Devils Panties Closet
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "jenniebreeden" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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03:47 pm
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lost post about Fall in NY state.
I'm visiting my old college roommate in Albany NY. The leaves are just changing. The hills are the same mountain range as my home town in Virginia. My friend is taking me along on her Fall errands. Today we took the dog to a lake where he ran with two other dogs. My friend Lessa tried to get her dog to go swimming in the lake with his friends by throwing handfulls of popcorn into the water to intise him. Her friend had just bought a small kayak and we took turns padeling around the bend in the lake to eye a small cottage tucked among the reeds. The light drizzle increased and we packed up the wet dogs and mudy kayak. Lessa had seen a berry picking farm and we pulled into a driveway where a boy no older than 13 manuvered a tractor around green houses. We lifted wet leaves to look underneath for unpicked rasberries. Lessa filled her green paper bin quickly where I had been alternating between my bin and my stomach. A siamese kitten decided that I was more likely to have treats even though Lessa was more enamored with the kitten. We spent the week cooking recipe's from the farmers market and I couldn't imagen going back to a grocery store after that.
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04:07 pm
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Kilts and a Cop
Dragon con, Sunday night 2009
Every night at Dragon con I charge up the leaf blowers and head down to the Marriott lobby to do some Kilt Hunting. I wait until midnight so that most of the kids are in bed and I pick an out of the way place so we don't get in the way of foot traffic. I use hard surface blowers with rechargeable batteries so that there's no exhaust, no power cords, and it's not a strong enough blower to do any damage. I don't actually try to expose any of the guys. I just want to tease and get some good pictures of a moving kilt and a surprised guy. The guys sign model release forms so that I can use the pictures for calendars and playing cards. I've been doing this for years and it gets bigger every year. Sunday night we hit critical mass. There was a HUGE crowed of women and a long line of guys in kilts ready to get blown. The crowed and the screaming women drew the attention of some of the hotel security and the roving police officer. The second guy that I leaf blew had a very light weight kilt and it went strait up and man shlong was everywhere. I got a tap at my elbow and a nice police officer said "Ma'am, you can't do that. I'm going to have to shut this down." Luckily the next guy had a routine with his girlfriend that he had cleared with me and I was able to step to the side and talk to the officer. I asked what in particular he was concerned about and I pointed out all the precautions we'd made. "We make sure the fire lanes are clear, they sign a release form saying they won't expose themselves. I'm not trying to show anything. These are hard surface blowers, no exhaust or cords." The officer is uncomfortable. He doesn't want to cause trouble but he also doesn't want us breaking the law by showing off full frontal. He says that there's children around. I say that's why we wait until midnight to do this. He finally says "Just don't let the kilts go up any farther than they should." I don't say what comes to mind and I thank him profusely and promise to be good. I notice the large hotel security men behind him and I run over. "Please let me know if there's anything I can do for you or if there's anything you're uncomfortable with." The men look very uncomfortable. This is a very large crowed of screaming women and a hair too close to public indecency. I offer to point the leaf blower to the wall. They still make grumbling noises so I offer to just not turn the leaf blower on. They're still uncomfortable but they consent to the compromise. At this point the boy and girl act has finished and the Irishman has finished with his strait jacket routine. I run over to the line of kilted boys. I know that the cop won't arrest anyone but they will shut us down if any of the boys expose themselves and there were some great kilts that I wanted to get pictures of. So even though the cop didn't say so, I told the boys that if any of them show their bits then I'm the one who will get arrested. I also don't know for sure weather or not I'm about to get hauled off to the pokey. I tell the crowed of women that we're going to pretend with the leaf blower. The women explode in indignant outrage. "If women can run around with their asses hanging out why can't we get kilt blowing!?!" The biggest complaint is that there's lots of dragon con costumes that are indecent, why can't we show a little man leg? I have to point out that if a costume is showing bush or nads (or girl nipple) then the security will escort them out. We saw this later that night with a guy who was wearing a horn helmet and a red plastic cup on his nibbly bits. He was escorted out for a quiet discussion and then escorted back to his room wearing a cardboard box. So it is reasonable that they asked us to stop when we were exposing man bits. Maybe man ass would have been fine, but the hairy man balls went too far.
I did loose half my audience when I didn't turn on the leaf blower for the next guy. I overheard one woman say "If there's no leaf blower, what's the point?". But I must admit I got some much better posing. Before, the guys would just stand their awkwardly while I tried to get their kilt to blow in the breeze. But without the blower, they'd hike the edge of their kilt up their leg a little and the girls would scream and they'd shake their butt, making the women yelp with joy. This way the men had more control over how much they showed and how much the women screamed. The guys still had a good time, even without the leaf blower refreshment for their kilted nethers. The women were grumbley but we got some great photos out of it. The police and hotel did let us continue even if it was against their better judgment and I am eternaly grateful to them. We did step over the line and they were trying to keep everyone safe and within the law. We should have moved to another venue long ago. This only confirms it. Next year I'm going to try and get in contact with Dragon Con and set up a room where we can have this in the program book and card people as they come in so we stay within the law. We'll also be able to control lighting and seating better.
pictures of kilt blowing
More pictures
GREAT pictures!
Really awesome pictures
Post a link if you've got pictures of the kilt blowing
Kilt Calendar
Kilr Playing Cards
ps; please e-mail me if you know who I should talk to about getting a room for leaf blowing at Dragon Con jenniebreeden@gmail.com
Current Location: Atlanta ga
Tags: cops, devil's panties, dragon con, dragoncon, jennie breeden, kilt, leaf blower
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11:16 pm
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to do
Gotta sign up for Wizard Chicago. Friggin $300 for 8 foot table. I'm going to try and squeez into 4 feet for $200 because I only made $500 at Wizard philly. With $200 for gas, $150 for hotel, $75 for parking, and about $100 for food for the weekend I don't think I'll be paying the electric bill this month. (I lie, the paypal orders cover the electric bill. I just stop using water). But I do love going to Chicago. Visions of batman standing on street corners in the city always make me smile. They've also got some great restaurants and I love any city with a working public transportation system. That, and I want to maul Ray Park and Luke Goss. Mmmmm Snake Eyes and Emo Hellboy/Blade prince.
I need to screen print some plain white zombie shirts. Gotta get that bottle of setter stuff so I don't have to iron (heat set) them (pain in the ass). Looking for a t-shirt printer the local place didn't get back to me.
Sent a new deck of playing cards to the printer. He's got the proof set up but has to dig up the files for the previous decks. The printing usually takes about six weeks.
NEEEEED to put together the pages for book 4. I'm holding off on re-printing book 1 so I can ship them all together. Books 0, con artist, 1 and 4 all have to be printed (probably going to cost over $10k so I have to skim down on print runs and shipping)
I've been daunted by it because it's 288 pages that I have to put together in photoshop. Three strips a page. Well, two strips and a piece of art or "what not to say in the bedroom" one panel.
Gotta draw more geebas.
need to print out Rapscallions script for next months "Customers suck" strips.
Gotta finish drawing more of the bonus strips for book 4. I've scripted about 160 of them from xmas and conventions but just haven't gotten around to drawing them yet.
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05:53 pm
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Beach; day 5 of 5
The house is silent. Waves crash softly in the background. My mother, brother and I all typing at our laptops. My sister and her son left this morning. My brother is out and about with a friend. Another sister is taking a nap. I'm leaving tomorrow and the rest of the family will scatter in a day or so. The sun is not out and the wind is too strong and cold to spend much time lying in the sand but I'm determined to have my last day. I went for a walk with my mother. We strugled through the soft sliding pebbles and sharp shells. We eyed a branch stuck in the sand, the head and spine of a fish laced between it's twigs like a sureal sculpture. My sister, mother and I dove into the rough ocean and bobed between roiling waves, skimming around froth that is a bit too yellow and fluffy to simply be churned water. The waves crashed a bit too high to be fun and were more dangerouse than exciting. You were more likely to tumble head over feet than ride them to the shore. They simply dropped down to crash on pebbled rock and you scrambled to solid footing before the next fell on top of you. Not so much fun as survival. The best waves are the ones you get on top of and they glide you up to the sandy banks, not drop you and then fall atop and clean out your nose and throat with salt water.
My mother is boiling an artichoke for my sister and I. We're finishing up some guacamole that Summer has made that's more onion and tomato held together with avocado and lemon juice. There's a melon that falls apart in your mouth more than any chewing that can be done.
Once we finished with the ocean my mother and sister went in and I sat in the sand and contemplated the sea, trying to gather it in for the rest of the year. Marveling at the waves that have rolled in from miles away to crash and slide up onto the shore, white bubbles transforming it into delicate lace and sculpted curves of rushing water only to slide out to sea once more.
My brother's back and wants to watch tv. He and Summer are now singing Black Velvet at the top of their lungs. My brother has black velvet shorts on like a tuxedo for the beach. We had gone to the thrift store yesterday. My family has special beach traditions.
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02:08 pm
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Beach; day 4 of 5
My skin is still tingling from the wind and the cold and my leg is raw from getting dragged across the sand. My siblings are playing "truth or dare" with my nephew. We had him eat a cracker with peanutbutter (I don't think he likes peanut butter) and walk around the house once or read every other word in a people magazine article. He asks if I wore glasses when I was little and he told Skyler to say one mean thing to her friend. Skyler looked up at Summer and said "Summer, you're my friend." Summer has made gwakamole and mom is frying up crab cakes.
The ocean waves peaked and rolled, too close together to drop your guard. The hard part about timing the waves to ride is staying on top so your hands out before you can feel the pull of the pounding surf but your body is staying atop the gathered momentum of the charging ocean. One inch too far and it's your body that is pounded by the surf and you get pulled across the rocks and sand. The most terrifying part is if the ocean rolls you over and you don't know which end is up and something more powerful than you are has control. Other than that and the sand in your shorts, it's a blast.
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07:19 pm
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Beach: day 3 of 5
My childhood is filled with the sounds of dice on a kitchen table late at night when the kids were sent to bed and the grownups gather with glasses of wine, whoops of laughter and wails of defeat echoing down the hall and up the stairs to our bedroom. My mother, two sisters, and a sisters boyfriend are playing "sand" at the table. (roll six dice and each one is one hundred points, five is fifty points, and three of a kind is that number in a hundred) Christian is asleep in front of Mythbusters. Eric is checking e-mail. Summer has made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Skylers boyfriend made shishkabobs and we're all stuffed and totally sated. My sister Payton is playing mouse trap with her son. I went swimming with my seven year old nephew. It was exciting trying to keep him above the waves. We built a dribble castle (wet sand dribbled into a tall drippy tower) We buried my legs and made a tail in the sand. We buried my nephew up to his neck and built a buff body in the sand and let him bust his way out. Oh, and we got a bucket of margarita.
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02:54 pm
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Beach: Day 2
I feel like I'm in a Corona comercial. I'm looking out at the ruler strait horizon, white caps peeking over the rolling waves, and the grass of the dunes swaying in the wind. We had lathered on the sun block and baked on the sand, jumping from the ocean to digging a huge sand pile and subsequent cavernouse hole. We walked the beach and eyed other families with varying degrees of tan line and sand constructions. Teenagers not yet old enough to be on their own patrol the shores in groups, their skin as brown as a red wood and hair bleached white. My oldest brother looked out of his elvis sun glasses at them and says "You'll never tan like you did when you were sixteen." I should point out why I feel like I'm in a Corona comercial is that I've got one before me, the lime squeezed in, and the only sound is the waves and whistle of wind through the grass. I can hear an ocasional burst of laughter as my siblings watch some Celebrity survival show. My mother sits silently beside me, a book held in her lap and her brown feet overlaped befor her, pensive over the story that she reads. A teenager walks by on his way from the beach with his family. Black baceball cap turned around and black sleaveless t-shirt, walking behind his family. He had a flashlight or sun glasses case held in his mouth and I think I remember seeing him yesterday with what I thought was an oversized stogy in his mouth. Odd rutiens and family rituals observed by strangers passing by who are, themselves, preforming their own rituals and family obligations.
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07:32 pm
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Beach!
The best part about the beach is the snacks. My baby sister Summer loves to cook and she brought her knives with her. Mom and she went to the grocery store and now they're frying up soft shell crabs and Eric and I grabbed some yogert and threw in strawberries and granola. There's a wedding finishing up on the sand outside. The men are crew cut with sun glasses and the women have deep tans and pick their way through the sand in small silk dresses. We had to drive through four hours of storming rain and gridlock traffic to get here. The soft shell crabs are popping and my mom is yelling over the frying butter. It stopped raining about ten minutes after we got here and Eric and I jumped in the ocean when Mom and Summer left for the store. Christian started watching mindless television. Switching back and forth between "hitch" and something about a best man and newlywed couple. The beach house is just one big room with a screened in porch where you can peek up over the grassy dunes to the ocean. I complained about the tv and now Christian is sitting out in the hammock reading and Eric is checking e-mail. I still have ocean water in my ears and I don't plan on putting shoes on for the next four days.
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12:02 am
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napkins
damn and crap!
I finished taking down cartoon ideas from my phone for the Boston story arch. I usually record them as I think of them or as they happen. When I was organizing them into days to be posted I suddenly remembered taking down an idea for a cartoon about a brain anatomy book Aili gave a friend in Boston. It struck me that there was a bunch of cartoons I scribbled down on a napkin in a cafe the morning I left Boston when I was hopped up on two cups of coffee (hey, half a beer or half a cup of coffee will fuck me up. It's a wonderfully cheep intolerance that I adore) I remember borrowing one of Aili's friends pens to write them out. I had been tired of carrying my purse and phone around. That was two weeks ago. The only other thing I can remember is finding the napkin and thinking "oh, this is important" and chucking it somewhere.
I remember the cafe we were at had pastel umbrellas, green painted picnic tables, and grape vines laced through a trellis making the canopy. Aili said the vines sometimes had grapes you could eat but they weren't very tasty. The kitchen was in the back basement of the house and the bathroom was a little painted nitch in one corner. The hardened foam insulation around the outside pipes of the stairs was painted and the bus boy had amazing arms. I split an order of banana creme pancakes with Aili and we served ourselves water from a water cooler. I remember one of Aili's friends saying she got a tan for her wedding and she had a boost from the extra vitamin D. But I can't for the life of me remember what I frantically scribbled down on that friggin napkin!
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05:03 pm
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I blame twitter
I've been meaning to post a few livejournal entries. I've been motivated by twitter. Just enough taste of an update without any meat.
I need to get book one reprinted and book four together for printing and I need to get the third deck of DP cards together. I finaly got a fourth housemate so now I can start saving up for the prints as aposed to using the income on mortgage. I do want to save up a few hundred to get a half dead tree taken down from the front yard. Reading the Sookie books kinda nudged me towards more home maintenence. As well as vampires and werewolves the sookie books also chronicle her cleaning habits and chores. It reminds me that just because I mopped last week doesn't mean I don't ave to clean the bathroom and mop again next week (or once I month, as I do it). But damn, does that extra person bump up the traphick dirt. He's a bit ocd so he's nudged me into being a bit more industriouse and I've nagged the other housemates into taking up the weekly mowing and moping.
okay, okay, enough about housework.
I tried using pagemaker but can't get it running. Trying to put together book 4. I just need to put three strips on each page for 288 pages. I've just about got all the strips drawn. It will just take a few days to put the pages together but if I can get a program together to do the pages for me then it will just take a few hours.
And I need to gather up the Book 1 files to send to a printer. Silent Devil took care of that last time and I'm using a diferent printer so I have to make sure the files are formated right.
I've got most of the third deck drawn (filler for book 3 I think) I just need to do the ace, queen, king and design the backs and box.
I got the shot glasses and dog tags reordered.
Screen printing my own shirts is a pain in the ass. Once I'm done with the blank shirts that I ordered I'm going to try and find a t-shirt printer place to do it for me. I'm also going to try and dig up the image file for the old devil girl shirt to re-print. I hate doing shirts because you have to haul around S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL to every show just for one product. But people have been asking about them and the zombie shirts are selling well.
Last week I drove from Atlanta to Boston to do Anime Boston. I stopped off halfway to visit my family in Virginia. From Boston I went to Dallas (stopping off to sleep in Virginia and Atlanta) for Akon. Atl to Va: 8 hours. Va to Boston: 10 hours. Atl to Dallas: 12 hours. I was exhausted the day after the drive but I liked the drive itself. Something about being on your own, choosing weather or not to turn on the radio or when to stop for food. I don't have to worry about anyone else or that I'm not getting work done. Ever since riding the bus to school I've found automobiles to be a wonderful way to get the imagination wondering. If left to my own thoughts, I'll have my own movie running in my head. Usually I'll figure more out with my vampire story; Huntress. http://devilspanties.keenspot.com/huntress/index.html
But as I passed the farms and pastures of Virginia I wondered at the solitude and comfort of an isolated farm. How the constant work is so different from that of the corporate world. I liked the idea of a corporate princess hiding out as a rancher. I'll play with the story some more on my drive to the beach and from there to Wizard Philly.
All year I look forward to the family trip to the beach. My mom has a favorite house that she rents in Nags Head. It's just one big room with some bedrooms branched off from it. But the main house is a two story open air room and we open all the windows and let the ocean air breeze through. My five brothers and sisters along with our half sister and her children all lye around reading or slather up with sun block and go play in the sand. There's a shower by the deck and I spend a week never bathing indoors. I'll just bring a few sun dresses that I can throw on and off over a swimsuit and everything will get dusted with dry salt water and sand. Thank goodness for short hair because I'm not planning on bringing a hairbrush. I'll just rotate between the ocean, a beach chair, and the porch hammock. I've already built up a bit of a tan so I don't get sun poisoning again. I meant to save the last two Sookie books for the beach but I accidentally read one. I'll bring the series to the house for everyone to swap out. Last year "Time Travelers Wife" was making the rounds. I'm planning on being nice and toasted before I go to Wizard Philly. I may still have sand under my nails.
But for now I have to o draw 15 strips so that the comic will update while I'm gone.
http://devilspanties.keenspot.com/d/20071010.html
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01:37 am
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emerald city
emerald city comic con was awesome. I'm in Seattle visiting a friend after the show. I sold out of all the books that I shipped here so I wish I had sent more but it would have sucked if I had to mail the books back so I keep telling the greedy part of myself that it's best that I didn't send more books. But I will have to send more to my friend in San Diego once I get home. If I sold out of three boxes of books the first day of emerald city then San Diego is going to need a lot more than the three boxes I sent last week.
We did the space needle and though it was expensive it was very good food and I got to talk with Danielle Corsetto. I got to hang out with Erica Moen (of the webcomic Dar) and couldn't think of any questions for her until after I left. I want to pick her brain about how she's able to have a very open autobiographical webcomic and she still keeps it adorable.
I stayed at the Green Torgouse youth hostel across the street from the farmers market and it was awesome. The artists of Weregeeks and I shared a room that had curtains on the bunk beds with individual lights and fans. Each morning we'd go to the market to grab pork buns and bean rolls for our lunch. The people were diverse and the weather was fantastic. My new favorite resterant is Blue C. it's the kind of sushie resterant that has plates of food on a convayor belt. I love any resterant at a convention where you can start eating right when you sit down and there's no trouble splitting the check.
the thing about a busy con. soooo exhausting. I'm going to spend the day drinking tea under my friends cherry blossom tree tomorrow and it's going to be fantastic.
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12:36 am
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Watchmen (no spoilers)
I'm a pessimist. I figured Watchmen would go the way of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and be a sham of the book.
But holycrap
Watchmen was awesome and it was as close to the book as you could get. Loved it.
But I'm still a pessimist.
I think the media and the norms are just going to see the nudity and violence and totally miss out on the "holycrap, who are the good guys? who are the bad guys? who really won?"
But let us not forget about the nudity
yay male bits! It's more gratuitous if you have strategically placed objects (end of Austen powers) than if you just go ahead and show it. And there was more man ass than girl ass. I am so happy.
I want to know where they found the actor for Rorschach. he was dead on. The audience loved the line "I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked in here with me."
I closed my eyes for the sawing off arms bit. It's about as violent as a movie can get. Jaw bones falling from the ceiling and arms segmented into the camera lens. Nudity and sex in all it's awkwardness. But I don't think that it was excessive. They weren't saying "look! look! penis!" though I did laugh with everyone else when they hit the flame thrower at the sexual climax.
The lady behind me (who had no idea what an "inside voice" was) said she was distracted by the male nudity and she wished they had given him some shorts. But the whole point was that he was outside of what we considered decent on all levels.
The Night Owl was somehow both nerdy and sexy. The women somehow retained some form of dignity even with their garter belts showing. (which i didn't get from the book) Yes, the women were objectified but so were the men. The guys had inappropriate spandex undies showing right along with the girls.
and now let me go back to the beginning
the previews
wow
I hadn't seen a Wolverine preview yet and wasn't really interested
holycrapGAMBITsquealYAY!
I'm in
I will be in line opening day for this movie. Holycrap is it fanservice. Nothing but fan service. Looks sooooo good.
Enterprise; "and now for something completely different" from star treck
I didn't see the third terminator movie. No interest. All plastic and bubble gum. But this latest movie is, again, something completely different.
Looks interesting.
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02:44 am
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puberty anyone?
When did all the hot man ass show up in Tron?
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12:45 pm
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larp dream
Last night I had a dream that was long and involved and had a lot of plot. There was a department store theft of burts bees pink lip gloss, huge mismatched toilet stalls, and a very polite mob boss. But there was also a chapter of the dream about larping.
I was in my Talia clothes and found myself at a game that I didn't know with players I didn't recognize but we were in the middle of the game and I realized I had forgotten my weapons. I ran away from all the fighters wooping comically and trying to find a sword. Some hit me but no one was calling damage so I didn't take it. One guy in front of me went down from some spell packets so I played possum. I hit the ground next to him so no one would attack me even though I still had full body points. I lay there listening to conversations and waiting for them to move the bodies or something (this is the part of the dream that strays more into the fantasy of larp and less of the "we're playing a game". more of the "we are the characters we're playing") Somehow I get onto the other side and make friends with the general guy. Fighting starts up again and I yell for some weapons. He gives me a piece of pipe wrapped in black and red tape with some bits that make it look like an F with three prongs. No padding. I ask if he's got something better. He grudgingly gives me two light weight, well padded swords. Green handles and gray taped blades, perfect for fighting florentine sp? (sword in each hand, one to block) and I jump out into the fray but as I go to swing at a guy I realize this is a different game and what if I'm a newbie? I run back yelling that I don't know what my stats are. I find out I call 8 with one sword (what I usually call) and 20 with the other and i have sixty body points. I start laying waist to everyone in sight. After that, a young doppelganger John Luke Picard shows up who's been dementionaly misplaced and Happy Goth and Dragon Con Goddess have to prove that he's not the real captain on the third level of a hotel basement with a fantastic ivory tiled 1920's pool and turn of the century dentist chair.
I think it's time to start looking for a larp that is running on a weekend I'm not at a convention.
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07:30 pm
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roommate
Still need a roommate. I've been looking since october and I'm starting to live month to month with payments. The books are helping me out tremendously and conventions are starting so I'm not going to go bankrupt, but paying double rent is daunting. One roommate is moving out in March and I did have a reader direct a friend to me and as far as i know he's moving into the old roommates spot in march...but I've still got that empty one now. Going to do another volly of posts on craigslist, roommate.com (ick, most of them are party kids over there) and buy a spot in the local rag though I never get calls from fliers or classifieds. I put up fliers at the local coffee shops and colleges. I can't think of anywhere else.
I did a sale of original art to raise money for a mini laptop for conventions and so I could do streaming video at the conventions without carrying my computer with me and risk damage to my one updating tool. The readers were fantastic and more than covered the cost of the notebook and I have it sitting next to me doing it's whole update thing. I got an Acer aspire one windows atom notebook thingy.... internet setup? you have to sign up for the internet? .... posted later; woo! got it online, did a quick test run of ustream.com works wonderfully! (as long as I can get internet connection) but I hit a wall. I've got the microsoft lifecam 1.4 so I can put the webcam up somewhere at the convention table and leave the computer behind the table. Only thing is the notebook doesn't have a cd drive so I can't put the software on it. I tried to find somewhere online to download the software. the webcam doesn't work on the laptop without the software. damn!
got book three in. i need to sell a few more boxes of books before i can get the lawn mower out of the garage. Gotta finish book 4 before next weekend so I can get a printout to Fairy Godmother my editor so she's got time to go over it and I've got time to fix it before I send it off to the printer. Also should print up more of book 1, book 0, and con artists...could use some geebas books too. But first, rent!
I'm off to scavenge craigslist.
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02:23 pm
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Self publishing - printing 6
There's a catch 22 with the final payment. The payment office needs an invoice before I can pay them. The sales office doesn't send out an invoice until the books are shipped. The books don't ship until the payment is made. It took a few days of me calling the payment office and then telling me to talk to the sales office and back and forth before I convinced them to talk to each other directly and not through me. It's good to know that two separate branches of the same company is just as confused in Canada as they are here.
I'm a bit concered because my sales representative kept quoting the wrong numbers to me. I know the $3k check was cashed but neither the sales or payment departments seem to have seen it. There was something called an over/under order that cost me $400 for 200 books that she explained to me three times and Is till don't understand. But what's done is done.
Good news is that the Diamond order is beings shipped out on Friday so we've got a week to sort out the payment mess and book 3 will be in comic shops February 4th. There's only about 300 of those books so it won't take long to ship. They have to send a truck down with mine (1700 books) so it will take a bit longer. .. uh oh. If it takes more than three days (which it will) then I'll be out of town for What the Hell con. hmmm, I'll need to find a way to bribe my housemate to unload eighty three heavy ass boxes.
I got a letter from the state and they want my paperwork from 2008 to renew the small business license by the 15th. I've been procrastinating on counting all my merchandise and digging up all my sales and cost paperwork and making an appointment with my new tax guy. It's going to be a solid days worth of work. I don't have any filing system to speak of so each year I have to dig through it all and organize it. This is what girlfriends are for! You've got the artist and then his wife/girlfriend is the one who usually keeps the books. Artist mindset with the logical minded partner. grumble
once the Uline boxes come in I'll mail off two books at media rate and that will let me know how to change the shipping cost on paypal.
I should be putting book 4 together but I still have hundreds of strips that need to be finished for that, which I haven't done. I want a clone to sit and draw, a clone to take inventory and gather up the sales receipts, a clone to put out roommate fliers and housemate website searches, a clone to do the yard work and mop the floor, and then I can eat popcorn and watch the first season of Bones and the Bollywood movie Doom 2 that Happy Goth says is packed with hot man bits.
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09:46 pm
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Self publishing - printing 5
I got all 1,000 of book 2 hard cover. It took four racks of heavy duty shelves from home depot. Five shelves per rack. eighty boxes. My garage is full. Then I realized that I've got 1700 of book 3 coming in two weeks. uh oh.
The printers are on schedule so far. My sales rep asked for final payment before shipping and confirmed addresses and insisted on a something loader for the truck because I don't have a loading dock for them to wheal the pallet off of. I'm slightly nervous because I checked my bank tonight and found that they cashed the check yesterday so why is she asking for the payment that was already cashed? There's tons of different departments so I'm assuming the sales department isn't directly linked into the payment place.
It's beginning to look like book three will be in stores on February 4th but I try not to get my hopes up. I'm doing a signing at scifigenre.com in Durham NC and it would be awesome to have book 3 for that.
Next week I'll be cleaning out my garage and trying to figure out where to put three more stacks of shelves in preparation for the 69 boxes of books that will be showing up soon.
Still looking for a housemate if anyone knows someone who needs a place in Atlanta, e-mail me.
Flat rate postal envelopes don't fit two graphic novels so I'm looking around for easy shipping methods for the books that are being ordered. I use the US postal service and I'm experimenting with boxes to cut down to size. THANK YOU to everyone ordering! this is going towards paying for book 3 and paying my mortgage next month.
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05:18 pm
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Never easy
Book two is here! It only took sixteen months to publish. But I got 704 of the beautiful glossy hardcover beauties in my garage right now! I put it up for sale in the store along with some new stickers/magnets and went to press the update button on keenspot and...it's broken.
Yes, that's right, after nine months of kicking and screaming for this book I finally get it and I can't sell it on my site. Is it bad that I didn't even twitch? I e-mailed keenspot and asked if they could fix the problem. The universe has been kicking me in the ass so long with this book that I've stopped being disappointed.
eh
Keenspot will fix it by tomorrow...probably. I'll have the books for conventions next month.
I got the proof from the printer for book 3 and I sent it back with a "yes yes yes print it NOW!"
Haven't found a roommate. Avoiding going grocery shopping.
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12:45 pm
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Self publishing - printing 4
The printer for book 3 confirmed my address so they could send me a proof.
I don't know if we're going to meet my goal of Feb 2nd for shipping but it'll definitely be done for the beginning of February and I've got three shows that month so I can foist it on many people.
My shipment of book 2, the epic adventure continues...
It began in China where it was printed and then shipped to LA to the Diamond warehouse to be shipped out to all comic shops. This is where my thousand copies were sent off to the publishers warehouse in Chicago but this warehouse doesn't exist anymore. When it got to Chicago it was routed up to Canada (I guess the publishers are up there, but I don't know, I get encrypted messages from orbiting satellites). Once they get the books in Canada they will send my thousand down to me in Georgia.
In the meantime Diamond has some overstock that they're sending me and those 200 copies should get to me on the 20th.
And so the journey continues...
I've got some interviews for roommates. Still nervous about paying the mortgage on my own. I figured with a four bedroom house I'd just fill it with renters but I didn't count on not being able to find any.
I had NO reason to think that I was pregnant and I KNEW that it was stress that was making me late but STILL, I worry. I think I did a cartoon where I yelled at mother nature for the catch 22; stress = late period. Late period = stress. I got my period yesterday and had a beer to celebrate. Trying to figure out a cartoon about that "oh yeah, I can have a beer. I'm not pregnant!"
Book 2 is showing up next week.
Book 3 is on it's way.
Roommates are being interviewed.
I'm biking to the coffee shop to draw. (using change bowl to pay for cake)
"my secret happy special place" -- Friend, in reference to girl bits.
“We build on foundations that we did not lay
We warm ourselves at fires we did not light.
We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant.
We drink from wells we did not dig.
We profit from persons we did not know.
We are ever bound in community.”
- Peter Raible
To do;
inventory for taxes
yard
answer e-mails (136)
-- four hours later
WOO HOO!!
shipping company called to make sure that I'd "be open on monday" for delivery. She was a little concerned when I told her it was a residence and that no, we didn't have a loading dock. But this means that 704 books are showing up Monday or Tuesday and the other 296 are showing up on the 20th.
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05:50 pm
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self publishing - printing 3
I owe the printers a cake. I messed up the sizing on everything, even the stuff I thought I fixed, but they said that they could make it fit and they're not even going to charge me for the extra work. So book 3 is still moving.
Haven't heard about my shipment of book 2
Haven't heard from any potential roommates
But I counted up the extra cartoons that I have piled around (strips that are slightly redundant and not as strong as others don't go online but I set aside for the books) and I've got 124 penciled out. Half are even lettered. I just have to ink them which usually takes about a half hour to an hour each. Then I can do 120 one panel strips and art and that will finish up book 4 and I'll be able to send it out for the first draft of editing (I haven't quite figured out those commas). After Happy Goth shows me a page maker program that will put the book together a lot faster than me doing it by hand in photoshop. Ah, technology.
Favorite quote
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals" -- Men in Black
"Never make important decisions on gloomy days...or if you're pms'ing." -- Lady at the coffee shop today. My response "oops."
To do;
yard
answer e-mails (120)
clean bathroom
taxes
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