Hard Liquor.

Shaved me a porn moustache. I'll probably be bored with it by tomorrow, but right now it amuses me.
I can't believe how tired I've gotten - and still am. It takes me so much effort right now just to keep up a semi-regular comic schedule.. I'm really burnt up. I need a vacation.
Last weekend I poured some effort into Worst Case Scenario, The Grim DotCom and the new mystery project, although mostly in storyboarding the latter, since I'm hesitant to just DRAW it and get stranded with pages I didn't intend that way. That's the biggest problem: I'm not so much tired physically, but mentally. So I have trouble visualising how I want the end result of my drawings to come out, so I'm resorted to just... drawing. Doodling, trying to get a spectacular result, but not really in control of what I'm doing. I don't like it.
And at work it's not much better. I'm putting in justabout the minimal amount of effort and can't be bothered to show too much initiative. I'm a shell of the employee I was - and it's all thanks to fatigue.
I don't *want* to complain about it, since it certainly isn't cancer or any rare blood disease or anything. But I barely recognize myself right now. And that can't be good either.

I hope I can get some sleep sometime soon. For days and days. Not just a few hours.

Time to get a bit mean.

Well, I can be a vindictive little prick when it comes down to it, as overseascartoon@126.com is about to find out. See, overseascartoon@126.com is the email address that has been sending us at Probeersel spam over the past days. Over and over and over the very same email, wether 'our company' wants to buy a booth on an Asian cartooning/animation convention. Well, overseascartoon@126.com, no, we don't. As you, overseascartoon@126.com, should have realised when we didn't respond to the first 20 emails. So, overseascartoon@126.com, I am now so fed up with you after you, overseascartoon@126.com, sent us another four such emails today, that I'm signing you, overseascartoon@126.com, up for every newsletter, every free product, every porn site, every bottle of viagra, every anti-spam policy, and ANYTHING else, that I can find. And I also hope to make sure that you, overseascartoon@126.com, are hereby picked up by whatever spam-spiders are crawling the web, because it's time that you, overseascartoon@126.com, get a taste of your own medicine.
Seeyah. overseascartoon@126.com.

About To Get Even More Busy.

I've sort of committed myself to a comics project I've been offered to co-operate on today. I can't disclose any details since it's all in infant shoes but I assure you, in due time I will reveal much, much more about it. The one question I hope this raises in your head as it did in mine for a while is, why on earth is René piling his plate up even fuller than it already was ??
Well, the work I'll be doing is kind of related to the work I'm doing for the Grim DotCom right now, and it'll be interesting to do something completely different. The main reason I agreed to do it is because it got me semi-excited - excited enough to have already sort of started on it. And I haven't gotten excited about anything in quite a while now.
So. Greg, eat your heart out - you're not the only one with a big mystery project coming up anymore ! Of course, I'd be spilling details and hints all over the place if it wasn't a secret project involving OTHER people who don't want their work revealed. Let's just say that it's not Probeersel.com related for a change, although in due time I'll make sure to showcase my own work in this Secret Project on the site, of course. If all this got you curious, too bad - you'd have to get me REALLY drunk in order for me to reveal any of it, and trust me, I don't get drunk that easily.

There. That should keep you all on your toes for any clues over the upcoming months.

Return of the Ice Queen

Here's a little post for those of you who've known me for longer than two-and-a-half year: the Ice Queen has returned. For real. She was still employed at my company but located in a completely different part of the building, then headed off to Singapore for nine months for reorganisational purposes and has now returned, to the department directly below ours. So I bump into her again during smoke breaks outside (in glorious weather, usually).
For the uninformed a quick boil-down: the Ice Queen is the loving nickname for a coworker from another department that I had a crush on for a while but she was completely unapproachable. Not that I didn't try to get conversations going etc. but she was very standoffish and seemed cold and indifferent to everything and everyone.
Now that time has gone by I'm just friendly to her, and she's surprisingly friendly back nowadays - she even waved at me earlier today. But that might have something to do with her soon leaving the company for good, I dunno. All I know is that despite having lost romantic interest, she turns out to be quite nice and even somewhat interesting when a bit more relaxed, and she remains drop dead gorgeous as well.

Since some of you have upon occasion enquired about her and I couldn't give an answer because I simply didn't know how she was doing or where she was, consider this a little update on your behalves.

Even more tired now.

Spiraling even faster and deeper down into total exhaustion. Right now to the point that I'm fed up with my 'posse' friends and my roommate. They all went out yesterday and had a splendid time without me and with no realistic means of me contacting them. I got home from the departure drink of a much appreciated colleague in Amsterdam, by 7 30, but no one was there. I first just lay on my bed for hours with some music on, incapable of anything else anymore.
Then when I had a tiny bit of energy again I dragged my sorry old carcass downstairs and actually really enjoyed having the house to myself. The only thing ruining it was knowing my roommate and 'his' friends could return at any time. And they did, at 2. Blah. It was ok, I guess, hanging out for a while watching Coupling series 3 which I was watching. But this morning one of them (who slept over in the guest bedroom) and my roommate took off at 10, obviously not bothering to say goodbye or anything, and I wasn't sorry about it one bit. They'd woken me up but I remained in bed pretending I was still deep asleep and I couldn't wait for them to fuck off.
I then got up and took care of a few things online that needed to be done, then leapt back into bed for another few hours to sleep more. Of course, just then, my roommate had returned and threw in a load of laundry.

IT'S STILL IN THERE. And I really need to do some as well, because the last couple of times that I should have done it he also sneaked in before me and I decided to wait. And of course waited and waited and waited and then the weekend's over and during the week I don't have the time to wait for the laundry to finish and put it up on the line. So now I'm on the verge of running out of clothes and the asshole AGAIN leaves his fucking laundry in there. And I knocked on his fucking door but he apparently has headphones on, and if I just open the door to ask him nicely to take out the laundry, he's gonna give me about the biggest fucking attitude - I've been there before, trust me. I keep putting up with this shit of his, FUCK !
So I *EMAILED* him now. Several hours ago. Does he check his mail ? No.

I wish he took a god damn vacation for a while or something. Leave the country, go have fun. Or stay over with our friends who are slowly becoming YOUR friends. Fuck, all I want is some peace and quiet. The house to myself. Freedom to do the things I need to do. And some god damn rest. No obnoxious coughing. No 'hey dude' everytime he walks by. None of his breakfast on MY POOLTABLE. No attitude about anything I want or need to do. No bitching about the cats being allowed to go outside. The absence of his friggin' carcass in MY hammock.

I'm overreacting, but really, I could do without him for a while. And without my so-called friends. And without everyone. Including the much before-mentioned 7-year crush girl. And work. And even the comic artists.

I just want some rest. Plenty of people seem to get it, so why can't I ? Isn't THAT something I can ask for my birthday ?

I don't even know what to put here.

Me, me, me, blah blah blah.

Yes, I'm gonna whine. Everyone seems to expect me to hold up under everything I'm put through, and to do so I really need to vent from time to time.

I really would handle everything a lot better right now if there wasn't so much crap going on. Greg's illness just goes on and on without the Medics offering any improvement, and now Sionnain has a tumor on top of her other trouble.
Work is insane but mostly because so many big problems just linger on and on and I'm caught in the middle relying on other people to fix them, who, of course, don't. Yay.
The weather isn't helping, this'll be the umteenth night in a row that I won't get any decent sleep because of the heat. Also the deadline is creeping closer to get everything arranged about the switch to another job within the company and.. I dunno. Things aren't exactly CERTAIN yet and if I screw this up, opportunity's probably gone.

I dunno. I just wish everything was fixed. Or that I was left alone for a while. To sleep. Or rest, at least. Perhaps even get some time to have a bit of fun. I tasted some fun last weekend and I want more.

I just want to be rid of feeling rushed. And lonely. And tired.
I want to feel good again. My heart's not into things. I'm slacking on the Grim DotCom work to the absolute minimum, I'm feeling a growing hate towards the daily Worst Case Scenario, the fun things happening to me feel really bland, I act less and less responsible and professional at work, and I don't feel passionate about everything anymore. If anything screams 'René needs a break', I think it's all of the above together.

Then again, perhaps just a good night's sleep would help as well.

Goodbye, 25...

Well, apparently it's my 26th birthday as of now, so if you'll excuse me, I'll be celebrating it by first catching way too little sleep, then having to go to work, then hopefully getting to leave work a little earlier after which I'll be hiding out in Arnhem. Not going into further details, just don't try to find me. Begone, you congratulators ! Shoo !

I Feel Like Whining.

Today was horrible. Satan had stayed outside all night despite me calling him several times last night and delaying my bed time (the arrogant little prick just sat there on the shed roof lookin down on me) and I only just stopped myself from kicking him as he hurried inside this morning. I slept too short (even though I went to bed very early) and the first half of the day at work was incredibly busy with a lot of mess that was left over. Within a few intensive hours I 'cleaned up' some 30+ emails. Yay...
The regular sites and forums were slow and uninteresting today as well so the web failed to interest me inbetween takes. Even the talk with Reinder is starting to lose my interest, mainly because of the rude 'yawn' interruption some anonymous asshole posted. It's not Reinder's fault because he actually manages to keep the talk rather interesting (to me, which is what matters in such a conversation, right ?) but once people start to pull that kind of crap, I kind of cease to care.
My English was even rather bad today (I had to meet with a client) and I made a few other sloppy mistakes that I normally wouldn't have made. I left home early ("fuck it") and on the way home bumped into an old friend from my student days. Getting home early enabled me to catch a last few rays of sunlight before sitting down at the PC and uploading some more 'special day' facts for the Probeersel site that Dirk Arend sent in.
So, normally, this would have been a relatively interesting day. But not today. My heart wasn't in any of it and I had a crap time. I can get into where my heart WAS at the time but screw that, I don't feel like it. Just felt like whining for a moment about my crap day.