Spicy sausages

On Friday morning I was walking along a sunny beach in Sitges, Spain, but then by Friday afternoon I was in East Croydon in the spitting rain. Now I know why the Brits do a mass exodus to these meditteranean countries!

Sitges is a really nice beach/resort town an hour from Barcelona. It's also the gay capital of Spain, which I didn't know beforehand, but did explain all the guys holding hands and some of the rather odd looking women in some of the seedy bars! Anyway, the team trip wasn't as bad as I thought, but as I don't really do the whole drinking and staying out all night and then being hungover the next day thing anymore, I was a bit different to most of my other colleagues (more mature and responsible = less fun?), but I did get along with most of them, even though I'm not the most conversational person in the world. I am however very stiff and sore from playing volleyball, touch football and swimming in the sea. I think I did more exercise in one day than I would do in a month!

The other interesting thing about the trip was the fact that even though flying Easyjet is cheap, the flight to Barcelona was half an hour late, while the flight back was an hour late. Buses, trains, and now even the planes don't run on time...

Off to Spain

No blogs for a few days, off to Spain for a company "team-building" event. I'm so excited...

Another signing - Neil Gaiman

Went to a signing by Neil Gaiman today. Had to leave work early and sit in queue for two hours, but at least it wasn't raining! I was tenth in line, but the queue steadily grew overtime, til it stretched around the corner. Due to the amount of people, they limited the signing to only 3 items per person, which was a bit naff, but I only missed out on getting two other thnigs signed, but I can live with that. Interesting mix of people in the queue too, the usual goths with tattoos, students, beardies, rather overweight people, and quite a lot of women too. Looking at what people had to sign, it was the guys getting comics signed, and the girls getting his books signed.
Anyway, after two hours in the queue, you get like 30 seconds of facetime with him, and he was surprised when I gave him a copy of his first book, a biography of Duran Duran from 1984. This had been sent over from Australia by the master signer/collector himself, my father. I think he is to blame for all this. Got that signed, a copy of Eternals #1 and a Green Lantern/Superman comic he wrote too. Then had to spend 45mins on the bus going home. I seem to be spending alot of time in queues or on public transport in london...

Kickback!

Went to Forbidden Planet today for a signing - David Lloyd, who is mainly known for having illustrated V for Vendetta, was promoting his new graphic novel, Kickback.

I had turned up just after 2pm for the a 3pm signing, but there was no queue yet! Oh well, I went off to look at Spanish phrasebooks (as you do) at Foyles bookshop, and came back at 2.30pm, and still no queue! Oh dear, I always feel bad for a person coming to a signing and hardly anyone turns up. The guy only wants to flog his book to pay his bills! There was one guy there already, a serious collector, who I've seen at lots of other FP signing events. He was first in line, and maybe 7-10 other people turned up by 3pm? Not good! When the signing began, the first guy pulled out a whole stack of comics, mainly David's early work in Warrior and Captain Britain for him to sign. David asked him if he was going to buy Kickback, as that was what he was there promoting, and the guy said no! David tried to converse with the guy about what comics he collects, but it was like talking to a brick wall. I don't know if the guy just has no social skills or flogs all the signed comics on eBay, but I was embarrased! Anyway, I was next, I only had two comics (one of them being Kickback), and I proudly announced that I had bought it, and had read it too! I think this made David a bit happier, or it could have been the beer he had in his hand.

The graphic novel itself is a good little corrupt-cop drama about corruption and redemption, but I think I would have liked it more if it had been in black and white, instead of the computer colouring it was done in (it just didn't sit very well on the art I think). Anyway, David's a nice guy, and I had a good chat with him about the book while he did a sketch in the front cover, which he did without me asking which was nice! I feel it is rude to ask an artist for a sketch, as if you like the person's art, don't you already have the book in front of you with their art in it anyway? I guess I just hate getting stuck in a queue when they take 10mins to do a sketch for someone ahead of you, and all you want is your comics signed...

Arty-farty advert

I was looking through a design magazine today at work and saw this picture which was rather cool (it is an advertisement for cashmere sweaters I think, www.allude-cashmere.com). The questions is though, is it a giant rabbit, or a very small woman...

Messy?

Not much happening at them mo, but the missus is due back on Sunday, so I need to clean the flat soon. It's not that it is dirty and I've been living like a pig while she's been away, it's just that I want the flat to be clean for her return! I've got into a really bad habit of letting the dishes pile up from Monday to Friday, and then spending an afternoon on the weekend washing them up! And the rabbit seems to do quite a good job of making a mess too, as he often does a flying leap out of his litter box spreading hay and poopsies everywhere. Actually, for those people that have stayed recently, they can vouch that it isn't full of empty pizza boxes! I always take them for recycling the next day...

Doom!

Here's a pic of Bushel eating some grass, on our carpet, out of a big cardboard tube called a "chube". Exciting, huh?
This weekend I watched two movies, "Nightwatch" and "Doom". Nightwatch was a really interesting Russian film about two groups of super-powered beings, the Light Others (the good guys) called the Nightwatch and the Dark Others (the bad guys) called the Daywatch, and no, I haven't got the Night/Daywatches mixed up. I recommend this film, as it had some nifty special effects and as I had no idea what was going to happen I enjoyed it more! On the other hand, Doom was the usual Hollywood piece of crap, with cliched characters who could have stepped out of Aliens or Predator, and the whole fim was very similar to Aliens as well. Some good effects though, and the Rock was quite good, but it lost the way when the Rock went loopy and they had that unbelievable fight scene at the end. I did like it when the camera went into Doom-vision though! For any of you single-guys out there (or ones in a relationship for that matter), don't make any woman watch this film, as she won't like it!!! Just stick to the wrestling...

British wildlife

I now know why the mad toff Brits like to hunt foxes. It's because they make the most awful screeching noises at 5am in the morning. I'm not sure if this is because they are the only animal that practices buggery or if they just do it to piss us off because we have taken over the environment and they are forced to eat rotting KFC out of grabage bins.I also saw two Robins having a "breast-off" this morning, thrusting their inflated red breasts at each other in some sort of wee-tiny birdy macho contest.And the final example of British wildlife was the three blokes drinking beer at 11am on a Sunday morning in the park opposite the supermarket. Well done, Britain! P.S. The picture above is of Bushel's litter tray after a dump. Behold the magnificence of what we call "poopsies"!

First boring blog

Not sure what to write about today, as today was a fairly boring day. I did go and buy a new pair of jeans, does that count as interesting? Probably more interesting than the double-sided tape I bought this afternoon...
Going back to my jeans, earlier in the year I bought a new pair of jeans because the old ones had developed a big hole in the seat/crotch area. Now, 6 months later, those jeans developed the same thing! What is going on here? Why does this area split/wear out faster than other parts of the jeans? Maybe my "package" is so big it causes the material to rip, or my loins are so hot they burn holes in them?? A mystery to be sure!
P.S. If anyone wants to buy my old crotchless jeans, just let me know...

Spade-Men Series 11

I've just finished pencilling all 25 strips of the 11th series of the Spade-Men! This was a different procedure for me, as normally I would draw in pencil one or two strips, then go back and ink them (go over in black pen). However, this time I just continued pencilling until all 25 strips were done. This worked really well, as say I got to strip 20 and I wanted to change a character's costume or add something to an earlier strip so it made sense later, I could just go back, erase, re-draw and hey-presto, it looks like U2J knows what he's doing when he's drawing this stuff! I'm actually pretty happy with this series, and considering it has been a year since the last Spade-Men series, I hope it's worth the wait! I just have to go and ink it all now...

The Misadventures of Bushel - Part 2

I got Bushel to the vet after 3am, and the vet checked him over and seemed to know about this condition in rabbits, and gave a good old feel around his stomach, which I'm not sure he liked, but he behaved very well. She recommended keeping him for 12 hours for observation, and would give him some injections for the pain and a muscle relaxant to help the gas blockage pass. I left him there and got home about 4am, and it was really sad coming home to an empty rabbit cage, as he is always chewing at the bars to be let out whenever I get home. I only slept a few hours, as I was expecting a call from the vets the next morning to tell me how he was going. Just before 9am they called to say he was fine and that his bloated belly had gone down by a quarter and that I could pick him up at 3pm. That afternoon, the vet said he had started eating again, which is a good sign of normal rabbit behaviour, so I took him back to get him back into his normal routine. Unfortunately I had to give him some antiobiotics for the next five days, which had to be administered orally! Now, Bushel doesn't like being picked up or man-hadled at the best of times, but being held down and having a plastic syringe with some yucky, sticky liquid shoved down your gob wasn't fun, for him or me! Eventually I replaced this twice daily procedure with putting the 0.3ml of medicine on a small slice of banana, which he eats up no worries! Who would think rabbits would eat banana? I can't see them climbing up banana trees in the wild? Anyway, after 5 days of medicine and much TLC from his worried father, he is back to his usual self and is eating, drinking and pooing like he's going to enter a eating, drinking and pooing-a-thon. As for why he got sick, I still have no idea to a specific cause, but it was a terrible couple of hours when I thought I was going to lose him! My baby!!!
P.S. The picture of him above isn't him dead (obviously), but is of him being a bit sleepy after having some pats.

The Misadventures of Bushel - Part 1

This is a pic of our baby bunny boy, Bushel!
He's a Dwarf Lionhead rabbit, and he's a funny little chap.
You can muss his hair up on his head so it looks like he's got a mohawk. Anyway...
He got sick on Friday night, he was behaving out of character and ran away under our bed and stayed there for awhile. I went and checked on him and he was hunching up and stretching out all the time, and I could see his stomach was bloated and raised. Somehow he had developed Gatrointestinal Stasis (GI Stasis), which is a slowdown of instestinal movement leading to a buildup of gas caused by bacteria. His little belly had swollen up to double it's size, and he was in a lot of pain. He wouldn't come out from under the bed, so I had to pull it out from the wall, and got him into the spare room where I gave him some pats to calm him down. I tried massaging his stomach to help clear the gas through his system, but it didn't seem to help. I put him in his cage thinking I could leave him until the morning to take him to the vet, but he just sat there really lethargically, and then began making a weird gurgling noise, like little burps, but it didn't sound good. I then called the missus in NZ to ask for help, and she said to get him to the vet! So, at 3am on Saturday morning, I put Bushel in his carry box, with a towel and some hay, called some dodgy mini-cab company and off we went to the emergency vet clinic! To be continued...

Graphic Event

Went to this event last night:

http://www.englishpen.org/events/penevents/maycontaingraphiccontent/

Graphic novels seem to be growing as an acceptable form of literature these days, but it is interesting that the often serious and autobiographical works like 'Maus' (which deals with the WWII holocaust) are still getting lumped on the shelves with the bright and breezy books like Spider-Man, Tin-Tin and all that wacky Japanese stuff. It sounds like they need to divide the 'Graphic Novel' section of bookshops into sub-categories, or just put the serious adult ones in with the rest of the books?
They also showed a few examples of some new graphic novels coming out, but they are the usual black and white, crudley drawn stuff that doesn't really interest me. The subject matter of these "literary acceptable" graphic novels usually involves someone recalling a tortured childhood, they then go to war-torn Afghanistan/Palestine/Wagga-Wagga, become an emotionally stunted lesbian/mutated/koala bear who draws graphic novels, strikes it rich with a publisher and now lives in Paris/New York/London.
Anyway, I like my graphic novels like my comics, all about escapism! If I want emotional anguish or depressing subject matter all I have to do is listen to all the loonies in my apartement block when they have their screaming matches at 2am in the morning!!
But getting back to the event, it was cool to meet Dave McKean, who is a suprisingly normal bloke when you consider his art is quite dark. I got him to sign a copy of Mr Punch (which had also been signed previously by Neil Gaiman - thanks Dad!) and Batman: Arkham Asylum. Posy Simmonds, who writes and draws for the Guardian was there too, and I got her to sign her book 'Gemma Bovary'. She was a nice lady, and showed me her sketchbook (oo-er vicar!). She's an amazing artist and also does children's books, so I'll have to take a look at them one day, so I can get some inspiration for my planned children's book "Bushel the House-Rabbit"!!!

U2J now has a blog!
Everyone and their dog seems to have a blog these days, and U2J doesn't want to be left behind!
Not quite sure how much stuff I'll put on here, or even what I'll write about, but it should be good for a laugh, or at least until I get bored of it.
My life isn't really that exciting, as it usually involves getting up, going to work and then going home!
However, my wife leads an interesting life, and our pet rabbit Bushel usually gets up to some sort of mischief, so maybe I can write about them.
Oh, and I do occasionally wrtite and draw an online comic strip called the Spade-Men...more about them later!