physical/mental space that allows me to be creative. In other words, it works.

I had work in:

Always Comix: The Evil Issue - edited by Erin Griffin and Sally Bloodbath

House of Twelve: Touching Children’s Stories - edited by Cheese Hasselberger

Lumberjacks: A Field Guide - edited by Colleen AF Venable and Marianne Ways

I went to the New England Webcomics Weekend this past spring, attended an gallery opening for Always Comix, exhibited at MoCCA this summer, visited NY Zinefest a few weeks later, exhibited at SPX this fall along with King Con and ended the cycle by attending the Brooklyn Comics and Graphics Festival in Williamsburg. I don’t know about you but that’s a lot of events for this tired soldier.

Everywhere I went, there’s one thing I had to say: Read Little Garden Comics.



All In All:






2010, BRING IT.

<3 Darryl Ayo Brathwaite

Hey! I have somehow managed to fall really sick in the last couple of days, to the point where doing anything other than being in bed is pretty much a special kind of hell, so I just decided: I am going use this time to finally play CAPTAIN BLOOD   

(Don't be put off by the Schwartzenegger clone in the preload image- watch the video from 1:25 and you'll get some kind of sense of what this game is)

 

It's a french Atari ST game from like 1988- it's got this unique, desolate atmosphere which has always made me feel compelled to try it out. Like the deep space you travel through, the game is cold, morally blank- the main character's a dying space pilot in a barren, mostly empty galaxy. He's hunting for his five clones so he can take their fluids to prolong his own life. You find these clones by talking to the alien lifeforms you might find hiding on the planets you encounter, and you talk to them in their own language- a pictogrammatically represented series of heiroglyphs the player must decipher and learn as he plays the game. The more you talk to people, the more of this language you learn and the more questions you can ask. 

But even once you're able to talk to and understand these creatures, nothing's easy- their motives are often obtuse, their information can be misleading. Apparently, the locations of some of Blood's clones can only be found out from the other clones, so sometimes you're forced to keep them alive- a lot of bartering and skullduggery goes on in this.
 
As a child this game baffled me!  True to its contents, the game seemed completely alien to my young self- the mechanics of the gameplay were foriegn to the point where I never actually discovered any alien lifeforms, I just flew around the galaxy destroying planets before I had a chance to see who lived on them (Captain Blood can do that). According to the youtube user comments, at least one kid in the 80's thought this game was really a link to the onboard computer of an alien craft, and for a dread week thought he had sent a command to destroy the earth. I can completely understand why- It has that kind of air about it.

So hey I am practically an adult now, and there's no other game that's come at all close to offering the same experience, so it's about time I bit the bullet and played it, I reckon. If you're similarly bedridden and you feel like joining in, that would be neato 'cause maybe we can use the comments section of this post to  trade hints and tips and whatnot, and not look at walkthroughs, and be 100% top draw dudes and ladies!

Download the game here!

Then, download an Atari ST emulator to play it on- for PC,  Linux  or Mac

I'm not 100% sure how to get the game to run, I will be going into this thing pretty blind myself but if you have trouble, ask for help in the comments maybe!

wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Blood_(video_game)

If you're in type 'I'm in' in the comments. OK LET'S KILL SOME FUCKIN' EVIL CLONES

 

become silver surfer

yes! i am in it!!! i have lots of money and im going to SPEND IT ALL
i downloaded the PW demo last night and idk i love the main screen and the whole thing made me laugh like ten million
PLEASE BOSS ;_;
i also like how it's an actual metal gear solid game instead of portable ops' Mini Missions ^_^ game
also i have a new theory that strangelove is gray fox in disguise as a woman
because this is the only way
i can go on

beedogs: i dreamt about daphny. we wanted to do eachother. SOB
or at least i dunno she wanted to do me. i got kind of creeped out really fast. she kept offering me drugs and i was like I Dunno Daphny I Dont Really and she was like DO IT and then things were not so nice
after that dream i dreamt i was harry potter and hermione asked me out in sign language and i was like :3 and we got married. and then at some party both of us were vegetarians but they made us eat little miniature cooked...poultry-looking things but they told us they were buffalos. and i mean miniature. like...if there was a soft-shell crab equivalent of birds. i dunno
it is weird because the other night i had a dream where through the WHOLE DREAM i was hermione with fred's personality and at one point me and george were like...bff'in it up...but harry and i were just pallin' around for most of it. and aberforth was headmaster of hogwarts, but like...it just looked like a normal school...by that i mean not a castle. it was still Magics.

Maxwell, age 2. A fluffy black cat... one of his parents allegedly was a Maine Coon, but he's pretty normal-sized. And fluffy. Did I mention fluffy?

Had my camera's battery charger not been lost you would all be faced with yet another barrage of cat pictures by me.

All this holiday food has given me a Christmas miracle! I have what I think is IBS with constipation, and usually no matter how much extra fiber I eat, or whatever it doesn't move things along much. it'll make me go, but it will still be unsatisfactory.

well all this heavy, delicious holiday food has just forced from me an assbaby as thick as my dogs paw. I have a 100 pound Labrador, he has HUGE webbed feet. It was also about 6 inches long. It was a wonderful, smelly, toilet clogging Christmas Miracle.

Boys and girls: Making a whole new post to attack someone is a little over the top. Although it was quite the popular post, I removed the one that was just a big personal attack against, er, what's her face.

Earlier this week, I was in a car accident. Not a big one, but hard enough to smash my bumper and the bottom of my hatchback. (All the guy behind me's fault, btw, I'm a fabulous driver). The police on the scene suggested I go to the ER, because my neck was really hurting, so I had my mom drive me there, and parked my butt in the waiting room. After 4 hours, numerous x-rays, and a pretty nurse helping me get my bra off (for said x-rays), they decided nothing was seriously injured, and gave my perscriptions for muscle relaxers and pain killers. They have really helped my back and neck pain, and the drugged haze is a nice feeling too, but my bowels are not at all pleased.

I hadn't pooped since two days before I got in the wreck, and that was 4 days ago. 6 days of no poo. And since it's Christmas time, I've been eating like a hog. Big dinners, lots of cookies and sweets, miscelaneous munchies. I began to worry, since all this matter was going in, and nothing was coming out. Finally, this morning my gut decides it's toilet time, and after some straining and a lot of sweating and swearing, I produced an ass baby the size of my head. It felt like that, anyway. It clogged the toilet and everything, I was so proud! Since that epic shit this morning, I've crapped twice more, neither were as big as the first, but they were still impressive. I think these have been my most satisfying shits in ages.

Also, for a non-poo related TMI: Ever since I caught a nasty cold three weeks ago, I've been having major nosebleeds. They come and go, but every time I blow my nose, there's more blood than snot. It's so satisfying to blow and have clotted blood come out; you know when you have that giant booger you know is back there, and you blow and blow, and suddenly it breaks free of it's nose hair captives and races towards its tissuey freedom? Yeah, it's like that. Almost like a mini nose orgasm. I tried to get a picture of my last bloody tissue, but the flash was blowing it out. I did wake up to my face stuck to my pillowcase with dried blood yesterday though, but I was too out of it to think to take a picture.

Today I'll put some stuff under a cut.
it's a x mas miracle.
( annnd more )

i feel myself starting to soften on Avatar, since, while still boring and fraught with unfortunate racial stuff, it had a lot of stuff i like such as an alien moon, warpaint, inexplicably floating rocks, and cat people like i said last time, but it's hard when i read quotes like this from James Cameron:

"We looked at designs for the Na'vi that initially were much more alien. When we would draw Neytiri and she had fins on her back and gills and all kinds of weird protuberances and so on in odd places, the question was, well, would you want to do her? No? OK, let's back off from that. ... We just didn't want to take it so far that she had kind of a fish mouth or anything."

i realize the irony of me saying Neytiri was hot in my last Avatar post, but all the same! XD

after this i foresee one more post relating to Avatar and then i promise i'll be done. :)

Every year, Christmas dinner gives me thick, soupy diarrhea that takes the fun out of the festivities until I can take Imodium. I decided to avoid spending two hours in the bathroom by taking Imodium RIGHT before eating.

Well, apparently Imodium has a bulking effect. I didn't have diarrhea, but I had the biggest, fattest logs I ever shit in my life last night. I almost gave myself a stroke with the effort I put into pushing these things out of my body. Every single turd prariedogged in and out of me before I could fully expel them with a satisfying "ka-PLOOSH!" sound. It was like I became the octopoop mom because I had eight giant, fat logs, and every single one stretched my asshole open so much they stung coming out.

Cleanup was a snap. No huge mess on the TP except some mucus and a few smears. The turds themselves looked exactly like huge sausages. I broke them up with the plunger before I flushed. Then I hosed off the plunger outside and resumed my day.


And a little added TMI--while outside, I hawked a loogie that looked more like an alien fetus. Somehow, it had a single pea in it from my dinner. Either it was stuck in my throat or somehow got up into my nasal cavities, but I sure breathed better after I got rid of it.


Have a great day!

My wife needlefelted this adorable Fuckface doll.

Man, Brin's such a racist

Does anyone else get a tiny bit a turdlings stuck in their poop hole and can't poop it out no matter how hard they try?

Sometimes I have to pull it out.