Diary of an up and coming sociopath

People who still visit my site may notice two things:

Firstly, Most of it’s gone. I’m having a spring clean of epic proportions because it’s been like 3 years since the last proper update or something, and it’s getting embarassing. My re-made site will be modern, sleek, and more relevant to me as a person. I’m a sentimental chap so I’ve got it all backed up if anyone wishes they could see something just one more time (and I left my #afe and easyworld minisites up for posterity.)

Secondly, the blog template has changed. I’m going to be using wordpress to power the whole site in the near future, so I’m attempting to find a nice design that I can hack apart and/or copy. You will probably notice many oddities over the next few days, but eventually there’s going to be a whole new site and the blog will probably be moved to the front page if I can coax my rss feeds into co-operating with a new location for the file though the magic of http redirects or something.

If, even at this point in the post, you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can safely ignore everything said above. If all goes to plan, livejournal/facebook posting will continue uninterrupted and you’ll be none the wiser. Note that while I post this, livejournal is down, so it might not even show up there, and I’ve disabled commenting here to prevent spam polluting the database while the site is in this transitional phase.

Christ, already it’s sounding like a mammoth task…

Sunday: In the morning I woke up around 10:30 and played Puzzle Quest. Around 1:00 I decided I’d been in bed long enough and got changed, then had a look around the Internets while Nikki ploughed her way through Harry Potter and Josh completed Just Cause. I re-read Unlikely, then while listening to Asobi Seksu and the new Ash album, I wrote an entry for my Jeffrey Brown Blog, Crudely Drawn Naked People, which is showing far more regularity than this dusty old joint. Perhaps I’ve run out of things to say about myself? To be fair, I kind of didn’t have much to say about Unlikely, either, it’s a pretty disjointed entry that I have a feeling I’ll be re-editing in the future. It took an hour longer than I wanted but it’s mostly readable now, if not my best work. I cooked dinner, but it came out sort of underwhelming. While washing up Josh lost two of the sweetcorn holders, found one in the bin, and turned the rest of the bin out before Nikki discovered it on the sideboard. Nikki, Josh and I played Puzzle League DS (I won), I had a bath, Nikki and I watched the last Inhumans Saga episode of the Fantastic Four cartoon, then Josh and I watched Parting Gifts, the Angel episode after Doyle’s death where Wesley turns up, and the end of an IT crowd episode.

Saturday: I woke up at 10:00 and listened to Jonathan Ross while playing Sonic Rush. My voice and throat were still knackered from last week’s cold, but at least the symptoms have largely disappeared. At midday Josh, Nikki and I left for Tescos and did the shopping. When we got back it was raining so hard that I just backed the car pretty much up to the very front door of the flats, and Josh and Nikki unloaded the boot. I parked the car, and got inside the flat to find Josh and Nikki cleaning up after discovering one of the jars of beetroot Nikki bought (at ONE PENCE each - discontinued line!) had smashed open, dousing the contents of one bag in juice, though without permanent effect, thank christ. The rain had eased off so Nikki and I set off for our eye tests. I chose two pairs of new glasses on buy one, get one free and shelled out £125 for the convenience of collecting them a week later. We went to the library where I picked up a book on British comics, and the BtVS Oz miniseries, which fills in the gap between Oz’s Season 4 appearances. It’s not canon, but it’s the best we’ve got (there is a novel dealing with the same subject, but christ, no thanks.) Ian came over and after dinner, we had a 4-player game on Puzzle League DS. When Nikki went to bed we watched the first episode of Series 2 of Annually Retentive, then when she was asleep, Josh, Ian and I watched an episode of Mega 64, then Ian showed me part of So Long, Mr. Despair, his pick of this season’s anime. I dropped him off back home at about 2:30am, then read the Oz TPB I had out from the library before bed.

Either I’m late to the party, or this post is going to cause several of my friends to empty their bowels in a such a convincing way that they’ll be lucky to have any bones left.

The script for the unproduced Dungeons and Dragons Finale. Not a hoax. Not a dream! Technically an imaginary story! (because they all are)

While I prepare to bore you all stupid with tales of the remaining couple of weeks since a manics gig, I thought I’d show you all one of the things I’ve been doing with my day off.

I have started a new little project. After doing a year’s worth of Alternate Cover columns on NTS, I feel that I’ve proven to myself that I can keep up writing with a fair amount of regularity. However, reviewing superhero comics week after week can get a little boring, because I don’t have enough money to buy a wide range and there’s only so much you can say about one issue of Ms. Marvel to the next. So, as you may have noticed, I’ve put that on semi-hiatus for a while - there will be new Alternate Cover columns on NTS, some by Seb, some by me, but they’ll not be weekly again for the forseeable future. 

So, after a couple of months off, I’ve been looking for something new to stretch my writing muscles with. I was considering an artist-specific music blog about the dear, departed 3 Colours Red, but as we all know, writing about music is like tap-dancing about architecture. I’m not sure I can adequately translate my passion for music into words like so many others can, so for now that idea’s on the back burner. Instead, I’m doing a comics blog, focussing entirely on the work of Jeffrey Brown.

It’s called (and props to Josh for suggesting the name) Crudely Drawn Naked People: The work of Jeffrey Brown. (If the title doesn’t give it away, it’s worth noting the banner image isn’t entirely work-safe - there is slight nudity, but it’s also crudely drawn.)

I haven’t decided how regular I’ll make it - I’m thinking weekly, but it may be more or less frequent. There’s a sizeable body of work that I’m going to go through, but it’s also small enough to be manageable. Once I’ve done it all, I’ll probably pick a new topic and run with that, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You’ll notice two things. Firstly, it’s not hosted on any of my own servers. This in itself is an experiment, though it’s also partly for the convenience - I’m getting too old to be installing point releases of wordpress every five minutes then fixing all my plugins again. Secondly, you’ll see the Amazon US/UK links at the bottom of each entry, when possible. That’s also an experiment, and one that I admit isn’t entirely altruistic (I love money, you see) but if it sells more Jeff Brown to people, that’ll make both him and me very happy. Please feel free to check it out, especialy if you’re not normally into comics, because Jeff Brown is one of those comic creators I feel really reaches a wider audience. Spread the link around if you’re feeling generous, and definitely make some suggestions if you’ve got any.