Just testing something.

No, you can't see it.
But I can.
And it makes me feel.
Feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
A little 'yay' bubbles to the surface.

But don't mind me, I'm mostly just being silly ;)

Happy New Year !

Gimme A You, En, Cee, El, Ee.. Uncle.

My brother's girlfriend gave birth to a very loud (judging from the brief phone call I had with my brother) little boy this Monday. His name is Lars, and apparently now I'm an uncle.

I've had a few very strange weeks. One of my best friends came to take care of me and that was lots of fun but it kind of tossed my schedule about. Work-wise, because I had been creative in shifting my days around to be able to spend as much time with her as possible, but also comic-wise and nightlife mayor-wise. During those two weeks, all sorts of people and ideas that I was no longer really counting on hearing from crawled out of the woodwork so now I don't even know how the rest of my month will look like. I've bought a new bike (to replace the really good one that was stolen july '05) and as of tomorrow night we'll temporarily have two extra roommates in this house. All in all, things are hectic and confusing even though I've rested a LOT the past two weeks.

Gonna have to ease into the rest of December, before I can figure out how and where I am right now, methinks.

Very Bad Mood Today.

Of all the people I've encountered since getting out of teh bed this morning, only two or three managed NOT to irritate the heck out of me. I'm having a fairly bad day. And work isn't much better, I don't have much of anything to do that can distract me from the People Who Should All Die Painful Deaths. So I'm browsing around on the web in an attempt at naive hope (while knowing better) that I might stumble upon something interesting. A well-written webcomic review site. Or a good comic that not only manages to interest me but actually still updates as well. Or.. well.. anything, really, that'll grab my mind. And you know what ? Most of the stuff I've found so far are blogs, and nearly all of them are from people who don't update and then return with the exact same phrase: "I'm still alive!"

GOOD GOD ! It's the blog equivalent of extremely lame office sayings that some people - very well represented in the People Who Should All Die Painful Deaths group today - mistake for humour or wit.

So here it is: I *have* died. Sorry, I know. I kicked the bucket. I expired. I had to die at some point the way I was going, and hey, I figured, why not for once actually do something predictable then ? That's why I haven't updated as of late. Being an ectoplasmic being now meant I had to get a bit of practice in before I could manipulate my very NON ectoplasmic PC to switch on and before I could type on the keyboard again. But I think I'm managing ok now and typppppppppppppppping worrrrrrrrrrrks.
It's not too bad here in the afterlife. It may not be what some of you expect from it, but it's a place to hang one's hat, and after all, what more do you want ? The fun bits include:
- peace and quiet and lots of away-time from the People Who Should All Die Painful Deaths because you can slip into any kind of area you want;
- with that same talent, plenty of voyeur opportunities;
- finally lots of time to catch up with my reading;
- no one bugging you to actually do some work, wether paid or unpaid, no weekly deadlines to make;
- you can sleep in allllll you want.. no, seriously, there's no need for alarm clocks and you're kind of expected to mostly make nocturnal appearances anyway;
- no dress code;
The less fun bits include:
- well.. sex is kind of out of the question, and I won't even begin to explain how complicated masturbation is right now;
- I haven't had a smoke since all this started;
- and then there's that pesky big light that keeps shining down on me. Still trying to find the light switch for that.

Anyway, all in all it's not a bad experience. But I hope you all understand I can't guarantee to update this blog anytime soon. I have no idea who's currently paying the electricity bill here but I figure if I abuse the PC too often they're going to notice.

After Days Of Passion

It's come to this: that I should quote titles of webcomics to come up with a clever header. But I couldn't find anything more appropriate, to be honest.

An update after all these months ? Yes, and a direly needed one. Because lots has happened - but then, lots always does if you pay close enough attention. And I always do, and since time in the mind of a human being is measured in numbers of events, my weeks last for eternities. So as much as I would want to, I can't summarize the entire period I haven't updated, even if I could still remember everything that went down. I have to limit myself to the bigger changes.

First off: I seem to be healing, psychologically. I have more energy, I'm depressed a lot less, and I feel more and more able to scramble back up on my own feet. It's still going slowly at the moment and I'm still far from the strong, energetic person I was just a year ago, but I'm also a far cry from the shadow of that man that I was when I was last updating this blog and practically drowning in angst and despair. What helped a lot is that creatively, things have been going fairly well. The Grim DotCom's storyline is progressing perfectly on schedule (in fact, it may be going slightly too fast considering the few things left to reveal this 'season', so I may have to slow myself down for the first time since I started this series), the 'KermisComics' were organised by someone else this year so I could actually just participate, which resulted in at least one page I feel somewhat proud of, as well as a lot of fun with several new comic artist acquaintances. And August 5th is behind me now. That's the big one. Reading back through my email archive over the past week (I've had a tendency all week to clean things up for some reason) I realised I had been preparing for this one evening since February - so for half a year I've lived towards that one spectacular, unconventional and completely mad show evening that it turned out to be. And it was glorious, insane, absurd, beautiful, and at the very least memorable. Audience turnup was also huge, media attention was fairly impressive, the Probeersel.com T-shirts that got distributed when you bought 'my' drink that evening practically FLEW over the counter, and most of my best friends and even some family turned up in the audience too.

One of the end results, since the inauguration of the new nightlife mayors of the city of Tilburg was attached at the end of the evening, is that I am now, well, one of the two nightlife mayors of this city. The perks include that I finally, after eight years, really DO have my own barstool in my habitual bar (where I essentially have lived longer than I've actually lived in either of my two homes in this city, if you add it all up). The disadvantages include having to get used to a very weird feeling when people recognize me in the street - which actually does happen now upon occasion. Point and stare, that kind of thing. But I knew that was a realistic risk and I accepted it beforehand, so I'll just have to deal.
But after the first week 'in function', my mind is already riddled with possibilities on what to do in this new role. Things we could organise, things we could publically protest against, things I could attempt to improve in my beloved city. All this, and the actual August 5th evening, have probably contributed to my somewhat renewed energy. What also helps is that all the love crap from before has also sort of resolved.. or vaporised, mostly. All the confusing situations where things just weren't clear have either been made clear on their or my side, or by changes in circumstances. It may all sound vague, but I'll get into detail sometime soon.

In any case, things have much improved. They're still far from perfect, and I do still have some bad moments, but all in all the only way is up. It seems.

I Suppose A Little Update Is Appropriate

Crash, burn, crash more. I'm emotionally knocked out by two strong punches, just when I was nearly on my feet. This entire week I'm sort of living from day to day as escapist and numb as possible. A friend is visiting me Friday and perhaps she'll be able to make things a bit better. But right now I'm not doing too well.

There's been an interesting development, comic-wise, but seeing as how I'm in my current weird place and unsure even how to manage what ALREADY is going on, I haven't agreed to anything just yet. I'm giving myself this weekend to decide. Under normal (but what is 'normal' in my life ?) conditions I would think this development was immensely cool and jump on board without thinking twice.
Wish I could be less vague about it but it's not my own project and it's all hush hush for now as far as I can tell. I'll reveal more of it when the proper time arrives. Comic fans, especially of the work geographically close to mine, will like this. That's all I can say for now.

Oh, in case anyone wondered: I removed the tagboard on the right side of the screen. Besides attracting spam, it now also started popping up ads. In other words, it just got too much of a pain in the ass and I chucked it.

René out.