Impressed with the good turn-out in our quad for the 2 min silence. We had the Last Post played too, cor. I am anti-war, pro-remembrance. #

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As jinty mentioned, we went to the ICA to watch Eddie Campbell (Alec, Bacchus, From Hell) in conversation with Arnold Brown, two very different individuals combined to shed light on both; a brainchild trick of (Comica organiser) Paul Gravett, Eddie Campbell's The Man at the Crossroads, still striking out towards that crossover comics audience that will (eventually) be pretty much everyone, if he has his way.

A delightful surprise in the audience was Jean-Paul Jennequin, an old contact from the queerzine years, now handsomely bearded and a pillar of the establishment, running the queer comics drop-in at Angoulême. You must drop in if you come next year, he says. Hehn.

In the signing queue, a woman doing her dissertation on autobiographical comics buttonholes us and we talk in odd spikes of thoughts for a bit; representations of friends, honesty, the shock of finding stories that you thought were about you in other people's works. Corinne Pearlman (I saw her on the way in) tells me she mentioned me in a lecture about female cartoonists; or was it just a picture? I don't know. Apparently the filming went wrong on that talk so it won't go on the website. It's Dyke TV all over again, something about me fails to commit to film.

Eddie remembers me (the woman called Jeremy!) from Bristol and I slip him a tiny minicomic. I'd entirely forgotten Bristol; it was quite buried in the memory of seeing him talk at the last ever UKCAC.

Here's the first page of my notes from the talk. The really significant statements are as follows:

[on the advantage an autobigraphical cartoonist has when it comes to coping with strange and difficult experiences] "When I'm in a panic, I can usually stop and figure out what might be useful in here to somebody else."

[on his early days as an artist] "If you'd told me I wasn't a real artist I would have been crestfallen." -- to which Paul and others of his circle replied: "We never told you that."

Page two tomorrow, click to see it bigger.

Eddie Campbell at Comica Lecture notes with false colours Paul Gravett fashion sketch. Alas, I did not get a second look at his amazing shoes...

I'm trying to plan a birthday even for a friend of mine, who is a scotch fan...anyone know of places in the area that offer tastings, etc? Or particular breweries in the area that are fun to tour/offer tastings? Thanks.

Any ideas for a day trip for the day after Thanksgiving??


My guy and I will be going to Chicago the following weekend so we don't want to do an over night, but a fun day trip on a day off would be nice.


Thanks!

I'm looking into moving some of my accounts to a local credit union - any recommendations? Bonus points for DT Minneapolis or NW Metro locations.

RT @rebelraising: #polljack - you can also vote that greater maternity rights DON'T make women less employable! tinyurl.com/y8j7du6 #

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This also happened today:

• 09:23 When you own a kitten, not only is there no point crying over spilt milk, it becomes a cause for celebration.
• 09:40 Love getting the number 16 to work. I checked on googlemaps; the route's no longer, and I get trees and rivers instead of shops and spires.
• 13:12 In the post office queue. The floor is wipe-clean now, and the bureau de change has morphed into a terrifying biometrics booth.
• 13:18 It's a bit quieter and less scary than it used to be, under the shiny black eyes of the cctv, but no faster. I shall be late back to work.
• 13:29 Had to edit from 'a lot less scary' to 'a bit less scary' as still some tattooed nutjob was muttering and trying to tear up the barriers.

the most amazing man in my life is turning 50 and we are going to have party in december for him but until then wanted to something fun on the actual date of Nov 17 th i know its a tuesday but any ideas would be appreciated

At this time of year I go into dormouse mode, and start lining my nest with things. Shiny things, gleamy things, dreamy things, pretty things, tasty things. Like most British mammals, I don't entirely hibernate, but I like to spend a lot of time in my cosy nest, and I like my cosy nest to be well-lined, like a winter coat.

I think that being surrounded by beautiful, interesting things, things that remind you of good times, mementos and souvenirs, gizmos and gadgets and bit and bobs is deeply soothing --especially when the weather gets grim and going out seems like less and less of an agreeable prospect. You feel set up, taken care of. There's no shortage of entertainment and interest.

This isn't to say that I bring everything home, or that everything I bring home I keep. There's a world of difference between despairing clutter and that excresecence of mindfulness, that fills the homes of people who love stuff.

It's time for late harvest now, time to look at all of those random things that have followed me home in spring and summer, and see what will stay, and what will be passed along. To ask of them the usual questions:

Is it beautiful?
Is it useful?
Does it make me happy?
Is it entirely itself?
Can it be used to make something else?
Will I actually get round to doing that?

And then some to keep, and some to pass on. Some to hold onto and some to let go. Until everything is in its place (more or less) and the whole happy round can start again.

1. Deep fannish thought of the day: Nobody ever inquires into the identificatory position of the guy watching lesbian (quote unquote) porn—we don’t talk about him as torn between the positions “do I want to do her or do I want to be her?”  (Are we that uncomfortable with women in the subject position "director"?)

2. ( Chuck talk )

3. ( Legend of the Seeker premiere )

4. Coffee and Consent: From Until Someone Wakes Up, a play written by Carolyn Levy and a group of Macalester College students:

Waiter: Would you like some coffee?
Woman: Yes, please.
Waiter: Just say when. (Starts to pour.)
Woman: There. (He keeps pouring.) That's fine. (He pours.) Stop! (She grabs the pot; there is coffee everywhere.)
Waiter: Yes, ma'am.
Woman: Well, why didn't you stop pouring?
Waiter: Oh, I wasn't sure you meant it.
Woman: Look, of course I meant it! I have coffee all over my lap! You nearly burned me!
Waiter: Forgive me, ma'am, but you certainly looked thirsty. I thought you wanted more.
Woman: But -
Waiter: And you must admit, you did let me start to pour. comments on DW

...so, I've had bad experiences with all of the GI doctors I've seen locally for acid reflux-- no one seems to want to give me any information or help me with figuring out what i can and can't eat-- I'm having to get all my information from my brother in med school, and it's clearly not helping enough, as I'm in pain every day. And the last doctor I saw literally shuffled me in and out of the office in 5 minutes, despite me having a lot of questions. I'd like to see a GI doctor who will actually give me information, not just put me on a new medicine and hope for the best. Preferably, I'd also like to see someone before, oh, next month, as I'm experiencing daily pain and am concerned about its long-term effects. Does anyone know ANYONE who would fit the bill?

Thanks.

I woke up at 4am last night with my ears ringing and throbbing glandular pain. Presumably I picked up something else at Comiket (it was a very tight room, and we were rather packed in). This morning the malaise doesn't seem particularly worse, so whatever it is, I guess I fought it off at the price of no more than a little disturbed sleep.

Comiket was quite fun; the ICA's a pleasant location (I had beer and a gingerbread man for my afternoon snack!) and it was lovely catching up with various people. The Wetherspoons (UK comics events always seem to repair to Wetherspoons in the evening, we really ought to set up some sort of sponsorship deal) was full of servicemen and women in uniform, who must have come from the morning remembrance events I suppose. At one point someone fell downstairs.

We tried to put the world and our part-time jobs to rights, but I had to leave before any resolution was reached. A bunch more people were turning up just as I went so I expect ait all got sorted out! My best discovery of the day was that if you've forgotten to set up a float for your table, the change machines outside the toilets at Victoria Station will provide.

In other news, MOCCA is shifting to April, reputedly to avoid airconditioning charges, so we need another comics event in June to launch our Whores of Mensa Fabulous Cocktail Party. Any suggestions?

Two tickets to the Bodeans on December 19th at the Guthire Theatre.

8pm, Aisle 1, Row P, Seats 101 and 102

$39 each

This is a sold out show! Snap these up as a pair! :) Cash only, can meet anywhere in Minneapolis, or along the way to Elk River. Thanks!

This also happened today:

• 01:52 Home with a head full of unexpected encounters. A fox gallops across the road. Mist up from thhe river. Nightbus, i missed.
• 11:25 Have/decided it's cold enough for duvet coat. Am on my way to comiket. Have bag full of minicomic making kit as I have suffered maker fail.
• 13:12 In the press of poppies, rain, medals he carries autumn leaves, holds his son's hand. I smile; unconsciously he waves them, like a child.
• 21:30 Three girls in stylish coats take turns to photograph each other in a dramatic alcove. Unseen a brief discordant composition for carhorns.
• 22:38 Charting comiket success by money remaining in wallet at end of day. About 5 down, after burger. Alas only achieved by rudely not buying.

... and what it means for fans, from serrico .  Read it here!  My emotional reaction to what SPN is doing with fans has largely been negative, but I don't think that invalidates it as storytelling (just makes the storytellers jerks, and ties in with their other gender issues, but that's a whole 'nother thing).  Jayne's analysis is really useful as categorization and explanation of why Heroes feels so cold in its interactivity even as it's doing everything Henry Jenkins is selling as the future of entertainment.
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There were still tickets for the Eddie Campbell talk at Comica when I looked a few days beforehand, so I wasn't quite sure what the attendance was going to be. In the event, it was nicely full - some few spare seats but not many. There were a lot of people who didn't look like they normally come along to comics events - a tall elegant arty-musicy couple sleek quiff on the bloke; a fresh-faced serious and sober-looking student in the queue behind us for book-signing - as well as some of the old stalwarts. (Jean-Paul Jennequin, who used to come to CAPTION regularly, has a beard now! And apparently he did the translation into French of From Hell, blimey.)

The talk was done as an interview - ramble; comedian Arnold Brown (a new one on me but not to others) asked questions and reminisced about Glasgow, while Eddie Campbell more or less replied to the questions and told slightly disjointed anecdotes that had some great nuggets of interest and truth in them when they didn't just peter out a bit.

I'm not convinced that Arnold Brown was necessarily the best person to ask the interview questions - he'd read the massive tome that is Alec: The Years Have Pants and had only good things to say about it, but some of his questions were too directed to their common roots in Glasgow (nice idea but in fact Campbell left Glasgow when he was fifteen) or covering grounds that were a bit uncomfortably like "where do you get your ideas from, eh?". The replies, however, were often suitably springboarded off these contact points - so to the question that sounded too much like "where do you get your ideas from, eh?", Campbell said that the two questions he got asked most were that, and "how mad is Alan Moore really, then?" which later led into a questions about the nature of fictionalisation, and how Glycon the snake god was chosen specifically as being a made-up god.

Jrmy did a couple of pages of sketch-notes which I would love to see on't internet as a reminder of the evening's points - cleanskies, can we can we please? But in advance of that, what I remember being mentioned by himself were things like how being an artist was more a question of deciding to yourself that you are an artist, in a way that might sound or be slightly mad when compared to external evidence (note that this isn't about being a successful artist, it's more like this page about being an artist successfully).

Afterwards we queued slowly for the signing - winding round the small ICA bookshop - and got into conversation with a student behind us who piped up as we were talking about the Women in Comics event in Cambridge, which neither of us had gone but which aforementioned student (Ellen I think she said her name was) had. 'Twas nice if slightly weirdly reverse-telescope feeling - it's twenty years ago almost exactly since Jeremy and I met at CBS, twenty-one years ago since I started CBS, and here is someone standing enthusiastically behind us talking about the thesis she wrote about autobiographical comics and how she discovered comics as a medium. Ah, for now we are old. But Campbell and his generation are too, or rather older; Alec is thirty years in the making, and Campbell has distinguished elegant silver hair and a career as an actually successful artist, not just successfully an artist. And Jrmy talked to him without babbling when he was signing her copy, and he remembered her from comic conventions past, and I stood silently by and was pleased that it went so well for her.

[ETA: I just remembered one of Campbell's anecdotes - not one with a nugget of insightful truth so much as just an interesting tale. He was talking about doing a picture of Bacchus, and the thing with his depiction of Bacchus was that as he's a very old god - four thousand years old - and so Campbell draws him with as many wrinkles as he can possibly fit into a picture. So he was doing this for a picture that apparently was being bought by Quentin Tarantino's mother, of all people, and he was drawing wrinkles on Bacchus. He wanted to get them as fine as he possibly could and tried using a hair, but it wasn't resistent enough. So he used a pubic hair, and it worked very well apart from springing around unexpectedly some of the time. Check out the picture and see if you can tell - it's the cover of, I think he said, Doing the Islands.]

Returning from the ICA and Eddie Campbell's talk; some nuggets of gold in there, and I think Jrmy has them in her drawn notes. Good! #

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This also happened today:

• 21:31 There's piccolo music playing over the tannoy at charing cross tube station. Also, eddie campbell signed my book and I didn't babble!
• 23:18 Ruffled shirts, chainmail, fishnets, mouse masks, leathers and pink moustaches. Ant people are diverse! I am at an adam ant convention.

Have some links of cool stuff.

Footwear made out of train and bus seat material. I think this one's my favourite - the Bakerloo line.

The same place also sells Peter Blake pop art, slightly weirdly.

The Sustrans shop has some rather neat stuff currently - I'm tempted by the bike lights (my dynamo's not working properly right now) - though I've got older lights I ought to just re-supply with batteries and use temporarily. The wrapping paper is nice though, and the cycling poncho is something I've been thinking of getting for a while now.

More information about the Ashmolean re-opening.

Just one green link - Google's new household energy monitor (though it looks like you have to get an associated gadget too).