As Seen In:

I got into a Zinefest in town - that only uses instagram and facebook for advertising, so I'm sort of SOL when it comes to like, connecting to them in any way but I'll save that for feedback, I guess.

I've got a short comics collection of HamsterBandit Industry pages, a short story about Snow White's ghost, and two very small squares of an old story idea project I did and a series of ghost story drabbles. I'm planning on making another set of two square zines and also printing a 16 page Batman and Columbo comic. I've gotten lucky on the last part that my dad's agreed to let me use his printer instead of me having to use Staples. It has so little colour in the actual comic that it felt physically painful to pay the price at Staples to double-side print so many pages.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Murdoch Mysteries and 3 thoughts:

1) The genre of 'if you have any hobby at all, you will be murdered' is alive and well.
2) You can really tell that this show was cast around Murdoch actor's (lack of) height.
3) By season 13, they have run out of short actors in Toronto.

You can see the opposite effect in Father Brown, where Brown's actor is a goddamn giant. The actors, including the women, were all cast tall so they fit in the shot with him I think. Bunty was 5'11-6'. The 'tiny' Mrs. McCarthy is, according to my searches... 5'8.

My gf is 5'8, I'm 5'3. She is like a giant to me. It's awesome.

I messed up big time. Instead of movies, I started watching shows with my bff Elly. Next thing you know we're watching more shows. Whole series together.

I tried watching two new to me mysteries tonight and they were *so suited to her tastes* I had to stop the episodes and decide we would watch them together at a later date.

This is why I don't add sugar or milk to my coffee! I'm too afraid I won't be able to drink it again if I don't have the added ingredients on hand!

We're at Session 9 and I've now made 7 comics about our adventures and that was enough to start posting them to Ao3. Here's the link!

Here's what I've posted since last last first 2:

( 5 comics about a very tired looking orc )


You can actually watch Thonk's design simplify in real time.

me: I turn 40 this year, btw
dad: that means I'm an adult now, doesn't it

I didn't have much sympathy for his arrested development - I've felt like an old man for about ten years now. Of course, I also got to do that oldest (presenting female) sibling with four younger male cousins on top of it responsibility dance so who the hell knows what tilted the scales there.

Canada Post might have another strike so I marched out in 4 degree stormy weather to the post box to mail some postcards I wrote like, a month and a week ago (respectively), finally. I did see a lot of nicely flowering trees, a really nice part of spring. And two scottie dogs that looked like they would personally knife me if I approached their owner picking up their doo. 'That's ours! You can't have it!'

Cute though.

Saw the first 10 minutes of Murderbot with my friend Meli until her connection gave up on trying to share itself with a teen boy. We'll try again Sunday at 3 am.

My mom's birthday is tomorrow! She's 67! She's had cancer recently and is currently cancer free right now, so I'm treasuring this birthday.

Unsettling. I was doing some kitchen maintenance today and discovered all my teas and spices had expired in 21/22 and had a sobering realization that maybe my depressive episode had been a lot longer than previously believed.

Oh well. I'm just cleaning it all out and found a white board in my stuff to write down the 'use this by NOW' dates for the new stuff in the hopes it will at least help with meal planning.

All right, movie talk:

Marry My Dead Body - watched this with Elly, a rare modern movie for hamsters. It's a Taiwanese film about a cop who through a series of circumstances gets into a ghost marriage with a man and proceeds to solve said man's murder when the ghost starts manifesting.


Buckaroo Banzai - All this time I thought I was definitely not a fan but having rewatched it, I think I just wasn't sober the first time I tried. Very easy to follow, very fun. Enjoyed the aliens a lot.

A Touch of Cloth - not a movie, a series of tv specials. 3 of them to be exact. Source of an emotional Crisis when I shared it with Elly and it turned out she dislikes absurdist humour and prefers character driven. Taking it as a personal affront, I had a big baby episode (not in front of her) and then I got over myself and watched the other two episodes (including the third I had never seen before) with Ann and Vali, which was a better match. "A whole house of people dead because of me! For the fifth time this year!"

The Crow - Watched this like six thousand times as a teen, showed it to Vali and Ann for the first time as a special movie weekend. They didn't hate it! And to me, I was happy to see it actually stood up better than my memories.

Willow - Part of the double feature with the Crow, watched this one with just Vali for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture. Also lived up really well to my childhood memories and Vali loved it, especially the Nelwyns. Willow's tiny tiny children were so cute. Elora was also a very expressive baby. Vali said she understood why Warwick Davis was an early crush of mine.

Teen Wolf - terrible soundtrack. This is a movie about basketball, the werewolf thing doesn't really register. Easy to watch it with the earlier stuff happening to Michael J Fox's character being that he's a trans man and meant I got to make jokes about fangs being part of taking testosterone.

The Marlow Murder Club - tv show I watched with Elly. We loved the three leads and I got to do a 'OH THIS IS THE SOLUTION' when it clicked before the characters. We were, however, surprised to find out it was a miniseries and not separate episodes. We endured.

Missing Link - saw this with Ann. Absolutely beautiful movie by Laika, the entire purpose of it seeming to be about making gorgeous sets. I enjoyed how they didn't follow familiar tropes for the emotional journey of the main characters, but am sad that the main woman character's story was backseat to being the narrator of the male lead's emotional journey.

Amityville Horror - I enjoyed how the director made sure to include the details from the original telling by the family that made you go 'oh yes, this was absolutely a hoax'

The Silence of the Lambs - Saw this with Ann, it was about as scary as your average Criminal Minds episode, by which I mean not at all, but it was compelling. The lady in the well was my favourite and I enjoyed her can-do attitude.

Hot Fuzz and Bon Cop Bad Cop - a double feature I've wanted to run for YEARS, with Ann and Vali (who had not seen BCBC) and it was a hit! Hot Fuzz is a delight of foreshadowing and BCBC is like rolling around in maple syrup.

In the Mouth of Madness - another Ann and Vali joint, this was extremely meta and the villain looked a lot like Neil Gaiman and Neil Gaiman's twee little quotes about 'a book is a dream you hold in your hands' actually fit in perfectly with this dude's evil speeches. Try it yourself.

They Live - Ann and Vali had seen this, I hadn't, the extensive punchout scene was a fever dream in how long it went on and 'I think they're married now?' - They made fun of me because I thought Roddy Piper was Kurt Russell but they both had big beautiful mullets and manly jaws, okay. I can't be expected to identify people beyond that.

Minding my own business when someone I dislike makes a declaration about something I don't give a fuck about and I am STILL like 'you're not the boss of me! I'll fight you! On the beaches!'

Just letting that feeling pass through me and move along.

Sometimes when the world gets out of my control I'll do little things to let me feel like I have a grasp on my existence, like look up a topic I have feelings about (not the above) on bluesky and block everyone who crosses me. Lately that search topic has been Neil Gaiman. I'm not sure if it's the result of my frequent blocking but I do hope the reason I find so few people to block is because not many people want to defend him. And that I got rid of all the 'haha I'm superior because I have never liked a bad person in my LIFE' early on. Your hubris will not save you.

Depressingly this is not effective with J K Rowling because there's too much everything that just kills my will to live instead of a satisfactory 'off to the shadow realm' feeling.

If this doesn't work, I buy tiny plastic horses (schleich) because buying + gazing is a powerful two punch of dopamine.

It's not so bad right now though - I'm not spending my day in bed, I've been going on walks, I'm planning to go back to the gym, I got new blue shoes that fit, I'm spending more time with friends, and I'm gonna see if I can successfully bake cakes in my big toaster oven.

I also have MANY tiny plastic horses to gaze at.

Looking for a good time?

Image search:

- Gloster Canary
- Viscacha (I mean the mountain one, but the plains one has much to recommend it)
- Tibetan Fox



I've gotten onto a new little bit of entertainment after seeing advice that to draw a medieval cat, all you do is draw a regular cat and give it a human face. So I did it with my cat and found it to be acceptable. And then I did a large portion of the cast of HamsterBandit Industries and giggled madly at the resulting Elly the Elephant and I'll be doing more later. Look forward to seeing medieval Guineamom.

I've passed my courses for this term and now I only require one more religion 200 course to get my degree. I'm an anthropology major/religion minor!

I get to register for my next courses on the 29th. I'm either going to be taking drug-induced spirituality or Buddhism.

I used to keep a daily diary and for some reason stopped last spring when I went to visit my girlfriend to see the eclipse. Maybe something happened to me when the sun went out and that child started screaming* but who is to know?

The Pathfinder game I joined is going well. I am an extreme coward, using my ghosts (I'm an animist) to check behind doors before we enter and the times I don't check and we walk into an ambush, I shut the door and get away from it very quickly. I don't think I've actually done physical damage in a fight yet, but I use telekinetic hand and figment to disarm and distract a lot.

I am an orc.

Current Cthulhu campaign ends soon - we're in a Sar is the gm cycle - and I become GM again and we will be doing a Catthulhu one, which is just call of Cthulhu but everyone is a cat. There's an actual system for it that I own, but what I actually do is use regular CoC modules and add animal npcs and stuff for information gathering.

I have a fic that's due in a few days. Pray for Johnny.

Speaking of, I also have to face the titcrusher5000 for a medical checkup today and I'm not looking forward to baby's first mammogram at all.

EDIT: When I was a youth I saw a news clip about my city's new titcrusher5000 and it pasted this very old lady's breast into the thinnest of pancakes and that is what I thought was going to happen to me and I was terrified but apparently that was more of 'she was an old lady with very little fat there' and less the standard so it was uncomfortable but not hideously painful. Go team.

*fire ants

Many years ago I asked a woman I knew 'should I dye my hair red?' and she said 'there's no such thing as an attractive redheaded man' and anyway this is now the third time I've dyed my hair red while thinking of her.

I was going to share her other bon mots but that was getting into mean grudge territory.

I went to a book sale today with me mother and a friend and while I had wandered off to a Claire's to look at giant hairbows, the friend had run into a local celebrity! The lady who had pissed off the entire town and led to a several hours long council meeting when she tried to get a bunch of books banned!

The friend asked mom and I to praise her for not clawing out the lady's eyes and we were like 'no, we will not condone your behaviour. You should have suplexed her'

Also, I got new bedsheets. They are 'jersey' - I don't know what that means.

I got my Hamham action figures back from the kiln today and they delight me. I think I've nailed the design.

That was my big day! Stolen ginger valour, potential fight scene, sleeptime comfort, and artistic expression.

Also there was a dog that didn't want pets, which was sad but I respected her request.

I have so many tiny horses* right now which is a sign I'm in emotional distress but also it means that if I'm buried with them, I will have a mighty herd to show off my riches in the afterlife. The barbies will be my servants.

I keep updating my webcomic over at hamsterwheel.art - up to 53 updates now, with two more in the queue. It's very hard not to make the punchline killing my little hamster avatar each time. I suffer for my art.

Each week I have a movie night with Moss and Ann, and sometimes I talk some other friends into it (most consistently Hina/Elly the Elephant who I swear is a real person even though she has no social media. Listen, people have seen her. She was my plus one at a wedding in October. We went to a tar pit together) and it's going marvellously as a project and I've also started watching modern stuff too that's not just tenuously 'pop culture!'

We saw Don't Let The Riverbeast Get You on tubi on Thursday which is a modern, very amateur slightly not of this reality horror movie a la creature of the black lagoon which features a world where tutors are the most powerful people in the world.

On Monday we saw The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes which featured a Sherlock which seemed to be an unholy combination of Mae West and Johnny from Airplane!. I liked it.

And I saw RoboCop! And I was deeply unsettled by the fact that it didn't seem to be sci-fi or unusual in any way for pretty much the whole movie!

There have been Many Others but my memory is short.

Wait, I also saw Wicker Man. It's a musical! Wicker Man is a fucking musical! Ann says that Howie should have slept with the innkeeper's daughter and then the next day everyone is just really mad at him and all 'just go. Go home. We don't even want to look at you'

Lastly, I've been rewatching CSI (original flavour) which is a delight and it's so freaky to see Sara be yelled at for going into a room with a gun when she's a CSI when in CSI NY not only would the swat team be led by the CSIs NY, they would have already killed six people. I preferred original flavour by a mile.

Wait, EXTRA lastly, I've been watching my way through Columbo which overall was a delight until I got to the finale of season 5, the potential last episode at the time which Patrick McGoohan decided to film as an experimental art project where he upended the audience's expectations of 'coherence', 'audible dialogue', 'sound mixing that didn't cause physical pain', 'a script', 'editing', 'Peter Falk being sober', 'a plot', and 'watchable'. I actually found myself wishing genuine ill on that man! Unusual! You guys know my tolerance for this shit! It wasn't just the worst episode of Columbo I'd ever seen, it may possibly have been one of the worst episodes of anything I'd ever seen.

Anyway the next episode was guest starring William Shatner (and Walter Koenig!) and was a delight, honestly. I was watching it with Hina and I said 'that's a hairpiece, Shatner used to keep stealing them from the Star Trek set' her: 'ooooh'




*Schleich. I love going 'this is a halfinger!' like I fucking know what that even means (I do not)