I’m not bothering to update you on my groceries this week. There’s still some left, but I’ve lost interest enough that it is too much work to take it out of its various places and put it on my counter to take a picture. You’ll all get over it, I am sure.

But this month, I have brought you a random comic strip I wrote at work one night that would have been forgotten if I’d not bothered to put it online, as well as one of the very first comedical stories I ever wrote for the Internet. That one predates Contains2 by a bit. I think I first did it up as an email to Marq when I was bored one time.

It got me thinking about other stories I’ve made over the years that aren’t as lucky to have made it online. I don’t mean what’s left of the Contains2 stories that I’ve just not got around to bringing here yet, I mean the stuff that is well and truly gone and I don’t even have notes to salvage it. Granted most of these stories I, obviously, can’t remember, but there are a few that I do have faint traces of in my brain and I figure I should note them before I lose even that.

The earliest I recall was, I believe, in grade 2. We were assigned to make little illustrated books with a story in them and I can remember that my story combined Egyptian elements with cat people. Basically, what I am saying is that it was a Thundercats ripoff. Apart from that I can’t remember anything. I do know that my report card that year made an oblique reference to it saying that I didn’t adequately explain things in my stories, that I took for granted that people would know what I was talking about if I knew it. Stupid little me. Similarly I wrote a prose story in grade 5 that borrowed liberally from the plot of King’s Quest V. Plagiarism. It’s the easiest way for kids to write stories.

Also during my elementary years I remember a desire to make a Christmas movie and that I wanted a sort of Advent Calendar motif to open and close scenes. I was apparently deep. It was meant to end with a snowball fight, I think, and I remember getting in trouble when we started throwing snowballs to “practice”. Stupid little me. We also wrote a skit about bullying once and performed it at a school assembly. I’d love to find out someone got that on film, but I doubt it.

Around grade five and six, I guess, was about when I started getting into comics as well and it is no surprise that that is when I started making comics as well. I did a lot of the old fold-a-bunch-of-sheets-in-half-and-you-have-a-book style comics, including one about a superhero called Zappo which I don’t still have, but I do remember enough about the character that someday I hope to give him a home. Perhaps my other biggest comic effort was a couple sheets full of different comic strips with different themes, as if I were trying to create a whole Comics Page in a newspaper. I remember only two of the strips and one of them, I think, I will recreate for this site sometime. The other was a two panel bit with a Native American man sitting crosslegged on the floor/ground. The first panel he said “How” and in the second panel he said “ya doing?”

Sometime in either late elementary or early junior high I wrote just a couple of pages, pure description no story, about a family living in a house that was so empty people kept assuming nobody lived there and putting up for sale signs. I never did finish it, I don’t think, but I remember it impressing the parents and teacher types who read it.

In grade 7, I think, for an art class project I created a comic strip about a superhero called Dog-Thing. I got an excellent grade on that thing, the teacher wasn’t even willing to write my grade on the thing because he didn’t want to ruin it. Naturally I lost it at some point. Stupid little me. For years I assumed I would never see Dog-Thing again, but while the strip is indubitably gone I did eventually find a sketch of the main character. That means I can use him again! I haven’t got around to revealing it yet, but Dog-Thing is a retired founding member of the Team of Superheroes.

Around the junior high years I also created Little Choy. Now I can hardly call these “stories” but innumerable images of Little Choy insulting anyone willing to speak near him have been drawn on school desks and in text books over the years that I will never see again. Luckily every one of them is pretty much exactly the same.

For a grade 11 English class we had to write something and as I recall I did. I wrote something about an office being shot up by criminals or terrorists or something. Nowadays that might raise some alarm bells or something, but this was at least a year before the Columbine thing, so all I got was a comment from the teacher about how I use way more paragraph breaks than necessary and the teacher mused that usually he had to tell people the opposite. I’ve always bucked trends, I guess. I still tend to like smaller paragraphs better. And I guess part of the reason that writing that story didn’t make me look insane was because, as I recall, it was about a guy who encounters one of the criminal terrorists and while they can hear shooting coming from other parts of the building he actually talked the criminal terrorist into stopping.

Grade 12, I don’t even remember for sure which class it was, but this was after the point where I’d stopped actively trying in school, so on some exam I was taking I did what I could and then turned it over and wrote a story about a squirrel detective on the back. As I recall it involved some sort of mystery in a casino tree. I think there was a rabbit bouncer possibly? I really wish I still had this one. It sounds messed up.

Anyway, as I said, that’s just the stories I remember enough to know I don’t remember or have notes about. Who knows how many stories I’ve written that have faded into nothingness? I guess we’ll never know.

Unless Time Travel!

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got for you this week. But hey, if we’re going to follow their exploits, I think that it is important to know why the Pete and Jeremy don’t do texting. So now it is settled.

Oh well. I can’t let that be all there is for the first post of the New Year, so here’s some nonsense image I had on Contains2. I have no idea what it is all about and I don’t think I did when I put it there either:

Also, I’ve just finished making a list of the books which I have read and own to compliment the list of my DVDs which was already here.

So there is the only strip I’ve got to give you this week.

It is actually Sunday morning instead of Monday morning as I write this. I am using the little function to pre-date a post so that it will go up automatically when its time comes. I’ve never tried it before and I figure that if I’m going to be successful at making sure I get a post up every Monday I need to learn how to use it. It seems… pretty much as simple as changing one number, but I’ll not know for sure until I see this post come up on its own.

Update: And this is Monday PDR. Neat. My time-travel post seems to have gone on without a hitch, so now that is among the tricks up my sleeve. Level Up! So… The time I might have spent doing that post this day was instead spent watching television in the form of the Walking Dead and the Venture Brothers. For the Walking Dead I have to rescind my comments made after I’d seen the first episode that came to the fact that it was good but that since I’ve read the comics I knew the story. As the episodes have gone on I see that they are either doing things differently or I don’t actually remember the early issues of the book at all. For the Venture Brothers it was the season finale and it was good. I am going to miss that show while it is away, but I guess the guys who make it need a break. So I might as well let them have one. The episode also mentioned a Secret President, which amused me considering how recently I started doing this strip.

So… A few days ago I got one of those things. You know, those things. Sometimes people on television have them. What are they called? Oh yeah: A cold. A few days ago I got a cold. It kinda sucks.

And while this is far from the worst I’ve had (I remember one last year with a bunch of coughing that lasted for a month or something) it has led to me being quite listless and foggy-brained all weekend. More so than usual even. And I’ve got used tissues everywhere that probably I should pick up. Pretty much the number one advantage of living alone is that used tissues can wait.

I did buy another one of these boxes of tissues, though. Who are those guys? Who are those guys still?

Of some interest, perhaps, is the fact that there is a new television show on some channel or another based off of the Walking Dead comic book. That book has entertained me for years, so I checked out the show and I was not disappointed. I’ve been a fan of zombie movies since childhood but I do admit that even before the modern enpopularizing of the undead hordes there were plenty of bad zombie movies and since then that has not changed. Because of that I am happy to actually see an ongoing show about them, which I don’t think has ever been done, and it seems to be done well. I’d probably be even happier if those two things were true about a show that wasn’t retelling a story I am already familiar with, but hey, at least licensing deals are good for the people who make the comics. They deserve a reward for having done their thing well.

And the title is correct. I just finished a bowl of cereal. Hooray.

So, today we hit the Hal-Con I mentioned a few posts back. I’d be lying if I didn’t say we were a touch disappointed. As hard as it is for me just to be in a place with that many people, the location seemed rather small and crowded. And while I’m sure there must have been stuff there that would have interested me, none of it was going on while we were there. I suspect that plenty of people did enjoy it more, though. It seemed like it anyway. I’m hoping that the event was successful and that we’ve got the thing poised to become an annual event. Especially if they can get a bigger venue next year.

Frankly, I had more fun while we were sitting at the Dairy Queen across the street and identifying what costumes people walking past were wearing. I can now say I’ve seen a man in a Cookie Monster costume on a motorcycle. Another plus of the day: I saw a guy in a Dr. McNinja costume. Dear guy in a Dr. McNinja costume: You made me happy.

It is currently not decided if we will be trying again tomorrow. If we do, I’ll let you know. If we don’t I might also let you know. Thus, these last few sentences are pretty unnecessary.

Also, I’d like to take a moment to complain about something I’ve seen on the Internet but today was the first time I heard about it in person: Using the term “genre” to refer to things like fantasy and science fiction. Like a website will say it has the latest news on “genre fiction” and it means it covers comics and sci-fi shows and just in general nerdy stuff. It’s downright stupid to me. Fantasy and sci-fi are genres, certainly, but to refer to them as “genre” first of all doesn’t specify what genre they are and secondly doesn’t acknowledge all the genres that those things aren’t. I am sure I have absolutely no chance of stopping this from continuing, but I can swear right here that I’m never going to play along! NEVA SURRENDA!!!