Another summer is over. August was a weird month. Busy and fast one moment, empty and endless another. I guess I'm glad that it's over.
Goals
1. Order new tablet (Huion Kamvas Pro 16 V2)
Yes! Saved up enough since the start of the year, it's finally here. And she's perfect!
2. In Orbit Sketch Pages 1-10
Re-doing the script because some integral moments were not working.
3. Summer zine with Alice 3: Electric Boogal-y
Finished the fashion and movies pages.
4. Finish COTY 2026 spreads
Still have October, November, and December left... but I did finish September!
5. Beginner JS course videos
Nope.
6. Titanfall 2 Anniversary sketch
Just some very preliminary sketches.
7. Fix PSP thumbstick
Forgot to do it...
Best Of: July
Movies
This has been a disaster month for movies. I watched basically nothing. My disappointment is immeasurable and my month is ruined. The number wasn't zero though! I guess I enjoyed A Knight's Tale the most because it's just a dumb, fun movie.
TV Shows
We watched the first season of Parts Unknown which was great. My favourite episode was probably Quebec because the food was... it was unhinged. Those motherfuckers were eating, dude! We are also coming close to the end of season 3 of Silo, it should wrap up on the first Friday of September. GIF not from Parts Unknown, just a great GIF.
Games
Titanfall 2 on my own after that dumbass troll was finally dealt with. I know, I know, I could just download Northstar. But I don't wanna be totally obliterated by sweats and G100s every waking moment. I'm shit at the game and I know it. However, me and Tom also started Saints Row The Third (the remastered version). I don't love the remaster, I think it wipes clean all the charm of the original game which is my childhood staple. But it's still fun, especially in co-op.
Books
Currently reading two non-fiction books: Right Wing Women by Andrea Dworkin and Drug Cartels Do No Exist by Oswaldo Zavala. I know that Dworkin is a very controversial figure and there's much I do not agree on with her but the topic is incredibly interesting, and devastatingly sad. I think TERFs have seriously co-opted her views on feminism and gender identity. Her own words on trans women may be outdated but they are not exclusionary. In fact, I think all she has to say about sexism applies as much to trans women, with extra bigotry on the side in the flavour of transphobia of course, which makes them women as any woman is. Regardless, to me trans women will always be women and I'm more interested in her work regarding why women often chose that which is inherently hostile, if not fatal, to themselves. I'm very early into Zavala's book but it's already very promising.
Finally finished Faith Erin Hicks' Nameless City trilogy. It's not long or anything, I'm just an idiot. It's awesome, I love her work so much.
Music
Unlike with movies, this has been an awesome month for music. I'm tempted to pick one of the many Elliott Smith albums I've been listening to this month but I feel like I should go with something that was actually, truly new to me this month. So, it's gotta be La Dispute's Wildlife at the recommendation of Alice. Rooms felt more morose, kind of like thinking back to an incident of horrific tragedy in a more well-adjusted present light. Wildlife feels like the it's happening to you right now, like you're in a car crash in slow motion and you can't get out of the car.
Animation
Watched some animated films this month but no 'toons or anime. This is getting sad.
This is gonna be a pretty boring post. Not much happened this week and I've been feeling kind of shitty. Be warned, this is a short, terrible, and self-pitying as hell entry. Don't really like lying though so I'll keep it as is. Maybe tone down the gruesome details a little bit.
I'm still fundamentally okay, just hitting the most expected speed bump ever. Seems like the road I'm on has no shortage of those. Honestly, I don't know why I'm bitching when I know how many people have it harder but I guess bitching does ease the stress some. Very whiny blog, man. I'm very whiny!
Week 35.
Been busy scanning all my notebooks in my spare time so I did that on Monday. I've been meaning to in case something happens to them, at least I'll have digital copies. Plus I can pack them up and put them upstairs for now so they don' take up much space.
Tuesday I scanned some of the physical photos I have. Went down memory lane a little too much, maybe.
The year is 2006...
Or maybe I've just been having a really shit week. I've watched way too much YouTube all week, like -make-you-sick amounts. And gained nothing from it. Wish I had a better way to keep something on in the background or when I have a free 20 minutes or something. YouTube's just really been eating away at my time and energy. So just quit! I want to.
On Wednesday my sister's friend was over and she taught us to play Rummy. As with all card games, I didn't get it for like 10 minutes straight until it somehow magically clicked! I don't Mo ever got it and kept cheating and sneaking tiles onto my sister's rack.
Thursday I did some sanding on the third floor. The good news is that soon I may be able to move into my actual room. Do whatever I want to it! Kind of stupid to be this excited for something like that at my age of 27 but I honestly don't care at this point. I'll start doing some sketches on furniture placement and all and hopefully some fellow bloggers can give me a little feng-shui input.
Luckily the Titanfall 2 servers are back so I've been partaking in some matches in the evenings. Friday, saw some of the GTAVI footage, not from the leaker this time. It looks awesome but I'm not gonna give Rockstar any money ever. Maybe when they stop firing unionized employees.
Totally passed out.
Did some more sanding upstairs on Saturday. My sister had a sleepover with her friends, we played a bunch of board games then left them to their own devices. Though I could hear these loud motherfuckers until like 5AM. Some classics were had at this sleepover: truth or date (with a prank call!) and a Jennifer's Body watch.
On Sunday I finally reached an acceptable stage in my digital file management. This has been a long time issue for me, makes working on anything a struggle. It hasn't solved everything but it feels like my mind's a little more at ease now.
Awful news in the world of emo, horrible things came out about the lead singer of Say Anything this week. Specifically grooming and predatory messages to underage girls. Not surprising, cuz men. I did realize I don't like a single Say Anything song. They suck. But that's not really relevant, because there's been bands who do make good music such as Brand New who also turn out to have just real pieces of shit there. I know it's hard not to sort of 'idolize' people who make great movies, music, or whatever but we shouldn't. Because we don't actually know these people. Especially if it means defending them when their victims are right there. I say that but I still hold my favourite musicians in high regard and just cross my fingers they haven't fucked someone over. I just hope that Cedric Bixler-Zavala's biggest crime was that he was dumb enough to fall for Scientology (which he left) and that Jeremy Enigk's biggest crime is that he's bald. But who knows, right?
The end.
But basically I've been so... defective this week. Extra defective. I write distracted, slowly trying some more job applications but the options are quickly growing thin locally. The last thing I want is remote work again but honestly I feel like I'm dry on choice here. I just want this to work out already. I'm not a proactive person at all but there are times when I give it my all and try, there's still waiting on waiting on waiting. I'm a broken record at this point...
This Week I'm Excited For...
I'm in such a bad mood it feels like I'm not excited for anything. But I guess it's probably for the 1st of September, the coming of autumn. Autumn always soothes my worries though I'm having a sixth sense feeling that this autumn is gonna suck big time.
Song Of The Week...
The one thing that has been great for the past few weeks is the music. I've been on a kick of new stuff via La Dispute and my old favourites through Elliott Smith. Re-listened to his entire disco throughout August. Surprisingly that is not the source of my melancholy recently. This week I'm picking one of my all time favourite's, A Fond Farewell of the posthumous From A Basement On A Hill. Just a plainly amazing chorus and imagery that's prickly and devastating: "This is not my life, it's just a fond farewell to a friend."
Someone here had a productive week (that's me!). Work, some art projects, an IKEA shelf that I did not enjoy putting together at all! Still, feels a little bit better now that the heatwave may officially be behind us.
But guess what? Next year my ass is gonna be posting about how excited I am for summer at the end of May 2027 despite the absolute torture that was this summer. Never having learnt my lesson... one must imagine Sisyphus air-conditioned.
Week 34.
On Monday I had some time for personal projects and also tried to play my usual hour or two of Titanfall 2. However, some shithead has been DDOSing all or most of the servers. And this asshole is also obviously aimbotting and cheating. I could download Northstar but I'm not feeling it yet. I may by next week.
Tuesday I finally got some good progress on the zine Alice and I are working on. Still a bit to go but I think it's all really coming together.
Wednesday we had some work, fertilizing the kiwi plants. They look a bit dried out and after the past month, that's no surprise. The corn's having a good time though. We got there before the sun and wrapped it up by lunch. I got to have fun on the tractor some more!
Whimsical tractor ride.
Corn?
Corn!
In the evening there was some live music and BBQ in the town center. We met up there with some family friends. I put on a whole look and everything. The burgers we got were so bad, which is surprising because it was the same vendors from the brocante in May. The couple that were arguing in front of like 30 people but made a fantastic burger. What a shame... was it the lack of passion? Everything was quite tasteless. We met Sham there and after dinner dropped by our house for a bit to watch my sister and her friend play Far Cry 3 and bother the cats.
Crepe!
More work on Thursday. I'm getting really sick of not having a scheduled job. I'd love to just... know what I'm doing next month and not be called in randomly. The poplar trees are tall as hell by now and the way they've been planted makes them look extremely liminal.
Spooky!
Friday I was busy cleaning up my room. It's a total mess and getting out of hand. I've re-organized my closet and I'm trying out this app as my closet database so I'll report back if it's actually worth anything. So far it's pretty good.
An IKEA shelf also came in and as resident IKEA builder it was within my jurisdiction to put it together. The delivery guys broke one glass and two MDF shelves though so that was very annoying.
On Saturday me and Tom finally started Saints Row The Third. I played it A LOT as a kid. We played some with my brother about two years ago as well but with the way my memory is, it's like I've barely ever played it. Tom's never played the third game, or any of the classic games, so this was his first rodeo. Obviously the character maker is the coolest part of the game. What I loved doing the most back in the day is making a hot girl voiced by Laura Bailey, in the most ridiculous outfits, listen to GenX 89, and doing every Deckers Gang Operation until I was sad that there were no more... I was obsessed with the Deckers specialist. In general, my obsession with the Deckers and their campy cyberpunk bullshit was kind of embarrassing but justified.
I still love you...
More of the same on Sunday. We're playing the remaster, by the way. And I've got to be honest... it sucks! It looks so weirdly realistic and totally destroys the style of the OG game. And runs even worse somehow. We got new and fresh bugs! Otherwise, we also finished the first season of Parts Unknown and watched the Jerusalem episode too. It's a great episode.
End.
Not a bad week, all in all. I'm just waiting for September to start. It looks like we'll be below 30 at last. Finally!
This Week I'm Excited For...
Probably making my own fun next week. I was going to start some of the comic sketches but I've been feeling that the script needs a re-fresh because a lot of the thumbs don't look good to me anymore. Would like to do that so...
Song Of The Week...
Since I enjoyed La Dispute at Alice's recommendation so much, I've been going back and listening to their earlier albums too. This time it was Wildlife and honestly, there's not a single bad song. Each one is a story, be it more literal or abstract, a narrator and their life in every song. Melodically, it reminds me a bit of At The Drive-In but maybe that makes no sense, I have no idea and am musically unqualified as hell to be honest. King's Park may seem like an obvious pick but I also can't not pick it for this week. Guttural, brutal, and painful song. Naturalistic speech or dialogue doesn't always work for music but it makes everything hurt much, much more here: "Can I still get into Heaven if I kill myself? Can I ever be forgiven 'cause I killed that kid? It was an accident, I swear it wasn't meant for him.And if I turn it on me, if I even it out, can I still get in, or will they send me to Hell?" I don't think anything good ever happens at motels.
I'm a changed man. The heatstroke has finally done irreparable damage. Blogging on a Sunday! Posting on that same Sunday night? Like something else that happened this week, this may be a one-in-a-decade phenomena. Alright, this may not last but it makes me feel pretty good to blog on a schedule. It's been an a-okay week. Some things happened on time even! That's a good prognosis.
Week 33.
Terrible Monday. Got gut punched by my period, pleasantly, in the middle of the night. The compounding heatwave left me on the brink. I spent most of the time in the shower or on the couch downstairs, in our only room with an AC. Gathered everyone to watch Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. Yeah, Tony's not screening anywhere near me in the foreseeable future. Fuck A24! Or fuck UGC or CGR! I don't know fuck who but fuck someone!
So I've had knowledge of Anthony Bourdain kind of second-hand most of my life. When we lived in China one of our friend's had a satellite that let you watch all sorts of US and European TV stations. We mainly perused Cartoon Network, the Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon. Adult Swim on the rare, private occasion. This is when Star Wars wasn't engulfed by The Mouse yet and Clone Wars aired on Cartoon Network (which no offense to the babies who stuck to Disney and the brats who loved Nickelodeon, but CN was the shit).
Anyway, eventually the hour would come when the adults wanted their shit back and we either stuck around or went off to play on our PSPs or something. Well, we led more exciting lives back then, so we may have gone and broken into some empty houses or filmed a found-footage movie about teleporting ancient artifacts (this is because we thought that pressing 'stop recording', moving to a new spot and hitting 'record' again was a genius editing technique that totally looked like teleportation!). The grown-ups loved a travel show or a cooking show, usually Master Chef or Hell's Kitchen or something else high stakes and dramatic. Anthony Bourdain shows seemed very down to earth, political, and confusing next to the expletives, flames, and seemingly endless competition. But it was the best of its kind in hind-sight.
We used to watch a lot of travel shows, even a few years back, before we came to France. I think the forced move really soured the taste of that. But I guess it's back because we had a good time. If you've seen Parts Unknown, did Anthony Bourdain visit your country? How close did he come to your hometown?
Big, big day on Tuesday! My tablet, my beautiful, perfect Huion Kamvas Pro 16 V2 arrived! I instantly unpacked it and plugged everything in. Listen, I'm a firm believer that the hardware is not nearly as important as the skill of an artists, you can make total masterpieces on a piece of shit Bamboo. However... a good tablet does make it easier. I tried it out for about an hour but sadly the cramps got to me. I let my brother mess around on it and apparently he saw God. I believe it.
She's beautiful!
Two screens!
Wednesday was the day of the eclipse. Very exciting stuff. Except we are so unorganized we didn't get any glasses. I watched my mum do... something to a piece of cardboard and foil for an hour. Like, just give up. It's not happening for us.
Me and Mo went out onto our roof to, and I know this is against all recommendations, peek at the eclipse. Don't do it! I know I did, but I'm an idiot! I threw only a few glances and mostly kept my eyes not just pointed away, but covered. See, the thing is, the eclipse covers the perceived brightness, but the sun's rays will still penetrate your now dilated eyeballs (because they think it's dark) and ruin your retinas. So, I was cowering away for most of it unlike my brother, who climbed the highest peak of the roof and looked outwards.
He thinks he's the king of the junjle.
I'm telling him, stop looking directly at the sun, it will seriously damage your retinas! He merely smiled back at me before turning his stupid, smug face back to the huge ball of fire in the sky, careless to the future he carves for himself.
Children know!
Luckily the situation was not that bad and no temporary or permanent blindness was suffered. Also the eclipse kind of sucked! It wasn't even partial for us, the moon barely grazed the bottom of the sun and it got just a little darker for like a minute. Disappointing! Apparently, there will be one visible in Spain next year, so maybe we can make a trip out of it. Thursday, same shit. Well... minus the eclipse! That would be insane!
Friday was awesome. Free shit Friday! My mum's been doing an apprenticeship with a very old dude in town who's a master at furniture renovation. He's been meaning to get rid of a lot of stuff, the dude's a hoarder, and luckily some of it made it our way. I'll post about it on the fashion blog later but there were some really great things, especially some coats and pants for autumn and winter. My sister also got this old Sony handycam but sadly it's busted. I fiddled with it but it's doing a weird thing in the viewfinder I wasn't able to find a solution to. Here's a video of how cool the cassette slot is and the weird viewfinder thing, set to Braid's Killing A Camera (too on the nose?) so you don't have to listen to my siblings scream at the Xbox in the background.
The cats also traumatized themselves by breaking a shelf in our little entry nook. Yoshi didn't come downstairs all day and in his rush to escape broke a nail. Luckily there was no blood and it was just the outside part.
Saturday was the day of all days. The busiest of days. The craziest! It started with a very early trip to the flea market/brocante. It was a sizeable one, a bit low on tech but lots of other good stuff, especially clothes and house stuff.
Kylie fucking who?!
Magical trash alley.
I had the nicest moment with these two girls at their booth. I stopped by and one of them gave me a paper, she just said it's for me and it was a small sketch of me! Riffling through stuff like a rat! It was such a sweet gift, I thanked her profusely.
It's-a me!
When we got home, we took a little time off then walked to the other park outside of town for the car show. It was awesome, and since my brother recognized most of the European and American models I just had him tour-guide me all over the place. Only sometimes I could be like 'Ah! Mazda!' and that's about it.
There he is: the most wanted!
Me with the vans.
Van!
Due to miscommunication however, we had to cut the trip short as we locked our mum out of the house and had to go back. Plus, we had a movie seance at Tom's at 2PM.
Naomi also showed up for our re-watch of Frozen and Frozen II. I think they are alright movies. I was never really into the Frozen story. I think Disney stopped hitting sometime after WALL-E. I'm old and lame. Tom hasn't seen Treasure Planet or Sinbad though, which is actually a crime of some sort. That will be our next double-feature!
I kept the box from the tablet because Simona likes it.
Nap in the socks.
Melting some more on Sunday. I've been a bit busy finishing up scans of my old notebooks and sketchbooks this week. The fires made me realize that I'd just lose everything easy if something were to happen so it'd be nice to have some digital backups of my oldest memories.
The end...
And so this crazy week was over. Celestial phenomena. Trinkets and memorabilia. Fast cars. And then some!
This Week I'm Excited For...
I'm making next week 'managing a bunch of stuff' week. I have so many random tasks that need doing, so hopefully I'll knock all of it out next week. Then I may have some time for my comic beyond next week.
Song Of The Week...
So I've been really, really enjoying Failure this week. Greatest band name ever? Perhaps. Fantastic Planet is a perfect album, top to bottom. I'm picking Saturday Savior as my song of the week this time, it's just got such a heavy and gravelly chorus. It's unreal!
